this entire month has been a total anticlimax for me. I have hardly been outside, since I felt I had no reasons to, so I mostly looked through the window and hoped for snow. today I've been out, though, to buy presents for my family. they're totally symbolic due to my empty pockets, but I feel like I have to give them all something for being there for me and bearing over with missing presents. I haven't had any real coping skills the last few (read: many) years. oh well. I've wrapped them in old FOEG-posters, since I'm not so big on buying wrapping paper. and then I'm washing some of my clothes in the bathroom sink.
oh yes, and yesterday I was at Tine's place where we played Skyrim for hours and hours. what a great game! okay, not great, but amazing and fantastic and awesome and beautiful, and SO entertaining! we hadn't played for more than three hours before I had to kill a dragon under the aurora borealis-lit night skies. WAUW. I'm hooked. I have to buy it for myself; I can't stand not to.
tomorrow I'm going to my mother's place to spend the Christmas days with her and my brother. we're only going to be us three this year and the only three things we're going to do are eat, play board games and sleep in.
in November I helped out my friend Kiss with her sculptures for visual display in an event in Vega called Nordic Sounds (check outher flickr). I merely painted and fire-proofed them, but I love working with my hands, pretty much no matter what, so it was really cozy just hanging out with her, painting, drinking tea and listening to music. she shares this big workshop space with some other artists and there's everything the heart could ever want, paint/wood/tool-wise: amazing! it's called Ragn and is right next door to Mayhem.
I miss spring. today I came home completely soaked and sore in my face due to a stupid hailstorm. spring wouldn't do that to me (at least not as violently).
these are from last year when me and Niklas spent Christmas at Lars's in London. we baked three different kinds of cookies and made lemonade, but used light sugar (why does this exist?), so it just tasted too weird. fortunately Lars is a really good cook, so everything else tasted wonderful and looked pretty as well. I could eat that entire plate of chicken and rice right now.
last winter (and some before it) my (step)dad lived in London, practically on River Thames. it had an amazing view of the inner city; you could see London Eye and London Bridge with the naked eye. these photos are from when my brother and I went visiting last November. I didn't feel so great last year, but I remember feeling very happy while being in the Seacon Tower. it also helped with lovely food and coffee and soda and all that stuff. I bought Fallout 3 and played for, I don't know, a million hours and then my save was deleted - WTH - and I haven't really played a whole lot since. it's an amazing game, so if you like gaming and haven't tried it (not likely) then do.
my dad moved back to Denmark over the summer, so no London this year. dang it. he now lives in Århus with his girlfriend and they're expecting a baby boy, so come April I'll have two brothers. it's crazy how little time it actually takes to make a human being - poof! new person! unbelievable.
later today we're going to look at an apartment with three rooms and a friggin' garden! yeah. fingers crossed.
I'm not feeling too hot today, so my plan for the day is to do as little as possible. I just realized how awesome it really is that Spotify finally has come to DK. after listening to some Rihanna and Arab Strap, I brewed a cup of chamomile tea and found (almost) everything that Sigur Rós has ever released. wow! it's been at least 6 years since I've listened to them. I forgot how absolutely cute they sound. I wish my mom still knew Icelandic so she could teach me, and I could understand the lyrics. mah. but some of it is pretty close to Faroese, so sometimes I catch the drift of what the song's about (a tiny little bit). I'm now listening to Ágætis Byrjun, my then-favorite album.
a great song from Ágætis Byrjun, Svefn-G-Englar. most people have probably heard it, which is good
when I was still in high school, me and my then boyfriend, P, used to lay side by side on my one person bed and listen to Sigur Rós, mostly ( ). we'd tell each other the pictures and moods that came into our minds. after doing this long enough, a story would start to form.
the one I remember the very best is about a woman and her husband. they lived alone in a little stone house by the sea, with dried fish and sheep coats hanging outside. the husband went out fishing and the woman sat outside the house sewing, waiting for him to come home and staring at the sea. after a long time sitting outside, the woman feels cold and sees an insisting fog drifting inland. she goes inside to warm herself and falls asleep, thinking that her husband will wake her when he returns. dawn breaks and she wakes. apart from herself, the house is empty and cold; even under her covers she's freezing. out the window she can see that the fog is thicker than yesterday, and she decides to look for her husband. she wanders up and down the shore for a long time, not finding any trace of him, but once she thinks she hears him calling. she goes back to the little house to eat a bit and see if he really has come back and is outside, yelling for her to come to dinner. the first thing she sees reaching the house is his boat; it's lying on its side on the shore, destroyed and full of holes. her heart falls and she falls to her knees, but she does not cry, as she knew that this would happen someday.
the end.
the story reminds of my great grandfather. my grandmother has told me, that when my great grandfather was little and lived in a tiny bygd with his family, all the grown men, as usual, went out fishing. the ship broke and no one came home. at that time, around the 1910s, there was nothing they could do, as there is nothing much else to eat on the Faroe Islands besides fish. they couldn't even sail to one of the other surrounding bygds and get help, since there was no boat left on land. luckily a boat came some days later and the people could get the help they needed. as far as I remember, every soul moved away from the bygd to rid themselves of the memory of what had happened there.
the end.
wauw. what a lot of memories a few songs can trigger, and my head is still full of many more.
my favorite comic of all time is called Achewood and is made by Chris Onstad. I've never really felt anything for comic characters before, but the feeling and mood of Achewood is just right up my alley and the topics are, for the most part, hilarious and something I can relate to. it's just not something I'm used to or have seen before, so I'm still in awe every time Chris Onstad strikes a nerve with me or makes me laugh. I have the first 9 years worth of strips downloaded, PDF'd, onto my Kindle, which works really well since everything is drawn in black/white/grey and I can have it with me everywhere I go.
I've posted four strips, which I think are particularly funny, and not part of a bigger story, but man, it's hard to introduce in so few pictures!
it's still going strong (last strip was posted this Wednesday) on achewood.com, where all the strips can be read.
Ray, above, (Raymond Quentin Smuckles) is a cool, semi-diabetic cat, who became a millionaire after selling some vintage erotica found on eBay for 6 million dollars. Ray likes eBay, the ladies and throwing parties. his best friend is Roast Beef.
my favorite character is the guy above, a depressed cat called Roast Beef (given name: Cassandra Kazenzaki). Beef likes programming on his computer and Java. his girlfriend, Molly, is good at helping him when life becomes too difficult to manage.
one of the minor characters, Nice Pete, is completely crazy. he is in and out of prison all the time for shady stuff.
Ray and Beef have the best friendship of all time:
!!! EDIT !!! it's not called cartoons, but comics. now I won't ever forget (but I probably will).
some time ago we went to Mikkel's neat record shop, Æter Pladebutik, for the release of Twirly Mist's EP and So Like Dorian supported him. there was wine and an audience of about six, and the concerts were cozy. I love the oversized can instrument. before we went to the shop, I had the best fresh mozzarella sandwich ever, from Stefano's. amazing night.
... and I'm going to print stuff out and borrow books. tonight is trying-to-sleep-but-can't-before-five night and I just won Solitaire three times in a row; now my win percentage is 12%. I can't believe it's almost December again.
I've always felt a little uncomfortable around things that were a little too medieval and tried to keep a distance, maybe because I thought it was childish (once I was in the woods role playing some war, and I hated it the entire time (and I was teased because of my name, which could have been the name of a bard)), but lately I've been embracing it completely. Game of Thrones, my new favorite TV-show, has blown me away and off my feet. the producer has called it "the Sopranos in Middle-Earth", which is an okay description for those who haven't yet seen it.
Catelyn and Ned Stark in the forest
it takes place in another world, where the two largest cities are run by two families; the Lannisters and the Stark family. lord Eddard "Ned" Stark is a father of four sons (Robb, Bran, Rickon and his bastard son Jon Snow) and two daughters (Sansa and Arya), and with his wife, Catelyn, he rules Winterfell, the most northern city before the Wall.
the Stark children receive each their direwolf puppy
south of Winterfell, in King's Landing, the Lannisters rule with King Robert and Queen Cersei in front. the queen has two brothers; Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Tyrion (Peter Dinklage). the Lannisters have a thing for power. the king and queen have a son, Joffrey, who also is completely out of his mind with power.
King's Landing
over the Narrow Sea lives the Dothraki tribe, who are ruled by Khal Drogo. the previous king in King's Landing, overthrown by King Rob, had two children, Viserys and Daenerys "Dany" Targaryen, who are now trying to gather an army to win back the throne, which is rightfully theirs. Viserys is an awful brother to his sister, Dany.
Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen
then there is the Wall. it has been put up to protect the rest of the realm from dangers from the North, which include a horror called Whitewalkers. in the Realm winter and summer are not as in reality; summer can last years and years (some of the Stark children have only experienced summer), but so can winter... oh no! and and and...
oh man, I can't stop myself! there's just so much drama and tension, and so many people that are important, that it's almost impossible to pass on without revealing the whole story. I think half of these characters have become my new heroes. there are so many awesome characters. the pictures are amazingly beautiful all the time, and there's nothing that could've been done better. total perfection. it's not often that I want to watch a series again and again, but whenever there is an episode on my TV, I stop and watch.
I was going to post a map of the Realm, but it's too big, so this intro will do
the show is based on a series of fantasy books by George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire. if I wasn't so hooked on the show, I'd start reading all the books immediately, but I don't want to spoil the show, and season 2 is in April 2012, so I just have to wait. it's weird, wanting to see it before I read it and not the other way around, but that's just what Game of Thrones does to me.
today I'm just chilling at home, listening to Family Portrait and Roy Orbison and looking through books. yesterday I started reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami and it's rubbed off some of its funny feelings onto me. it's a story about memories, love and being a little weird, I guess, and it's great.
today I've been really thinking about everything. can't wait to start school again in January, it's just too boring being at home all day long and not having to be anywhere. my dad has just brewed his own beer and has asked me to make some labels for it, so at least I'll have something to do on the computer and, hopefully, refresh what I've learnt this last year so I won't forget it.
wish I had this guy with me right now. he's actually a huge Norwegian Forest cat. heehee.
most of the Friday at the festival I was at the Yuri Landman workshop with Emma and eight others, building a Home Swinger, and Saturday was spent learning to play the instruments together and ultimately show off on the big stage. it was a totally awesome experience, even though I was very nervous. I obviously didn't get any pictures of that, but there are some over on Tine's cool blog.
I finally took the time to look through the photos from this years Festival of Endless Gratitude (there are many, many, many); it made me all nostalgic, but luckily there is a support show for the festival, this Thursday at Mayhem, so I can wallow a little bit. can't wait. hopefully a lot of people will spend a lot of money, so the festival can live on. and this Wednesday there's the release of Geiger no. 21, which will include some of my photos from the festival. woo!
these seven photos are from the last day of building and the first official day/night of the festival.
