We dress up in slave made rags.

We walk up and about, flashing and turning, wearing cloths made in factories who exploit women in poor positions throughout Asia. It’s nothing more than a social rape orgy, and the poor are screwed without the sensation of being satisfied.

We want cheap pants with quality, we want our sweaters to last but at a low cost. We dump tons of textiles every year, shipping it off to the Grand Incinerator, thick heaps of black smoke rise to the sky as a symbol of our overconsumption, excessive in every way. Meanwhile, poor women in places as Bangalore or Cambodia work their asses off to produce these cloths we throw away long before the expiry date has a chance to flash its ragged colors over our heads. These women slave for us, they pay the price for our vanity, for our constant need for more, more, more. We walk into H&M, Wal-mart or a Nike store, depending on where in the world you live, with total ignorance on how the manufacturing of these products are. How are the working conditions for these women, trying to feed a bunch of kids, living in a place where birth control is not a part of the act, where they barely earn enough to feed the family, where they slave for your right to buy cheap cloths in a half-fancy low-cost store.

How can you define freedom under these conditions?

http://www.aftenposten.no/okonomi/utland/article3634967.ece
http://www.aftenposten.no/okonomi/utland/article3634971.ece

Dave and The Great American Mist.

Dave the yoghurt-boy had a thought but it disappeared into The Great American Mist. What about your yoghurt, I ask. I thought I had it with me this morning, he says as he’s fumbling around to find it. It probably got left behind like a dying solider on the battlefield or more likely on the kitchen unit. As I sit there watching this Returning-Mess-From-Oktoberfest of a man I wonder why every time they interview people on the streets of America it’s always the dum-dums that are standing in front of the camera like little children lost in the garden. It’s the ones with a complete lack of general knowledge that are interviewed, like someone is on the quest to mirror the dumbness of a nation, idiocy jaywalking across common sense. These are the ones picked out to represent the American nation.

I guess there are at least a couple of guys over there that know their home town is not the center of the earth, that America did now discover the world and with the understanding of Europe as not a county but a continent, or know what a continent is. It’s really scary to see these people walking around without a chaperon, without a legal guardian or any sort of support person to carry them with their lack of intelligence tucked away in a backpack. If I was a citizen of the US, I’d be pretty embarrassed of my fellow Americans.

Is the US nothing more than gun crazed, God loving lunatics, a nation of lost fools or can you make anyone seem mentally challenged through random interviews? I mean, is it right to represent 260 million, or what, citizens through these airheads, this knuckle draggers? For God sake, do something, electroshock ‘em, anything but let these people out of their homes and into the streets. And you let these poor bastards vote. They are clueless folks spinning the wheel and landing on whoever comes up on their front lawn with a bible in his hand and a gun in the waistband. These people voted for Bush Jr., twice! Or again, this is what it all seems like when in reality they are highly intelligent people. Who knows? It’s on youtube, anything can be faked and shaped to fit the glove.

I guess you can find these dimwits anywhere from Germany to Norway, from USA to England, but these people (see link below) are so far out there in the mist that you have to feel sorry for them. What about reading a book, google some shit you don’t know, try to learn -like- something every week. Study history and expand your horizon, throw away crappy magazines idolizing celebrity, turn off the TV overflowing with reality shows. If Trainspotting was written today Irvine Welsh would have written “Mind-numbing spirit-crushing reality shows” instead of game shows. Turn that shit of. If you fill your brain with shit, then shit is all you can project into the bucket between your legs. (And since this blog is called The Bucket, I guess shit comes to mind when you read most of these posts too). When “St Peter The Illusion” asks you “what you leant” on this planet during your brief time here, be sure to give him a good answer. Give him a good laugh, kick him in the nuts and hit that moaning face of his with a fat book called My Brain. Say, Yeah I learnt shit! Then walk proudly into heaven and talk to “God the Illusion” about shit that counts. I don’t think he’ll care much about TV shows and football scores, about Paris Hilton or who-fucked-who in rehab.

Dave did not find his yoghurt today. Instead he walked over to the coffee machine and pushed the Espresso button. Did we learn anything this morning? No, not much. The only thing that is sure, is that you can’t believe everything you see on TV, read in the papers or on the internet. Neither can you believe every video you see about stupid people to be true. But what we do know is a lot of Gods children are lost in the Great Mist. If you’ll measure the brain activity of these people you’ll mostly see a flatline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27f0IimLQpU&feature=related

The wave of post-punk is surfed best by Green Day.

What I really enjoy about Green Day is how they have survived in the music industry. When they burst onto the scene in 1994-95 I got that inevitable feeling of this being a one-hit-album band, that Dookie was as good as it ever was gonna get for these guys. I mean, even how great the album was, it was such a cartoonish approach to the whole album that you didn’t believe this could go any further. And when I saw them playing at the Oslo Spektrum in 1995 it was 45 minutes of playing and then “We’re out”. There we stood wondering why this gig was over so fast. OK, until now this seems like a poor review, but we are on the turn here.

This trio are by all means a force to be reckoned with. They have earned their place on the highest level in music by delivering a hell of a lot of great songs, songs that are funny, that make you feel happy and so often have a message squeezed in between the lines. They have that seriousness underneath the layer of nineties fun-punk, punk that brought the sun into the adolescent bedrooms when Rock N Roll and Metal was banging it’s heads out with the post-Guns N Roses and Metallica period, after Kurt blew his brains out and Grunge crawled back into its cave and died like a pre-historic creature.

Green Day is the band I turn to when the clouds gather in my head with that feeling of longing for guitars mixed up with melancholia. Green Day tend to turn the smile back on and send messages of more than fun into my brain. It’s “don’t give a F**k” combined with a social conscience. Instead of being over pretentious and trying to be too smart the lyrics of Billie Joe seems more like paintings of everyday life of a white lower middleclass kid. Hanging around with nothing to do, no future, no plans, just a job with a nametag on the chest and carrying the upper class on his back. You are the legs of the table, kid, you are the carpet under my feet, the doormat and the bell calling the servants. What can you do about that? Go into unemployment. That’s a career worth waiting for.

But we have some great tunes for ya, kid. When punk broke out a bit of aggression was what the trashy kids of the UK needed to bang their heads in. Fun was what the post-punk wave of the early nineties needed with songs like “Welcome to paradise” and “When I come around”, overlapped by “Warning”, turning into “Know your enemy”, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “American Idiot”. You can clearly see how Green Day are maturing along with their audience. It’s like they are walking hand in hand with the people the music was designed for. The big punk wave on the other hand died out or got weeded out with the trash bin when the garbage truck rolled by.

The first wave of punk started the movement, the main wave brought the tsunami wiping out the crowd but the post-wave was something you could surf on into the late nineties and all the way to the new millennium. Green Day is one of the bands that has surfed this wave of post-punk like a Kelly Slater, Laird Hamilton or Taj Burrow in the most outstanding way, people that make it all seem so easy.

Hate for the Romany people and love for our lazy bastards.

In the modern society nomads are not the kind of people who stands out in the crowd as “Wanted”. In some cases they are even kicked out of the land they wandered into.

France are on the field, lining up the busses, airplanes and the kick-out Generals are working overtime. The Gypsies are a wandering pack of beggars, hustlers and thief’s and France are shipping them off. Ok, this may seem a bit harsh, even stigmatic and racist. But look around and tell me what you see when you observe a Gypsy. It may, for all I know, be the outskirts of the Romany people that fits this description. Maybe I am completely wrong and a narrow minded bastard. Maybe I am a right-wing nutcase, a guy raised in suburbia, surrounded by nice white people who haven’t seen a foreigner since their last trip to the wrong side of town. Maybe I am the one who need to adjust my view. If so tell me I am wrong, but until then, I still see Gypsies on street corners and by parking meters begging for change and it comes out wrong in my head.

My attitude is that I’d rather give change to a drug addict than to a Gypsy. The drug addict has a problem, the Gypsy just don’t want to carry his own weight. But again, this might be all wrong. We live in a society overflowing with shit we don’t need, we are using money like it’s the only way to salvation, getting the newest 3D/HD-ready flatscreen TV, a new Blu-ray player and an Xbox in each kids room. A blender, you gotta have a blender, electrical heaven come to me, get me a laptop installed in the bathroom and by the toilet, save me from a technological impaired way of life. Shit, send me to the end of the universe just to have been there, waste money on a machine that will wipe my ass for me, so I can live better. Man, we live so good we look down on folks not on facebook, people who ain’t got a Spotify account. If you ain’t on the right buss, you won’t go to techno heaven.

So, if we can spend shitloads of money each year on all the gadgets we need to survive in the suburb jungle, why can’t we spare a few coins to the people who have made a career out of begging? Will you miss the few coins you throw in that paper cup? Not likely. So why do we disapprove of this? Why should we give away our hard earned money to some punk race that don’t wanna contribute to our wonderful society. When we waste like we don’t give a shit, why can’t we waste a few pennies to the Romany people? I guess it’s because of this thesis: Society works kind of like this, if you can’t walk we’ll carry you along the way. If you refuse to walk, you are left behind. Or maybe not. If you are the right kind of human, we will carry you, even if you are capable of walking. If you are of the wrong kind, well, you better get out of town and stretch out those tarpaulins somewhere else.

But if we just found some land for these people, helped start the first Gypsy State, would that work out for them? I just can’t stop wondering if that will be the first empty nation where all the inhabitant have immigrated, left the plains in waste to be among us with their accordions, paper cups and mobile phones. Have you seen a beggar with a phone? I have. We are doing a great job for these people, they are not on the Amish side of life, they are right here with us and we will never be rid of them. So start loving these thugs and hold on to your purses.

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/eu/artikkel.php?artid=10018641
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/19/france-sends-scores-of-gy_n_688465.html

A Marilyn Manson song floats by as I contemplate about the world economy.

“Next mothafucker’s gonna get my medal,” the intro goes. Yeah, my middle finger, I say and prepare for my departure. Next thing I know some punter has slid a comment up my crack and I gotta answer some shit-feedback. Man, you can’t even take a dump in peace in this town without having to answer a mail, in like, a nano second before your phone starts to ring like a virus is running wild. It used to be quiet around here but then the financial boat with the worlds money in its belly suddenly floated up again.

Some places have not been so lucky. People are losing jobs and houses, sleeping in their BMW, in tents or under some bush in the park, going to free meal programs and trying to hang on to the last threads of their former life. Society are facing something resembling the great depression and the nations without a safety net are the ones with the most casualties. Reports from the US shows us how wrong it all can go. The Great Nation surely got slapped across the chin by its own hand. There used to be a saying, “The new rich”. Now its “The new poor”, and these people are falling hard. Just think about how it must feel to pull up by the front door of charity in that black BMW just to get a meal, not to starve for the next 12-hours. That guy must feel the whirlpool tugging at his feet like a hungry monster, waiting to swallow him whole.

But in time man will prevail, society will rise and rebuild itself. It always does. Rome fell but man stood strong. Germany attacked its fellow Europeans but the continent survived yet another tyrant. Well, it was indeed with the help of the one nation always willing to stand up against madmen. Lot of shit can be said about USAs foreign politics today and in the recent past, but they rolled up their sleeves and gave us a lot of lives to help push the Hitler area down the drain. We must not forget that. Before I lose my track completely and get sidetracked like Alzheimer City; this is not about war, right or wrong. This is about money. About finances. About the piggy bank getting robbed by a kid high on sugar, ready for yet another trip to the candy store.

So as my working days are escalating again and I get more and more to do, I know that there are still people out there who struggle to even get by. White people from the upper class are experiencing what it’s like to lose big time. What it’s like to fall through the trapdoor and into the gutter, from mansions to trailer parks, living like a refugee in a tent camp in the middle of a big City, in modern society.

What this hour, in the human way, needs is yet another war. War always gets the money rolling. War always bring people together. War is good business. Always has been, always will be. The problem is, this is as wrong as it can get. When you go to sleep, watch the sky and be aware, someday shit will fall from the sky like the first snow of winter, and you’ll know a new pair of gloves won’t be enough to get you through that winter. And all this because some geezer see the potential in yet another war. Fuck it, I’m going to bed.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,712496,00.html

The bed bugs are on the march.

Don’t let the bed bugs bit you, they say. But how can you, like, not let them? The little pests are on the march, like Lazarus rising. The bloodsuckers where no longer an issue but somehow they are charging into our bedrooms, walls, sockets and random holes again. The stay of the radar, out of sight, but the shit stains are usually the hint to the mosquito bites you experience during the winter. What bites? Ah, the bed bugs. Nature is trying it’s best to wipe us of the map like it is gathering the troops and getting them ready for the battle. Bed bugs, madmen, diseases, quakes, floods, bees, sharks. Man, if nature was a bit smarter it would mutate every shark into land walking lunatics roaming the streets looking for a quick bite. If it was smarter it would turn the bees into wells of hyper potent poison. But nature has created madmen with shaking fingers over the buttons of the Grand A-bomb, men not mad enough to push the button, diseases not concentrated enough to kill us all, quakes merely strong enough to lay cities in ruin, floods killing only a handful of people while the virus-like man reproduces in ever larger numbers. It looks like nature is either softhearted or sloppy.

Or maybe the human race is a beautiful thing, capable of miracles of peace, love and understanding. The hippies got it, but the message floated into the ditch with too much acid, with a counterculture movement falling for the trap laid out by a Leary-cultish way of thinking. A great thought was generated in the minds of the flower children, but as usual it went too far and escalated into a nut-case wing far off the chart.

We are by all means a species out of balance with the rest of the world, but this can also be nothing more than an illusion, we might be in the bloom of our potential. We might have turned into exactly what we were supposed to be, a breed of builders, collectors, adventurers, artists and thinkers. Every scrap of nature might be a perfect thing, meant to balance it all out. Like the world is here for us and like we are here for the world. Every garden needs a gardener and man is plowing through the garden like a farmer on Meth. Man is weeding the garden like natures natural way of growing needs organizing, shit must be killed off, moved or fertilized, need more shade or more sun, it must all be neat, stones must be laid in patterns and trees lined up to fit into the I Ching flow of things.

I have no idea of what I am trying to say here, but for some reason the bed bugs are back. They are becoming a new problem and I am not looking forward to getting this buggers in between my sheets. Please, somebody kill ‘em all!

http://www.aftenposten.no/bolig/inspirasjon/article3687339.ece

But nature has put a couple of cute fellas out there to do the hard work, trying to keep our numbers down:
http://www.side3.no/article2997965.ece

The Mail.

Man, did I fuck up the other day. I sent, yes that's right, I sent an ANGRY MAIL to EVERYONE at work. Pissed off like a cranky, pre-menstrual mother off the happy pill. It was a short “fuck you mother fucking lazy motherfuckers” kind of thing. No, I did of course not use exactly those words, but the message of obscenity was in there. The funny thing was, like, it was so irrational, so goddamned fucked up. I was raving about in my head like a mental patient, like I wanted to be committed into the straight jacket, drugged out of my mind and strapped up in the padded room.

I felt so righteous about it all when I really should have felt ashamed. But you know, it's always afterwards that you figure out that you have, totally, taken a swim in the piss-lake, lost your shinny marbles and stumbled on the path of life. I am by no means a perfect man, so I easily forgive myself for my faults.

But, back to the mail, what was it about? Can you guess? Some of my colleagues did not know how to use a hanger. So I wrote that I understood it could be hard to use the hangers in the morning and that it “do take a MENSA polluted brain to figure it out, how to hang cloths on a hanger”. It was such a build up from all that stupid shit you encounter all fucking week long and I snapped. And you know what, that was soooooo good, to be such a bitch.

It did get some attention among the colleagues, of course, and the boss sent me a mail stating the unnecessary distribution of this mail. I said OK and surrendered right away. Was that wrong? I mean, when you have already pissed your pants, do you need to shit your pants too and throw your sanity away by hollering at the boss as well? My balls ain't that big so I went with the flow of things and joined the "You made a fool of yourself" wave going through the building like a cool breeze.

Did I learn anything from all this? I guess not but I can really recommend it. Maybe it will get you fired, you lucky bastard. I didn't get fired though, it's not a cynical place I am at... let me refrain that, my bosses aren't, but I probably am, cynical to the bone. When at a previous job, where the bastards buying the factory smashed the place up like a fragile house of cards, I also sent a not so happy mail.... does this begin to seem like a pattern? I hope not. I borrowed a little fun from Eminem and directed my anger at the American firm destroying our living. It was:

“Let's get down to business,
I don't got no time to play around, what is this,
must be a circus in town, let's shut the shit down on these clowns,
can I get a witness, {hell yeah}”

But I changed it to “Oh yeah”, my balls ain’t that big.

*Postscript: The mail was written and sent to everybody back in April or whatever, but I didn’t think it would be a good post so I moved it into the scribble folder and picked it up again this week. Like wine it might be a bit richer in flavor over time, or it tastes more like vinegar now. I don’t know, but anyhow, this is it; The Mail.*

Melancholy and self-pitying drama.

I tried to start a post
but all I could type was
some melancholic idiocy.

So what’s the point in that
self-pitying drama.

No, dude, I’ll find a new thing
for tomorrows entry.

Something fun, something totally
unessential shit.

But I guess it will be about
a mail.

Yeah, The Mail it will be.

Dave has computer problems.

Dave thinks the FBI is having him under surveillance. It’s kind of hard to say where this comes from, but Dave is as paranoid as only a genuine Yank can be. We observe his tense gaze at the monitor every morning when the same message appears on his screen; “Send to Bluetooth”. “I don’t send to no phone”, he mumbles to himself. He looks around, trying to figure out where the hidden cameras might be, his eyes wander as he sips coffee and I see his lips are still trying to mumble shit that don’t make sense.

What you need to know about Dave is that he no longer live in his native land. He has emigrated, left the premises, gone AWOL and found a new haven in a Norwegian cave. And Dave sits by his desk thinking the FBI is surveying him like a stray sheep in the wilderness. The Great Force of The Bureau, monitoring every Average Joe trying to blend in with the locales. Yeah, I’d like to believe that, but it sounds more like a bad Will Smith movie than a bite out of reality. But when Dave digs his teeth into reality, chews it a couple of times and spits the awful mess out beside his keyboard, it resembles nothing you have ever seen. It’s like a Picasso SLASH Dali version of the world seen through surrealism goggles, like a world without smell. This little monster of an idea lives inside his skull, manipulating the brainwaves and sending false signals throughout the paths between the parts of his brain. What the signals say? “Send to Bluetooth”.

Suddenly David says something out loud, to himself, and I sit there wondering; What? The message pops up on his screen and teases him like a virtual devil. I try to engage myself in a conversation with my friend, still smoking hot from the trip to the Bayern Sodom, not so much Gomorrah, but his eyes are fixed on the screen. I try to roll my chair over to him but there is snow on the cold shoulder, the breeze of paranoia makes me wanna find the closest sauna and bolt the door shut. I don’t want to sit in this post-Bush infested area. I wanna, like, be in the sun and shit, but what can I do?

The IT guy comes by and Dave shouts his name, making him come over to our little fortress of office walls.

- He needs a new PC, ‘cause it sounds like a lawnmower.
- Send a message to help desk, the IT guy says.
- I’m fine, I start saying before Dave cuts me of.
- No, you’re not. That thing is so annoying.

Our level of fatalism has never been that high, but we do believe it is the Yanks faith to walk blindly into the sun, like any immigrant in this country. We sit here, on office chairs from IKEA, ignorance as our aura and far away from any real danger, and with the impression of the world as a pretty far out place. To the great Dave the world is a place claimed by Team America of USA, aka all the evil bastards from Nixon to Bush, the League of demons, morons and assholes. Everybody else try to fight back, but the axis of evil are as black and white as any Sith-Lords system of belief. Like Patrick Swayze laid it out for us in Roadhouse: It’s our way or the highway. That is probably why Dave is using the paper shredder right now and sweating like a German pig before Oktoberfest.

My God, he is funny, that guy. I’m so glad he is locked in here with me. It would be a pretty boring place without him. My jacket might have beltbuckles on them, but he is freakin’ plugged into the system like a matrix clone and highjacked by the FBI paranoia. “Send to Bluetooth”. Some fuckers way or the Highway. Average Joe is on the loose. I? I am sitting on my IKEA chair and scribbling nonsense like it was news for the CNN. I probably got deeper problems than the immigrant beside me.

The Aulie trawler and the hungry gulls.

Newspapers, that is what they call themselves, but they are a sorry excuse of a media trying very hard to fall down the stairs, telling us what is happening in this world of ours. They are like hungry sharks biting and swallowing whatever is thrown into the sea. Take the Great Peacock Aulie, bless her sweet ass, all she has to do is posting a nude picture of herself on Twitter and the news desks are so hot you could have a barbecue in there. People are getting on the bandwagon and discussing (yea, me to it looks like), arguing, criticizing, parodying, having opinions and what-a-fuck! I mean, the picture is nice, like a fashion shoot. If a famous photographer had taken it and it was Kate Moss or someone in that league posing on that rooftop, it would be claimed as something else than a desperate attempt to get attention. The desperate ones are the “News”papers bored out of their minds, fishing for anything in the lake to show off as a big fish.

Whenever The Aulie trawler is cranking up the engine and heads out to sea, the seagulls are flocking around it, screaming and fighting for presentable scraps. And what does she do? Probably standing on deck laughing her cute ass off. I know I would, ‘cause it’s that easy getting attention and she rocks that boat of hers from side to side, stirring up water, making waves only seagulls flop around in waiting for fish heads to belch down like dishes from a five star restaurant.

I have nothing against seeing her naked, but I wouldn’t say it is newsworthy. A nude picture is anything but news. It is a body without cloths, nipples and a nice shave. Some ribs and high heels. A face with an attitude in a black & white presentation. It’s bait for the gulls and urban nudism. As long as the picture ain’t tacky, I say go for it.

http://www.vg.no/rampelys/artikkel.php?artid=10027455

Bobby at the front door.

When you discover reggae you have a choice, you can either follow Bobby through the door or you can stand on the door mat slapping hands with the biggest man in reggae. Bobby is a great fuckin’ artist, or was (may he rest in peace with Jah), but there are a lot of other great fellas inside that room too.

Me, I followed Bobby through that door and discovered the likes of Max Romeo, Eek-A-Mouse, Barrington Levy, Damien Marley, Clint Eastwood & General Saint, Dillinger, Beenie Man and Xavier Rudd, and let’s not forget the youngest Marley kid Ky-Mani (even though he is more rap than reggae). This is just a few names that I enjoy in the spirit of reggae, but the point is as follows; inside the reggae room there are a bunch of great bands and artists undiscovered by many because of the cherry at the front door. But inside you’ll discover great songs. Sweet feelings. Homophobic, yeah, but the music is not the less great. Every message out there can’t be perfect, but let’s be honest, reggae is a huge and wonderful thing.

Walk through that door, follow the man and keep slapping hands in every direction. Reggae is the freakin’ shit, I’m telling you!

The young Adonis’ and the modern Helen of Troy’s unveiling the world.

I can’t say I read much of what other bloggers write, not that I don’t care, it’s just that I hardly have time to even write anything on my own. So reading blogs is way down on my to-do list. I rather read a book, and I do read a lot in that department. Well, a lot might be an exaggeration, I read about 10-15 books a year, that’s what I have time for. Right now Papillon by Henri Carriere is on my bedside table and that is by far better reading than any blog. That is kind of a backstabbing thing to say for someone filling a webpage with crap himself, hoping that some poor sod will stumble onto it for a quick read. But I have made an observation when it comes to blogging and I have a Q for the people, those few who wander into The Bucket (of waste). OK, here it is, my question of the day: Why are most of the bloggers, or at least the top-bloggers, mostly beautiful young people, preferably girls? What drive readers to the young and beautiful? Are there no… sorry for the expression, ugly chicks on the blog-train?

Do you have to be a young Adonis or a modern Helen of Troy to be readable? Is it the thoughts of the young and beautiful we crave or are the ugly ones just shell-minded people not worthy any attention? I don’t know why this looks like such a weird fact or maybe it’s not, maybe I am so wrong about this, but whenever I encounter a blog mentioned in the newspapers on the web, it is ALWAYS some young hot chick writing about the importance of whatever. The next Q that popped into my mind was; Who read these blogs? I might already be too old to understand this shit, but I’d guess guys would be the answer. Has blogs, facebook and flickr become a substitute for porn surfing? When reality shows are such a huge thing, it looks like people want reality with a screenplay, storyboard and a director. And that is also the case for porn, with Voyeurism and some couple caught on camera and pix of girls gone wild and young drunk whoever caught naked or flashing boobs, being violated on some sleazy web page. Is reading the blogs of these young and beautiful nothing more than a way of masturbating?

I’d like to read the blog of some ugly, fat chick. I’d like to see her on top of the “10 top blogs” list. I’d like to read about her encounters with the world, her latest lay, trip to the movies or what she think is gonna be the next big thing. When young people, good looking or not, writes about something that matters more than shoes, shopping, a crazy in-party or posting pictures of a trip to the park, I say good, post some words for the world that is worth reading. But somehow they always seem to look like cover girls, like they were dumped from the latest video shoot of some new Lady Gaga video. I too like to look at beauty, but when I read, what she or he looks like doesn’t really matter.

So come on, find me a fat & ugly one that writes about the world and I’ll read her or his stuff right on.

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article3817041.ece

Dave at the Oktoberfest.

David returns from Oktoberfest with an accordion under his arm and the first few hairs of a mustache under his nose, lederhosen in his suitcase and THE hangover thundering inside the alcohol bombarded brain of his. It is easy to say that something has changed in David’s personality. It’s probably the ompa-ompa music that has gotten into his nerves system or it has reprogrammed his brainwaves. Anyhow, Dave is no longer Dave, now he is more like… Fritz or Heinrich or Wilhelm, something like that. It’s like a German clone has returned from Bayern, and the Yankee guy we knew was kidnapped and buried somewhere along the autobahn, under six feet of concrete like a post-war secret hushed down from the heights of the Nazi-era.

Big breasted women yodeling and serving to much beer, throwing Bratwurst and Frankfurters on your table, grilled swine in all its glory; Pork Knuckle, Pork Roast, Wiener Schnitzel and Nürnberger Roastbratwurst, Kasseler Rippchen and Mettwurst. A diet queen would die of instant fat poisoning within thirty minutes of devouring this bonanza of food and alcohol. And who wouldn’t love this? Fat food and rivers of beer, a social gathering fit for a last offering before leaving earth and ascending upon heaven. After Oktoberfest you can die happily and end life with the blast of a German Luger. Go out with a bang, enter the Pearly Gates with the ringing still in your ears. Man, what would St Peter say? What would God say to this massive gluttony, Capital Sin number 3. I’d say he’d have a case of sin number 6; Envy. Or more probably he would transform into a fat German guy and participate, cramming down as many sausages and Giant Mugs of beer as possible. I gotta say I’d like to be Gods sidekick or chaperon that day. A priest wouldn’t do any good on that event. No no, send in the little devils, the demons of gluttony, the fellas responsible for all the obese mountains of human fat walking around the streets of America. Or better, send those fat fuckers in with God at the Oktoberfest and cheat the clergy of the experience.

On David’s return to work after the somewhat special trip to Germany, we observe a huge change in his behavior. Not only is his dialect a new kind of sound, it is also the sound of trying too much at the same time as it gives the impression of being authentic. We have no idea how he pulls this off but when you hear him speak at first you think it sounds fake. Then your brain shifts and make you believe this it actually how a Bayern immigrant would speak. But nature has its tricks and David is definitely pulled out of the magic-sleeve. And David now has a new taste in music, and it pollutes our ears like toxic waste. His desk is filled with stacks and stacks of German ompa music, blasting out of his green and yellow Skullcandy Ti Stereo Headphones. Somehow the music and the headphones do not match at all, it seems wrong in every way. But this is the new Dave, the new man returning for the German Sodom, not so much Gomorrah, and the metamorphosis has left us all baffled, dumbstruck and flabbergasted. When a college comes home as a completely new person, like a computer with a new, strange software, you do feel a bit like the Twilight Zone has hit town.

But Oktoberfest may not be such a bad place. It sure looks like a hell of a lot of fun, like an event you should go to at least once in your life. Why not? It’s food, drink, happy people and maybe some yodeling. A friend sent me a song over Spotify by this Japanese guy named Takeo Ischi, Der Japanische Jodler. If you can get this kind of combination, or alienation, by going to Oktoberfest it must be some powerful shit they got down there. I’ll put this Bayern gathering on my bucket list and go down there when my prostate starts to grow, when my hair is all white, my face is covered in wrinkles, when bushes of hair sticks out of my ears and my eyebrows are like one huge rain gutter and making my face a strange or funny thing. I’ll go there someday, in the great mist of the future. I’ll drink gallons of beer, eat Bratwursts and Frankfurters, Pork Knuckle, Pork Roast, Wiener Schnitzel and Nürnberger Roastbratwurst, Kesseler Rippchen and Mettwurst, with Rotkraut and Kartoffelpuffer on the side, have a bowl of Leberknödel Suppe and drown myself in German milkmaids, I’ll wear lederhosen all week and roll into a river to end my days as happy as an old man can be. Then it will be farewell world and Hello God, how was your trip to Oktoberfest? And he’ll answer; It was just like heaven. Sorry for not believing in you when I was alive. And He’ll answer; That’s OK my son, have a nice journey to hell. Whatta bummer that will be after Oktoberfest.

An old breed is walking into the tar pit like a blind mammal.

Are the publishers the new dinosaurs to follow in the steps of the record companies and face extinction when the digital meteor hit the book market? Or are we, like, gonna witness a grand revolution in the field of book publishing?

Publishers are walking into a field of land mines and they don’t see the craters in the sand from an ancient time when the music business walked along this dying land of dead dinosaurs. Spreading .pdf documents in every direction as the new way of selling books just to be a part of the digital world is like walking into a trap built by your own hands while sleep walking and breaking a leg in the fall, being trapped in your own stupid hole just because you were an ignorant, naive fool. Nobody’s gonna keep their fingers of the Ctrl + C button follow by a push on Ctrl + V button, copy & paste it baby, do it, it’s that easy.

.PDF’s are a product not meant for book publishing but somehow the worst solution was chosen. I mean, how stupid are you? Haven’t you all learned from the music industry? Haven’t you seen what digital products are? It’s easy copying and easy sharing. Don’t even think for a second that people ain’t going to share shit, ‘cause they are.

“Hey man, you got the new Stephen King on eBook?”
“Yeah, just let me make you a copy.”

This conversation may seem a bit weak, but you get the idea. If the new way of selling books is a .PDF based system the product will be treated like an .mp3 file where the users share books among them self, and don’t even try to compare sharing with a library. If the library was giving away copies of a book to everybody that walked through the door you’d get close to what file sharing is.

And who wouldn’t share? Consumers are not faithful towards producers of material, they are loyal to other consumers, to their friends and family. If you ask a friend if he can send you a copy of this or that eBook and he says, like, “no way man, buy it”! You will think of him as a cheap bastard. And who want to be a cheap bastard? But sharing the digital products are not a phenomenon among people knowing each other, The Pirate Bay and its peers/siblings/equals provide the service of Wide Word Sharing. But is there a solution to this?

First of all; stop thinking of digital products as something you’ll get your hands on, start thinking license, start thinking fresh and new or the digital costumers will in time rip away your whole market.

Second step in this process is a system or platform in the realm of Spotify. If people are willing to stream music, they will stream books. iPad with free 3G, a spotifyish kind of platform where you pay a fee to open a license for the title you want to read, that is more likely a way to go. This is user friendly and it protects the interest of the writers.

Well, what can I say about myself? I freaking love books. I love to read, to put them on my book shelf and watch them standing there as a cabinet full of prizes, as a token or symbol of my own fake intellect. Books do that to me, probably, but I love the product, not just the words inside them. That’s why I don’t care much for a red and white adobe-icon on my laptop, or are tempted to by a hand held pad that will cheat me out of my experience with a book. And a lot of people are like that, but the generation growing up and the next will be more and more used to quite other ways of reading.

So, do something now, before it’s too late and find a better way to meet the market in the digital world. The answer it out there, just open your eyes and a new world will unfold before your eyes. Your future depends on it. It’s do or die. Fuck or be fucked. Kill or be killed. Drink from the fountain of prosperity before the meteor hits you in the face like an iron fist.

When this shit is taken care of I too will go digital. Until then I’ll swear to the old ways.

The Doors and Jim Morrison lovebug inside my head.

I was born about six months before the American Prayer album came out, and seven yrs after Jim Morrison died in that hotel room in Paris. Safe to say I did not experience The Doors during their heights, nor did I ever get to see Doors-like acts until I saw the movie about the band by Oliver Stone and it just hooked itself onto my main nerve and made me a Doors fan for life.

The poetry of Morrison had a huge impact on my life as a teenager, in that post-Doors movie area when it became cool to listen to and idealize the band once more in what seemed like a second coming. Well, it might not have been as that much like a new wave, Morrisonaries have made their pilgrimage to Peré Lachaise long before the movie came out, with that “going to Paris to write poetry” kind of thing being a mission in life for so many people, ever since his death. But to me, The Doors revelation was it, it was the first serious stone laid down in the foundation of my own writing.

I did not understand too much of what his lyrics or poems was about in those days, might not understand much of it today either, but it was the way he used his words as rhythm in a playing matter. It was fun to read the poems and American Prayer, when it was re-released on CD around 1995-96 or something, let me experience the poems with the power of one of my favorite albums of all time. It just lifted the words onto a new level.

Jim Morrison was so printed into my life as a teenager that I felt a psychic connection with Jim and a lot of my writing was inspired by his poems. A mental nutcase maybe, but that was what it was like. Jim was everything to me and he was in my head. I typed out his poems on an old typewriter, framed them and hang them on the wall, read The Lords and the New Creatures and the two collections of his poems in Wilderness and The American Night, read the biography “No one here get out alive”, saw the movie again and again. Then later, in my late teens, acid made me understand the concept of the movie way better and I reconnected with Jim in a totally new way, I felt like I had figured him out in a way you cannot do without letting your brain taste that meltdown of the brain. No, I do not believe in any opening of doors with acid, it felt more like burning bridges. But it was fun to get closer to him by trying to understand the acid experience.

But anyhow, I am waiting for the new movie, “When You’re Strange”, to hit town or to get released on DVD. But in the meantime, I am still a huge Doors fan, I listen to Ray Manzarek on Spotify, combined with the American Prayer album these days and it makes me send waves and waves of “thank you”s to the man on the keyboard . Listening to Ray tell his tale of the Doors and spinning off on the everlasting love and fame of Jim Morrison just makes my day a stroll down the old Jim-mania alley that I used to go down so many times in the past. I was even a pilgrim myself, taking a picture of his grave and hanging it on the wall, blown up to a full size poster.

I am not quite sure what this entry is actually about but it feels like a tribute to The Doors, to Jim Morrison and a thank you to Ray Manzarek for recording his story of The Doors and Morrison on the CD called “The Doors: Myth and Reality”. The band made a huge impact on my life and I am glad I discovered them when I was young enough to get totally sucked up in a Doors/Morrison zone that sent me on this journey that is my life. I guess everybody has their own trip with similarities and easy comparable elements, and it all seems genuine when you're in the midst of the intensity.

Roskilde 2010, looking back.

It was a week of weed and Jäger, total lack of paranoia and being sunburned with the look of a lobster during the high-season. It was great in every aspect of the word and the sweet pleasure of freedom grabbed me like a horny servant. Legions of crazy campers roamed around like mental patients on the loose, dressed up as Super Marios, in that famous Borat bathing suit or completely naked, dirty smelly bastards and grown children on the run from a birthday party where being dressed up as a cowboy was the thing.

By nighttime you fell asleep exhausted and fucked up, freezing and pulling the sleeping bag around you, dreaming the lucid dreams of a stoned teenager. When you woke up it was like a heat wave had struck your tent and all you could do was gasp for fresh air and pull franticly at the tent zipper to let piss infested oxygen flow into the sauna you were sleeping in. The first thing you notice when your lungs are filling up with that disgusting smell surrounding the tent area, is a broken deck chair, two used condoms with semen so fresh that sperm cells are still swimming around in it and some neighbors dick hanging out in the open, marking the owners territory.

I stepped out of the tent and looked around at the madness. It was camp flags and sex dolls waving in the air, drunk lunatics snoring in the surrounding tents. The whole place was like a gigantic havoc of yesterdays party, trash everywhere and tents blowing in the wind as far as the eye could see. Say what, like 70-75.000 campers, something around those numbers, where making the best of the situation by being as fucked up as possible. Beer for breakfast, joints for lunch and booze for supper, projectile vomiting as a reverse midnight snack.

Walking around on that grand field and observing this scene, you can hardly believe you are a part of it. I mean, who can? How can you believe that some weirdo has tried to give himself a haircut in the middle of the night and are now standing in front of you in the food cue, looking like he’s been manhandled by a hairdresser on acid? Whatta fuck is wrong with these people? Nothing, they're just letting everything from normal, stuck-up society go and releasing every went, letting steam out, having unconditioned fun. And I am digging the whole scene, the nakedness, the dressing up, the music, oh god, the music.

Dirty rockers from Iceland; Solstafir, and the gigantic monster of a prodution by Damien Alburn; Gorillaz, some chick holding down the preasure of vomit pushing its way up from an overfilled wine belly, nothing but a drunken swine, probably letting it all go in the crownd somewhere, the old grunge wave with Alice in Chains in front but lacking the overdosed and long gone Lane Staley and how I miss his voice, punk fun and insults at the NOFX gig and a huge disapontment watching Them Croocked Voltures, three men having spelled success for you in ever way up untill this point, the surprise gig being The Mexican Institute of Sound, tequilla infested party style and a jumping crowd, joints in the air and kisses in the wind, and at last the grand finale; Prince, the old hag making magic in the cold evening of a Danish summer night.

But of course some seen - some missed, like Motörhead and Prodigy, Staff Benda Billili, Speed Caravan and Moderat, Robyn, LCD Soundsystem and Jack Johnson. Well, you can't see 'em all, you just can't. 18 concerts was enough and what was seen. We spent a week at the Great Festival and crawled helpless home to the boring life of everyday, back to the dead ends, back to the vacuum created in our lifes after spending a week in Sodom, a week in Gomorrah, a week in heaven. Next year? Who knows, maybe we'll find a hole and dig our way down to hell. Who knows. Fuck it.

Ear drums blood beaten by Skambankt. Whatta pleasure!

The first time I heard Skambankt it was like a shot of heroin rushing through my veins, shooting a stream of ecstasy from ear to brain to body and soul. Far away from the realm of Kaizers Orchestra a distant cousin sledgehammered its way into the Norwegian platform of dull music and their demand to be heard was far more a seduction then a hostage situation. Or maybe like an erotic hostage scenario where your musical crouch was wet from pleasure and aching for more more more.

That’s kind of how it was for me the first time Dynasti blasted through my radio at work and blew me away. I just had to find out “who tha fuck” these guys were. What I found out was that the band, at that point, had two albums and an EP available. I got hold of all three and played them non-stop in the car. Even my son at age 4 or what he was at that time wanted to hear the music on the short drive to the kindergarten. He even commented on the dialect of the vocalist, saying he had something in his throat (you know, like when you’ve got a cold and slimy stuff is stuck down there), that’s how intense he listened to it.

I have had the pleasure of seeing the band live 3 times. Not many times if you compare to a travelling fan who have almost lost count but all three concerts have been an explosion in my ears. A wonderful supernova splitting sound molecules and leaving my heart pumping like a mad machine when the last tone has died out and the last syllable is uttered.

The only disappointment came with the last album, Hardt Regn from 2009. It sounded like too much of the autopilot was working overtime while the band just had a good time making music. It was down a notch, but that was just because they had delivered music on such a high level up to that point. It is quite natural to lose a bit of your pace when you run along the track. What’s important is that you gain speed again and pump that magical shit out like a canon shot, a shot that only can be found in the wilderness of Snowmobile Land where Skambankts sound belong.

If Skambankt is a new thing to you, which is close to unheard of today with the bands success, you should start with the debut album and work your way forward. Take your time with each album, listen to it like a pack of over-religious people listen to the priest and let your musical soul fall in love with a band that has no intention to be anything else but the best, a monument in Norwegian music history. If they can keep up the quality of the self-titled debut, the EP Skamania and the second album Eliksir, this will be one of the greatest rock bands Norway has produced. And yes, we can believe in that mania!

Malcolm McLaren takes a dive.

Punk, it finally broke the barriers in the late seventies with a spurt of white kids from the gutter roaming into every scene in society, from music to fashion, newspapers and TV. Every label wanted to sign a punk band, because it was the new thing, the fashion wave and the flavor of the moment, anti-establishment with lack of respect for the authorities mixed up with what seemed to be their own ideology. What started with the beat generation was overlapped by the hippies and passed on to the Punk scene. Punk bands who had just played a couple of gigs got signed right away, even if they sucked as musicians, but got hyped up and made into a musical institution. The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Ramones and the Buzzcocks, famed bands who got the ball rolling, but the one guy who stands out in the history of punk, are written in stone; Malcolm McLaren.

At the age of 64 he packed up his bags for the last time and passed on to the other side of life, long after Sid took his final breath. He was the man responsible for the biggest hype in music history, The Sex Pistols. A lousy band on the lowest level of music, trashy and complete mental, but was the perfect spawn of the new swing in music. Led by Johnny Rotten on vocals and the worst bass player in history, Sid Vicious, they managed to kick the punk genre into heavy rotation. The band was far from good, and the worst thing is when you listen to the songs and look back in time, is that what was made was a handful of songs that worked perfectly, songs that provided an attitude, provided musicians and crowds from the same level, people that wanted exactly the same thing, that came from exactly the same place and understood just perfectly what it all was about. They was unemployed, dropout-kids and white trash trying to make their way in life. In a way what the punk movement accomplished was a highly beautiful thing; against all odds this terrible shit actually was made legitimate because it was made by the same scrubby people that was hopping around in the crowd. It was not Titans travelling around with a huge stadium rock show, it was shit bands playing at shit holes and trashing about. It was raw, unpolished and sour, but it was their music, their scene and they dived into that pit like it was the garden itself.

You cannot deny punk its place in history and you cannot deny McLaren his place in history either. And you cannot deny, even how crappy they were, The Sex Pistols their place in the history of music. They led the way, the adolescence age of the genre, born with the likes of The New York Dolls and MC5, Iggy Pop and the Queen of the lot; Patti Smith. When punk became the thing, it was more or less a second wave. The Pioneers was either broken up, beat down or rolling on. The pioneers of punk has to watch the Pistols on the throne, but the throne is not what it’s all about. Who cares about the leader of the pack, punk is just a bunch of rats crawling around and got housebroken in the early nineties with bands such as Green Day and The Offspring, Bad Religion and Blink 182. Today punk is a more pop oriented and cleaned up version of what it started out as. In some ways it’s for the best, in other ways it’s a loss of that horrific edge that punk sprung out of. If you love music, and I don’t mean just a general liking, but love music, punk is one of those rare moments in time you have to treasure. Punk provided latitude in the geography and terrain of music. And as they bury Malcolm McLaren his contribution to music will live on.

The ragged flag of punk is waving in the wind and the flag pole has stood its ground. Today we lower that flag and salute the late Malcolm McLaren with the remains of the flag he helped rise.

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article3597851.ece

The universe and the ant.

I’m not going to reveal any grand philosophical answer in this post, simply because I can’t. No one can actually give a correct answer to the content of this blog post and the answer to that is pretty easy; We do not know the complexity of the universe. We can only guess and assume.

What I asked myself was two things. How can we determine that the universe is expanding, and what is the universe expanding into, over or crushing in its way? This is a hard nut to crack. If something is expanding, it needs room to expand in. So instead of trying to solve a problem I have no capability of figuring out, I found a way to explain my own lack of ability. The reason why we, or at least I, have such a problem grasping the ways and size of the universe can be explained with an ant.

The ant will never be able to comprehend how vast the earth is. It can only run around and imagine how big it is. The reason for why the ant can’t understand this is because it can never explore the far corners of the earth. It can only explore the area near to it. It can of course explore vast areas compared to its size, in the same way as humans can go into space and travel great distances, but not remotely as far into space we have to go to understand its full potential. To see the grand suite of the universe we are a part of, we have to explore space in the same way we have explored earth. The ant can’t understand the vastness of the earth of the same reasons we can’t understand the universe.

What I might need to do to start understanding some of this greatness, this cold darkness called space, I feel the need to study the thinking of Nassim Haramein. “Crossing the Event Horizon” might help opening ways of seeing the Universe in a new way. I don’t know what his theory is all about yet, but I’m looking forward watching it. When I’m done I’ll let you know.

http://www.theresonanceproject.org/

PS. Nassim, you disappointed me in a grand scale. Sorry, but this just seems cultish.

Is the planet nothing more than an enormous waste bin?

Watching WALL-E was such a funny experience, not just because Pixar are fantastic in the business of animation but of the simple fact that they pictured the way we contaminate and litter the planet so perfectly, and Pixar probably wanted to shed light on this topic. The movie was like a beautiful glimpse into the future, a very believable future indeed. What else is earth becoming but a large fuse dump. Just take a look around you, as the snow is melting garbage are popping up faster than the crocus and coltsfoot. And that is just on the local scale.

Let’s take a wider look and where we dump shit:

We ship electric waste to Africa for recycling, but only 20% is usable, the rest is burned on open fields.
Ships are sent to India for chopping.
We got junk floating around the earth like an asteroid field. How are we even going to attack this problem?
And the sea is treated like a waste bin, like, “Out of sight, out of mind”.

We produce and waste. We consume like crazy. We treat the planet, our home, like it’s a hotel room we can fuck up, check out of and leave the cleaning for someone else. Have we forgot the fact that no one will come to clean up our mess? What do you teach your kids at home? To tidy up their room or do you do it for them? When the kids are moving out, do you go to their home to clean up their flat or do they have to take responsibility for their own filth?

When it comes to garbage we have to change the enormous consuming mentality, we have to make the most of our resources rather than dump and burn everything. Plastic, oil based products… some day, maybe not in fifty yrs, maybe not in a hundred yrs, but some day the resources will be all used up. The future generations will be the victim of our squandering. Hopefully our kids and grandchildren will find a way to change the death of a planet. Or at least the horrible buss we’re on will take a better turn.

A colleague said, when talking about the dumping problem: Can’t we just send it into space, if the universe is infinite won’t it be space enough to dump it in?
I said: Well, that’s the problem, the mentality of dumping. We must change that, ‘cause if we send all the junk into space we will throw away all our resources. We must recycle and take better care of what we got.

But what can I say, micro plastic is killing life in the sea. A flake of paint orbiting around the planet will make a pretty good dent in a space shuttle.
Nature is nothing more than a fridge with food moving around. We rearrange or kill whatever is in our way, may it be humans or animals.

We are a bunch of dirty bastards, the human race. All we can hope for is a revolution of the kind that will reprogram the very perception and values we have when it comes to our Mother, the planet earth.

http://www.aftenposten.no/fakta/innsikt/article3574592.ece

Ah am a writer, said a-this fool.

It has taken me years to come over my problem with this term. I really had to work with that, a mental wall blocking up my ability to define what I was when it came to writing. When people asked me if I was a writer I just said –No, I am just a guy who likes to write-. In fact, when I write it is the only time I let myself go completely, when I just let everything flow and follow the stream of my imagination, let characters grow, let scenarios unfold and create fictional landscapes. It has not been easy for me to accept myself as a writer. I had to climb that huge wall in my mind and come to terms with what I am.

What I enjoy the most about writing is the freedom it provides, freedom to harvest whatever my mind dreams up, the freedom to follow weird paths and strange highways. I peek through narrow chinks and grand canyons, I walk through wild forests and long forgotten deserts, I paddle down rivers and cut my way through wilderness. The journey is always about the story, to tell a tale, to entertain myself with the hope of someone else also enjoying what I do.

It doesn’t mean that writing is always easy. Some days it’s like fishing for words in a well, if you’ve tried it you know nothing will bit down in that dark hole. Every effort to find the right words bounce around in your mind like something uncatchable, something slippery or thin as air. But some days it’s pouring out of your head like a flooded dam. Those days are like euphoria, an ecstatic sensation flows through my mind and everything feels magic. Everything feels right and every word fits like a perfect piece in a puzzle.

I know I am a writer. I have been for a long time, it just that it took me a long time to accept the term. Hopefully you will enjoy some of the things I write, not the stuff in this awful bucket, but the published stories or what you can google up when you enter my name. Have a great day and read a lot, read a lot.

Confused minds in the dark forest.

Short input today, Easter is coming up. Just read about the Christian Warriors who planned murder on policeman with a little bit of bombing on the side. Are they any better than the average Muslim fundamentalist? Aren’t you pretty much a totalitarian when you need to kill those you disagree with? I’m sorry, but what is wrong with these people? This is a perfect example of how misguided belief is lead into the wrong kind of forest. They are not walking in the garden of prosperity, but in the wasteland of mayhem, anarchy and disorder.

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/artikkel.php?artid=595277

Footprints in the sand.

I turn
around
to see the
footprints I
have made in
the sand like the
history of a walking
man.

You
can’t
learn too
much from
this footprints
but you can easily
follow my steps to the
end of the world.

Would you?

Anti-what, Mr Gerstenfeld?

Well Manfred, I live in Norway and I am not anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. I am just anti anyone that use religion for self righteousness. I am anti on the use of religion as a flag for killing, corruption, anti-humanity, plunder and oppressing.
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article3578213.ece

But what need to be understood is that this behavior is not a new thing. The usage of religion as a weapon is not a new-age wave in the Business of Belief. The crusaders killed and looted in the name of Christ. The Muslims fought their way into Europe with booth the Ottoman Empire and the Maures and fight like crazy within their own circle. Religion surely finds its way into the troops anyway you see it. If your God wills it, it’s justified and it is all a political bullshit game. Religion has held hands with politics since the beginning of its cult, just to win believers and destroy its rivals.

There is no pureness left in religion, as I see it, and Israel, among others, has to take a long and deep stare into its own behavior to find the reason for any anti-Semitic attitude anywhere in the world. I can’t say this means I’d wear a PLO scarf and go marching down the street demonstrating in the name of Palestine either, ‘cause I believe the situation would be as bad for Israel as it is for Palestine if the table was turned. Israel just have the advantage of being the stronger side.

What need to be done is looking forward, but when you all focus on the past like it’s all that matters, you will never get any progress. The important issue is how we can ensure a better future for our children instead of teaching them hate and violence. No one in the Western part of the world dislike Israel for no reason, but every time someone utter a dislike for Israel the anti-Semitic hand is waving in the air. If people can’t express any disliking for Israel without being accused, then we are dealing with absolutes and a totalitarian way of thinking.

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/midtosten/artikkel.php?artid=585467
And Israel just keep coming with the anti-Semitic banner again and again, like it’s a trump card. Who said Great Britain was Israels dog? By calling anyone a dog in this way suggests that they are owned by you. This behavior is what causes any anti-Semitic attitude in the first case. You drape yourself in white to hide your bloody, dirty hands as just truly sanctimony people are capable of doing. There is a reason for why Muslims drape them self in bomb-belts, even if that is as wrong as the oppressing, but it is not something you can look 50 yrs back in time to figure out. Thousands of yrs of history has shadowed any pure religious agenda. What we see today is the dirty religions laundry piling up. Now we don’t have a washing machine big enough to clean all the blood off the cloths, not enough hands to scrub of all the dirt and not enough minds to change a bent way of thinking.

It is all a shame, but Israel is not the cause alone. To understand you have to study the history of religion, the misuse of every known religion out there. We do not have the prosperity of mankind in mind if we keep up this abomination. Look back at the past to learn from history, not to dwell on any wrongdoing. Killing is a part of the inheritance in the human gene pool. To find peace, even as naive as it sounds, we must overcome the problem of war, of separating races and belief and seeing thy self as the rightful heir of anything. We are one. Living on the same planet. And we must act as one.

http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/03/25/nyheter/israel/utenriks/politikk/10997308/
To me it looks like Mr. Gerstenfeld WANT us to be anti-Semitic to promote his own agenda which seems to be of selfish reasons. What else than to grab his 15 minutes of shame, to put his face forward. By attacking others in this manner, you stir up the pot and the anti-Semitism that lay dead start to rise and swirl around in people’s heads. Who is responsible for this I ask. What do you have to gain from this behavior? The agenda must be about you, Mr. Gerstenfeld.

It is a shame that people focus more on their religious differences then a human bond between every single human. As I said, we do live on the same planet, and no belief in a God should devide us.

Ah want my rockers bad.

What is rock n roll all about? I ask myself as I read yet another Tabloid Headline in the newspaper about the recent bad boy Pete Doherty, the notorious drug fueled Libertines/Babyshambles singer who regularly serve us pieces of his public life through a scandal-hyped news window. Everybody loves a good story, even if the story isn’t good. That is the case about a lot of the stuff written about Mr. Doherty. The fellah is totally into his drug train and a lovable artist for every newspaper without respect for its self. Most of what you can read about Pete Doherty in the papers are of low news value, but he is getting shitloads of bad boy credibility every time. He is, despite the fucked up role model he may be, exactly what I am looking for in my rockers. Let’s mention a couple of our long lost heroes: Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, Kurt Cobain, Shannon Hoon, Keith Moon, Andrew Wood… do I need to mention more tombstones here?

It is by all means a tragic fact that all of these artist are dead, dead because of a life influenced by drugs. I do not intend to idolize drugs in any way, but the way of drugs are a natural part of the rock culture and the picture of the bad boy syndrome following a rock n roll career. When the industry clean up their acts they provide much more healthier role models for the kids, but what is the essence of rock, what is it all about? It’s rebellion. It’s chicks, groupies and all the sex you want. It’s sweat, bare chests and long hair. It’s flying solos, it’s hard beating drums and speakers going up to 11. It’s crazy stories, madness and total chaos. It’s great freakin’ songs with attitude, attitude that reflect the bands image, an image that reflect the bands personality and upbringing. Bad fuckers with a great talent for hard shit and who knows how to throw a party. Rock it after all just another fantastic freak show.

If this isn’t a part of the history of rock n roll, then I don’t know what it is. But all the rock stars I ever loved, is a drug crazed lot of buggers. But great non the less. So when a funny guy like Pete Doherty comes along, it is either a blessing or a cures. What is , however you categorize him, a fact is that he carries that rock aura of madness and craziness with him. Even if I’m not so much into the music he plays, he is a true rocker and will one day pay the prize or harvest the glory. Pete is just what I want rock n roll to be; dirty, raw, fucked up and a total hazard. When rock becomes too clean it loses the edge that made it in the first place. I don’t want nobody to choose that kind of life or to wish them dead of overdoses or causing the death of others. Every time a performer dies it saddens my heart and it saddens people around them. But when a complete accident of a rock star strolls onto the scene I embrace him like a rare gem.

If this is a bad sign about myself I don’t know. All I know is that I pay tribute to all the rock stars dead or alive, rockers that at least try to live up to the myth. Some of them survive, some of them fall to the ground. I thank all of them for the music they provided and wish they would still be alive.

http://www.vg.no/musikk/artikkel.php?artid=584288

Why are we so hung up on this?

I can’t say I find it interesting what sexual presences other people have, but why do we need to mark every homosexual out there with signs on them like they are Jews living in a Nazi occupied territory? The only reason why knowing another man is homosexual is because you are interested in the same fun or activity, if you follow me. We force people to take a stand and speak out with comments like “I am gay and proud”. If I went out saying I was straight and proud, I guess some people would find me a bit anti-gay. But somehow society has a really hard time getting over the fact that some men like having sex with other men. If that’s your ball-game, fine, I don’t care. I don’t need to know, and the media are dragging this kind of coming-out-game on every gay performer out there. It's such a big deal to them that they (media or whoever need to know) have created a "Closet" for them to hide in, or to come out of.

Sure it was no surprise to seeing this fella in the papers with this “confession” and coming out officially as gay, but why do we need this? Do we also need to know if a politician likes S&M, if he's a foot fetishist or if he likes dressing up? I read in the papers some years ago about a “Lesbian Sado Priest”, as they called her. Whatever, if that’s what she likes does that hurt anyone? If Erlend Bratland likes men, do we need it announced on the news on TV, in the papers and treat it like it means something? Isn't it his business, a part of his privacy?

As long as two grown people are doing something they like it’s their business and no one elses. Society should stop branding every gay person like a cow to know what area he belongs to. Sure, I can’t understand that someone prefer men instead of women, but that doesn’t mean I must built up a hate relationship with gay people. What I ask is WHY are so many people, out there, AFRAID of gay men when they at the same time embrace the look of girl-girl scenes. If two girls kiss at a party it is socially accepted and some may even cheer enthusiastically. If two guys do the same it would sicken a lot of the people present. Double moral at its best, don't you think?

I won’t make a longer rant than necessary about this, but the last say here, in this totally uninteresting post, is that you should respect thy neighbor, and stop branding everyone around you. If this post makes you wonder about my sexuality, then read it again and ask yourself why you wonder.

http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/03/18/kjendis/erlend_bratland/norske_talenter/homofili/10912265/

A hundred days and it`s on.

Trying to understand the meaning of life is like trying to understand reality when you`re on acid or like trying to grasp the air between the palm of your hands. At the same time it is as meaningless to explain my love for Roskilde as it is to explain love for a person. It`s like, how can I explain why I had such a huge crush on this girl when I was sixteen. I just loved her immensely. Roskilde is a grand event of a festival but is that a reason alone to love it?

I’m sitting here drinking a glass of broth that makes me think of pee instead of fake, freeze-dried vegetables. When I drink the broth small pieces of the fake vegetables float into my mouth and make a strange squeezing sound when I chew on them with my front teeth. It is horrible, but somehow I keep drinking it. Outside the weather is in the early phase of pre-spring, when the heat of the sun is teasing your icy bones and making you long even harder for sweet summertime. It is at this very day a hundred days until the biggest event of the year swing its gates open. It is one hundred days until it starts and I am counting the days like a kid before Christmas, like a seventeen year old teenager with psychotic strict parents sweating out the days until he can get drunk with his buddies without getting in trouble. I am waiting like a madman about to be released from the loony bin, like I have been spending 14 yrs in prison and about to launch into freedom. What I do, actually, is trying to understand my love for the Roskilde Festival, and a tear rolls down my cheek with the realization of two tickets carefully mounted to the fridge with a magnet, like it`s a mental shrine.

It’s 14 yrs since the last time I held a ticket to the Roskilde Festival in the palm of my hands. Like the GnR song “14 years” it’s been a freaking long time since I went to my “Woodstockian” festival utopia. It’s been 14 yrs of longing, remembering, embracing memories and serving “The tale of when I went to Roskilde” to my friends and anecdote-sharing with people I meet who also have done The Roskilde Thing. It was back in `96. I was 18 yrs. Immature. And totally ignorant on the prospect of rain. I did not watch a weather report, did not bring a raincoat or rubber boots. Luckily it was sun all week long and I got sunburned like the too high idiot I was. I bought the ticket and togged along a classmate and his friends, and shared a train compartment with 6 girls from Tønsberg (no this was not as exciting as it sounds).

This time I am 32 but I feel like I’m that 18 year old kid again. But this time I am a hell of a lot more mentally prepared. This time I KNOW what I have to look forward to and it tickles my balls like anthill (I do not know what that feels like for real, but metaphors tend to be my kind of glove). The tickets are mounted to my fridge with a toy magnet and have increased in prize and nostalgic value. That immense love affair I had with the festival 14yrs ago is like a huge crossroad in my mind, like BC and AD is to the Christian community. Before and after Roskilde. And all I can do is check onto the webpage, everyday for news of bands, bands, bands. Who tha fuck is coming this year, who is playing, who is headlining, who-Who-WHO?? But it is not so much about the music as it is about the journey, about the feeling of being in that state of wonder, horror and joy. And still I can’t figure out just what it is that sets of a swarm of butterflies through my stomach each time I re-read the band list. I can only say one thing; Ah’ll freakin’ see ya there, dude.

The sickness within.

The sickness within, when the body seem corrupt the blood cells will mutate and attack from within the border, killing its own kind. There is no way to explain it, why white blood cells suddenly change their behavior and try to pull down the structure it also is dependent on to exist. If all falls down, chaos will come and from chaos comes order or anarchy.

It is surely a sign of sickness when cells starts attacking other cells, but where the sickness lies is a question of prospective. The cells do not attack what it see as perfectly healthy, but what it sees as sick, as decadent and depraved. If you believe this to be absolute you act upon it. Somewhere things have to change, somewhere human kind must change its ways and see life as a common course, see that we are all walking on the same path and to reach the goal we must collaborate to pull mankind’s biggest challenge off the doomed wagon. We are fucking up, big time, and we are the ones with the power to change that. If civilization breaks down, it will put us up to the final test and I believe it will put us to the wall for extinction if our ways don’t change.

Are we nothing but a parasite on a rock moving through space, are we clinging onto a host that eventually will try to shake us of and kick us into the cold darkness of the universe? And don’t believe the hype of how precious life is, if we where no more, the universe would not even notice our absence.

Cynical? Well, make a diagnosis and find a cure. Nature always does.

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/artikkel.php?artid=579810

A religious man asked me “Why not?”, I said…

I am not a religious man, because I do not see the fundamental elements of any religion as purely religious. The fundamental elements are what the commandments are built upon, covered up by a higher being so that people can worship a set of rules that help them to prosperity. In other words, they are there to help us lead better lives. By this I don’t mean that the idea of religion is wrong, but I don’t need to believe in a god to want to be a better man.

What is so immensely frustrating about religion is that the message is so clear, yet so many people have trouble seeing it. Religion is not about hate, not about ruling, not about control, but about love, about inner balance, about being a better human. It doesn’t matter what your fellow citizens need to believe in to be able to cope with their own inner weaknesses, ‘cause by god, we all have our weak spots. Religion is not about judging thy neighbor. The pioneers did not want death. They wanted a better world and through history the power structure has corrupted the whole concept, the whole meaning behind every religion out there. The bible alone has been rewritten numerous times. How can we today trust its writings? A religion used to judge, to hate, to dictate instead of a way to enlightenment are used for nothing but blasphemy against the beauty of life, even as “new age” crappy this sounds. But the opposite of hate is love and love for mankind is what is needed to survive the battles between all of man.

But it is so much more convenient to believe in a judging father, a madman with a fraternity in the afterlife and if you don’t have a members card you have to take the escalator down the janitor in charge of purgatory. I can’t focus on such an idea, it seems all wrong. We just need one simple guideline, one little piece of help: Do to others as you want them to do to you. That’s all. It’s so easy even kids can understand it. Combine this with respect for each other and we are all set and ready to go. If the world can understand this simple concept, we would be on the right way.

I have to end this post by saying that this is not a genuine thought, made by me in a moment of realization, many spiritual or enlightened guides have understood this way of thinking long before me. All I am saying is that by study, with knowledge and understanding, a lot can be achieved. When you are presented with, you know, anything, think. I try my best to use my abilities, but I know I too have a long way to walk. In the words of Socrates; I know that I know nothing.

It’s a free ride baby, saddle up.

Spotify hassle the free-riders into converting over to the premium account. Just 5% pay, it’s a free ride baby, saddle up. The music stores has been a victim of a hostile takeover, the kids are running the show now and they share in amazing speed and massive contents of music are being copied, given away for free. But dear music biz bosses, you men on the high horses and with the "fat of the fans"; when we use Spotify, downloading decreases, we download less music and this is the way to go. Nobody actually appreciate piracy, fully, but we can appreciate a good platform that stream music. The consumers no longer see the value in the product, the CDs, but against all odds the Vinyl has emerged from the deep end and are again being loved. If you wake up and smell the Maple Nut Crunch you will find a way to walk with the consumers. What we want is easy accessible music, user friendly platforms and the end of greed. The digital age is the French Revolution, the end of the Romanov imperial dynasty, the fall of Rome and the end of slavery. It’s a naïve "power to the people" kind of change or at least an attempt. And all this is the symbol of the fallen scepter of the music industry.

But whatever the future holds, the middle ground of free and the $$ is where we must meet.

http://www.vg.no/musikk/artikkel.php?artid=581684

Freedom of press or a pack of harassing bullys?

3000 Muslims walk the quiet steps of a peaceful protest. They are by all means by their full rights to utter their disgust for what the papers claim to be “Freedom of the press”. But what amazes me is how most religious people, Christians as Muslims, Jews as Catholic still has that outwards focus in their belief. When it comes to religion it is not important what happens outside your mind, all that matters is that your belief contribute to you being a better human, a better person, leading a better life, helping those around you, making you community a better place to live. All religion should have the inward focus. The individuals must seek inside them self and work with their own issues, fighting the urges that are pictured as the sins. There are no sins that will condemn you to the hell of purgatory and there are no utopian afterlife. If there on the other hand IS a heaven to ascend to, well what a fucking bonus. And if you are to enter that heavenly Utopia your actions as a human being should be your ticket in, not what you believed in. Religion is no insurance that grant you access. Heaven and hell are right here, and the kingdom is within your very lives. But for this kingdom to work, we all need to cooperate the machinery that stand before us.

Religion has through the ages fought for the right of salvation. What must be understood is that WHAT you believe in is not important, as long as what you believe in makes you a BETTER PERSON. So much blood, so many lives has already been spilled because of the misunderstood conception of the religious meaning. Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha and all those spiritually enlightened pioneers can’t have wanted so many people to suffer on behalf of what they started. All religion are, from the early days of their birth, meant to help people to cope with their lives, help them to be better humans and for them to prosper en enhance. Only a dictator grasp the hand of war, only a mad man see the way of death, only a man without the focus of mankind will seek the death of others and hide behind the shield of religion.

And, as a last line, we must not dwell on the past. Those who are dead, those who have been killed are water under the bridge now. Revenge will only destroy us all. We must learn from history to secure a better future for our children, for our grandchildren, for the future of mankind. If we still choose to fight over land, power and which kind of hat our neighbors use, we are doomed to fail as humans. And if the Muslim community get pissed off because of those drawings, you are a fool to keep printing them as it is a waste of energy to let yourself be angered by them. It’s only a drawing, is it worth losing your live over? And what “Freedom of the press” boils down to, it is not worth printing if you know it will cause unnecessary tension. The most important things of all is knowledge and understanding. Know thy neighbor to understand his ways and respect the differences that lay on the other side of the fence.

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/artikkel.php?artid=584086

The Aulie/Sand collaboration and bunny-hopping with the medias tabloid-lost downward spiral.

All the media hype makes you wanna fuck her, or maybe not. But hey, I’m as shallow as they come, I ain’t “pick and choosy”. I’d fuck her all the way down the highway. She is cute enough, nicely curved and a funny-bunny. Who wouldn’t? The pair run around playing with the media like the crazy kids of the art world. The only problem is that not much is very shocking any more, but the trash-papers still embrace the low value of shock, controversy and extremely bad headlines. So all this can’t be put in the crazy kids basket, but the media think this basket is like the dirty laundry of news and pull any concept out of it even though it is nothing more than the emperor’s new clothes. The crazy basket is empty of any controversy, god damn it, what do we need to do to wake ya up? But anyway, the pair sees the fun in this and choose to play with you anyhow, even as tacky it may seem. And with Big Brother on the serious ground they have the necessary bridge to the safe zone of the corporate clientele. People don’t give a fuck about art, actually, but they do give a damn about the peacocks they encounter. And the Style of the Peacock are not to be underestimated.

Flambéeing her ass: http://www.vgtv.no/?id=28397