As usual no major self-discovery, stunning insight or earth shattering news. Amazingly I have actually done some stuff this week.
/update format
-Monday went to class and afterwards hung out with some dudes from my Swedish class, two greeks, a brit, and a dude from Cali(fornia).
-We discussed the public urination habits of Swedes. Verdict: Whole different sense of shame here. Whole different.
-We did discuss other more positive things about being in Sweden, but I'd rather mention the embarrasing stuff. Cause it's more interesting to read. No?
-I've developed a very positive opinion of Greeks after meeting several through the Swedish class I'm taking. The ones I have talked to are all hilarious. Or quite smart. And usually a very entertaining combination thereof.
-Not such a good opinion of Russian mail order brides (*cough*egotistical*cough*).
-I've heard the Finnish dude in class is really funny to hang out with. I think he makes a lot of money and travels a lot as some sort of business man. Only thing I know about him is he really likes Metallica and Iron Maiden. Oh and, amazingly, he must have worse vision than me since he has these THICK-ASS glasses, thickest I ever saw. If he was short and wrinkly he would look exactly like Hans Moleman.
-Back to Greeks, they talked about Soccer hooliganism quite a bit. Apparently football clubs in some countries are like thinly veiled and very effective parapolitical entities, with the fans like borderline mercenary armies. Apparently full circumvention of the political and legal process becomes a routine excercise. Who knew? I guess people who pay attention to European soccer. For example: you own of a football club and need to tear down and rezone a few square miles of a city for that massive new mall project that will net you billions of Euros and don't want to bother with things like "property law" or "protected historic buildings" or "taxes". Just tell the 20,000 fans of your club that pesky thing called the "government" is going to put an end to the team if you can't build your mall and thus afford to keep Pele on the payroll (or something like that). Massive protests. Problem solved. I probably butchered the example (which was just one true story from their hometown), but you kinda get the idea. The funny part was they were fully aware of this phenomenon, hated the corruption of it, yet at the very end of the story Vangelos, with a murderous glint in his eye, was all "BUT I STILL LOVE THAT TEAM DAMMIT!" Fascinating.
-Thursday we went to this bar in Stockholm that had a bunch of pool tables to play billiards and have a farewell party for the dudes that are retiring (on my birthday). They gave us a lesson on how to play and then we had this short tournament as teams of 2. I basically ruined me and Peters chances to win everytime. After the tournament the dude that gave the lesson did some pool tricks. He asked us first if we wanted to see some tricks. It was really odd cause it was exaclty like the end of that Simpsons episode when Mark McGwire is like "Who wants to see me hit some dingers!" er whatever. Kind of odd. I dunno I guess the tricks guy was famous er something (probably only in Sweden) cause his picture was on the wall a lot.
-Anyway we drank and ate on the company dime (I hope, cause I never paid fer nuthin'). I can't believe how unaccustomed I've become to the affects of alcohol. The dudes that were gonna retire were pretty drunk when we (the Uppsala guys) left. Aparently the Sthlm dudes went to another bar after that. And the bar after THAT bar wouldn't let them in cause they were all too drunk. Then everyone was there the next day and seemed to be in much better shape than me. I guess I've become as big a pussy as I had feared.
-Funny story from the billiards place. These two women came that apparently used to work for the company and are BIG cougars, I guess, judging from the one story that everyone was sure to tell me before they showed up. One word: cucumber. Fill in the rest yourself. Cause this is a family blog. You sick goddamn perverted fuckstains.
-FORMULA 1 STARTS TOMORROW!!! I've been really pumped and scouring the internet reading about it for months. All I can say is I REALLY REALLY wish I would have had the money to bet on this season. There won't be another chance to make as much off the underdogs for a long, long time. My boy Vettel qualified 3rd. Brawn GP took the pole and 2nd. Merc.-McClaren was garbage and Ferrari not a lot better. I want to make sweet love to Barichello and the Brawn cars while Richard Branson films it.
-That humor (humour?) was oddly British. I've thought a lot about how easy it is to parody British humour. Easy as madlibs. Observe:
"I'd expect to hear that from a (English city)ite with a (piece of clothing, hairstyle, or fashion accessory). You look like (English D list celebrity) after (embarrassing activity)"
"Americans are fat"
Cue uproarious Brit laughter.
It works every time without fail and every British joke follows one of those two templates.
Will post more and some pictures later tonight.
BRANIFF
Believe it!
28 March 2009
07 March 2009
New Stylezzz/Gold Soundzzz
Aight foo's vi ska försöka med det nya utseendet på bloggen nu, so skip to the sections (the big bold text) you are interested in, that way I can write as much as I want and not feel lame for the huge post since you can skip what you don't want to read about:
MUSIC
"Final Day" - Young Marble Giants
According to wikipedia the YMGs have some loose connection to Scritti Politti AND Nirvana which is helt bra eller/or hella cool in my book. This song is what I personally consider a "perfect song" and I can count on one or two hands the number of those I've heard, and I take the title of "perfect song" very seriously. A perfect song rating by me is completely independent of genre, topic, concept, lyrics, instruments, band, artists, whatever, you name it. Look, if Limp Bizkit and/or Coldplay created what was in my opinion a perfect song I would readily admit and celebrate it, though I'm 99.999% sure it'll never happen. Anyway, I usually highly dislike songs that sound all palm muted indie cool gayness (which p.s. this song was about 27 years ahead of that particular fashion) and yet it's somehow more than what's at the surface. Not a single misplaced sound, poorly chosen word, or wasted note in 1'42" of flawlessness that leaves you begging for more when it ends all too soon (kinda like, uh, LIFE?). Look, you may not agree and that's cool. We're still buds.
"Get By" - Talib Kweli
I never listened to Talib Kweli before this song (or after for that matter) yet somehow since my best homie Ryan told me Talib Kweli was the shit (and he also said Pete Yorn was the shit, so, ya know, take that with a grain of salt) I've just assumed he was. And Ryan was correct. This song brings all the hotness you can imagine. You like bass? You like rhymes? You like soul? You like idiosyncratic piano loops (I love 'em!)? It occurs to me just now that for some reason Ryan has much better taste in black boy music than in white boy music, which is really odd cause he makes some damn good white boy music. Can someone explain that to me?
"We rock like Paul McCartney/from now until the last beat'll drop"
Fuck yeah, you already did your job, and there's still two left.
While we are on the topic of explaining things to me, someone PLEASE explain to me why '93/'94 were by far the absolute best years for hip-hop? Has there ever been as productive a year (ya know, time frame wise) for any genre of music? I'm thinking motown could outstrip it if someone had the time/nerdiness to correct me. Do it, I'd love to know.
PICTURES
One tiny part of the lovely paper mill outside of Frida's hometown. You have no idea how bad this thing smells when it's working at normal capacity. Imagine feeding your baby indian food for a month straight then getting it drunk on cheap beer one night and then changing its diaper the next afternoon. What came out of the baby smells similar, yet way better than this thing, I promise you. Frida's parents' house is like 30 miles north of it but when the wind is wrong you won't want to go outside if you can help it. Frida just corrected me that there is a paper mill closer than this one that makes the smell at her parents house.
Does it matter?
Lots of snow in Gävle a few weeks ago. You can kind of tell from the picture if you look at the size of the car with respect to the snow piles. The snow plows make big ass mountains that don't melt usually, so if there is a few snow storms and no warm weather they just keep stacking up.
Snow pile in Frida's neighborhood.
Bridge over the river near Frida's house.
View from the bridge.
CULTURE
The amount of piss next to roadways and sidewalks is UNBELIEVABLE. You'd never know it in countries that don't have snow that sticks for weeks at a time, but apparently either people absolutely LOVE to park their cars and then pee right into the snow in front of them or a lot of people are bringing their dogs everywhere they go and not giving them enough breaks on the way. I dunno but the amount of yellow snow I've seen here is outrageous. Never touch the side of a road or sidewalk with anything but the soles of your shoes. That's all I gotta say.
Going to a concert on Sunday night in Stockholm. I'll try to take pictures and post them on here. It's exciting cause I haven't been to a real concert here yet and this one is at, as far as I can tell, a very hip bar in the very hip area of Stockholm (not the expensive hip area, the poor hip area... I can't afford expensive hip, basically no one can here). I'm planning on wearing my ugliest most unhip clothes to make sure everyone knows I'm not hip, so we'll see how that goes. I'd hate to be mistaken for someone cool in the cool part of town, ya know?
MUSIC
"Final Day" - Young Marble Giants
According to wikipedia the YMGs have some loose connection to Scritti Politti AND Nirvana which is helt bra eller/or hella cool in my book. This song is what I personally consider a "perfect song" and I can count on one or two hands the number of those I've heard, and I take the title of "perfect song" very seriously. A perfect song rating by me is completely independent of genre, topic, concept, lyrics, instruments, band, artists, whatever, you name it. Look, if Limp Bizkit and/or Coldplay created what was in my opinion a perfect song I would readily admit and celebrate it, though I'm 99.999% sure it'll never happen. Anyway, I usually highly dislike songs that sound all palm muted indie cool gayness (which p.s. this song was about 27 years ahead of that particular fashion) and yet it's somehow more than what's at the surface. Not a single misplaced sound, poorly chosen word, or wasted note in 1'42" of flawlessness that leaves you begging for more when it ends all too soon (kinda like, uh, LIFE?). Look, you may not agree and that's cool. We're still buds.
"Get By" - Talib Kweli
I never listened to Talib Kweli before this song (or after for that matter) yet somehow since my best homie Ryan told me Talib Kweli was the shit (and he also said Pete Yorn was the shit, so, ya know, take that with a grain of salt) I've just assumed he was. And Ryan was correct. This song brings all the hotness you can imagine. You like bass? You like rhymes? You like soul? You like idiosyncratic piano loops (I love 'em!)? It occurs to me just now that for some reason Ryan has much better taste in black boy music than in white boy music, which is really odd cause he makes some damn good white boy music. Can someone explain that to me?
"We rock like Paul McCartney/from now until the last beat'll drop"
Fuck yeah, you already did your job, and there's still two left.
While we are on the topic of explaining things to me, someone PLEASE explain to me why '93/'94 were by far the absolute best years for hip-hop? Has there ever been as productive a year (ya know, time frame wise) for any genre of music? I'm thinking motown could outstrip it if someone had the time/nerdiness to correct me. Do it, I'd love to know.
PICTURES
One tiny part of the lovely paper mill outside of Frida's hometown. You have no idea how bad this thing smells when it's working at normal capacity. Imagine feeding your baby indian food for a month straight then getting it drunk on cheap beer one night and then changing its diaper the next afternoon. What came out of the baby smells similar, yet way better than this thing, I promise you. Frida's parents' house is like 30 miles north of it but when the wind is wrong you won't want to go outside if you can help it. Frida just corrected me that there is a paper mill closer than this one that makes the smell at her parents house.Does it matter?
Lots of snow in Gävle a few weeks ago. You can kind of tell from the picture if you look at the size of the car with respect to the snow piles. The snow plows make big ass mountains that don't melt usually, so if there is a few snow storms and no warm weather they just keep stacking up.
Snow pile in Frida's neighborhood.
Bridge over the river near Frida's house.
View from the bridge.CULTURE
The amount of piss next to roadways and sidewalks is UNBELIEVABLE. You'd never know it in countries that don't have snow that sticks for weeks at a time, but apparently either people absolutely LOVE to park their cars and then pee right into the snow in front of them or a lot of people are bringing their dogs everywhere they go and not giving them enough breaks on the way. I dunno but the amount of yellow snow I've seen here is outrageous. Never touch the side of a road or sidewalk with anything but the soles of your shoes. That's all I gotta say.
Going to a concert on Sunday night in Stockholm. I'll try to take pictures and post them on here. It's exciting cause I haven't been to a real concert here yet and this one is at, as far as I can tell, a very hip bar in the very hip area of Stockholm (not the expensive hip area, the poor hip area... I can't afford expensive hip, basically no one can here). I'm planning on wearing my ugliest most unhip clothes to make sure everyone knows I'm not hip, so we'll see how that goes. I'd hate to be mistaken for someone cool in the cool part of town, ya know?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
