Category: Friends

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.

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Narrative. Doing shit. Paper curtain.

I was talking to Jonas over a couple of drinks, complaining about the lack of narrative to my life. He countered saying that we should be writing our own stories rather than look for signs of what manner of tale we’re playing a part in.

As a young pup I loved books with quotes and aphorisms. Here’s one from Theodore Roosevelt:

“Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger.”

En gardin och en kanin. Gardinerna är gjorda av papper.

Ninja fail. Drinking buddies. Well hung.

Shortly after a ninja tried to kill the princess of Sweden, I and Petter visited Tobias. As it turns out, there’s not all that much being offered in ways of entertainment in Trollhättan, so all too much money was spent on drinks in hotel bars and such. We were good and tight when we finally stumbled back to his place and fell asleep in front of burning cars in Grand Theft Auto 4. It’s what I believe is called a guys night out except that none of us contracted syphilis.

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I’m infatuated with the time lapse function of my IXUS 70, and will use it until it’s just not fun any more.

We discussed how to best remedy the climate change and global warming and such, resolute to have an email with a solution ready to send of to the UN the next day. We might have to revise our Stalinistic suggestions a bit before going public.

I think we sort of decided to go sailing in a couple of weeks time, and in a vulnerable moment I brandied about the idea of foregoing cigarettes during the cruise. Should we go through with this, it’s not certain that all of those setting out on the trip will return. Imagine something between Lord of the flies and Deliverance, sans banjos.

I’ve been nursing a hangover all day, and had plenty of white rice for brunchinner. For some reason I’ve been reading about different kinds of bows and arrowheads the past hour. If you are a hunting person and wish to buy blunting or shredding implements, you’re in luck: www.bowtechproshop.com.

Drive driven into drivelling dementia!

Yesterday a few nice people celebrated Petters coming of age. Or even-further aging, if you prefer, since 33 isn’t really a milestone as these things go. Yay for Petter, for he is a jolly good fellow.

I got into a sour mood at the end because people were doing the “territorial pissing dance” and elbowing me. Either I find a party where people are polite and don’t dance only to pick someone up, or I stop dancing. Or I drink less – drinking makes Mateusz annoyed and grumpy, like an old person who is annoyed and grumpy.

I’m not certain if I should keep on Twittering. Sooner or later someone will take those messages seriously and come knocking on my door.

Montage of Pär & Petter

I wake up to a kernel panik on my computer, and the drive is making desperate sounds; it wispers “Kill me, kiiiiiill me”. Three hours and a lot of worry later I’m one drive short short of a raid, but ought to be up to speed soon since I actually have a backup of the more important stuff. It’s a drag though. I had just gotten a few good documentaries that I was looking forward to.

Wet asphalt put through some sort of Photoshop \"filter\"

There’s a quiz I’m going to. Wont be able to answer any question, but maybe doghairs are good things.

Chirping, running, drinking, working.

The past couple of days I’ve learned a few things.

For one thing, Gothenburg really likes Bruce Springsteen. The local tabloid had a prop plane doing slow rounds over the city, encouraging the Boss with improper punctuation and a sad whiny sound. I’m sure he was overwhelmed.

Flygplan med banderoll om Bruce Springsteen

Utanför Stearin i Göteborg, askfat

I’ve spent a month back home now, and much of the momentum that I had regarding a documentary project about architecture has been spent on stupid details (like the new look of this blog) and I have yet to book an interview. The coming week should be a make-or-break time to get started and get something on tape. Once I have that, I’ll start looking for financing and such.

Much of the time I feel as though I’m on vacation but ought to work anyway. It’s the constant annoyance of being a free agent: You’re not really free. Ever. Never ever.

Röda sten i motljus

Tallkottar

I’ve been “running” four weeks now. Every two days I pull on sweatpants, plug in some headphones and go wheeze among normal people. It’s getting better, and I’m moving up to level three on the C25K scale, meaning that I’ll be running for a full 3 minutes next. “What is the world coming to” you might ask yourself, and I would answer “asthma and the end of times.”

My impulse control is still bad by anyone’s standard but my own, but smoking is down to sort of ten sticks per day and I no longer suck on that inhaler like a pup on a teat of life.

Petters ögon - come hither

Ballong eyes

Two other smaller things that came to my attention was that although drinking is a nice pastime, I ought to find something besides that. Like drawing, or sailing, or maybe furthering my career as the worlds greatest person ev4r!

If you go out drinking with people who work in bars, it is safe to assume that they have a built in gene that allows them to not get as drunk as you, so don’t try to keep up. I went with Petter to a bar owned by an old friend of his and ended up at a concert at Pustervik. We were discussing how women on stage are very successful at looking awesome (compared to the same woman in grocers) so we were fawning a bit. One g&t too many later I was stumbling home, coming just short of having to drag myself along a wall.

Suggestions for hobbies other than drinking? I mean, it’s not as if I have an abundance of money or health here, nor is it helping me to look better or getting laid, and the routine is getting a bit routiny.

Konsert på Pustervik, 4 juli 2008

Kvitto från Delerium

Pär i motljus i Stockholm

Anna is going with Hanna to Israel tomorrow, and as soon as I’ve set her up with a Twitter feed I’ll post it here. I’ve been trying not to engage in all these web 2.0 projects too much since they are devourers of time, but let’s see if Twitter can’t be useful for something. My own feed is in the column on your right, ladies and gentlemen, and you are welcome to follow or @ or whatever it is that the kids do. I decided to try after listening to You Look Nice Today, which is a very relaxed and excellent podcast (except the latest live episode, a rather meh affair) which apparently came about after the producers were twittering all the time.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s time for you to waste at least fifteen minutes here: Twittervision.

While working on this project of mine – yes a specific blog for it is coming up shortly – I’m starting to look for job. Preferably freelance or part-time, in whatever area that I might be good at. If you have suggestions or think that I can do something that needs to be done, give me a shout. I need to pull in approx 7000 SEK a month to stay afloat and am really terrible at this whole marketing myself crap. I need someone to give me money and then point at the ground and hand me a shovel.

Gänget går längst gatan

Birthday. Density. Flaaaaaanders

Looking for music in 5/4 tempo, I ended up with this:

And what in holy heaven:

Birthday get-together yesterday ended up with minigolf. Neat. I got two shirts, a pack of Lucky Strikes, an old Polaroid camera (need film) and a bed which is to be delivered curtesy of Hanna sometime in the future. Awesome. I did not know that you could give away beds. This raises the bar for the future.

We had strawberry wine and went for a few beers. I’m feeling better, although the solidity of my corporal production leaves something to be desired. My dear brother Tomasz calls it “peeing through the butt” but it leaves a rather unpleasant image in ones head, don’t you think?

I’m enjoying oatmeal and organising my music collection.

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.

Mea Culpa. Or somesuch

Sometimes it takes you quite some time to come to a realisation that is glaringly obvious to everyone around you. You might be a mean drunk, overconfident or inconsiderate, and it might take a while to notice and even longer to so something about it. In my case, I haven’t been aware of how I’ve slowly been losing my shit the past year or so, and just the other day realised that the small outburst of murdering rage I’ve experienced might be related to other stuff.

So the next time I go off ranting about getting into a fight or smashing a bottle on someones stupid head, you might want to tell me to relax and take a few deep breaths. I hear it helps.

On a lighter note, here are some t-shirts I found in my old closet at my moms place. They’re from my high-school years and shine a bright light on the vomitingly cuddly guy I was trying to be.

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As well as a drawing of me for the school paper, a photo of me with hair curtesy of henna and a guy who gets shot in the gut.

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I can’t say that I would have done anything differently back then, but I wouldn’t stand to meet that snotty wanna-be intellectual today. Hopefully I won’t stand the Mateusz of today in ten years time. There’s always the outside possibility that one might become slightly better.