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How many charities do you support? That’s right, you! One of the few things that I’m proud over in this world is the fact that I support (financially and ideologically (yes, that’s a word!)) Amnesty International, Greenpeace, The Swedish Red Cross and Unicef. And I just signed up for a new Unicef program (“A Drop of Water”) and got a cool pin to put on my jacket for it.
I know I’m really patting myself on the back here, but my point is – what do you do? I wanna make you feel bad if you’re not supporting one single charity, so bad that you’ll have to start after reading this. And I wanna make the ones that do give something feel a little better. And I also wanna make a point to everyone who says I’m too obsessed buying stuff for myself (most recently a new $1500 TV) and thinks that I’m too tight!
I would be blood donor too if the hospital that’s close enough to walk to would allow me to give blood there…
This may come off as a bit cold or just asshole-like, but am I the only one who’s tired of all dedications / memorials and stuff that’s gone on over the past year? It seems that when someone, especially if they are famous, dies it has to be made into something huge and special. Two great recent examples of that is Aaliyah and Lisa ‘Lefteye’ Lopez. Both made decent music and they may both have been good people, but with all stuff that’s been done in the media (like the recent MTV VMA dedication to Lopez) you’d think they were up for some saint-status or something.
And then ofcourse there is all the 9/11 (which by the way, we swedes would write 11/9). Naturually it was a terrible event and a huge loss of life, completely over the top and I in no way condone what happened. But why was I asked to hold a minute of silence last wednesday? Anton, a friend at work, got really upset, borderlining mad over this entire thing. At first I thought he was overreacting, but at the end of the day, with all the hype in non-american media, you’d think it was the biggest disaster that ever happened and that the world “owes” america (especially their government) something?! Wtf is all that about? Ofcourse I feel sorry for what happened and to the people who lost a loved one, but it has in absolutely no way affected me or my life, so why should I feel anything about that entire thing? Let’s reverse it – can any one american say why we swedes should hold a silent moment or two next saturday (Sept. 28th)? I’m pretty sure not a single one of them can, because why are they suppose to know that is the date when Estonia sank! Which, if you’ll excuse the cold Vulcan part of me, was atleast 10 times worse, percentage-wise, for sweden than 9/11 was for US of A. “But Estonia was not an act of terrorism against civilian targets” you may say. True, but the Estonia disaster was a random event that killed about a thousand people, which I consider a far worse human disaster than some misguided terrorist who’s been fooled into thinking that USA is the devil. But from their perspective, just how wrong are they? I’m not gonna try and justify what they did, but lets face it, USA has a huge tendancy to play cop in the world. And as long as they have the UN support, that’s fine with me. But I can atleast understand why the islam world are getting upset when the US government is demanding that Yasir Araft be replaced by someone more US friendly!
I, myself, am pretty US friendly when it comes to the people, it’s just their government I object to.
“Dude, if you’re so against it why do you have a memorial for Eden!”. That’s different. That was a personal tragedy for me that I dealt with in this way. I have never ever asked anyone to feel sorry for me or a minute of silence for him. Not even when the 6 month mark came and went did I tell anyone! And it’s not like I’m doing a huge thing about it either, it’s there, read it of you want to. Or not.
So I’m on call this week. Again. For the third consecutive week! I work as a computer consultant, and one of our most important customer is this big lawfirm that I’ve been working at on and off for the past year. And as a part of us taking over their network, we have an on-call service for them. And I’m it again. There are three major points to being on call – 1) Be close enough so you can get there within the time specified in the contract 2) Make 100% certain you can answer the cell phone when they call. This includes staying up till midnight (can’t go to sleep and hope you wake up when it rings!) and also making sure there is a clear reception where you are and 3) be 100% sober. Now, any of these three things I can do, no prob. But combine them all, for an extended amount of time, and what kind of life do you get? No going out for beers with the pals, no going home to my parents, no going to the movies and you can forget about dating. And this is the third week in a row!
Naturally there is an upside – money.
But does that compensate giving up the freedom of just going to a movie if you feel like it, or to drive down to my parents for a nice dinner or something?… There must be some part of me that thinks so, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it. Again and again.
Guess it all goes back to the old saying – “time is money”. I just wish you could reverse it and buy more time 🙂
Ask me how long it took for me to drive home the other day! Long enough to hear 26 tracks of Moby’s “Play”-album. “But that album only has 18 tracks!”. You’re right, it does, which means that I listened to it almost 1 1/2 times. I don’t know how much time that actually is, should be around 90 minutes. That’s right, I prefer measuring time in what I actually do, or what I would do if I wasn’t stuck in traffic. Because time really is, much like money, something artificial that we humans have created. The only three naturally occuring cycles are days (Earth’s rotation), 4 weeks (the moon’s orbit around the Earth) and years (the Earth’s orbit around the sun), the rest is just made up of a bunch of people. Don’t know exactly where I’m going with this, I guess I just want people to stop and smell the flowers a bit more often like I do. And I still don’t have a wrist watch 🙂
I did something this weekend that I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I never logged onto my computer at home! Seriously, from about 11 on friday night until I got to work at 8 am this morning I never logged onto my computer, not to check my mail, not to check my icq, not to read the latest Natalie-news! It’s not the first time I’ve been without computers (that week in Kenya was a real trial!), but it’s the first time I’ve been home, with a computer available, without going online or anything. And it felt good. Real good as a matter of fact. So relaxing just kicking back and doing other stuff than programming or webdesigning or graphics management or gaming or something. Does this make me sound pathetic? Don’t know, you’ll have to be the judge of that.
I just got a new favorite TV show. “24“. The show that finished its first season in the states and got like 10 Emmy nominations. Well worth it! It’s about a anti-terrorist unit trying to stop the assassination of a presidential candidate. So far, nothing major. But the series wins in it’s originality! First original thing is that it takes place in real time. So one show, with commercial brakes, is one hour, so the entire season only covers one day. I didn’t think it’d keep up the pace, but I’m in the eleventh hour right now (get it?) and it’s still exciting. Also really well written and pretty good filmed. Have only spotted two major screw-ups, but that’s because they don’t settle for one camera angle, they always seem to have two cameras rolling. ATLEAST. And with a little hi-tech phoning some interesting scenes can be produced, like one in episode 10 when the lead character is being chased and has his cell phone on and four different people are listening in on what’s happening, and they are all cut in into one frame, pretty interestingly done. More original programming like this please! And credit to the Internet for supplying me with these episodes. (since alot of people are always trying to relate violence and/or sex-crimes to the internet somehow, I just want to offer a different opinion about it!)
August 25th, you know what that means? 6 months since I suddenly lost my best friend. My spontaneous reaction was “is that all?”, it feels like ages ago since I last spoke to him. Since we shared some jokes, watched movies together, just sat down at a bar testing new beers and stuff. But at the same time it feels like it was just yesterday that this entire thing happened. I remember those weeks as if it was yesterday…
So how have life proceeded since then? Pretty well I think. Although I did suddenly realise that alot of my life has been converted to routines and procedures. Like I’m just going through day by day waiting for something to happen. And I don’t like that. So I’ll see what I can do to change it. And I still find myself thinking “I gotta tell Eden about this” when I stumble on something new I know he would’ve liked. Guess that’ll have to wait until we meet again in Sto Vo Kor.
The other day some person called me trying to sell a subscription to a newspaper, DN. As usual when this happens I just reply “nah, I read everything on the web, it’s all there”, and they just take that excuse and that’s the end of that conversation. But there’s one thing that is NOT published on the web – obituaries. I wonder if there’s a law prohibiting it or why, but they don’t publish them on the web at all. It would make things a little easier having them on the web so you could just send the link to everyone instead of telling them to buy the paper… (yeah, I know, there are bigger problems to dwell on than this)
When asked “what kinda music do you like?” I’ve always answered it with something like “I’m not into any special genre. I like the tracks, individual songs!”. What I mean by that is that I’ll listen to almost any kinda of music, as long as the song itself is good. Sometimes a musician/group that I like makes a bad song that I really dislike (like Meatloaf for example!). Then there are some musicians/groups that I dislike that does a song I actually like (like Britney Spears).
There are a few that have made my list of people who can’t do a song I will like. Eminem just made that list. All pop-groups put together by all these star-search TV-shows are also there.
Then there are very few that are on the list of people who can do nothing wrong. Who’s work I like no matter if it’s good, bad or crappy lyrics. Today I saw a documentary featuring one of those very few people – Jewel. I remember when I first saw her, it was on some MTV show. It was just her, her guitar and a piano and she was performing “Foolish Games”. I just fell in the love with her voice and the overall feel of the song. Went out and bought the CD right away and never looked back. And I’m still kicking myself for not getting tickets to see her when she was here in Stockholm. Another person on this list is Moby.
So now you know.
Now what have I been doing so much that I haven’t been able to stop? Programming PHP! Again! And once I get started programming I won’t stop until it’s all done. And now I think it is. I’m really annoyed at myself for not being able to go to bed without keep thinking of this project and coming up with new ideas and trying to solve old problems. I’m a really weird and nutty guy.
There was also another reason I wasn’t updating, but I’ll come off as sad and pathetic if I tell you…
I had a perfectly good reason for not updating this place, but I guess I have to now – yet another couple made in heaven, Sandor & Josefin, got a son two days ago. Huge congrats and all good fortune blah blah to them!
Haven’t been doing anything special, spent the weekend doing my best to distract my mind from the vision I saw at the wedding last week…
But I’ve got something great in store for everyone! The Parlor ! This is a short movie that is just awesome. Pretty weird, some nice twists and great dialogue. Totally independant and if it weren’t for the internet, most people would never have seen it!
As I’ve said a couple of times, I’m not a big believer in love at first sight or getting feelings just looking at a woman. My philosophy has been that a beautiful woman can only peak my interest, nothing more. So how come I’m still thinking of a woman I saw and who’s beauty I was admiring for hours but never got around to talking to? It’s been 6 days, let it go!
See my biggest problem, which is the main contribution to why I’m still single, is that I can never take the initiative with women. It just doesn’t work for me, I tense up, get reminded of how I’ve been burnt in the past and end up looking like a geek. If I even get that far! Last saturday, I didn’t get that far! She was constantly on her feet running around during the dinner and later she was always surrounded by her women friends. And if I suck at going up and talking to a beautiful woman standing alone, I’m ten times more nervous and afraid if they are in a group. It’s like flying into enemy territory, being shot down and reminded that you forgot the parachute! Ofcourse, there is no certainty you will get shot down unless you take a chance. But I can’t do it. So the only thing stopping me is me 🙁
But I’m still working on it, very slowly.
I had a very good reason for not updating yesterday. I was annoyed. Very annoyed. On tuesday somebody must’ve hit my car when it was parked and busted it up for a good $400! Fortunately I only have to pay $160 of that, the insurance company takes care of the rest. But it is still very annoying having to go through all practical procedures for this kinda thing. So I wasn’t too happy yesterday. But today is a brand new day with brand new problems. But I won’t be bothering you with that, instead I’ll post a top 5!
This is quite simply the movies I think are the funniest ones I’ve seen. To qualify you have to be able to give me one of my infamous laugh-attacks (when people don’t know if I’m laughing or having as asthma-attack!) and also make fun of someboy, or even better, yourself!
# Movie Motivation
5. Amazon Women on the Moon This movie is just weird. But from the very first scene with Arsenio Hall to the last one with Carrie Fisher I was laughing so hard I couldn’t believe it. There’s one sequence that I didn’t laught at though that’s just boring – the funeral. And that even had Robert Picardo in it!
4. South Park – The Movie Another movie that I was laughing my ass off most of the time, except for all the Devil / Hell parts, I never liked those. But who can keep the laughter away with a song like “Kyle’s Mum is big fat bitch”!?
3. Galaxy Quest This movie gave me several laugh-attacks, best one was after Alan Rickman “you broke the ship” and I had to pause to catch my breath. And then came “Tawny vs. the Computer”-dialogue and “the ship is gonna tear itself apart. Just fyi” 🙂
2. View Akewniverse I know this is chicken, but I just can’t decide which of Kevin Smith’s flics is the funniest one. Jay & Silent Bob was probably the funniest one, but if you haven’t seen the rest you’re lost. But sequences like the Star Wars bashing in “Chasing Amy” made me crawl on the floor beging them to stop!
1. Spaceballs – THE MOVIE As far as I care – the mother of spoof-movies! Things like “shit, I knew it, I’m surrounded by assholes”, “what’s the matter Colonel Sandurz, CHICKEN?” were just right on the spot. Still can’t watch it without pausing at the “when is then gonna be now”-sequence! Thank you Mel Brooks!
>Remember my rant about how James Bond never has trouble parking his cars? Well I found out this weekend that atleast Natalie Portman has trouble with that, as this picture shows 🙂
Another couple made in heaven, Tomas & Jenny, also had a happening weekend and adding to the “world is already overcrowded”-problem by having a daughter.
CONGRATULATIONS!
(and there were much rejoicing)
And so I’m back from a rather enjoyable weekend. Started off strong on friday evening with doing… my laundry. Ok, that wasn’t even an inch amount of fun (hey, if some can use lightyears as a meassure of time, I can use inch to meassure fun!). But I did get a chance to learn Warcraft III a bit better.
Then on Saturday it was time for a wedding. My friend Markus finally tied to knot with his “dude, she’s 16!”-Linda. When they met, Markus was around 22 and Linda was only 16. Now, 9 years later, they finally married. And out of all the couples I’ve seen, some of which have made me realise the upsides to being single, these two have been the complete opposite – making me realise that girlfriends aren’t mean and guys can still do their thing. We’ll see if that still applies now that they’ve taken it to the next level. The wedding was over and done with very quickly, less than 30 minutes (and last a lifetime. Hopefully!). Then it was time for the dinner afterwards. And that complicated things for me!
My “Rules of Conduct” include some gentleman-rules, like opening the door and picking up the bill at restaurants. Some gentleman-stuff I’ve ignored because they… in all honesty – make women seem incompetent. But during this dinner all these rules applied. Pulling out chairs, making sure her wine glass was never empty (I thought this rule only applied when you had other intentions in mind?) and so on. I didn’t know people still did that… Anyway, nothing happened that I’ll regret later.
Sunday arrived and off to the big city of Stockholm to take a walk down chick-lane (Drottninggatan). This is the kind of street that’ll make you twist your neck, especially in summer time. And then to O’Learys sportsbar to enjoy a Formula 1 race and the company of my two sisters and one of the Pauls (the other one is not into F1). Oh, and Jocke was there too. And for the first time that I’ve been there they got my order wrong. But me, being the “I’m not afraid of new things”-kindaguy, ignored that and just went ahead anyway.
So generally speaking – a very, very great weekend indeed!
Busy weekend. Work to 5 today, lots of stuff on NP.com, then a wedding tomorrow (although not mine, Markus’ is the lucky bastard that have ensnared Linda) and then a Formula 1 race again. And some Warcraft III… But before I leave, here’s my first “Top 5”. I’m starting easy with a simple one, “Top 5 Best Movies of All Time”. But it wasn’t easy, movies just kept coming up in my head that there simply wasn’t any space for 🙁
Top 5 Best Movies of All Time
This is actually the hardest one of them all. A movie has to live up to alot of things to come in here. Most of leave me changed in some way, have effected my psyche and my opinions. But still, movies are made to entertain, so that’s another thing it has to live up to!
# Movie Motivation
5. Chasing Amy The best Kevin Smith flic to date. It’s got some of the best dialogue ever written. Alyssa’s speech about how hard it is finding that right one that cutting off 50% of the population didn’t seem right is totally unforgettable. As is Holden’s speech in the car. And their fight in the parking lot outside the arena. Not to mention the “Star Wars is racist”-rant in the opening! Simply amazing!
4. Shawshank Redemption This movie may seem long, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it when you’re watching it. It’s a great story about the human spirit, hope and payback. Just see it and you’ll see what I mean.
3. Léon The best movie combining a very taboo romantical story all covered up in an action flic. All the actors were really great, but Portman just rocked as Mathilda! And it had good music too. It’s got such a different story and script that I just love.
2. Schindler’s List One of the best historical movies ever! A terrible but true story, and as long as there’s a movie made about it we’ll never forget it.
1. Contact This movie was just awesome! It asked some really interesting human questions (“are we, as a race, happier because of technological advancements?”), mixes some religious aspects into it, it had a great sci-fi story with amazing creativity and a surprisingly strong scientific background. Then it had some absolutely awesome effects and superb sound! And it also made sure to establish that USA isn’t running the world.
I saw the documentary of why the WTC collapsed, the one told from an architectrual point of view. And I found myself, every time they showed a replay, wishing that the second plane would miss. Am I the only one who does that?
Fortunately, I had taken a vacation day today so I’ve been just relaxing all day, looking at movies. And one movie gave me an idea for a new feature on this site – top 5 lists. Inspired by “High Fidelity”. I know it’s real “wanna be”-style to take after a cool thing from a movie like this, but I really like their quote “it’s what you like, not what you are like”. So over the next weeks you’ll be seeing a lot of “top 5”-lists on this site. Hope you’ll enjoy it.