I only have a quite moderate interest in sports, but I still find the Olympics to be a nice break from regular routine. Maybe it’s because I sort of fill up most of my sports qouta during those two week events.
I don’t really like the fact that it is in Europe, though. I’ve always thought there is a certain something about staying up at odd hours, and maybe pay extra attention to some sport I’ve never bothered about while waiting for something else to start. That’s how I discovered curling, for example. That’s a typical olympic sport for me, not something that concerns me otherwise. And at times I’ve also found speed skating strangely mesmerizing, especially the longer distances. Probably something with the steady sching…sching…sching of the skates. And the female competitors, athletes with physiques that make you believe they can crack walnuts with their… sorry, I got a bit carried away.
Otherwise, I’d say the hockey is the main event for me. And this time there’s no risk that we’ll lose to Belarus… If I was asked to list most memorable sporting moments I would probably I would probably put the 1994 final against Canada as number one. That was one intense game. The cat behaved nervously for days after seeing me and mom jumping and screaming like crazy when Forsberg nailed that last shot.
I’ve also always had some fascination with the opening ceremonies. Probably my mother’s fault, she used to make a bit of an event out of that. And there’s nothing like a ridicilously extravagant display of pseudo-cultural kitsch once in while, is there? I actually think the whole concept is quite silly, but silly can be entertaining in itself. The displays have become somewhat more tasteful lately, though. The Greeks put up a quite appealing show in the last summer games, though. And I think the people who created the Torino opening did a good job as well. I think they finally have come to the conclusion that you only can have so many stiltwalkers, acrobats on strings and 15-person parade float-costumes before it goes over the top. Having had a bit of an interest in the movement I specifically liked the Futurism-inspired bit, with the dancer Bolle (dressed in the Futurists’ idea of a suit) performing against Umberto Boccione’s sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space. The decision to include something as un-olympic (to me, at least) as a Formula 1 car burning donuts felt like a nice touch, and I guess it was a good representation for the love of speed shared by both the Futurists and later generations of Italians. But overall, I guess the aesthetics of the whole thing had the tradional gaudyness of “culture for the masses”.
Oh, and there’s one thing that puzzles me. The olympic games always comes with the message of peace, and all that, but still the flag was raised by some special Alpine soldiers. I know flag-handling has always been a military thing, but isn’t it at least a bit contradictory?
Tags: Art, sports, thoughts
February 11, 2006 at 12:08 am · Filed under General
If you take the name Gyllenhaal, and pronounce it in Swedish, it would be GyllenhÃ¥l (“aa” substitutes our “a”-with-a-ring), which� means “golden hole”. So, starring in Brokeback Mountain, we have Jake Golden-hole. Haha. Get it, gay cowboys, golden hole… nudge nudge, wink wink?
Sometimes I crack me up.
Tags: random, thoughts
January 17, 2006 at 4:16 pm · Filed under General
I’m too passive with the posting, so let’s talk about my expectations of the new year. Or rather not. I’ve never been into the year “thing”. Same shit, different number – or something like that. Where’s the big difference? Is it simply a matter of perspective, that people need to cut existence into smaller pieces thinking that they will be able to grasp it more easily? Personally, I think grasping existence is a pointless excersise, so I try to focus on whatever is at hand. Try to process life as it is within reach, and not bother with what happened last year or can happen in 2011.
When it comes to entertainment, a field where lot of people seem to put their anticipations, there’s not much either. I can’t think of any announced albums that I really want to hear, for example. Anyone got any suggestions on what will happen musically in 2006? Same thing goes for books, I guess.
I havn’t given the movies much thought either, but there one of the titles is Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Chinjeolhan geumjassi or Lady Vengeance, original Korean and U.S. titles respectively), Chan-wook Park’s third film about revenge (following the, in my opinion, brilliant Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy. It was released in Korea last summer, opens here in Sweden in January and I think U.S. release is in March. I’m also a bit curious about how the adaptation of A Scanner Darkly will turn out, since Philip K. Dick
is one of my favorite authors. But when it comes to adaptations, anticipation can be a bad thing, so I try to keep my hopes down and assuming it will be a total screw-up. The filming of William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition falls in the same field.
Tags: movies, Music, thoughts
January 5, 2006 at 5:43 am · Filed under Entertainment & Culture, General
I was lazily staring at my TV, more specifically the Late Show (yes, we get all the social commentary from Letterman, Leno and O’Brien here as well – but with a week’s lag), and they had a “holiday shopping in New York quiz” – one of those things with two logical options and one comical. There was one showing a woman eating, and asking if she had stopped to get:
- a) Hot cocoa
- b) Soup and a sandwich
- c) Reindeer kabobs
…and it took me a few seconds to realize what the joke was supposed to be, because around here eating reindeer is nothing strange. Here in the northern parts, it’s probably a standard item on many people’s julbord as well (and yes, the traditional Swedish christmas meal comes in the form of a smörgÃ¥sbord)
So, how do people who have grown up with an image of reindeer only as the (sometimes) red-nosed animals in front of Santa’s sleigh feel about the tought of eating one? Say, compared to a cat? If there’s one thing I’d never eat, it’s cat… no matter what the Chinese say…
By the way, how would you feel about (someone) having sex with a reindeer? Compared to, for example, having sex with a horse? How does one do it with a horse, by the way? Do you need something to stand on, or is it a matter of taking a steady hold of the sattle and sort of hang over the beast’s butt? Or do people engaged in that sort of things prefer to hook up with small ponies? Is my conception of the horse’s.. uhm.. glory hole.. being somewhere at chest level wrong? Are perhaps stallions preferred, so it’s a matter of getting beneath the animal? Wouldn’t it be more practical to have sex with a reindeer, or is bigger better when it comes to animals? Many are the questions…
Sorry, I’m just horsing around – it turns out that the year’s most read online article in Seattle Times was about a guy who died after doing it, or rather being done, horsy style (I can’t figure out any other way it could lead to a perforated colon…) And Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing suggests articles about sweet equine luving as a way to increase traffic… so well, I’m getting on the horse-humping bandwagon as well. Be sure about that.
I wonder if Hollywood will see the possibilities in the subject? I mean, they did open the path for movies about sexually deviant cowboys this year.
Tags: news, thoughts, tv
December 31, 2005 at 2:01 am · Filed under Random ramblings & reflections
Sometimes I wonder if I’m really a nice guy. Mostly becuase I come up with little sadistic schemes all the time. Not that I ever would go through with them, but I still wonder how I come up with them. This idea came to me when I noticed that as we are going towards the peak of the holiday shopping season, the stacks of junkmail dropped through my mail slot are getting ever larger by the day.
The idea is a game that requires only a few key components: a door with a mail slot and peephole (can be excluded but requires faster reactions), and an ETA of the junkmail delivery person. The course of the game is to wait by the door, preferably dressed as if to go out, until the deliverer is outside the door – and then swing the door open with full force. I guess I have to work out some sort of scoring system. It could also be interesting to join up with a few others in the building, to see who disables the target first.
I don’t suppose this would become a truly international sport, since while doors open outwards here in Sweden, that doesn’t seem to be the case everywhere.
Tags: sports, thoughts
November 30, 2005 at 5:17 pm · Filed under Random ramblings & reflections
I just opened a new pack of coffee. I like that – that first whiff of fresh coffee when you open, and then the first few extra fresh cups. One of those things that are, when you think of it, quite nice. But I guess that from a more practical viewpoint it means that I should get that coffee grinder I’ve been thinking about, so I can get my brew as fresh as possible all the time.
Another nice thing is new CDs, especially if they are not only really good, but also just what you’re in the mood for. I wrote about Ane Brun in an earlier entry, and I got the new release Duets in the mail yesterday. I’ll return with a review in a couple of days.
Oh, and relating to the fever dreams I mentioned in the last post, check out Dreamlines. Enter a few keywords, and see the web dream about it. Here’s the “flesh and blog” dream. The creator, Leonardo Solaas, explains the work:
“Who is dreaming? The user, or the Internet itself? In a certain way, both. The program generates a personal moving picture, unique, unpredictable, and forever gone when it is finished, just like dreams. But that dream is made out of pieces taken form the subconscious of the whole net, gathered by some words of the user and the obscure logic of searching algorithms.”
The abstract image is a snapshot of a dream (click for full view, I didn’t want to lose detail by resizing it)
Tags: Art, links, thoughts
November 24, 2005 at 3:56 pm · Filed under General
I keep wondering what the reality show makers will come up with next. Why not just brush up something old? In Brats in Chopper County Paul Teutul Sr., his sons and employees at Orange County Choppers, known from Discovery Channel’s popular series American Chopper, will be assisted by eight girls who never have operated more advanced tools than a nail file – until they got their own credit cards and could hire people to do that too. Maybe could end up like this:
Summary of episode 3: The girs are making a slight progress in adjusting to their new environment, but still can’t be convinced into doing anything practical, except for Amanda’s ordeal with cleaning up the “contribution” her Chihuahua made to a seat cover in the last episode. There’s also seems to be a general reluctance towards interacting with the shop’s regular staff, although Michaela seems to find it amusing to convince Mikey to bring her things.
In a sudden burst of creativity Tiffany gets out her nailpolish and adds a red design to the tank for one of the bikes under construction, the other girls agree that it “looks like something that that kind of people would like”. Jennifer returns, having recovered most of her eyesight after having stared to long into a welding torch. Rick is still annoyed over her “my father is rich so don’t tell me what to do” attitude.
Paul Sr. gets into the worst fit of rage ever shown on television when punching a clueless Paulie in the face even before asking how he could come up with the idea of putting a blood splatter design on the “Stay Alive” bike they are building in honour of the troops in Iraq.
Now that’s good television, isn’t it…?
Tags: thoughts, tv
November 18, 2005 at 1:36 am · Filed under Random ramblings & reflections
When I was waiting for the bus earlier a guy came running to the bus stop, and asked me if the bus had gone. People really don’t use their brains anymore, do they?
If I had been in his situation, I would have been able to draw the conclusion that I hadn’t missed the bus based on a few facts like:
- there’s a guy standing at the bus stop
- there’s only one line trafficking that bus stop, so that guy must be waiting for the same bus
- the guy doesn’t have the annoyed look of someone who’s just realized he has to wait 20 minutes for the next bus.
I wanted to tell him that “yeah, the bus just went by, but I stayed here to tell you that you missed it”, but the risk of having to explain that it was a joke and ending up giving him a definition of the concept of humor seemed to great.
Tags: thoughts
November 10, 2005 at 8:37 pm · Filed under Random ramblings & reflections
I woke up with this wonderful feeling, something much like having been deep-throated with a grater, as well as a suspicion that same utensil had been used to grate the generous chunk of cheese which appearantly had been melted and then poured down my throat. Phlegm so thick it bounced when I spat it out. Truly glorious, cold-season is really my favorite time of year… Nice weather for it, though. All grey and dull. It’s almost so that I wouldn’t mind a bit of snow to lighten it all up.
Well, not much more going on today, I’m on my way back to the book waiting by the bed.
Tags: cold, random, thoughts
September 28, 2005 at 1:04 pm · Filed under General
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