So long, suckers!

This is my final post of 2006. I've got finals next week and then I'm going away, so there's tons of stuff to do. So... Merry Christmas and I'll see you all next year.

Oh, yeah... In the spirit of the season, I though't I'd give you this. I tried posting it as a video, but the tag is broken, so... Here's a link:

http://www.dagbladet.no/tv/index.html?type=fbig&clipid=1358

Did you notice how they have enough foresight to tell the idiot not to hold it with his hands?

An idle wag of the Solomonic tail

Yesterday I purchased a CD. But not just any CD. Oh no. It had the sound of New Year’s rockets on them. Around here people buy and fire their own rockets from their own backyards. Usually while drunk. Very, very drunk. Every year tons of stuff burn to the ground.

They always scare the living shit out of my dog. The rockets, that is. Personally I worry more about the neighbours, but what the hell. As soon as she hears the sound of fireworks, she shoots under the couch like a bullet, hitting the wall so hard that my depicted relatives rattle on their hooks.

It’s really quite amazing that she hasn’t given herself brain damage yet. Actually, come to think of it, she does spend a lot of time chasing and playing with bugs and little animals that clearly only exist inside her own head…


Now I’m working on gradually getting her used to the sound of New Year’s rockets. I guess we can hope that her eccentric behaviour won’t get any worse. Maybe.

From The Devil’s Dictionary:

Dog, n. A kind of additonal or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship. This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations, takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant. The Dog is a survival – an anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon the door-mat all day long, sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means wherewith to purchase an idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned with a look of tolerant recognition.
An idle wag of the Somomonic tail… Now there’s a mental image.

The pooch finds religion

I have a headache. A the-boy-who-removes-the-sword-from-my-head-shall-be-king kinda headache.

That got me to thinking about that one time at the cabin when the pooch got sick.

I’d escaped to the mum’s cabin to study for my exams. The pooch came with me, of course, since her life naturally seems bleak and meaningless without me (just like yours would, I’m sure). That, and she can’t feed herself. This also meant that once we arrived at our destination, I felt obligated to fix her up some kibble and water.

To the tiny fridge in the tiny kitchen I went. There was no running water in the cabin, and I was to plain lazy to walk down to the river and fetch some, so I filled her bowl with some of the bottled water from the refrigerator. How many dogs do you know that get the chance to drink Evian, huh? Not many, I bet. Little did I know…

The pooch drank and ate and pretty much passed out in a corner. All was peaceful. For a while.

I was deeply engulfed in the oh so fascinating world of hydrology (ironically enough) when the pooch woke up and made it clear that she wanted to go outside, by a long series of jumping and screaming her head off.

As soon as the door opened, she bolted out to the nearest bush and began making it miserable by throwing up on it like a sailor on shore-leave (or whatever they call it).

I later learned that the Evian bottle contained holy water. The kinda stuff that’s blessed by a priest. Why anyone my mum’s would keep holy water in the cabin (or why they would have holy water at all, for that matter) I have no idea.

It is, however, obvious that religion does not agree with my dog…

Ham and maturity, please

People spend their whole lives trying to be mature. Then you become mature, and have your midlife crises, where you try desperately to recapture your lost youth.

I'm still in that phase where I'm trying to be a grown-up.

A little while ago, I bought a ham. It's in my freezer right this moment. Having a ham in your freezer is definitely very grown-up.
Of course, I also bought apples simply because they were shiny. That might not be.

Sometimes I tell friends that I’d like to be an adult. And then I jump up and down, or something, just to demonstrate how eager I am to reach this goal. Most of them seems to think that I’m not, though.

Dave Cockrum, the guy who created the X-Men, died recently at the age of 63. They found him with a Batman blanket, wearing his Superman pyjamas. That’s definitely not grown-up. I wonder if he had a girlfriend? He probably didn’t have a ham in his freezer, anyway.

Richard Simmons' exploding steamer

"I swear, they take over my head"

I don't understand writers who say that their storied just write themselves because the characters take over their heads. This doesn't sound healthy to me. It actually sounds a bit... nuts.

Sure, when I write I know my character pretty well. They have their little personalities and attitudes, I know pretty much what they would and wouldn't do. But I am still master of my head. Nobody but me is commanding my little grey cells.

If this balance of power ever shifted, I'd go into therapy. If they told me to, I'd take pills. Little ones, big ones, round ones, square, pink, blue or purple ones - it wouldn't matter, I'd take them anyway. They could stick needles in me, if they thought it necessary. Considering some of the people I've written about, I might even agree to shock therapy.

If the invasion got really bad, I'd fully expect a loved one to knock me unconcious and drag me to an institution, where they could solve the problem, using whatever means necessary.

Picture "Inside" by Andrew Mason

The Devil's Dictionary

I love the devil's dictionary. It's got some very funny stuff in it. Like this:

Day, A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper - the former devoted to sins of business, the latter concentrated on the other sort. These two kinds of social activity overlap.

Absentee, A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction.

Abstainer, A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

I'm definitly not one of those. I obstain from very little, unless circumstances beyond my control force me to, and I don't give a damn about the large majority of people.

Belladonna, In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of he essential identity of the two tongues.

Cabbage, A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

Dawn, The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth bein that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The resaon we find only robust people doing this think is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.

Debauchee, One who has so earnestly pursued pleasure that he has had the misfortune to overtake it.

I want to be a debauchee when I grow up, mummy

I'm a CIA agent!

Do you remember the Furby? They were the little, furry toy which shot to fame a few years ago. They spoke furbish and could pick up on worlds and sentences that they heard.

Apparently the CIA issued a memo to their employees, saying that they weren’t allowed to bring their Furbies with them to work, because they didn’t want the toys to go blabbing about things they overheard in the office.

This made me wonder…

The words “I’m a CIA agent” have been used by idiot teens everywhere to make them seem tough. They’re also a key ingredient in heaps of action movies. To many, this simple phrase is the verbal equivalent to adjusting your crotch.
Unless, of course, you do it like Michael Jackson.

These are the same people who need a special memo to keep them from bringing their stuffed animals with them to work.

I’m not so sure I’d want to give them a gun, really.



Pic by Guillermo Ruiz de Loizaga for www.flickr.com

I took a test, I did

I'm not a ma'am, dammit!

Phonesalesmen make me crazy. They make me want to strap them to my kitchen table and dissect them alive with knitting needles.

About a year ago, I had a fit of niceness and donated some money to an organization that works against infant death syndrome, and thus placed myself firmly on their List Of Suckers.

So now they call me almost every day. It usually happens when the phone is turned off or when I can’t hear it ring, but then I can see that they’ve called, and that’s just as irritating as if I’d actually had to talk to them.

I’ve registered my number against marketing, so now all I need to do, is to tell them to leave me the hell alone, or I’ll strangle them with the telephone cord. Easies said than done…

The last time I actually spoke to one of them, he was talking so much and so fast that I couldn’t get a damn word in edgewise. Then he committed the ultimate transgression. Without any warning, the word slithered out of the telephone and into my ear.

“Ma’am”
That’s right, the little shit ma’am-ed me. I’m not a ma’am, dammit. I’m barely a lady.
I hung up. I had to. People don’t respond well to murder threats. Not even the ones who aren’t really intelligent enough to understand the concept of murder.

But they’ll call back. They always do.

Pic by Jgh Photo for www.Flickr.com