Erm

Listening to:
Beautiful Child - Swans (you won't like it, I promise... rest of the album sux anyway, older stuff seems much more promising)
Hot N Cold - Katy Perry (every damn morning)
Prayer to God - Shellac (so awesome)
Just a Friend - Biz Markie (how is this song this good?)

Playing:
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (mainly driving the F2007, the only car the game needs IMO!)

Watching:
No Reservations Season 5 (finally!!!!)

In the immortal words of the little japanese yakuza from the pretzel lady episode:
"Fuhgivuhness prease!"
Whatever spirits possessed me to write such a shameful post have run their course I assure you.
Not much happening lately. Back in Swedish course after winter holiday hiatus. Learning a completely foreign language in a different country truly is a unique experience. Hard to explain and even harder to imagine. I thought it would kind of be like discernible steps of progress towards some final goal. Totally not like that at all. It feels like 5 steps forward then 2 back then one to the left and one forward again, then 4 to the right then 3 backwards, then 2 more to the right, then 8 forward... Really confusing and frustrating. Like at the morning coffee break on Wednesday Anders was talking about music and the movie the Departed. I understood like 90% of everything he said NINETY FRICKIN' PERCENT. For instance, he said he was watching it with some Malaysians (don't ask) and at the scene when Frank trades the chinese triad dudes the computer chips er whatever the Malaysians laughed. When Anders asked why, they were like "Those obviously aren't chinese guys, they are mainly koreans." Then the next two days of work, for 16 hours I understand like 10% of everything said. How can I understand something so obscure as that and then nothing?! In class I can bust out with "I believe the dinosaurs died out around 260 million years ago when a giant meteorite impacted the earth which caused the sun not to shine which killed off lots of plants, which then killed off lots of plant eating dinosaurs which then killed off the meat eating dinosaurs." Then the rest of the week I've maybe strung together 3 coherent meaningful sentences, despite my best efforts. LORD KNOWS I'M TRYIN'. On the train I'm accidentally reading in Swedish about the new Upptåget train schedule I couldn't care less about without even thinking about it. Try to read about something I really want to understand in the newspaper... Oh sure I understand most of the words, but what meaning am I getting out of it? NONE. YARRRGGH. I mean I guess for only being here 7 or 8 months I'm making a lot of progress, but that means basically nothing when you can't understand everything 100% of the time, which is the entire POINT of having written and spoken language... If you can see where I'm going with that. Ya know, that whole efficient communication thing.
Oh well, I need to go sleep now. Write more soon.

Dr. Octo

Mental disorder, person and alias/
55.6 computer TRACKS on your ASSCRACKS

Things you don't know about me:

I was a minor cyber-meme-celeb back in 2003 or so. My wrandom writings were published anonymously in Harper's without my consent. But no one knew then, and only one maybe two of my closest friends have any idea... At any rate I apparently have a .se website dedicated to the legacy of those anonymous posts. Especially ironic now. I guess. If you know what I'm talking about send me a message.

"Hello big chief! Le's talk, why not?"

Out.

UpDaTE HOtTTtLINE # 9

Currently listening to:
-No Epiphany - Fucked Up
-Sunglasses at Night - Corey Hart
-Overpowered - Róisín Murphy
-Penetration - Iggy & The Stooges
-Seven Souls - Material

Currently playing:
-Fallout 3

Currently watching:
-Top Chef Season 5
-Top Gear
-Joy Division documentary
-Låt Den Rätte Komma In (or I would be if I could understand Sweden talk gooder : ( someday I will though...)

Wishing I could:
-Go to a batting cage, for some weird reason. I haven't since I was like 15 but I have this inexplicable craving lately

Going to:
-Hopefully goin to a club called Flustret, or as my work friend calls it "Jurassic Park". I've heard a lot about it and I think I'll go with my friend from Swedentalk class. I'm looking forward to it. Oh, and the name... I think in english we might call it "Cougarville" or somesuch. The age range is supposed to be like 14-65, full of lovelorn divorcees and junior high girls, making for a danceclub I actually really really want to go to.

All for now. I forsee at least two of the four people that read this getting a call from me this weekend. Look out!

GOD FORTSÄTTNING

New Year's Eve was great. We ate, drank, smoked, played games... For dinner we had Rudolph as an appetizer and Bambi for the entree. Yes, reindeer and deer (well elk). And, yes, I have been waiting over a week to say Rudolph and Bambi. Smoked cigars at midnight, with millions of fireworks going off everywhere and every church bell in the country ringing, it was awesome.

Anyway in the spirit of the new year here is my best of 2008 list. Actually it won't be in list form. Oh, and I reserve the right to use any year.

Comic strip of the year: Rocky. I think I've mentioned it before on here as a favorite for reading practice. I'm sure I'm violating any number of copyright laws by posting these examples here, but if you are about to prosecute... Just tell me and I'll remove them forthwith:


I didn't bother to fully decipher the first one but he's in Norway promoting his new book (the material for the strip is derived from his real life experiences mostly, and he is Swedish) and complaining about his fans and then later he's on the toilet and a fan sticks his hand under the stall to get an autograph. The second quite comical romp occurs at an in store book signing again on his book tour in Norway. A child (with the Norwegian flag on his hat and shirt) asks very politely in Norwegian for an autograph in a notebook and Rocky's Norwegian handler tells the kid to piss off cause Rocky is only signing "Rocky" books or "Rocky" magazines. The little kid runs away crying in Norwegian (Wæææ!). Rocky says "Yeah, yeah, run and buy the damn book for $600 and then get your ass to the end of the line, you all have oil here so you can fucking afford it!" Then a smoking hot teenage bitch (female dog!) asks if he can sign her shirt and his handler starts to say "he's only signing..." when Rocky lunges over the table and grabs the bitches shirt and says "These are my fans!!! They made me who I am today!!" Then the Norwegian handler says sarcastically "Sexually frustrated geek with hubris...?" Get it? HAHAHAHA!!! It's interesting because he often writes in different languages, showcasing the national propensity for multilinguality.

Anyway, next up on my "BeSt oF 2008!!!!" list: Michael Jackson: Thriller. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(album)
Do yourself a favor and read that. It was nothing short of a musical revolution. The Beatles (self-admittedly) put white faces on black music and cashed in, becoming what many consider the greatest musical act of the century. Elvis before them. FINALLY a black person was truly cashing in on his own music and not just being used as a means to a financial end for some bald fat sweaty white dudes who couldn't dance their way out of a wet paper sack. To think that only a little over 20 years ago MTV were scared to give a black person primetime exposure and had to be threatened before they would play his videos at all. MTV!! WTF?? Do they even have white people on there anymore? (I kid, I kid, I wouldn't know anway, I can't remember the last time I watched it)

In other 2008 music news, be sure to check out: "Give it away" by RHCP. The fact that that song pushed them into uber-stardom completely blows my mind. The song is nuts! Go back and listen to it again and ask yourself if you could ever have predicted that song would be a hit. If I had to guess before it became popular I would have said: "No way, it sounds retarded!" Retarded awesome! Radio stations refused to play it because it had "no melody". Seriously the song is awesome but in a completely idiosyncratic way. Maybe that's why people went crazy for it.

D.J. Shadow "Endtroducing". If you haven't heard it you suck. The first album EVER created entirely from samples of other people's music. FIRST EVER. Everybody does it now. Perpetually imitated, rarely equaled.

Favorite blog of the past few years: TOKYO DAMAGE REPORT.
www.hellodamage.com/tdr
I visit this site with damn near religiosity. I think it has all the mainstream appeal of Gorgoroth (oh, another good thing that actually is from this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avnsgYvHPK8&feature=channel
watch TILL THE END, you won't regret it, and if you like it watch the other 4 parts) but if you are interested in Japanese culture and/or metal and/or have a little knowledge of either you will hopefully find the blog hilarious. Schultz is an absolute crazy looking GENIUS.

Coolest milieu of the year: Late '70s Miami cocaine culture, BEFORE the cuban/colombian wars. The amount of money made in the span of time and adjusted for inflation... Well I guess the current run of Ponzi scheme, sub-prime loan, and general regular workin' dude rapists probably have it beat by a long shot, but WHO HAD THE DISCO CLUBS?!?!?! HUH???? That's right. Plus it built a city, and DIDN'T ruin the worldwide economy, so it had that going for it!

I guess thats enough of that for now. My daily three hours of "me" time have dwindled to 30 minutes.

PEACE