When life gives you lemons, throw them at pedestrians.

Yesterday was not a good day.
While writing my exam paper, my Macbook Air crashed.
And no, I hadn’t made a back-up.

Fortunately, I had only written a couple of pages which should be rather easy to re-create. Unfortunately, No back-up had been taken of things like older exams, notes for classes and…pretty much every picture from the last 5 years.

I’m surprisingly calm about the whole thing. I guess that there’s a slight chance that I can still recover/fix the disc, but I can’t tell until I get my hands on the installation disc tomorrow.

On the bright side, all the good photos I’ve taking have been printed as well as posted on the blog, so they are not totally gone. But still.

Hmmm I have a wee essay to re-create.

The Post-Modern Prometheus

Considering Joe has begun to post on a regular basis I thought that I’d give it a go again. Not that I really ever stopped blogging there’ve just been a lot of things I’ve had to attend to lately*. I’ve been busy unpacking** at the hotel***, among things.

I was planning on posting some pictures of the new place + it’s surroundings, but in order to do that you actually need to grab your camera and take some actual pictures. I haven’t done that in a long time****. But luckily help is on its way. Or should I say his way*****. Mr. Paul Capewell will be joining me for 4 or so days in the beginning of may. Considering that I took around 400+ photos the last time he came around, I’m confident that I’ll take enough this time around to fuel a soon-to-come semi-pretentious photo-blog in which I’ll give all the photos a vintage filter and write something inspiring in Helvetica******. Alternatively we’ll just raid the beer fridge in my kitchen. Either way, jolly good times to come!

*And by attend to I mean drink.
** And by unpacking I mean drinking.
*** Egmont used to moonlight as a hotel in the summer months and shall henceforth be referred to as the hotel (because it sounds cool. apparently.)
**** That is actually not true. I took a couple of hundred pictures from a recent party at the hotel, and, apparently, some this very weekend at another party in our kitchen (or, at least I hope it was a party, otherwise I’d like to know why I have 20 pictures of stripping male roomies on my camera).
*****Yes, I should.
****** I totally stole that idea.

Detour

I’m feeling like I’m going on a blind date with 15+ people tonight.
Probably because I AM going on a blind date with 15+ people tonight (15+ being the amount of people, not their age. Don’t worry).

Well, it’s a blind date of sorts.

It all started this monday. Actually, it started sunday.
I recieved a call from a number I didn’t know, and true to my fashion I didn’t answer.
I looked up the number on the net and the number was from Egmont, the dorm which I will be moving into next tuesday.
‘Ah well’ I thought to myself ‘probably someone from the office calling about moving details or something (not considering the fact that it was indeed sunday and their offices are closed on weekends)’.

Well, if it was important the person would probably call again.
But he didn’t.
The next day another number, which I wasn’t familiar with, called me.
It was a girl living on the floor I will be moving into.
She asked me if I wanted to come around Egmont before moving in and have dinner with them.
‘How lovely of them’ I thought, and scheduled dinner with them on thursday.
As in today.
After hanging up it dawned upon me that the move, and subsequent change of scenery was getting very real.

So, today is the day. I’m supposed to be there at 18.45 and I’m looking forward to it. I am also terrified.

See, I would like to say that I a rather social guy. I’ve been in the party committee at uni and a tutor for the new students so it’s not that I’m not used to meeting new people. But this time I’m meeting new people who I will also be living with (or, at the same floor, at least), sharing a kitchen with and a lot of other things. The personal barrier will be torn down this time in a way I’m not used to. I will be seeing these people a lot more than any other I’ve shared an apartment with (well, in Copenhagen). There’s a lot of social activities going on there, among those the foodclub, which I will be visiting tonight. Basically they eat dinner together 6 out of the 7 days in a week, and while it’s totally up to yourself to choose how often you are going to participate, I believe you’re expected to show up for at least 2-3 dinners a week.

Of course I’ve already tagged myself as ‘that guy’ by being a vegetarian, but hey, no sense in making things easy, right?

But afterall, this is exactly why I applied for a room in the first place. To push myself and challenge the personal qualities I think are lacking a bit.

I’m sure they’re nice people, afterall, they probably wouldn’t have invited me if they weren’t. They’re all student, of course, so how different from me can they be?

Well, probably a lot younger (perhaps), but that shouldn’t be a problem, should it?
Considering I’m not really acting my age (read: not married, haven’t got any kids, haven’t got a degree etc) I should fit right in, shouldn’t I?

I friend commented on that, earlier today, when I told him I was moving to Egmont.
‘Aren’t you a bit old for that?’ was his response.
And while I thank him for his support, I guess there’s some legitimacy to the question. Personally, I don’t think I’m too old, but living in a society that likes to dictate what people should be doing with their lives and when, I’m prepared for the question.
In the immortal words of Aaliyah ‘Age ain’t nothing but a number’ (the title of her debut album which she release when she was 15 and married to her producer R.Kelly (a guy who likes to piss on underage girls during sex, but, erhm, you get my point)).

I’m due at egmont in 2 hours. Better tidy up.

Unusual suspects

Company shindig feat. bowling.

Original intention:
Act civilized.
No drinking until after bowling.
Get home early.

Reality:
Commence drinking at the office.
Scream like a mad man for every strike/spare/pin knocked over
Wake up with a pair of bowling shoes in your bag.

Last night was awesome. Now birthday party feat. presents.
Awesome.

Redux II

Accommodation.
In less than a fortnight I’ll be moving. Again.
This will be the 5th time I’ve moved since moving to Copenhagen 5 years ago and the 13th time in my lifetime.

When I was a child the security of home meant a lot to me. But then again, I was a little pussy who was afraid of everything. These days I get bored if I live more than 1 year one place. Well, maybe that isn’t exactly true as circumstances have more or less forced me to move each time.

This time the main reason is monetary. I love my current room. It’s huge, close to the city center and the university, but it’s fucking expensive. I demands about 85 % of my monthly goverment-sponsored study aid, and I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that money is good, and that I would like some more of them.

Seeing as most of my friends my age are getting married, having kids, buying apartments and some even houses, I thought the best way to cement my budding identity crisis would be by moving into a dorm/halls/college (or whatever the English name is. It’s this).

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, but Egmont is immensely popular and gets a lot of applications for rooms. like, a lot lot!

I got turned down this summer, but decided to try harder, write a new application and secure the room this time around (actually, I just re-send the application with a recommendation letter from a friend who knew someone on the admissionsboard. Love, thy name is nepotism*).

So let’s look at the numbers:
Size: 24 SquareMetres –> 12 SqM
Minutes to Uni (bike): 5 min –> approx 30-ish
Rent: 3900,- –> 2200

If it hadn’t been for the last detail you’d been well within your rights to call me an idiot. But the money saved will be much needed.

I won’t write too much more about the move right now. Seeing as I’ve had a longstanding infatuation (oxymoron?) with the place I’m pretty sure I’ll give a full account of dorm life on another occasion.

Now I need to start packing :/

*Disclaimer. None affirmative action was displayed during the application process. I’m just that good at writing applications (seriously).

Redux

Season 5.

University.

I’m slowly approaching a point where I have to become a little more focused and specific in regards to my education. English is, and was always only meant to be, a gate-way to the media-science post-grad programme, but the road leading there is long and rather intricate.
‘Oh I see’, the more naïve version of myself thought, ‘I’ll just go and see a guidance counsellor, they will know what have to do, after all that’s what they get paid to do’.
They should know.
But they did not know.

Dealing with the university administration and guidance counsellors makes me wanna do drugs. Hell, it makes me wanna molest penguins, but somehow I’m sure that’s frowned upon.

To this point I’ve spoken with three guidance counsellors, all of who have sent me on to the next one (one even directed me to another with the words ‘he’s super cool, he deals with these things all the time and he knows everything’. I then wrote him an email only to get the answer ‘Yeah, I don’t know anything about this. But maybe this guy will’ sending on my way into an infinite loop of frustration.

So to make a long story short(-ish): I’ve been cockblocked by the university education-wise so many times that I’ve stopped counting. It’s frustrating to say the least.

It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride, university that is. Last semester ended in flying colours with regards to my exam results, and while that is just peachy it doesn’t erase the fact that it’s frustrating as hell, to know what you want, how to get there and still get shot down by bureaucratic nonsense.

Gethsemane

A friend of mine once told me that she had read my blog, but stopped because I was always apologetic about not updating it more often. ‘Fair point’ I thought and promised myself that I would never again apologize for having missed a couple of weeks of posting. ‘Even better’, I optimistically thought to myself, ‘maybe I’ll begin posting every other day or so…’.

So now where back to the same old situation, but this time I will not apologize. Actually, it’s not me, dear readers, it’s you. I simply just didn’t think that you’d deserved a post from me, but now I’ve had a change of heart (or something like that. I really just would be easier to say ‘sorry’ but I’ve made promises etc.).

Usually pauses between posts aren’t a problem. It’s not like my life is that eventful. Some uni stuff here, new music there, the odd concert thrown into the mix etc etc etc.
This time around, however, I feel I have too much happening, or at least much has happened since my last post, but I’ll try to get around the important parts.

I’ve tried to create a single post containing all this life-altering information, but it ended up being a bit messy. Instead I think I’ll just do individual posts.

Demons

I am the owner of a pretty large quantity of compact discs. The exact number I do not know as most of them are in storage at my mother’s house, but an estimate of above 3000 would be an exaggeration. Despite the huge number I’m still fairly familiar with most of them. A lot I like, some I have no idea why I still have and then there’s the small number of bands/records I really fucking love.

I have a lot of bands and albums I love, but sometimes loving one particular album to bits can become troublesome. Take a band like The The for example. I absolutely adore the ‘Dusk’ album. Stunningly beautiful and one of my alltime favorites. The same with Sun Kil Moon’s Ghosts of the Great Highway album which ranks in my top 3 of alltime favorite albums (I’ve mentioned the song Carry Me Ohio more times on this blog than I probably should’ve had and it is, in fact, one of the songs I would like to have played at my funeral), but still, I haven’t heard or bought any other album from The The or Sun Kil Moon (or any other Mark Kozelek project, for that matter) simply because I’m afraid to do so. I’m afraid that they won’t be as good, I’m afraid they’ll change my perception of the band, but most of all I’ve felt that I’ve spent so much time getting under the skin of the aforementioned albums and I don’t know if I can do that all over again.

Thank fuck, then, for Mogwai.

I love instrumental music. There’s a sense of emotion to it that is hard to find in music with lyrics (as I am of the opinion that most lyrics suck, apart from the ones I write, obviously). Being a huge softy emo at heart, I like music that just create emotions within and fosters a mental video/imagery – and Mogwai does that, a lot.
I love most of their albums, but I’m reluctant whenever a new one emerge, mostly because it is indeed instrumental and the songs are usually pretty lengthy, but whenever I actually get around to listen to it it usually turns out epic. And the new one is no exception.

The new one, with the epic title ‘Hardcore will never die, but you will’ is out in little over a fortnight and so far two songs have been leaked (officially).
And oh dearest me are they good!

Itunes will tell me that yesterday I listened to the pair 25 times. a piece.
Yes. They’re just that fucking great.
Rano Pano does the most for me. There’s something about the tune (and video) that is, at the same time, mesmerizing in a drone kinda way, but still incredibly saddening.

Still, check them out. Flawless instrumental rock in my book.

In unrelated news I found a supervisor for my BA project (which is still a whole 9 months away, but I like to finish early (hey ho) and as of today I’m officially a year older.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a nice pint of prune juice and probably jacking off to re-runs of The Golden Girls.

(no proof reading was done of this post, nor do I intend to. Suck it gramma/correct spelling pervs).

Elegy

I’m so amazingly bored these days. It’s been about 2 months since the last classes of the last semester, and while most of that time has been spent studying for the seemingly neverending line of exams (actually, calling it ‘neverending’ would be a mistake as there were 4 exams – all of which are over and done with, so the line did, in fact, end) at least I had something to do every day, something to get up to in the morning.

Luckily, I only have to wait until monday for the next semester to start. I’ve even bought some books for it already. I’m a good student, you know. And handsome (my mother tells me).

Speaking of handsome, here’s some pictures from the U.S. trip.
EDIT: eff, apparently the horizontal pictures are kinda small, which is a pity as they shoul, indeed, have been large. I cannot be arsed the upload the whole batch again, but they will, like so many other things, become bigger if you click on them. So, yeah, click that motherfucker.

Lincoln’s crotch followed by Arlington Cemetery, how utterly inappropriate.
Lol.

In anything, these pictures testify to the fact that I cannot do the whole ‘tourist’ thing at all.

Zero Sum.

Ok, so this is what happened.
God, do I hate starting posts that way.

Well, ok, so what happened was this:
Directly after posting the previous post I looked at the list I’d made for myself and instantly acknowledged that there was very little chance that I’d ever get all points done. I’m not Superman, you know. Or Batman. Or God. (Whoever is more adept at dealing with domestic chores. I think it’s Batman, have you seen the size of his cave?).

It did, however, start out rather good. Bathroom got cleaned quite quickly and in a display of my newfound energy boost I did the kitchen as well.
This, of course, caused me to reward myself with a 10 minute break (which eventually became a 30 minute break, but whatever). after which I somehow persuade myself that while cleaning, I had probably gained the same muscle tone as a trip to the gym would have had, and therefore postponed going to the gym until tomorrow.

The only thing left then was the bottles for recycling, tabs for the dishwasher and snacks+milk. I proud to say that I didn’t fulfill any of these missions. Long story short; left with three bags of bottles. First grovery store – closed. Second grocery store – closed. Third grocery store – open, but bottle machine out of order. Fourth grocery store – closed. Fifth grocery store – open, but bottle machine out of order.

Gave up, stopped by a sandwich shop, bought sandwich and a soda, returned home (with more bottles than I left with, in fact), ate sandwich, subsequently ruining any exercise and muscle tone gained from cleaning, sat down, wrote this.

As mentioned in the earlier post, i’ve just finished my last exam.
It went ok.
I’m still awaiting the results for 3 other exams, but I espect them to be 2x ‘meh’ and 1x ‘oh crap’ with one of the ‘meh’ potentially being ‘yay’ or ‘oh crap’ depending on the teacher’s level of medication on the day and overall mood.

‘What will you do with a whole week of vacation’ you might ask yourself.
Well, apart from work, a reunion thingy, a concert, a girlfriend returning form India, a delayed christmas party and one goodbye reception, I plan on devoting whatever time I have left to:

and

Cd’s and books acquired in the last month or so. Fuck Yeah.
Knowing myself, I know I’ll probably only get around listening to the new ICEAGE and Kanye West albums as well as flickr through one of the books, thinking ‘cool, I should read this some time’ – but at least I’m aware of that.

Well, best be retired now as I’ve made plans for a trip to the gym tomorrow morning. Well, that or cleaning. Whatever helps me buff up.