Category: News Page 5 of 6

At this very moment I am working on, or supposed to be working on, at any rate, a jazzy horn and woodwind version of Crazy by Willie Nelson. A situation I would not have seen coming a few years ago. Hooray for life.

Haven’t been in here for quite a long time. A lot has changed. I’m living on the Faroe Islands now. Yes sir.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi. Not sure I’ll continue blogging as it was an experiment. But who can tell. Someday I might feel the urge.

Hmm, September 14. This day has meaning to about half the Faroese population.

IT STARTS with a painful blister – a very painful blister. It feels, people say, like being stabbed with a red-hot needle. When the blister bursts, the head of a worm pops out, thin, white and very much alive.

The rest of the worm, about a metre long, remains inside your body. It can take up to two months to pull it out, inch by agonising inch, during which time it may be impossible to walk. In extreme cases, you may host up to sixty of them, anywhere on your body. The worms can cause paralysis or lethal bacterial infections, and even if you survive mostly unscathed, next year it can happen all over again.

Good lord.

Other than that… well not much has been happening. Too busy for blogging, that’s for sure. That won’t change until I go part time or get another job with less travel time. And then I might actually decide to take this blog more seriously. But not at the moment, I’m afraid.

See you in a month or so…

Neil Gaiman recently wrote the following on his blog:

I went to Alabama, to Tuscaloosa.

Before I left, I was interviewed by Tuscaloosa newspapers. “What do you expect of Alabama?” they asked “What do you know of Alabama?” I was a bit puzzled by that. It’s the kind of question you usually get asked by small, nervous countries who don’t get many visitors. (“Have you heard anything about Ruritania?” they ask, and you tell them that you’ve heard that the strudel in Strelsau is excellent and you’re glad that Jews can now own land there again, and everyone’s happy.) It’s not something I’d expected to be asked coming to a state. But then, I’d visited (if not actually signed books in) 47 states and I’d not yet been to Alabama, so they sort of had a point. I told them no, I had no expectations.

The same thing usually happens on the Faroe Islands. Every tourist or visiting artist is subjected to the same line of questioning. What did you know about the Faroes before coming here? Are the Faroes known in your country? How do you like our local food and beer? And if the tourist is male: What do you think of Faroese girls? It doesn’t just happen in pubs, on the street or at concerts, but invariably in radio and television interviews.

Thus, we are one of the “small, nervous countries”. Now, I love the Faroes and it’s people but it is odd that that so many of us come preprogrammed with the same set of engagement rules as soon as we meet a foreigner steps ashore. There is an undercurrent of low self-esteem. Hmm, can a country have low self-esteem? Yes, yes it can.

Of course, not every Faroese person behaves this way, but any visitor is bound to run into a few of these mindless faroese automatons during his stay.

All righty then, I’ll be off again. Incidentally, have you ever heard anything about the Faroe Islands?

Found these amazing images of the Martian surface taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Apart from that, I’ve been ill for the entire weekend, so I haven’t really been up to much of anything. The majority of my time has been spent on the couch reading, surfing and playing poker. Right now I’m reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I’m such a slave to popular culture (actually, I’ve always been quite anti-pop which is just as bad).

Hmm, I have to head to bed now. Gotta get up stinking early for a crazy Monday. Yup… Oh, the apartment has been shown again today. The real estate agent is hopeful. Me too.

Goodnight.

For reasons unbeknownst to me (and I’m too scared to press Ctrl-H and realize how much time I’ve wasted today) I stumbled onto the site of the World Rock-Paper-Scissors Society. Not only does this society exist, but apparently they hold an annual world championship. This excites me to no end. I officially predict RPS to be the new craze in 2010 with scores of rock-paper-scissor strategy books flooding the market. With a little effort, anyone can be a EV+ rock-paper-scissors player.

Goodbye for now. I will continue my endeavor to provide valuable and worthwhile information.

I think I’m becoming a little addicted to poker again, which is fine as long is it doesn’t interfere with my intentions for the new year. I shall keep a watchful eye on myself, so I don’t sink into that bottomless pit of procrastinations and evasive actions. Been there a few times in my life.

Be that as it may, right now I’m playing in some random freeroll on pokerstars and having a great time. I’m by no means a great savvy poker player, but I’m learning a bit here and there and my game has improved since I last felt the urge. I used to play by the book(s), but now my game has become much more fluent. Feels like playing an instrument, although I do hit my share of false notes here and there.

Obvious imagery, anyone? Hmm, hopefully my writing will improve a bit with this blog. I think I used to be good, but the last three years of working mindless jobs with way too little time for reading and writing has made me very rusty indeed. I need to get back to being a bum. A happy-go-lucky spiritual bum. Yes, that’s it.

I’ve put my apartment up for sale. So if you know anyone looking for a beautiful home in a very attractive location in Malmo, Sweden, then check this out:

I have two New Year’s resolutions for 2010:

1. I intend to be more creative. This means mostly music, but I also have a few other ideas.
2. I intend to become completely debt-free. I’m battling a rather monstrous mortgage, a student loan and one smaller loan.

I realize these intentions may seem like tall orders, but I’m with Michelangelo on this one:

“The greater danger is not that your hopes are too high and you fail to reach them; it’s that they’re too low and you do.” – Michelangelo.

Frightfully good point, I think.

Personally, I think New Year’s resolutions are a bit silly (why not start any time of the year?), but nonetheless I always find myself making them come the end of december. I’m fired up about my resolutions right now, but as experience shows, the challenge is to keep that fire going as “life” happens during the year. We’ll see how it goes. There should be some motivation in keeping this public. Yes yes, I know no one will read this and the few that will, will most likely not give a rat’s ass about what I have to say.

That was a lot of wills.

In any case, Onward, Christian Soldiers.