Utopia

A few weeks ago, I was cleaning out my desk and shelves in our office up north. In a magazine box, I found an old note book, between math notes and calculations. The note book contained some poems and short stories and memoirs that I wrote between 1987 and 1990.

Nice surprise. I thought that book was lost and gone long time ago.

It was fun to read. I was astonished by some of the stuff I wrote. Maybe I will post some of the high-lights (if any) on my blog. I just need to get it typed and translated to English.

Here's one of the poems, which is easy to translate, since it's free form. According to my note book, it was written on the night-train from the south in April 1987:

Utopia
Those
who can write
write, and
those who cannot write
print books and
make jellymen and
grow tea and
tobacco
for those who write.
By the way,
I have quit
today

What the Hell does it mean? I'm not sure, but maybe I tried to quit the tobacco. If so; it failed. I'm still using it. I don't smoke, but I use this black stinking stuff that you put under the lip; snus (kind of moist snuff) >:)

Office poetry

I had to spend most of this Saturday in the office. What the Hell, I have better things to do, like enjoying the nice (but cold) weather, and writing on my so-called novel.

It wasn't even fun work, just some boring preparation for meetings and travel next week. For a moment of entertainment, I glanced into the blog world, and found this funny game on Colene's blog:

Pile up a few books and see what poetry you get out of the titles.

So, I grabbed a few books from my office bookshelf, and piled them up. I happened to find a couple of novels in my shelf (borrowed by some friends), so I put science and fiction every second. I took a picture with the camera on my cell phone (crap camera). Here's the science-fiction poem that I got:

Supersymmetry and supergravity
A hero of our time
Numerical analysis
On the road
The changing earth

I've seen better poetry, for sure, but at least I got some entertainment in my office boredom >:)

Thanksgiving

Holy shit! Six Flags Airlines was spectacular this evening. The tickets are pretty expensive, but they give you bang for the buck. I've been a frequent customer for some years, but never experienced anything like the roller-coaster ride we got today.

The start was smooth and easy. At cruising altitude the captain started to tease us: "Weather is nice. Good landing conditions. Easterly winds, so we expect some turbulence when we approach for landing"

And turbulence we got! No kidding.

I could never imagined an airplane moving like that, up and down and sideways, bullying the laws of physics. Some people cried, and some puked (the smell can not be mistaken).

The plane made a downward move so rapid that not a single ass touched the seat, like we were weightless in outer space. A tall man, two rows in front of me, banged his head in the ceiling. I bet you tighten your seatbelt better next time, dude.

I think we were all pretty shaky and exhausted when we touched down on the runway.

These pilots really impress me. They know how to keep a Dash 8 flying. They're very experienced, flying up and down in the turbulence between the small and remote airports in the north, all day, all year. And they all retire happily at age 56.

It's Thanksgiving today, so I should probably say: "Thank you guys for bringing us down safely"

In Satan we trust >:O

Just another Thursday

That's it for today. In half an hour I leave our office in the north. Then I will go to the airport to get back home, flying Six Flags Airlines of course.

I just returned to my computer after a visit in the basement of our office building. I went down to look at some cores that the sedimentologists have put out on display. Cores means that it's samples of rocks taken out from the borehole when drilling a well into a oil reservoir. It's about a hundred meters of sandstones, similar to what you observe along the road in Western USA (I took the picture in Utah some years ago). However these cores have the familiar smell of oil. It's the stuff that we turn into petroleum for your cars.

Cool stuff, but I don't get to see these cores very often. That's the faith of a geophysicist. I spend most of my time with mathematics and computers, and hardly ever get to see the real stuff.

There's no thanksgiving celebration here. We don't have a tradition for that. I won't get any turkey with sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce, unfortunately. Maybe I'll take a hot dog while waiting in the airport.

I'll write another chapter for my so-called novel while waiting for my flight. It's gonna be the continuation on the previous chapter I wrote. Hay, that's gonna be exciting. I'm already looking forward to it.

We will see what I get. Here it's just another Thursday.

Wine and oyster

So I'm back in the north, once again. I plan to stay till the end of the work week. Last night i took a late flight, with a two-hour transit stop. While waiting in the airport, I wrote a new scene for my so-called novel.

The plot is pretty much lined up, chapter by chapter. I write the scenes in random order, depending on my mood. This is what I wrote last night, approximately 700 words:

Chapter 11: Wine and oyster

He couldn’t help it. Tom Snare was nervous when he was going to visit someone in their home. Meeting people in a bar or a restaurant, no problem, but coming into someone’s private sphere always made him feel uncertain.

He walked up the stairs, to the third floor and pushed the door bell. Nothing happened. She had invited him to come, for white wine and oyster, but maybe he was wrong about the time? A minute passed by, it felt like an hour. Then the door opened, and Marions’s smiling face appeared.

“Hi, Tom, come on in”, she said and pushed the door wide open.

“Thanks”, he said, and stepped into the hall.

He took off his jacket, and hung it on a hook in the corner. She looked at his black T-shit with a white scull printed on the chest.

“You look so scary in those T-shirts, but I know you’re pretty harmless”. She touched his chest with the palm of her hand. “Harmless and sweet”.

Snare captured her green-brown eyes and then glanced down her body. Her chunky thighs were squeezed into a pair of black tights. The red T-shirt stopped above her wide hips. She was barefoot, toe nails painted dark red. His heart was beating a little bit faster..

“I just came back from the gym”, she said, when she sensed his eyes sliding down her curvy body. “I just need to take a quick shower”.

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes, a little bit, but no hurry. Just take your time”.

“Did you come straight from the office?”

“Yes, it was hard to break loose today. I’m working on some really interesting stuff, and so close to get all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. It’s a new mathematical formulation of … ”

“Stop it, Tom, before you get into it again. I bet it’s just another obscure geophysical imaging method that doesn’t work in the end”

“Yes, maybe”

“I’m just teasing you”, she said, with a caring smile. “Tonight we will just relax”. She paused for a second, “and have a good time”

“And I was thinking about the student that died”, he said.

“They guy who died in the bike accident?”

“I’m not sure it was an accident.”

“Hobby-investigator Snare has a new hypothesis”, she said with a touch of irony. You must tell me more about it later. I have to get into the shower”.

“There’s s bottle of white wine and glasses on the table. Why don’t you have a taste and make yourself comfortable while you wait. I’ll give you something to eat in a few minutes”, she said, in an increasingly louder voice, as she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.

He poured a glass half-full of wine, and leaned back in the sofa. His eyes fell on the bookshelf, and then on the pictures on the wall. Three lithographic prints in pale blue and green. The colors matched the furniture. Landscape-like half-abstract features, the kind pictures women tend to like. The kind of pictures he found annoyingly tasteful and boring.

He wanted to take a closer look at the bookshelf, but he didn’t. A bookshelf can tell a lot about the owner. It would be impolite, like peeping into someone’s privacy. He took a sip of the wine and just waited.

After half an hour, she came out from the bathroom, with a purple bathrobe wrapped around her body. She crossed the room, and stopped three steps from the sofa where he was sitting.

“Didn’t you like the wine, Tom?”

“Yes, I did”, he said. “But I wanted to wait for you, so that we can enjoy it together”

“You’re charming when you try to act a gentleman. It’s not your natural style, but I know you’re doing your best”, she said and smiled.

She flung her hair backward and raised her arms, with hands gripping around the hair to gather it into a pigtail. He suspected that she did it on purpose, when the bathrobe slid open, and revealed her belly, and her dark-blond bush, gently trimmed along the bikini line. It was just the way he liked it.

The oyster was served.

Swimming for Harry Potter

I'm not a big fan of Harry Potter. I have read only one of the the books (the first, with the kids). I thought Lord of the Rings was boring too. I just don't like the fantasy genre very much.

However, today little boy and I planned to go see the new Harry Potter movie in the theater. The movie is just released here. We found that 5000 tickets were pre-booked for the weekend, all sold out. Little boy was somewhat disappointed. What should we do?

We went to the nice waterpark we have down on the harbor, right by the quay where the big cruise ships come alongside in summer. The waterpark is indoor, otherwise it could be used only for a month in the summer. The kids love it, the diving tower, the wave pool and the tube slides. And there is a big pool for competitive swimmers of course. The parents can relax in the warm pool, with panorama windows on the sea side. It gives an illusion of swimming in the middle of the fjord.

Little boy was happy and we still have the Harry Potter movie to look forward next weekend >:)

(Here's a video from our waterpark; freestyle skiers at off-season practice)

Back on the slopes

The winter has come to Winterland. The ski resorts opened this weekend. There's not much snow yet, but it's possible to ski. For the next five months it will only get better.

Last week I bought new ski boots for little boy, and spent a fortune on ski passes. The good thing about it is that it makes the rest of the season appear very cheap. There's a couple of more investments to be done, new ski boots for older boy (the old boots still fit, but are worn out), and a pair of new giant-slalom skis for little boy, but it's not extremely urgent.

The kids have been looking forward to this for a long time now, and I don't mind some snow myself.

We're back on the slopes. Yeah >:)

The beauty of religion

I read in the newspaper about this farm worker in Pakistan. It was a woman who belongs to the Christian minority in the Muslim country.

One day she was sent to the spring to fetch water for the farm workers. The other farm workers refused to drink the water, because it had been carried by a Christian. The woman got pissed off and said: “Jesus died for our sins. What has Mohammad done for you?”

She was sentenced to death for blasphemy. Well deserved, of course, you can't just offend the gods and the prophets like that.

On the big day, she will be painted black in her face and pulled through town by a donkey, to the square where the cheering crowd is waiting to watch the execution. It will be a spectacular show.

It’s the beauty of religion.

The 7th day

I didn't participate in the NaBloWriMo, because I don't have enough ideas to write every day, and I don't have the time. I just write when I want to, as simple as that.

Now I have in fact posted something on my blog every bloody day in the first week of November. It wasn't planned; it just happened. I don't like making plans, because I have too many already.

Today I'm resting, on the 7th day, just like God. Thats about the only thing we have in common, God and I.

I'm the peaceful and tolerant one; mostly harmless >:)

Fuck more and buy less

Yesterday my old lady and I had this very interesting conversation by the kitchen table. The big question was: Should we buy new cutlery or not? The old crap we have was bought cheap at IKEA in the previous millennium.
- I saw these nice knives and forks in a catalogue, she said.
- I'm quite happy eating with the ones we have, I said.
- It's quite expensive, $100 per pair, and we need six at least, she said.
- I don't care. If you want it just go ahead and buy it. It's your money.
- The design is really cool, she said.
I don't worry about the cost. It wouldn't ruin us. This is just one of these questions I don't bother to boggle my mind with. I'm not concerned about what cutlery we're eating with. Buying new we might get sharper knives, but we already have steak knives, and we have plenty of silver if we need to impress.

This was just one example. It happens over and over again. We throw away things that work fine, and buy new stuff just because it's newer and looks cooler. Things have become too cheap. It's too easy to just buy new. Does it make us happier? No, it doesn't. The better parts of life are not for sale in the shopping mall.

Fuck more and buy less >:)

Abrahadabra

A few weeks ago, I visited the local metal store. It's a small obscure shop selling only heavy metal CDs, cash only, no cards accepted. I asked the long-haired and pale guy behind the counter if he had any cool stuff to recommend. He handed me an album by Australian grindcore-death-metal band The Berzerker. I bought the CD, and also grabbed the new album Abrahadabra by Dimmu Borgir.

Dimmu Borgir isn't my favorite band; I like the old-school black metal better. I wasn't very impressed by the previous Dimmu Borgir album and didn't have big expectations this time. Also, they recently fired half the band members, and replaced them by session musicians on base, drums and keyboard.

The new album was a positive surprise, nice melodic black-metal-inspired symphonic metal. Finally, they've got budgets big enough to hire a full symphony orchestra, and a big choir. In the song named Dimmu Borgir, the orchestra, choir and band flows nicely together. It has almost a radio-hit potential (hard-core black-metal fans don't like that).

On the song Getaways, which is the official video (a crazy mix of milk, blood and pigeons), they also use some female vocal. This works quite well, for variation, in particular the last 1/3 of the song (the "be the broken or the breaker" part). But they're not the first black metal band to do this; Satyricon had some female vocal on the Volcano album.

It's gonna be very interesting to see how they will perform the new songs live. Hopefully I get the chance to see them in concert next year. It's a really good live band >:)

Health or wealth

The Republicans are back in the House. On their agenda is to stop Obama's health reform.

In my mind, the health of the many is more important than the wealth of the few. But that's obviously an insane idea for the Republicans.

Then the good news: With Republicans like Jack Conway, Christine O'Donnell, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich in free action, it will hopefully help the Democrats in the next election >:)

Nothing is sacred anymore

I was shocked and horrified yesterday, when little boy came home with this new book from the school’s library. Nothing is sacred anymore, not even the Hardy Boys.

When I was a kid, I read about all the books about the Hardy Boys, at least 60-70 of them. This series was the backbone of my literary childhood. I had to buy the books myself, or borrow from friends. The librarian in my hometown (hardly a town, it was on the country side) refused to take in the books. She thought it was junk literature. What the Hell, the Hardy Boys, that’s the best books ever written … well, at least when you’re 10 years old.

Yesterday little boy came home with a book from the new Hardy Boys series; Undercover Brothers. I hadn’t seen this series before, so I got curious. We read the book loud together. It was “written by” Franklin W. Dixon of course (that guy has an impressing career, starting in the 1920s). The story is told in 1st person with POV alternating between Frank and Joe. They are undercover agents and get their missions from an organisation called American Teens Against Crime (ATAC).

The new series is modernized, in the sense that it's set in our cell-phone-and-computer-game age. It’s probably done to make the kids relate more easily to the setting and the environment. Maybe it’s needed to boost sales.

I’ve always thought that half the fun of reading books is to learn about life in past times and different places. And I definitely prefer the original Hardy Boys before the new. Don't mess with the Hardy Boys.

Maybe I’m a little bit prejudiced, or maybe I'm just getting old >:)

Private property

I don't want to own anybody.

I don't want to be owned by anybody.

It's just this little madness. Private property is evil. Marx was right, but his theory has not been properly tested.

It's against human nature

Seafood in the dark

This weekend we switched the clocks back, from daylight-saving time to regular time. That's the astronomically correct time, more or less, depending on where you are compared to the meridians that define the timezones. It's getting dark pretty early now. It's dark already when I go home from work.

Anyway, we got one hour extra this weekend. It's like we save one hour in the spring, and get it back in the fall. I spent that extra hour in the best possible way with seafood, oyster and that kind of stuff. To Thou Who Dwellest In The Night, I recommend this great song by Arcturus.

Which timezone are you in? I'm at GMT+1 >:)