But what if moss is good for the stone?

I’ve moved to my own place. After five or so years living with Anna, Albin and Eskil, and lately with Jan, moving to live on my own feels almost like a betrayal of some ideal. I’m not sure what ideal that might be, but it seems indulgent, bordering on, dare I say, bourgeois. I’ve never had a place of my own, so for me this is all terribly exciting. I’m like someone coming out as gay and boring all his friends by talking non-stop about how excited he is to suck dick; —Like, I have a fridge. It’s full of my stuff, and I just left five snowballs in there for a week!

Sara & Olle helped me move two weeks ago, and I’m now the shady subletter of Helgas previous apartment. It’s a one room apartment overlooking the river, with Norra Älvstranden on the other side serving as an example of just how low one might slip into upper middle class without realizing it. The Stena Line passes outside my window, as does the motorway, lending an industrial city timbre to the place.

Moving didn’t take long. Like a goldfish in a bowl, I hadn’t grown beyond what I could fit, and so transporting it didn’t take longer than an hour. Packing all my crud, crap and junk, took appreciably longer. When I cleaned out the room, it was emptier than it had ever been during my stay at Gröna Vallen. The indoor climbing wall was as I had found it, and for all the years I’ve slept next to it, I had tried it only a handful of times. My shuffling feet had scuffed the floor and my bike had left tracks where the rubber had rubbed off.

Living by oneself has upsides. Jerking off is easier than ever, and will be even easier once I hang curtains, seeing as how I live on the ground floor. Curtains would also allow me to work easier during daylight hours, and I’ll no longer have to fashion light controlling plastic head sleeves to get the retouching work done. I don’t own much furniture beyond a bed, so my living room is rather bare. I’m looking into getting an adjustable table and ergonomic chair, but this furniture business will take a while to arrange as work has piled up. I hope to get a coat hanger within two weeks, but am not taking bets on it. Laundry is off the table and buying underwear and shirts in bulk feels like an excellent solution.

Cleaning the old place out was sad. Sad like Bruce Banner walking down the road, but also sad as in confusing. When my year in Iceland was up and I got back to Sweden, it was as if I was the only witness to what I’d experienced there, and were I to go back there would be scant evidence of me ever having been there. Cleaning out the fridge, or the shelf in the bathroom, I felt something similar; I was vanishing the traces of myself, and was wondering what intangibles I was bringing with me, and what I was leaving behind.

This, of course, should only serve as a reminder that what is important in life is most often our relationships with other people, and that taking care of those, and being mindful of our friends, is a continuous process and should not only hinge on routine but on choice and hard work. (Most people know about this, but I am surprisingly resilient to the obvious) And in total contradiction to this, I have hardly met with anyone the past two weeks, except Sara who has taken pity on me and enjoys laughing at my idiot ramblings about how I will craft a table with a built-in scanner.

I’ll make good on this though. As soon as I have something to hang a coat on, and no longer live in paper bags, and have bought either a broom or a vacum cleaner, I’ll have you over for tea or beer and maybe Xbox if I lose my mind enough to buy one.

Pants! It’s all pants!

The only pants that actually fit me – and by that I mean the pants that don’t make me look like a pornographic sausage roll – have suffered terrible deterioration. Apparently I’ve developed crotch-rot, because I now have four pairs that are beyond silly to wear and make the hairy leg-flesh look like a ill-cleaned pork kassler; I don’t know how many people I have mentally scarred. Will sit down with sewing machine tomorrow and try to remedy the sad state of affairs, if pants can be said to have states of affairs.

In other news: 1) I went to the gym with Petter last Friday and still can’t bend my legs properly. 2) I get less shit done than I’d like – am tired. Maybe eating poorly. 3) Started running again and my pulse is up at 180 when I run as slow as possible which means that the whole “ærobic excercise” stuff is out the window 4) Jonas, Tobbe and Mark have all visited without me mentioning it here. I don’t know why I’m not updating more often. Blame Twitter. 5) Students of mine might be reading this blog, so expect fewer cock-jokes.

PM: 2009 resolution candidates.

I came back to Gothenburg in time to welcome the new year with a couple of friends. After dinner we headed to Heaven 23 (on the 23rd floor of a hotel) for drinks and fireworks. We’d been told that a strict dress code would be enforced, and as a result we all looked bloody fabulous in jackets and such. Anna and Hanna had given me a scarf with flower prints on which allowed me to play the part of a toyboy and/or gay chihuahua.

We pretty soon realise that the whole dress code thing doesn’t apply to the scores of hotel guests that have found their way to the top floor with their kids in search for lebensraum and alcohol. The enterprise we had set out on is now transforming in front of our eyes into an after ski, but with more expensive alcohol and family friendly music volume. Once the fireworks start the kids are swarming, longingly staring out over the city but probably missing their Playstation consoles.

We’ve been buying drinks for two hours or so and slowly realise that we’re not getting value for money. We wrap shit up and leave in search for other venues that might enjoy our custom, and where we might actually enjoy being customers. I’m still sick and communicate mostly through coughs and spit – I’m a whiny bastard when I’m sick – so it’s actually a relief when we give up on finding anything interesting at half two and take the tram home.

Mum just got back from Hawaii, where she and her boyfriend were seeing new places and having a grand time. Sounds like fun, that. My Christmas has been spent under the banner of plague and lethargy, and I’m looking forward to getting back to work at Chalmers and planning stupendous projects. Also, I need to make more money so that I can buy people all those Christmas presents I’ve been putting off for three weeks. I mean, my brother got two pairs of socks from me, which although they were designer socks, still are socks.

Contrary to the title, I don’t have a new years resolution yet. I’m working on it and it’ll be a good one. Promise.

This is your entertainment for today:

Metafilter user xlcus created a Flickr project that mirrors images. Put in your own search terms and lol away.

centre-mirrored image of an owl

Have I told you already that Jonas is picture blogging Berlin? Pardon my wandering eyes.

And a short time lapse of the bridge from the other night. Sooner or later I’ll do something original with this function, but for now I’m happy just emulating what I’ve seen on Discovery Channel.

[flv:https://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/bron_igen.flv https://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/bron-igen.png 640 300]

Meat! Blood! Meatblood!

Anna has a suggestion. Or rather, “suggestion” might not be the right word since that implies “choice,” something that I’m apparently not being afforded in the matter.

Anna solarised

It’s about meat. It’s not only about meat, but meat being the fulcrum around which whatever ailment she’s hell-bent on fixing pivots. Her brother recently transitioned from a newbie vegetarian to stone age diet kind of guy – from tofu and sprout, to meat and red wine. Wine might be anachronistic, but the point is to exclude carbs and cooked food in favour of blood and anything red.

I’ve been vegan for so long that it’s not something that I think about anymore. And because it’s such an engrained part of my personality, this is the part that Anna suggest I shake up, shake down, shake it the fuck around.

Gif animation party

All this to get out of a rut, as it were. To tear down and rebuild on better foundation. Also, there’s the idea that the lack of hormones and whatnots in a carnivorous diet make you lethargic, and if I drink the blood of a boar I’ll suddenly become Adonis incarnate and get stuff done and have more energy and so on.

This is about challenging yourself and re-evaluating who you are. And in my case, who I am. If you’re a docile guy, try to punch someone. If you’re aggressive, turn the other cheek.

At the heart of the matter is that I don’t like to be coerced, and while one of Annas’ great talents is to be convincingly convincing, I have a hard time fending off the onslaught of a circular argument: The reason I don’t want to challenge myself is because I’m not challenging myself. Replace “challenge” with what you wish, and it’s clear that what you need is not what you want, because you’re used to wanting what you don’t need.

Crying billboard model

I’m rambling a bit. If often takes me a while to decode the advice that my friends give me, and it’s always with the utmost hesitation and suspicion; if I’m not in a position to decide what is good for me, on what basis do I judge the value of others’ advice?

At some point you have to realise that you might be wrong, and goodness knows that I’ve dispersed my share of halfwitted suggestions and criticism to friends. I’m not sure how to properly respect the effort that goes into this kind of feedback. You get advice and get yelled at by friends because, for whatever reason, they care for you. I just don’t know how to reconcile (what I’d like to think of as) my critical judgement with an acknowledgement of lack of personal insight.

Exhibition. Escort. Emotions. Almost fighting.

I was invited to show at the My Computer exhibition that Olle Esvik and Erik Boström curated at Gallery 300m3. Olle had comissioned two copies of the old virtual photography stuff that I’d done, and along with 23 others the space was well used. It’s a good show, and if you’re in town I’d recommend a visit.

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Most of the evening was spent running interference though; old issues are new again, and since I suck at any form of conflict management (basically I black out and ramble) I start off by being rather rude to a friend and then stumble through a short presentation of my work.

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The last couple of weeks that I’ve been working in Stockholm, my evening routine consists mostly of watching Scrubs late at night, and it’s amazing how well they manage to resolve conflicts. Yes, well, it’s a TV-show and their conflict resolution comes with sound effects, but still. Amazing.

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I drink a bit too much of the champagne that Anna and Pär have brought as a gift, and I swollow an upper that Andreas presents me with. It’s guarana or somesuch, and I can’t tell if it has any particular effect. After hopping a bit we end up at Uppåt Framåt, and although the music is nice I become morose and have a hard time ignoring the more aggressive assholes in the place and become an aggressive asshole myself.

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Stress + alcohol + impolite people = doom

The last hour I spend sulking and imagining how I will get beaten up horribly; it didn’t seem like such a bad idea, except I would prove the inevitability of violence as conflict resolution, and that would be depressing. Whenever I feel awkward or stressed, I often imagine myself getting beaten up; I’ve had this for as long as I remember, and even though it’s such an obvious example of projecting an external conflict where there is an internal one, it’s hard to make away with.

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I dream that I’m sixteen, in a public bathroom, asking a girl that I have a crush on if we should kiss. She puts her hand to her mouth and vomits blood and a big lump of pink. On closer examination it proves to be her heart. I wake up and Saturday passes in gloomy existential meandering. Bah.

I just finished Farnhams freehold, a Heinlein book about freedom, racism and with an autocratic patriark as protagonist. Interesting, but bizarre. Get it from The Pirate Bay or a used-books store.

2008, the year of ****

I seldom listen to song lyrics – often it’s just a line that is coherent enough for me to focus on, and of course Tom Waits filters in somewhere whenever he’s gently crooning – but I might be missing out. Anna is all Morrissey Morrissey Morrissey ooh listen to the lyrics and I can’t really empathise with that, but she sent me a song of LCD Soundsystem, All my friends, and it has some really good lines.

Especially fitting since I’m in Stockholm doing something that doesn’t really resemble anything you might call living.

Oh, if the trip and the plan come apart in your hand
You look contorted on yourself your ridiculous prop
You forgot what you meant when you read what you said
And you always knew you were tired, but then
Where are your friends tonight?

Yes, well, ok. I’m in good health, and except that I worry about people in Poland, I’m fucking peachy. Peachy but bored. I just hope that I won’t regret being “bored.” Last time I did we got 2007.

1000 DJs. Performative entertainment galore

1000 DJs is a group of people at my old school that are throwing parties. Last Saturday there was an exhibition, then there was a party, and then there was an exhibition about the party (“1000 DJs, the fuckup”).

In order of appearance:

* Rainbow. The leprechaun was mugged & his gold spend on crack.
* Lovisa from STHLM doing a move.
* Making this curl took Miranda 40 minutes. Well worth it i say.
* Making this body-tag took less than 1 minute. Inflated sense of “party” might be worth it.
* Now you see it, now you don’t!
* After the destruction derby, there are words exchanged regarding the artistic value of said derby, vis-a-vi the planned two-day duration of the show
* Privacy is hard to come by, but some people are not even trying. Ah, the decadence of frolicking art students.

If there are any concerns regarding the quality of the images and so forth, I’m doing this on a windows machine for the first time, and even though Picasa has some neat features, I’m not as used to it as i am to iPhoto. Plus I’m hung over from the fuckup-party yesterday.

Oh, and later today i’m going co-carting with work and a rival company. Free food, although I suspect that they will feed me pasta and taunt me and slap me with meat.

Film-festival. Beer. Olives

The film festival has begun and of course it was time to end my two days of sobriety by going to the opening at Järntorget.

Contrary to my friends opinions, I found that most people in there were very pretty. In a we-look-good-and-we-know-it sort of way. It was also very crowded, so I set about drinking myself into the mindset of a bowling pin – I wouldn’t mind wobbling about and being pushed as much, was the idea.

It’s a strange thing. The promises of sleezy and (on my part) slightly flabby sex turned out to be nothing more than another sweet lie told to me by my friend the alcohol in order that it could mingle with more of his beer friends in my gut.

Sanity preveiled though, and at two o’clock Anna, Mateusz, Anna and Olle (AMAO) took a cab home where Mateusz cooked late-night pasta and proceeded with kicking Olle in the proverbial nuts at Xbox.

Then sleep. Good old fashion lonely, cold, sleep. bu-hu. and so on.