Thursday 15 May 2003

Pic of the day: Me with my haircut and the GURPS religion compendium.

Outlandish shop

Today I finally found the entrance to the Outland shop here in Kristiansand. It is a rather new thing, I am pretty sure of it. I only saw the sign a few days ago, and then yesterday a friend told me she had been there. Today I found the entrance, it was actually inside the door to another shop and then right down to the left.

The name "Outland" is almost certainly influenced by Berke Breathed's comic of the same name, which was well received in Norway. Also we use a Norwegian word "utland" with simply means "outside the country", "abroad", "foreign countries". Since this shop is selling only imported goods, it is kinda appropriate.

Geek paradise! I just walked around for a while, staring at the manga, the anime, the fantasy and sci-fi books, the superhero comics, the role playing equipment ... stuff like that, packed, the whole shop full! They had Chobits (both manga and anime) and Love Hina and even Escaflowne, but in the end I bought 3 GURPS compendia: Vikings, Middle Ages and Religion. They did not seem to have Rome, for some reason, or I would have bought it too. I have only begun reading Religion, which describes how to construct myths, deities and religions for imaginary worlds. It is kinda disturbing, but I remind myself that it is only for fantasy worlds, playgrounds of the imagination. (Besides, some of the disturbance may come from all the chocolate and Pepsi.)

GURPS is my favorite role playing system for off-line role playing. But there was also lots of stuff for other systems. I saw Silver Age Sentinels for D20, for instance, quite tempting too. There were even miniatures for campaign games, probably Warhammer or something like that. And multi-sided dice were lying in large boxes like the kind of candy you buy by the weight.

The guy working there looked like a big teddy bear and was kinda nice I guess. When I came to pay for the books, the bar code reader registered a much higher price for the Religion compendium: kr 289 instead of 199 as the price tag said. It was way above the other two at 229 each. I gently made him aware of it, and he reduced the price to 199 without any debate at all. (Rightly so, it turned out, for there were at least 2 seriously dog-eared pages when I opened it. Not that I think that is his fault in the least. And I guess it will not be very noticeable once I am through with it. But even so. He did the right thing, and for that I commend him.)

The prices are of course still outlandish. These are imported goods, and don't have a mass market here in Norway yet. For my outlander readers to get an idea of the prices, Norwegian kroner are like 6.85 for each US dollar. So this is not a place school kids go to burn their allowance. It is more a place for geeks who forsake other delights of the world in order to indulge in the beauty of manga, anime, comics, role playing and other fantasy escapism.

The place wasn't exactly crowded, but then again it is new, not heavily advertised, and hard to find. As a university city, Kristiansand is bound to have a great potential market for geek stuff, not least anime and manga. We could still become a thriving otaku society here! (*Watches readers cringe in horror*) Er ...think of it as cultural exchange. We gave them slalom skiing after all!

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Just read my years-ago entries before uploading. How come that I cut my hair today, and exactly 3 years ago? I don't cut my hair often. How come the friend who recommended the Outland shop that I visited today, was the same friend I wrote about exactly 1 year ago? I don't have much contact with her (my loss, I guess). Does my subconscious really go around remembering the exact date of all things in my life, or is it just coincidence?