Friends – Page 8 – Monocultured

you would not believe the day i’ve had. litterarly.

seriously, there’s some messed up crap going on that i’m not going to go in to. i can’t relate to it because it’s bloody surreal, and if you can relate to it i’m very sympathetic to your fucked up situation.

as an alternative i present some images to you from my previous saturday that left me hung over and slightly concussed all of sunday. in no apparent order:

this was the spring party at valand and it took place at berg 211 – it was a bit too far away from the city center to become a staggering crowd of stinking artists, but we made do. and the locale is stunning.

four days ago i was dreaming about loosing a tooth, and the more i poked at it with my tounge, the bigger it became and the more it split into fragments. it became so bad that i had trouble talking. when i finally started pulling pieces out, they turned out to be glass fragments – such as you might expect from a broken bottle.

any interpretations?

you would not believe the day i’ve had. litterarly.

as an alternative i present some images to you from my previous saturday that left me hung over and slightly concussed all of sunday. in no apparent order:

any interpretations?

creationism and the evolution in my fridge

i don’t know what the percentage of ~~creationist~~ intelligent design believers there are in sweden, but it seems to be quite popular in the more religiously fundamentalist countries out there.

should you ever find yourself debating one, there is an informative rant here that could guide you on your way.

Mögel_skål

speaking of miracles of nature, here’s something i found in the fridge – anna was away in sthlm and i thought i’d clean something. please notice the small pebbles of fat that have formed on top of Herbert (the thing had developed sentience and named itself Herbert) (ha, ha. old food joke)

mögel_närbild

also: a couch and erotic horseplay between randy men.

randig fåtölj manligt aggrohångel

stallman, work and hookers

i just returned from a lecture by richard stallman. i tried to get some friends of mine to go, any friend actually, but when not even those who i thought were into computers and free and/or open software knew who he was i felt a bit crestfallen.

so i crammed into the draken cinema alongside a crowd of 99% sweaty men and listened to rms preach about gnu/linux and the four basic human rights as they relate to computer software. i’ve read most of it before, but it’s nice to see the man himself deliver. i had to leave when the q&a started, but caught enough to hear him berate the questioners as more or less imbeciles. he’s such an adorable geek in that way – if you don’t do your homework or ask silly questions he’ll call you on it.

(a photographic curiosity is that a guy at the other side of the room took a flash photo at the same time as i took mine, so i actually caught his flash. not that big odds of that happening.)

as of two days back, i’m a working kind of guy. from eight in the morning until five in the evening i’m behind the counter at the photo store, trying to imitate someone who actually knows what they are talking about. ok, most of the time i know more than the person asking me, but it’ll take a while to get the hang of it.

the past two days have been spent learning the antique system that they use for shipping and receiving. the stupidity of the system employed (which entails printing out seven different papers, using two printers, and a bunch of different computer apps) is baffling. if computers, and especially computer applications, can be said to have developed over the years, then the applications used in this instance are technically retarded. if you think i’m using the expression in a derogatory fashion you might want to refer to a dictionary.

at the same time, i’m filling out a questionare about chewing gum of all things. a gum manufacturer has given me a bunch of gum samples and thinks that they will benefit from me answering questions like:
I feel refreshed while chewing this gum
I feel refreshed after chewing this gum
I can imagine chewing this gum while reading or studying
I can imagine chewing this gum while walking, driving, using public transportation and/or bicycling.

me and a coworker (whom i gave one piece of gum out of the alotted six) agreed that this gum was best suited for “standing around” and/or “talking”. it was also a bit too soft. i can’t begin to imagine the amount of money the manufacturer has to shell out to get this nonsensical information that somehow will end up with yet another type of regular, fucking, gum.

seeing as i might appreciate some cheering up, anna and jan suggested they make dinner yesterday. awfully nice of them since my eyes lack a certain zest if not outright will to live after working (people work nine hours a day for a living? insane!)

anna has family visiting as well, so the dynamic duo decided to swag it up a bit and do a non-vegan concoction that would be esthetically pleasing, taste good, and (i imagine) be really cool and elaborate. so they dug out some cheese and bacon and chicken, had fish and shrimp for starters, and actually put the work in to make their own mayonnaise.

besides going out to get some pepper and lemon, i sat comatose in my room until someone calls out to me. tired, but glad that i don’t have to cook anything, i step innocently into the hall. the aroma sort of stops me in my tracks. i check to see if all that working and biking in the day has turned me into a walking pile of sweat, but sweat doesn’t smell like that. this is the smell of death. somehow the combination of fowl, egg, rotten cheese, fried chicken and whatnot has melded into something from CSI. you know when grissom or one of the others step into a room and immediately throw their hands up before their faces, saying Oh, God! What is that?. it was the smell of three hookers and their pimp left dead in a shipping container. and not the “pretty woman” type of hooker.

my food was very good once i stopped breathing through my nose though. tomorrow is a day off, and i plan to sleep until eight. at least

demonstration & deconstruction

let’s do this in pictures and videos, shall we?

in stockholm i went to the first of may demonstration with the anarcho-syndicalists. strenght in numbers is a good thing, and it feels good to be reminded that there is a political alternative and that other people might not be as absent from it as i am. after that i saw a bunch of wild rabbits in a tiny park – how they manage to thrive in downtown stockholm is beyond me, but there you go. my david attenborough moment. bonus material: taking the last commuter train home, some ants eating an apple, and me doing the drunk-look-in-the-mirror routine at a hff get-together.

i came back to gothenburg last saturday to help with taking the exhibition at konsthallen down. this is a time lapse video i made of it using the built in camera and gawker. the first video is of the deconstruction and painting of one corner, the second video is of the packaging of all the prints and thingies. a mad amount of work. one image every fifteen seconds in both vids:

in order of appearance:
– error message on the bus. blurry picture because i’m drunk.
– mom, brother and i. from a series of fifteen pictures.
– this is the reason you don’t keep open razors in the same bag pocket as your cellphone. it happened on the train back from sthlm, and some other passangers freaked because of all the blood. it’s still raw and i can’t type properly.

and last but not least: don’t even bother watching the new spiderman movie. it sucks in obvious ways, and more subtle ways. it’s not worth even downloading – i ended up fast forwarding through most of it. these people don’t even know how to use special effects properly fer crying out loud. oh, and tell me that this isn’t a freudian slip on the behalf of the director: spiderman is battling sandman and black spiderman with the american flag as a backdrop. i mean, c’mon. is this a too obvious reading?

kungsängen & bålsta – babies & food

kungsängen. there’s an odd quantum effect here that makes me revert to being a teenager; i’m on the couch, drink soda, eat like a pig before slaughter.

moms boyfriend had a birthday party during the weekend (watch the video) and tomorrow i’m off to demonstrate my lazy solidarity with other working class folk, and meet some friends. too bad it’s so cold. but hey, if one day of marching a year is what it takes to keep the world just and equal, so be it.

home, mellow home.

whenever i visit mom in kungsängen i slump back into the worn, white leather couch, sleep late and eat a lot. also, i usually go and check on my teeth. no cavities this time, which was surprising. but yay how encouraging.

other than that, some buildings have been torn down, others have been built. met up with childhood friend matilda “you-are-wrong-by-default” baraibar and her sister carolina, and we took their kids for a stroll and then they left for the city. i just borrowed a bus pass from a neighbour (mass transit is prohibitivly expensive here) and am meeting up brother in stockholm proper later tonight. let’s see how many beers i can squeze out of him.

also, this is a good post on slashdot about the metaphore “information highway”. click the text below to go to the original post:

“Suppose the highways were like the net…

A highway hundreds of lanes wide. Most with pitfalls for potholes. Privately operated bridges and overpasses. No highway patrol. A couple of rent-a-cops on bicycles with broken whistles. 500 member vigilante posses with nuclear weapons. A minimum of 237 on ramps at every intersection.”

In vino veritas

ok, it’s getting late, and i’m tired and supposed to get up early to be moral and technical support for anna who has her examination tomorrow. yay for her.

the opening was spectacular. someone counted the number of people showing up, and 666 people turned up.

just the day before we’d been busy building the blessed thing, and come saturday i was walking around with one camera in each hand, trying to get something to drink before the art-peasants would swill it all up. i wasn’t fast enough, and the bastards drank everything and ate all the sausages-on-a-stick (not that i’d have any use of them, but still).

the stress didn’t go away all together, and because the show brought so many people together that otherwise might have stayed clear of each other, well, there were issues that probably will mess up the human relations here.

the first image is the 1000 yard stare of andreas on friday – digesting the horror (the horror) of the shitload of work that we still had. the rest of the images are from the opening and the ensuing party. scroll down for video.

as aside, i’m utterly freaked out by my bank statement, which at the moment reads “fuck you, you destitute beggar.” i got a letter from the student loan ~~evil henchmen~~ people (using the term loosely and generously) saying “yes we know you only have two months left, but we thought we’d help you loose some weight by not approving an extension on your loan. have an awesome life!”

so i’m 28, soon 29, and will borrow money from mom. i like the idea of family helping each other out and all that, but i’ve never lived much by it and can’t help but to shake the feeling of being an utter looser. plus this whole thing is making me feel like a mooch. if you have money, it’s not troubling to have someone else pick up the bill at a bar or for a cab, but if you’re broke it’s something you’re acutely aware of – it’s not a good feeling. then again, a recurring nightmare i have is that i’ll end up in a gutter somewhere. (a pre-emptive self pity, and a perfect excuse for not doing anything to avoid it)

speaking of nightmares, i had two dreams the past month that have stuck:
1 – somehow, there was a pool of young people that had to do service as sex workers for widows and older people. for some reason i was involved and set up a meeting with two older ladies for a rand-y-woo
2 – i won the world championship in sucking dick. literally. i don’t recall any actual sucking taking place in the dream, but i did recive a diploma.

speaking of which, looki what warren ellis found: [click image]

art hall prep 3

it’s over. sort of. the exhibition opened yesterday, with a (possibly) record crowd of 666 people (seriously) attending. it was great. kellogs frosties great.

here’s a vid from fridays building of the show. dorota at the art hall was kind enough to stay an extra hour, and we were out at eight in the evening. to recap: it took six people five days of 11 hours labour just to build the show. 6x11x5=330 hours of hard work.

here’s the vid from fridays building. i’ll edit the material from yesterdays show and party shortly.

stuff that i’ve been doing during the four days that i’ve helped out:
* nailing wooden trimming to flimsy wood composite material
* using a big saw
* drilling holes
* fastening screws
* mounting big pictures on walls
* covering stuff in wood-patterned vinyl
* laser level measuring thingy is cool
* carrying stuff
and a whole bunch of other small stuff i don’t even recall but i’m sure seemed important at the time.

art hall bonanza, pt 2

up at seven. at home at eight. i’m so fucking tired. and my “friends” are mocking me, offering such helpful remedies as:

1) a quiet jerk off in the bath
2) pre-chewed food that they can feed me with, like a small bird.

they were just teasing of course, in that friendly yes, we are laughing at you but we like you kinda way. heartwarming, really.

because of lack of sleep, food and health, i was silently cursing everyone in the hall until someone brought food and made coffee. i wished harm upon them in an embarrasing amount. a dull inner voice would say things like –if you move the hammer one more time i hope you die.

good thing i’m such a calm and non-violent person. (that way, when i finally snap, they can all say “he was always the calm and non-violent person, we don’t get it”)

because i’m a cretin i stayed up last night watching death of a president, which was a well done mockumentary of the coming assasination of george bush. well done, but not all that interesting in itself.
mockumentaries are interesting as a genre though; it’s basically invented news after the fact – so i had a fun time trying to piece together who would make a documentary like this in case bush got shot through the head with a frozen turd (as the case might be).
the esthetics were too somber for anything american that i’ve seen, but we only get the utter shit american documentaries over here, so i’m no judge.

bleh, i’m ranting. i’m tired and ranting. i’ll stop now.