Friday 27 April 2001

Pic of the day: Cassette. To the lower right you may glimpse my dice.

Disturbing culture etc

I caved in to nature and took a day of sick leave, as I did not feel much improved in the morning and early day. Since then, the sniffles have receded somewhat (especially since a nap after lunch). I'm still quite pickled, and my head feels stuffed with cotton.

Having suddenly some time on my hand, I sat down to daydream a bit, with my dice within easy reach. Yes, I do daydream using the GURPS basic set handbook and three 6-sided dice. I have not confessed this before, but I guess I should have it out in the open. I suspect this goes beyond simple geekiness and into the realm of truly disturbing quirkiness. At least I don't use the adult extention rules.

Oh, and I fixed various speling erorrs in my very unfinished online novel, Gwalawala.

***

Got an e-mail from a local friend. Ok, "friend" is too strong a word, but it is a lot easier to spell than "acquaintance". Someone I know, from the town. I see her now and then, but usually together with her mother. I am not the type to disturb families, so I don't say anything. Now it turns out that she has also taken to writing an online diary. Isn't that cool? I won't link to it without asking - not all people are as hungry for publicity as I am ;) - but I thought I'd tell y'all how exciting I think that is.

While we haven't had much contact lately, we used to hang out on the same BBS network back before the Internet caught on. She was also a source of obscure but pretty good music. You know I'm terrible with new music myself. I already have a hundred - or perhaps a couple hundred - CDs, so it takes a lot for me to move my handsome ass up from the easy chair and go hunting for new music. In later years, I have relied on my best friend to introduce me to new music. But this time she had dragged home something called "Limp Bizkids" or some such. Ick. Why can't they at least have the good grace to sing in Polish or Bantu, if they absolutely must pollute technically good music with their voices?

On that note, some of my favorite cassette recordings are pop music in Saami, the language of the northern aborigines of Scandinavia. It is related to Finnish, a language in which I can just barely order ice cream and milk chocolate, and of course a mobile phone. But Saami, using slightly different sounds than the other Nordic languages, is even more foreign than that. Thus I am assured that I don't have the faintest idea what they are singing, and can enjoy the music. It is rare indeed to have pop music where the texts are an improvement over the karaoke version. Well, I guess Chris de Burgh counts as pop music; but his popular songs are almost without exception the ones with boring lyrics. ("Missing you" (bleah), "Lady in Red" (ugh). Mushy stuff. Kiss kiss.)

I have to agree with the talking otters of C.S. Lewis' Malacandra stories: The natural thing for a sentient species must be to breed and be done with it, rather than spend all your life thinking about it. (Of course, it being a generation since I read that book, I may be twisting their words slightly. Anyway, they were way cool. Go furries!)

***

Another person that I fairly often meet in the city is Captain Sabretooth, or Terje Formoe. (Sometimes spelled Terje Formo, I have never found out which form is correct but the e is not pronounced.) Funny thing is he was one of my musical heroes before he became famous with the Captain Sabretooth thing. He wrote songs for children, many of which were also enjoyable for adults; some of them were quite hilarious. Somehow he managed to come up with an endless stream of whistleable songs without becoming really famous. Perhaps because they were in Norwegian, or at least those I know of.

Back in my BBS days I managed to get my clammy hands on a used but still playable music cassette with some of Formoe's best songs for children, aptly named "Til Donald". Donald Duck is for some reason immensely popular in Norway, unlike most of the world. There is even a science here called "donaldism", comprising the study of all things Donald Ducky and the impact on Norwegian culture. (As opposed to itlandism, which is a religion in which pajamas are important. Long story. BBS again.)

But now, Norwegian culture is fading. A couple generations, if we manage to keep this world alive that long, and the natives will speak Norwegian only when the tourists are listening. This probably means the end of Donaldism; and of the cultural heritage from Terje Formoe. Oh well; it won't be in my time. Generations are pretty long these days.

And before then, one can assume that Kristiansand will have a serious competitor to McDonalds. I don't positively know that Donald Duck has paved the way for McDonalds burger restaurants, but the fact is that no other European country has as many McDonalds outlets as Norway, compared to population. And perhaps not by coincidence, we also drink the most cola per person (though much of it is diet coke). McDonalds sells only Coca Cola products in their outlets here. This is a major reason why I usually buy a milkshake instead when I eat there. I avoid Coca Cola by force of habit. Not just because it makes me sick, but also for their dirty maneuvring in the marketplace, and the killing of labor union activists. I hate labor unions as much as the next guy, but killing activists is another matter entirely. Especially when you sell a very murky soft drink which can dissolve almost anything, given enough time ...

Pleasant dreams! :)