I don’t know why I bother watching the VMA’s anymore. It must be the “I’m too old for this shit” syndrome or something like that, but I haven’t enjoyed an MTV award show since the MTV EMA in Stockholm 2000… But like last years MTV EMA’s, the only thing I liked was the opening (Madonna, Britney and Christina) and closing (Metallica) acts.
And while I was writing that I thought of another reason I might not like these shows, a fact that may make me sound a bit rascist but I trust you know me better than that – out of everyone that got awards, how many were white? Coldplay and Linkin Park were the closest one, if you disregard “why oh god wasn’t I born black” Eminem or Justin “I wanna be Michael Jackson so hard I even twist my nuts just so I get the same high pitch voice” Timberlake. Or wait, does it make me a rascist not liking Jay Z, 50 Cents, Piff Diddly, Ashanti, Missy Elliot or whatever everyone’s names are? Now I know what black people must feel like when watching sci-fi…
And while I’m on the subject – how many people would laugh at Chris Rock if he was white? Not many, ’cause he’d be in jail for being the most rascist person on the planet. But he’s black, so that’s ok 🙂 But his joke about Coldplay was pretty funny – it is damn depressing hearing that guy laying all his heartache in that “I’m fighting back my tears”-voice.
But that’s just about the music, I did enjoy other parts of the show, Black is always hilarious and those gay interior designer guys were hilarious, loved their expressions when Madonna was bringing down the house.
Hehe, what can I say, go Britney and Madonna 🙂 I’ve always liked Madonna and her no-bs approach to things. Might even get to like Britney if she keeps that up 🙂 But more about the VMA’s in a later update.
But it kinda reminds me about a Deep Space Nine episode that I saw, very recently – “Rejoined”. An episode about homosexuality, without homosexuality ever being an issue but so totally in your face when Terry & Susanne gets it on 🙂 Yeap, got season 4 of DS9 on DVD so I’m kinda in DVD hibernation now, expecting to come out of it late on Saturday.
Do you like “what if”-ing? I love it. Thinking about those small little events in your life that have had a huge impact. Like “what if I hadn’t by accident heard of that computer course at Thorildplans that turned out to be the best year of school ever” and “what if I hadn’t wasted a year in college”, “what if I had gotten the first job I applied to” (it was just a freak accident I didn’t get it!), “what if I had taken up the offer of joining the old MinDator crew at ITF”, what if… Had any of these things happened I wouldn’t be where I am today. It might have been better, it may have been worse, I have no idea. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I like “Dead Zone” so much – they are really great at “what if”-ing. They visualize the possible consequences of the choices the characters are forced to make. I’ve exceeded my download ratio, TWICE, downloading this show that I’m liking more and more. More thoughtful and deep shows like this please!
Ok, now why haven’t I been updating this place in almost a week, and wouldn’t have done so tonight either if my mother hadn’t called to check up on me? I mean, even when I’m out travelling, even when the hotels don’t have any internet connection, I’m still able to update this place more often than that, right? Well, it’s… kinda like nothing much have been happening to report about. Compared to being out travelling, seeing new cities, meeting different people, speaking other languages, learning how to appreciate different foods and just admiring the beauty that is life… well, compared to that nothing much have been happening on the 67 square meters that is my (rented) place on Earth. I’ve been entertaining some friends, and over the past two days I’ve been busy watching movies and launching the new and improved NP.com. We’ll talk more about those movies and “The Dead Zone” later, right now I gotta go to bed and get some rest for the coming week that I’ll spend at the lawfirm. Atleast 8-5. That is unless someone calls me because… that’s right, I’m on call this week too 🙂
Why have I been so quiet lately? Well, nothing really thought-provoking has happened. Well Bush had a hilarious press-conference last friday… as I said, nothing thought-provoking. Working away at work, re-programming NP.com. just going on with my life. Move on, nothing to see here.
This morning I woke up and saw one of the best interviews ever on CNN. One of the guys responsible for the bombing on Bali got his judgement and it wasn’t the death penalty which many would’ve thought. So CNN got a live interview with an aussy parent of one of the people who died and tried to get him to say “they should just kill him!”. But he quite simply stated that “I’m not a believer in the death penalty, it’s not a part of my philosophy and that’s the way I raised my children as well, so I’m content with this judgement”. And the poor interviewer did her best provoking him, even interrupted his sentences (no pun intended), no luck there. So much for death penalty being implemented to make the relatives feel better!
I don’t know why, but I’m a sucker for nostalgia. Always have! I use the words “good old days” way to often and like reminiscing about them. Like today! I accidentally met Chribba, the guy who tought me everything about being a corporate computer tech, today. And then I visited ITF’s office (ITF is a competing company made up mostly of old MinDator employees) and spent an hour there, which was really nice seeing these guys & girls again. And she’s as hot as ever…
Gee, have I been busy! Movies, programming, computer game & Formula 1. And work ofcourse. That’s why it took me so long to upload the new pictures that can be found here. Enjoy!
So this week is the annual national tolerance and respect week. Also known as gay pride week. For one week everyone in stockholm, from big coorporations to the little guy sitting in gridlock because the streets in downtown stockholm are closed, are suppose to show our respect and support to the gay community. What about the other 51 weeks of the year? As if I need an appointment in my calender to be respectful and support a bunch of people who wanna live the way they want! Some political correctivness is just too much. This, and casual Hawaiian T-shirt day (yes, I just saw “Office Space”, but more about that later).
The two travelling companions I had during my trip to South America had one thing in common – their need to shop! Shop shop shop! And I suck at shopping even when I know the store and even worse when I don’t even know the language. So I did my shopping from the hotel room by ordering stuff from the ‘Net. And now I finally got to see some of the DVD’s. And … well, I think I’ve seen so many movies that it is now almost impossible to sneak a twist by me. One of the movies was “Basic”, that military/murder/who did what movie. I heard the writer behind it had said he wanted to throw us, as in the people who pay attention and give away the ending 15 minutes too early, off balance. And there sure was alot of twists, so many in fact that he tilted himself and there are three major plot points still unresolved. And unfortunately I pay so much attention that the little broken eight ball outside Travoltas place totally gave it away, and that was less than 5 minutes into the movie! Then there was “Life of David Gale” with one of my favorite actors, Kevin Spacey. He said in an interview that it’s pretty unpredictable, and this is the guy who played a huge part in the movie with one of the biggest twists in movie history (“The Usual Suspects”), so that promised alot. But 60 minutes into that one I knew how it was gonna end, with one little exception – did he or didn’t he know. But I still recommend everyone to see “Life of David Gale”, quite simply because of the entire anti-death penalty story.
And so I’m finally back here in lovely, warm & sunny Sweden! Man have I missed it! It took us about 23 hours from checking in at the airport to checking out at Arlanda. 15 of those was spent sitting in one little chair with severely limited space. I even tried sleeping pills, no luck there. But that just made coming home more enjoyable. So enjoyable I went right out to buy some new toys for my computers at home! And now I’m using wireless shit here, so I can actually sit in my bed and surf the web, checks mails and everything! Ofcourse I could do that before as well, with a long cable. The schedule over the weekend is very relaxed, only real “have to!” is doing my laundry. And I began it with sleeping 14 straight hours!
And then I checked my kristoffer.com mail account today for the first time in almost two weeks. It contained about 1350 messages! That’s about 100 messages per day! And maybe 10 of them was worth reading, the rest was just junk & spam mail. It doesn’t seem to matter how many proposals are on the table to stop spam mail and shit like it, it just keeps on coming 🙁 This has as another bad side-effect that when I go through my mail I spend about 2 seconds per mail to determine if it’s worth reading or not. And when I get 1350 messages hopefully you’ll understand why – 45 minutes to go through mail only to find the 10 I actually wanted to read!
Woke up today to the news that the USA military had killed Saddam’s two sons. And both the White House and 10 Downing Street were ecstatic. Without really knowing the exact nature of the operation I can only deduce this from what I hear on CNN and read about it on the net – but what gives the US the right to off people in foreign countries? They’ve probably been doing it for years, but this was kinda public and they’re even bragging about it? When they execute their own citizens in the name of justice they atleast give them a trial. But oh yeah, that’s right, the US don’t wanna go along with this international war tribunal until US soldiers are immune to being prosecuted for anything!
Over the past week, the media has once again shown its lack of good journalism when it comes to reporting about stuff on the web! A 31 year old ex. marine web-dated a person. It got serious, he told his family he was going to Britain to meet this 19 year old girl and off he went. They then travelled together to Germany through Paris, her stopping by a pay-phone to call her parents to say everything was ok. Oh, and the girl in this case was really 12 years young. And that’s as far as the facts takes us and speculation begins. CNN tried to keep an open mind about it, but when he was arrested they started the “predators on the internet” talks. And “Aftonbladet” in sweden didn’t even tell the facts but told the story so it sounded like a straight up kidnapping. And without knowing exactly what happened I can’t really defend the guy, but I gotta make some pointers here. Did he really know she was 12? I’m pretty sure young people today do what we did which was to lie about our age to seem more mature. And especially on the ‘Net, it’s really easy to get away with it too! I can very well imagine them two in a chat room with her saying she was 19 or something! And when they finally did meet IRL, he must’ve gotten the point she wasn’t that old, but so? What 12 year old hasn’t wanted to run away from home but doesn’t have a good alternative plan? This girl got one served up, what’s to suggest she didn’t leave on her own will? I can’t see any way that a person can be unwillingly dragged through three airports, with all the security they have today, without being able to call for help in any form. And is there a law out there against 12 year old people running away from home and travelling abroad?
But the dude was arrested right away in Germany, and he has a prior for sexual assault, so he might have done something wrong somewhere along the line, but I’m atleast giving him the benefit of a doubt and I’m really interested to see what he’s charged with, cause as far as I know, nothing he did was illegal. And for all the “what tha hell was he thinking!?” people out there, go see “Léon”, I’m pretty sure this guy had.
Remember that little link I posted a while back when they tried to change the name of French fries to Freedom fries in the states? Well, it looks like the French are returning fire as they try to ban the word “e-mail”! Seriously! What would the world be without politicians, huh? It would be a much more dull place to live in, that’s for sure!
Why can’t spanish be spanish everywhere? Why do they have to have different versions of it? I’m not sure the use of “dialect” is appropriate, cause it’s not a matter of dialects, even words are different. I still haven’t seen any place selling bocadillos, but plenty of sandwich-places! And then double “L” is pronounced differently as well. It’s annoying as hell when you’re trying to learn a language.
One of the small little pleasures when I’m out travelling – tuning in to CNN to hear the latest news delivered by Daljit Dhaliwal! She’s like Tone Beckestad on TV4 in sweden – they can give you the worst news or weather report and you still sit there smiling.
One of the things that have been keeping me busy is cathing up with what’s been happening in the Moby-world. As you may remember, I missed his concert in Budapest with one day, so to compensate I’ve downloaded his show at the Glastonbury festival. And once again he reminded me of why I like the guy so much – he, as an american citizen, apologized for “having such a f*cking idiot as our president”. And I liked that on so many levels! Not only because I totally agree with him, but that he won’t give into the normal “our president is almost like god and he’s infallible” bullshit that seems to be going on over there. I’ve heard alot of people not being totally happy with him, but I’ve never heard any american ever use that strong language about the President. And I’m not speaking about the person of “Bush” anymore, I’m speaking about the institution. Just look at any american movies involving the President and he’s bound to be shown off as a larger than life person (Armageddon, Deep Impact, ID4, The Rock and so on). But if you prick him, does he not bleed? And now I could actually be arrested for a felony – threatening the President of the US of A!
Scary, isn’t it!?
I’ve been home for 6 days straight now. That’s more than I’ve been in the past 2 months. And I’ve had stuff to do all the time. Sometimes a bit too much. The normal Borg-efficiency have taken over and I’ve found myself doing three things at once. And as the old saying goes – “you end up doing neither very well!”.
Considering I’m on vacation I’ve actually been surprisingly busy, everything from cleaning, washing, stopping by my parents place, catching up with some friends and stuff. And this sunday I’m off to go south of the equator again and I’ve done everything I can to get a good seat on the 15 hour flight from Frankfurt but that seems to be impossible! Lufthansa doesn’t allow you to reserve the seats at the emergency exit until you’re actually there! So I’ll probably end up somewhere not so great with no leg-space what so ever not being able to sleep. Fortunately my MP3 player can play for 17 hours without re-charging it! But I guess I shouldn’t complain, I mean how many people get to go to Argentina for 10 days for free!?
You’ve heard that the record industry is now going after people like you and me, people who download and share our music over the internet, right? And here I am, in a former eastern state, looking for a CD but by god, over one week later and I still haven’t found it – the original CD anyway! I’ve found plenty of copies! Plenty of homemade versions with printed out covers, but I haven’t found the original CD. And in Singapore it was even worse – I went into a DVD store and found like 10 retail DVD’s, rest of the store was THOUSANDS of homemade VCD of movies (the VCD’s were homemade, not the movies!). And all this for profit. But I’m the bad guy, sitting at home downloading a track or two for personal, non-profit use?
Going home to Sweden today. Not a day too soon either! Although the staff here have been nice, as well as my two travelling companions, I can’t wait to crash in my soffa enjoying a couple of new DVD’s, eating a bag of OLW chips, drinking some SWEDISH Cola and be guaranteed I’ll get to see the new F1 race!