The results of TV deprivation

As I wrote in an earlier blog entry: I've now been without TV for a week. It was not hard at all, and I'm in no real hurry turning it back on any time soon. I've actually gotten a lot out of not staring at that stupid box:

• I've been on two dates and cancelled one because I met this awesome woman. No Idea where this will end up, but just meeting her was wonderful. I'm kind of waiting for someone from The Hidden Camera to pop out and tell me she is just a joke and I've been had.
  
• I watched the entire "League Of Gentlemen" TV series, on DVD (on my laptop). It is awesome in every way. A strange mix between twisted comedy and horror. Also a few episodes of "Dexter" and "Flight Of The Conchords"
• Been to an excellent festival and discovered the exquisite music of "Wildbirds And Peacedrums", a band that is based on just a girl with a beautiful voice and a percussionist.
• I've been so totally drunk that I'm amazed I woke up at all the day after.
• Fixed up a corner of my balcony with plants and general coziness. The furniture is still awful, but its about a gazillion percent more cozy now. I've actually started using it, something I hardly ever did before.
  
• Read a great deal more of The Man Who Killed His Brother, and its pretty good. I think I'll have to read the entire series.

So if I gained all this: what did I loose?

Well... If you don't consider missing an episode of MacGyver at 02:00 each night a loss(I don't): then NOTHING!

Laughing your ass off anyone?

I watched the entire League Of Gentlemen TV series recently, and for some reason this was the sketch I laughed the hardest at:


(Embedding is disabled by youtube, so click the image to see it there)

...what makes it even more funny ( disturbing? ) is that later in the series: there is a reference to the aired commercial in a conversation that makes it apparent that this was actually the actress they ended up using in the final version of the commercial :D

Me: a criminal?

I got a little reminder from the Police today. They reminded me to my great joy that I am indeed a criminal. Perhaps one of the worst kinds of criminal.
I have been found guilty of offensive behavior and for this must pay 800SEK to become a better person. I doubt this fine will make me a better person, in fact I'm pretty sure I'm kind of a pretty good person already.
Here is what I did: I was sitting with a couple of friends from work, having an after work beer on a Friday night, at a bar on the edge of Humlegården and after 2 beers I really had to go all of a sudden. So I jumped over the really low fence and went over to this huge tree and did my stuff. This is where the fun starts. I hear some shouting behind me as I'm getting ready to return to my friends: Three Police officers are jogging towards me with faces full of non-smiling.
They never shout at me, but for a really long time they stand around me saying stuff like "Didn't you know this was illegal"
, "What were you thinking", "We can't accept this as an ID" (my drivers licence had a crack in it) and "We'll have to wait here for a while" (They needed to call station to make sure I wasn't convicted of some other heavy crimes). All of the time these guys had the facial expressions saying "This is a very serious situation, we must be serious and
alert, this guy may be very dangerous".

All I could think about all this time was "NO: Don't say it!, NO: Don't start smiling, NO: Do NOT make a joke now, they will NOT appreciate it and will NOT think it is funny".

All in all I took up 30 minutes of three Police officers time on a Friday night because I peed on a tree in a park. A big tree, nobody could see my thingie ( the tree is located at GPS RT90 coordinate [X=6581868,Y= 1629082] b.t.w, pretty big huh :) ). Was this well spent tax money? Did I waste this tax money, or did they? I know they were wasted.

Where is the line drawn between silly and offensive?

Cellphone: Human interaction resistance +20?

I just took the tube ( tube = metro, subway, sossesnöret, grävlingen, bunneltranan) home from a nice date just now and noticed a behaviour that I've got myself. That does not make it any less weird. Cellphones are used to make the user look occupied. I mean: sometimes you probably play a really cool game, but I suspect that most of the time people just click back and forth between menus/flip between SMS:es/do nothing at all really. I've seen people do it, I've done it myself. It's kind of the same behavior that makes me uncomfortable sitting in a café alone unless I've got a book or magazine to read.
It's kind of a new version of staring with huge ( fake ) interest at the commercials. Both the new and the old versions are tools to avoid eye contact with your fellow travelers... Why are we so desperate not to interact?
The last time someone spoke to you on the tube/bus: was your initial reaction "Oh no"? I mean that split millisecond before your brain sorted out that the guy just asked the time... And as you started fishing out your cellphone to see what time it is: did the thought "Is my cell too cool, is he just checking if I'm worth sticking up later?" cross your mind?

Why haven't I ever asked the lad/lass across from me: "Hey, I'm meeting a friend for coffee in 10 minutes, do you know a cozy café in the south part of town?"

A partial explanation on Italian driving?

I got around to looking through the vacation photos from my trip to Italy today. We were sitting in Trastevere in Rome drinking several bottles of totally excellent red wine(thanks Silvia!), when I looked up and saw the awesome sight of these three signs. This photograph kind of explains why Italians don't seem to really care that much about the traffic rules... they can be pretty ambiguous. I think what these particular signs are trying to say is:

"This is a one way street, commoooon, dare to go in the opposite direction! I dare you! Nah, just kidding, you cant go in here at all."

Or perhaps a seasoned Italian driver can explain it better?

TV eats my braaaainsss...

It really does. I have this button that invokes "next channel" on my remote. This is kind of OK. The problem is that upon reaching the last channel: it activates the first one. Result: Pressing a single button can keep me locked in my couch for any amount of hours... watching complete and utter crap.
I wold not mind if... say, 10% of the crap was not actually... crap, but it's not. This is in a serious way making me doubt my own intelligence, and making me not like my own actions. I hate not liking my own actions. So let it be known:

I will not start my TV for a week from this post.

What I think I will get out of this experiment is:

- More reading.
- More browsing (yes: preferable to TV)
- Maby an extra visit to a friend
- A date perhaps
- Not feeling like a moron

(But starting it and setting it to channel FRONT is OK; that is the channel the sound from my laptop ends up, and as it gets no visual input: the screen is just really really blue. I needs my music.)

The best thing about Arvikafetivalen...

...was the CD:s I brought on the road trip there. Most are just universally excellent, others are in the spirit of Arvikafestivalen (The Arvika Festival). It's not in any way that it was a bad festival, it's just that this year most of the bands were not MY bands (except VNV Nation). The beer was totally decent.
So here they are, in no particular order, no wait, I lie! In the order I picked them out of the case to write them down:

• Tool - Lateralus
• Tool - Aenema
• Nitzer Ebb - Belief
• Kaizers Orchestra - Evig Pint
• Morcheeba - Fragments Of Freedom
• Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump
• José Gonzáles - Veneer
• The Knife - Deep Cuts
• Tori Amos - From The Choirgirl Hotel
• DJ Shadow - Entroducing...
• Spawn Soundtrack
• Kraftwerk - The Man Machine
• Infinite Mass - The Face
• Portishead - Dummy
• Front 242 - Front By Front
• Frontline Assembly - Tactical Neural Implant
• System of a Down - Toxicity
• Radiohead - My Iron Lung
• The Pouges -Rum Sodomy & The Lash
• Placebo - Without You I'm Nothing
• Placebo - Placebo
• Kosheen - Resist
• Yazoo - Upstairs At Eric's
• Red Snapper - Our Aim Is To Satisfy Red Snapper
• Gary Numan - Pure
• Pixies - Doolittle
• Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
• Oompf - Sperm

Yes, I still own CD:s.

Death for atheists

Had a funeral today. It's a bit strange having a funeral by/for atheists because all the rituals you know are so tied to religion. Anything short of throwing your dead in the garbage will be rituals I guess.
I have nothing against rituals per se, but I can't really name any "neutral" ones...
Anyway, here is what we did: We placed the urn in the ground. We placed flowers. And finally we stood around the grave talking about what she liked and what we remembered about her. I liked that. It felt right and very emotional.
A funeral for me is the point in time when I "get it". Someone is gone, really gone. From then on I can let go / move on / get over it.
Whatever ritual you do perform is good I think.

Finally an acceptable reason to blog

I never really got this blogging. I routinely ask friends with blogs what the big idea is. Why would you do it, and why would anyone care if you did? Is it not just writing a personal journal and leaving it in the town square? Is that not just really, really weird?
I got the answer a few days ago from either of the writers of 2 tanter or Daniel Lugn:

You start to notice your surroundings.

The idea is that in some way ( good or bad, not sure yet) after a while you start to think about what in your surrounding could become food for your blog. I like that thought. I'd like to be that guy that starts to giggle at the sight of some obscure coincidence that is actually pretty cool when you think about it. I like thinking about stuff.

Stuff is cool.

Oh and; Yay! First post.