Jeg vil ha snø!

I want snow! all y'all who are complaining about the snow or stuck in cooold coold weather without snow (sorri, lars..)

send it to me!

...and I saw this picture on this blog by Malin (which you gotta check out, because she knits gorgeously and like a fiend and has the cutest kids imaginable- living jan brett paintings!)

and laughed out loud, because this...

is Norway in a Nutshell.

it's like when I came back early from påskeferie (easter break) and went for a run (because it was gorgeous and sunny and after winter in alta, that's big news) and passed Maren and Inger Johanne and someone who I've forgotten sunbathing in their swimsuits and liggeunderlag (of course...it's påske, and alta, so it was maybe 50 degrees fahrenheit, but, then again, it's påske, and alta...) and met a well-swaddled Bjarne hobbling determinedly around on his tiiiny skis glaring at the ground going...there's snow. I have skis. I...will...ski... even though he was barely 2. if he was even 2. I don't remember.


also:

last night I and the boy were playing some world of warcraft (he was off playing with things that would eat my face, and I was running around in the newbie playground trying not to get eaten by giant bears and weird pseudo-satyr-things)

anyway...

So a quest takes me to a town, and in this town I get another quest- to go talk to Captain Vimes.

Vimes! Whee! the Pratchett is taking over the world!

see?Me and the Vimes. he's actually not as short as he looks, because I (as a dranaei) am (according to the boy) "freakishly tall demon goat-girl." (you can't see the hooves in this picture.) He's just jealous that I'm taller than him in-game.

quite possibly the best coupling episode ever.

...the giggle loop...

and now, for something....

...completely different.

I reaaaally want to see this movie.





because it's nils gaup and it looks amazing and intense and about something that I, for all my years as a villager in sameland (and, more soberingly, a leder of sameland) totally missed. wow. yikes.

for ally'all non-norwegian speakers- it's about the events of November 8th, 1852, when a group of saami revolted against the leader (and moonshine distributer) and the priest of a nearby town (kautokeino). several people were killed, others beaten severely, and the backlash was swift and severe. like all things involving religion/ indigenous cultures/land expansion/politics, it's messy. like whoa.

Take clashing religions, burgeoning religious conversion, and extremist religions, add the problems inherent when a homesteading culture moves into a nomadic/herding culture's region, with a bonus dash of open/closed/open/closed political boundaries (which the reindeer don't care about, of course, knowing that the good stuff is just...over...there...and when 'there' happens to be Russian-held Finland, 'there' is reaaally far away). mix the above concoction with widespread -and spreading- problems with alcohol addiction and over taxation/fines and a lovely blend of both us-them and 'smart us' vs 'ignorant native' and...well.

boom.

granted, I can't imagine trying to set this up for the kids...but...there are so many parallels to things from US history and in current events that I also can't imagine not trying to teach this- without getting sued by their parents would be a plus- and we've done other messy things. (zerbezian day? yeee. shudder.) and theoretically most kids that we'd do this with a serious level of detail would have already gotten most of this in their US history.
of course, I'm probably wrong based on what some of my ed-major friends have told me, but hey. we can but hope. and if they're not getting in their US classes...then they really need to get it from somewhere.


...


the fact that Mikkel "litt samisk, heeeelt fantastisk" Gaup is a lead actor and, at least in the trailer, has a steamy scene is, of course, a small bonus.

and it's finnmark! heia finnmark!

things that have made me giggle recently:

:warning:

you might be very disturbed at what makes me giggle. I'm just sayin'.

firefly fans: yosaffbridge or yosaffbrig or yosafbrig? or yosaffbridg?

on to the giggle-inducers!





these two comics are from this website, which I blame for my accomplishing very little yesterday. the one to the right made me giggle enough that The Boy very worriedly asked if I was all right, since apparently my sniggering sounds like weeping through headphones. the one on the left was discovered much later, and did not induce the same amount of giggling.

it was still pretty funny, though.






Giggle Exhibit 2:
...because it's sinfest. and it reminds me of all those lovely hours spent in the MBL-WHOI library. mmm...mblwhoi.

Giggle Exhibit 3:finally, a Nemi comic I don't have to translate! ...there's actually a lot of them, but still. and if you want more entertaining skrik-related stuff...there's always the Klart Du Kan! parodi. it is in Norwegian, and it is hi-larious. finding this in valhall while searching for appropriate-to-show-to-american-kids commercials made the whole thing worthwhile. well...actually it was the kjempenorsk commercial, but you know. (it's a help line, and the guy calls for help with his drill, which only pushes the screw in, not out. the voiceover at the end says "Steal a Munch? Sure You Can!" :P)

Giggle Exhibit 4:...physics starts too soon. siigh.





and this one, while not making me giggle per se, made me go...yes! win! take that, English First-ies!

and I hope that his friend was a bystander, or the cherokee speaker, otherwise...ouch.







and this one just made me smile, because I know these two people. Maybe not the same ones as the artist/writer, but...I definitely know them.


all the above (in Giggle Exhibit 4) are from this website, which I got through a convoluted manner from my fellow god* Andrew.
*(god in this instance refers to we who control your soundboard. we are the voice in the darkness. we can make you sound awesome...or like screechy death. do not mock us. and do not make us mic every single actor with crappy mics that feed back when approached by another mic within 3 feet when all the actors are going to be dancing closely. especially when half of them don't need the damn things.)

...there might have been some scarring due to West Side Story...sorry.

Giggle Exhibit 5:

yes, more of the badly-spelled (oh, what am I kidding? it's a different freakin' dialect.) images from the lolkatz website.
my first impression for the mythbusters kitty was...man, what did they do to that cat? followed closely by...yep. wow. it is the heineman kitty.















And I want to know how many google searches for 'sisyphus' were caused by this image, because I am old and crotchety and certain that that website is not the right demographic.

so there you have it. things that have made me giggle (or whatever) recently.

woohoo!

so there's a bright side to feeling vaguely like crap, with spikes of true crap-

...well, ok, there isn't, but check it out- there's this poll that asks you to pick what your favorite future would be (some of your choices are 'interstellar frontier' (like Firefly) or 'crazy space new york' (Fifth Element) or 'galactic federation' (yep. star trek))

and guess what's currently in second place? that's right, baby. 7,068 voters are rocking the Interstellar Frontier because firefly is the awesomeness of awesome.

go vote!

I would be a horrible buddhist.

...the ants. must. die.

Not content with The Boy's car, they're making another foray into the apartment.

seriously? in a sealed, watertight tupperware...in a cabinet...on the second floor of an apartment building...and they can sense the russian tea mix? what?!

excuse me while I go cry in my corner...

aaaaahhhhhhh.....

that's a sigh of relief, by the way, not a groan of agony.

thank you Whole Foods Market, thank you. and once again Blessed be O Gretchen for sharing the light of Diva-ness with me.

we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. (scheduled looks incredibly weird to me right now. must be a brain hiccup.)

because I am a slacker daughter I am devoting this post to one of my christmas presents from me mum, who requested these pictures...um...well...let's just say that they've been sitting on my camera since I got home from christmas vacationlet, ok? sshh...

ladies and gennelmun, I give you...

Best. Bag. Ever.

exhibit A:

Tramcars! one tram two tram red tram blue tram!

Exhibit B:

The Evolution of Skiing tshirt, as a lining. takes you from Longboardathal (ca. 1890) to Bigarius extremus before devolving into Grungus maximus (who is, of course, holding a snowboard. hehe.) the other side of the bag is an ooold school trail map tshirt...How old?

• no tunnel to mineral basin
• (cos there's no mineral basin),
  
• no peruvian express high speed quad (just good ol' chilly slow 2-seater peruvian),
  
• no baby thunder chair,
  
• and the gadzoom quad is still gad 1, the coldest chair on earth. you think I'm kidding.
  

...which shows you how long my family's been skiing there.

anyway. all these add up to...


Best. Bag. Ever.

plus, it's vamsegarn. I get to be snowbirdy-wooly-norsky geeky all at the same time!

...and if you really want your brain to hurt...

so I was bumming around YouTube tonight, as a service to a friend, trying to translate a Ravi-DJ Løv song.

don't go there. therein lies...ouchyness. it's a very cute song, cute as only a very naughty tongue in cheek nordmann can be.

Don't click the linkies if you don't want to listen to a song with the word 'f*ck' in it. and don't read farther if you don't want to read the word uncensored.

um, yeah. anyway. sorry. I'm feeling skittish about "teh internetz" after the grammatical showdown of yesterday. I must just accept that the facebook group Udo invited me to is indeed correct- I am over 40, yet in my 20's. except then I think the rest of this post is invalid. whatever. shrug.

so. I thought that Ravi was enough brain hurty for the evening, but YouTube...oh, YouTube... always has more fun in store, which led me to this song:
Fuck Deg by Sichelle (which is sung in norwegian by a norwegian, and yeah, that means what you think it does.)

it's a pretty decent song, I thought. I can see it fitting a mood quite well, and it's blending with the post-allergy-drug-cocktail-hormonal ride I'm currently on quite well indeed. and, of course, there's the obligatory norwegian old-man parody also available.

then! aha! controversy!

it's a cover (read: steal) of Fuck Dig by Anna David (who is danish, and the original singer.)

she's clearly channeling early 90's Mariah Carey- hair and scale climbing. I like the music video for this one better, but the singing itself...well, it's too MC for me. and it's danish, so the tilbage and other fun contortions and glottal pseudo-stops make my brain hurt too much to really enjoy the song. it's not that I don't like Danes or Danish...I'm just lazy. (and there's something wrong with "tilbage" sounding like "tilbaeaeh") ...sorry, Maja, Naja, and all my other danskies.

but wait! there's more!

she sings it in german, too! Fick Dich. (eyep, still what you think it means.)

...and thaaaat right there's some brain hurty for you. the brain goes...whu...but...uh..mu...*fzzt*

and this music video is...strange. I can't tell what she's channeling. angry euro-tracksuit R&B? running along a dark road with redneck-like trucks veering around? no idea.

and I wish I remembered what 'angepisst' meant, because it makes me giggle whenever she sings it.

and still more!

English gets to play too!
and that's even more brain hurty, but in a different direction, because like so many english versions, it's a transliteration instead of translation, and after hearing it in norwegian and danish and knowing those words, and then hearing the english, it's just...ouch.

and it's the same video as the german one, which is slightly sad. however, apparently it's harder to channel mariah carey in german and english, because there's much less scale-climbing.

so. there you have it. brain hurty galore, and now if you've clicked on any of the linkies you, like, me, have verrry confused lyrics stuck in your head.

my work here is finished.

oookaaay...

...five days straight is definitely my limit for steroids. no mas. nuh-uh.

imagine translating They Might Be Giants into a foreign language.

Kaisers Orchestra: Dekk Bord
(my translation...)

it was a long winter but soon enough it became summer
and all the people partied
there were hard nights and a lot of blood and tears
and the captain worked like a horse
he was a strange little creature who was hungry from experience
but the rations were mostly water and wheat
he stood at the wheel the whole day, with the helm toward Skagen
and the fastest way to Cape Horn
set the table*

when it was quiet on the sea, I should have some free time
everyone sat down and played cards
the captain dealt, the rest played
and the money shifted owners pretty fast
Carlos was doubting while many others smiled
they said they'd take Carlos for everything he had
and later when the judgement fell Carlos had lost everything
it was because he gathered only change

row row home to Translyvania
forget your personalities and other trivialities
set the table*, send a telegram to Victoria
for soon I'm going to arrive

A pair of men I'd lost, Carlos was the last
it happened when we put in at Marseilles
he lost a drinking contest with the belgian chimpanzee
and now he sails no more
in hong kong it was chaos, I went on the dock outside laos
I never thought I'd come away alive
but a laos-born came out and thought our ship was god
and let us out to the open sea
set the table*


Now, I'm sure that Dekk Bord doesn't actually mean set the table, but it's Kaisers Orchestra, and they're.....reaaally hard to translate. like whoa.

but when you listen to the song, you can't really catch most of the lyrics. but Dekk Bord is repeated multiple times, as in "viiiictooria, dekk bord, viiiictoria dekk bord dekk bord"...

...so really, all your brain hears is "set the table, viiictoria, set the table set the table..."

...yeah. I'm just...gonna...go...over here now.

things fizzing across my brain...

1) ...apparantly, I'm not (ok, my mother and I aren't) the only knitters in the world who still grok the dead languages. the number of posts in/with latin on the Harlot's recent death-by-leaf entry show this.

one day, we will take over the world. you can join us. we shall be your morpheus- absolvi tuam animam...muahaha...

2) someday, hundreds of years in the future when our current english is to english what middle english/old english is to our english now (feeling like a bad GRE yet?), i.e. understandable only to english professors and people who happened to take the right language (although we've deviated enough from germanic roots that spanish speakers will likely have the best chance of that, which I'm sure would/will drive all the English First people nuts and I looove that!)

ahem. anyway. so. in the future, monty python's Spamalot will surely be performed not as satire but as grandly as we currently perform Tosca or any other can't-understand-it-enjoy (or not) the-music opera.

and, of course, will have all the english professors giggling uncontrollably.

3) if someone corrects your grammar, anonymously, as in a simple

Example A:
{it's = it is, its=possessive},

you can feel free to ignore them if you feel slighted or insulted. but really, you shouldn't. just go "oh." and try to remember next time. or don't. it's your perogative. they're not slamming you. they're not lording their immense grammatical knowledge over you. they're not saying you're stupid. they're just like me. they notice. they can't help themselves, either because of genetics (hi mom) or good teachers (hi Mrs O'Neal, Mrs Nicholson, Mr Dvorak, Mrs Topp, Miss Josephs, Big Dunn) ...they see the error, they MUST fix.

now, on the other hand, if they direct the comment at you and say something like this...

Example B:
{marmotknit, god, you know, you embody everything that is wrong in this world because you just can't care enough to know a stupid third grade contraction, you should be ashamed. its= possessive, it's = it is! get an education!}

then by all means, react in anger. unless they're a personal friend poking fun at you, in which case you still need to react, otherwise other denizens of the blogosphere will rush to your defense and a flame war will have begun.

but if the comment was like example A not example B, then...lighten up. don't immediately rush to post something directed at the corrector saying that unless they're being paid to professionally edit, they shouldn't, because it's bad form. it's really not. I promise. Bad form is B. A is just...a post. if you feel you MUST post a defense...then simply post it. don't direct it to that person.

and you can't say that you shouldn't correct in a blog in a different form of english (either an ESL blog, or whatever), because who wants to be putting something incorrect in print? reason number one why I don't post often in norwegian. that's what drove me crazy when I handed my articles to people at my folkehøgskole to correct because they'd giggle as they read it and then hand it back- uncorrected!- because they thought it was cute and didn't want to offend me.

cute? bad grammar cute? for a published thing? NO!

(and really....if you are in your professional life a published writer....then...you're used to it. you shrug and move on. and seriously, given the post...I'd be too distracted to proofread. I might go back and fix it after things had, you know, calmed down/I was sober again/had fixed the sock, but...then again, I might not. cause I'm lazy.)
4)....and if you spell grammatical incorrectly in your 'don't correct others' post...you just make me UNBEARABLY want to correct it. you have no idea.

my fingers itch, and it ain't just the hives, baby.

AleXander got me started on the icanhascheezeburger website. here's one of my favourites:
and then there's...
because...penguins. really. cannot resist the penguins.

and lastly...the 'me' on world of warcraft.
I have a kitty. and a bear.

what not to do on your Monterey vacation...

...eat something unknown that you are unknowingly allergic to that results in your poofing up in hives in all areas of your body and making your face look like some horrible hollywood post-plastic surgery nightmare. and then especially don't take half doses of benedryl even though you're worried about the warnings on the labels of not OD'ing on benedryl since you haave to have the anti-itch creme or you'll rip your wrists and hands off...because then your throat starts to swell which sends you to the ER for three and a half hours where they can't get an IV in because your veins are normally just difficult but when you're cold they're impossible, so instead you get oral steroids and an intramuscular epinepherine shot- an Epi-Pen without the pen.

and. they. suck.

ouch and burnination. and then you're all jittery, and kind of unsteady when suddenly you get bundled out of your room (goodbye, insanely-drunk-homeless-guy behind the curtain!) to sit in the hallway because someone more dying than you is en route to the ER. and there you sit. and sit. and sit. and finally someone comes and detatches the cool little laser finger thing and gives you a form to sign which you can't quite do because you still can't really move your fingers and you get home and pass out.

the worst part of all this? for my indeterminate age spent sitting in the hospital bed...I couldn't knit, even though it was mere inches away in the bag at the feet of The Boy.

sad. day.

Today is much better, though. only isolated bits of itchiness are still evident, and it no longer hurts to swallow, and I'm only slightly feeling hit by a truck.

here's hoping it's tomatillos, like my dad. if it's shellfish, there's going to be tears. I liiike my shellfish. lesigh.

...I hate Oakland.

I do. I really do.

here's my day:

I wander into the kitchen for to find food.

the counter is moving. why is the counter moving? Oh. the ants are back. joy. and it's a food preparation surface, so I can't really spray the happy ant death upon it. and they're coming in behind the stove, so I can't really get at their point of entry. joy. oh well. windex! and I'll deal with it after dropping The Boy off at the BART station.

so The Boy and I attach the bike rack onto the car and drive to BART. I pull up to the wait/dropoff line and he stays in the car while I go get my bike, so we don't get a ticket.

I walk to the rack. no bike. I gaze at the racks. nope, definitely didn't lock it elswh-oh. my gaze travels downward. ah. a lock. my lock. my "secure for areas of moderate to high crime" with a 9 out of 12 security rating- one lock down from their New York uber lock.

yeah. that lock.

it's been cut, and is dangling forlornly at the bottom of the rack. I head back to the car, send The Boy off to his train, and go trolling for parking spots. after an agonizingly long time, I find one. I walk back to the rack. unlock my poor bike lock, go to the attendant, who smiles sadly at me and points to the BART cop standing next to her window.

we chat. I'm pretty much screwed, because I don't have a serial number and that's really the only thing that can help me. where's the serial number? I don't know. hopefully Mom's Uterine Tracking Device has better luck. the Decorah Police didn't have it, and the bike shop I bought it at...at least 6 years ago...is out of business. can I get the $2250 insurance from Kryptonite? not without that serial number.

was the bike locked with one simple U-lock? nope! I locked the rear wheel to the frame with a cable lock and the front wheel to the frame with a Masterlock Street Cuffs lock. and then locked the whole thing to the rack with the U-lock.

the sole saving grace to all this? I hadn't yet put my christmas presents on it (nice front/rear lights, and the rack for the pack over the back wheel. (heh. rackpackback), so at least I still have those.

I drive home. I cry. I whine. I put ice on my bruised knuckles. (don't punch streetlights.) I force Kateswiegehts to listen to whining. I whine at Ingebjørg.

I still have to do laundry. and kill the ants. and clean. and figure out what to do. and figure out how to replace the bike and pay rent at the same time.

and figure out how to avoid running away to Puerto Vallarta, hiding out until the RCS gets into port, and stowing away on her before jumping ship on a certain island where no one will eeever find me.

I am in such trouble...

...because of this.

as if I needed another webcomic. and especially one with 5 years of MTWThF archives.

but it's legos. and star wars/trek/generic geeky parodies. and legos. and 'Late Night with Boba Fett.' and legos.

did I mention legos?

went for my interview with The Picture People yesterday. went fairly well. we'll find out tomorrow how I did.

have also (re)discovered that my breasts are not italian. so I thought that, for once, there might be something standard about women's apparel...

...I know. way more than futile.

can I also mention how much I hate it when authors end their books, mostly resolved, and then tack on an apparent non sequitur? especially when it's a blatant lead-in for the next book? and that ok, fine, I did understand, but that's only because in true Pollei fashion I read book 3 before books 1 and 2?
(and really...a dark night on a heavily-forested florence hillside, being chased by boar hounds and men with guns, with no flashlight...you can distinguish eye color of the strange shadowy man you blunder into? ok yes dramatic lead in for the ending, but still. lesigh.)

am knitting with fervent fingers on a project that shall remain nameless because I'm going to submit it to Knitty, which means I can't talk about it or I'll have to kill you. at least until it gets published. or rejected. which is very likely, because it's quirky and strange and dependant on a deep passion for firefly. or at least a twisted sense of humor.

still. based on the number of Jayne Hats I've seen around...

there's hope.

oooo....aaaah....

so, excitement!

we're now on our third straight day of rain, which is exciting for the bay area- the land that weather forgot.

and just now, a rolling crack of thunder was heard across the plains. I know. you're not impressed. but here's the deal...coastal zones...don't thunder. it's rare.

I'm happy.

and I shall remain happy as long as we have a) power b) no flooding c) the neighbor's tree stays up.

The Boy and I celebrated New Year's in true nerd fashion: I constructed steaks, we drank champagne mixed with chambord, and we watched Planet Earth. whee!




we'll see if that worked. 'tis my character. I finally gave in to The Boy and gave him a christmas present of me playing World of Warcraft. he's been trying to get me to play for years. So. that's me.