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.

[flv:https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/trollis.flv 640 297]

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.

I’ve restored most of the stuff that I lost in the crash, but the drive is beyond salvation. The only things of importance that I’ve lost are a few images, and anything in the downloads folder. Any attachments you might have emailed me are now roaming the pastures of the great beyond.

There’s an exhibition going on at the art museum right now, concerned with painting. The modern art world being what it is it encompassed performance and installation as well, and since I haven’t been to any shows lately it’s such an odd feeling when I go. An essay is taking shape somewhere in my brains about my chosen profession and my role in it. I’m obviously not going to great lengths to establish a career, but I go through the motions of doing it. I buy magazines, see shows occasionally, have 2000+ articles in my RSS reader about grants and exhibitions, and most of my friends are part of that scene.

In lieu of artistic work, I take great pride in the wheezing and panting I do every other day. When I started running I was at one point overtaken by a lady pushing a baby stroller. It was sort of a low point, and I had to take a picture to illustrate. The whitish dot disappearing under the viaduct is she, three minutes after she overtook me. Today I would totally kick her arse as long as she didn’t keep her tempo up for longer than three minutes – that’s how long I can run without stopping. I’m moving up to five minutes on wednesday.

I spoke with Stefan yesterday, and we discussed moving somewhere. Not somewhere in particular, but just the urge to move. He asked me why I’m still in Gothenburg, and it took me a bit by surprise. I haven’t thought of it much lately, but I guess that this is as close to a home that I’ve ever had, and I’m wont to enjoy the feeling.

Sooner or later I’ll be in good enough shape to do a Forrest Gump, and I’ll take off for Taipei or the horn of Africa, but until then I stay put.

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.

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.

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

When living in Karlstad I would drink mint tea all the time and flush the leaves down the toilet. It used to freak people out because I’d have this toxic green rim around the water-line in my toilet, giving the impression that the Hulk was pooing at my place.

[flv:https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/Mint-te.FLV 640 360]

Anna, Hanna and a bunch of other people are in Israel on a course with HFF: looking for the modern. I don’t know what they are doing, but if you’re as curious as I, you can follow along Annas Twittering which just started at twitter.com/Ms_Ganslandt. It’s in Swedish, so you might want to learn that first.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There’s a comfort in watching crappy movies, because you can always assume that it’s bad and you can concentrate on finding the gems. And then there’s the campy stuff that you can’t help but love. The silent agreement that “this is what the audience wants” and the response from the audience that “yes, this is in fact what I imagine that someone thinks that I want.” Or maybe I’m just getting old and have had a change of standards.

[flv:https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_uploads/2008/07/untitled.mp4 640 298]

Once again I’m humiliating myself by submitting a design to Threadless.

Whether you have an account or not, click on the link and vote on the design. This is very likely to make you a better person. Link: Never trust Cyan

—update—

Ouch, that was a short non-event. After one day the design was out of the competition with 1.37 on a 0-5 scale, as judged by 300+ people. No taste some people. Back to the drawing board…

If you’ve visited this blog the last couple of days, you might have noticed that it looks messed up or not loading properly at all. This is because I’m doing a redesign live. I’m crazy like that.

The point is to make the content area wider, allowing wider images and videos. One side effect will be that the old posts, with images and videos cropped to 400 pixels, will look less than good.

I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know what you like and don’t like (I’ll even pretend that I care) as well as if anything doesn’t work. (Y’know, technically.) Should you comment or email me about it, make sure to be specific since if you say “the comments look like shit!” I won’t know which version of the comments that according to you are smelly.

Good night, and God bless!

One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.” She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again.

Woman has a bad itch. Really bad.
www.newyorker.com

If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. If you want to do it, do it because you love it. Find meaning in it. Otherwise, you’re tricking yourself. You’re tricking everybody.

Interview with Dalai Lamahs youngest brother.
www.tokyomango.com

I know that it’s easy to poke at the mote in Americans’ eyes rather than doing something about our own much more fashionable beams, but c’mon.

Prayer circles at gas stations to lower gas prices.
www.toledoblade.com