Freeday 7 January 2000

Pic of the day: It's hair fluffing day again!

I woke up at three in the night, sitting in my big boss chair, with a partly written e-mail in front of me. So I just decided to call it a day and crawl to bed. A few hours later, the clock radio was giving me the latest news again, and it was time to rise for another "work" day. Paid a couple bills. I still have money for food and stuff, but there won't be any room for luxuries next month. Well, unless I use a credit card, of course.

Luxuries by modern Norwegian standards, I mean. Even us from the lower middle class live like kings compared to our ancestors, and not way back in the stone age or anything. Go back a hundred years and things were pretty hard. I still remember some of the old houses that were still standing (on their last legs) out in the countryside when I grew up. Large families huddled together in small drafty wooden cabins. From my long-living grandparents I got a good notion of life back then: Herring and potatoes, rough homemade clothes, hard work from early childhood on.

OK, those were not kings, admittedly. But even kings and queens could not walk into a nearby store and carry home lots of fresh fruits from the other side of the globe. Spices were worth more than silver until recently. Electric lights and heating? Getting news and entertainment from all over the world? Being able to chat in real time with a group of friends from across the ocean? I'm not kidding, the kings of year 1900 did lack some options that I take for granted. Admittedly, they had more gold and jewels than I've ever had. You can't win them all.

I do not consider it a luxury to summon up the music I want from hundreds of songs and classical pieces, and listen to it with a clarity rarely found in a concert hall, unless you happen to have the hall for yourself alone. Even when taking a walk, I can listen to the music of my choice. Who could dream of such a few generations ago? Neither king, emperor or pope. No wizard could conjure up such magic, nor any priest. It would seem to belong in childlike tales of fantasy.

Speaking of childish tales of fantasy, I've been back to writing on my never-to-be-finished Thaumaturge story. Things are not going too well for our imaginary friends, I'm afraid. The Thaumaturge has just run out and resurrected fourteen people, after his girlfriend chased him out. She tends to do this a lot, it seems. She's a rather ambitious girl, and hanging out with a superpowered person easily grates on her nerves. Of course, it hardly helps when he changes her body into Claudia Schiffer without even asking first.

(I wonder vaguely what the laws say about using the distinctive likeness of real people in fictional works, given the usual disclaimers about characters living and dead etc. Not that I plan to publish this novel ever ... it is certainly going to stall before completion like all the others. But given that the comic book Turok featured Bill Clinton as a dinosaur in disguise, I guess there is some wriggle room.)

Also in the fantasy writing queue, I have a more traditional fantasy story about a young were-god ... born with the star birthmark, there are said to be 144 of them in that world at any one time, a new one being conceived only when one is dead. Sometimes secretive, sometimes evil, always living a dangerous life for themselves and those around them, the were-gods will sooner or later be possessed of vast magickal powers for shorter or longer times, during which they have only limited control of themselves as the demigod-aspect takes over their bodies. I'd appreciate if someone else had written that story, as it takes a load of time to write a book (and I never finish them anyway).

A nice thing with fantasy and historical novels is that people are less likely to think of them as autobiographies. If I were to actually publish any fiction, people would likely look at the main characters as avatars of myself. Or at least this has happened to others.

A bit into the afternoon I fell asleep in my chair again, woke up with knee pains, and dragged myself over in a better sleeping chair. This is not uncommon when I've slept too little for a while (and I tend to do that) and especially after eating chocolate. Chocolate tends to make me sleepy. Now isn't that strange? You'd think that chocolate would make people perky. It contains an alcaloid related to caffeine, only weaker (theobromine, so called from ancient Greek theos: god, and broma: food. Nice thought). Chocolate has also been successfully used as an aphrodisiac. But me it makes sleepy. Perhaps I'm a mutant or something.

And that's my day, basically. No kids, no wife, no TV, no life. And no partying on Friday night. There are probably lonely, horny women out there waiting for a sympathetic man to confirm their womanliness and buy them the drinks necessary to overcome their inhibitions. But I'm such an ego... I'll stay at home tonight again. ;)