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I can still remember my first non parental cinema experience as a kid. It was the spring of 1989, and my girlfriend and I were going to see “The Little Mermaid”, the original, not the shitty replicas or rip-offs you get today, and we were going ALL ALONE. Filled to the brim with anticipation we strolled into the cinema in our pink sneakers with white unicorns, bought one teeny, tiny bar of chocolate each with our hard earned money from sneaky neighbourhood lotteries which for some unknown reason never had any winners (who suspects cute little girls?). With the sugary masterpieces in our hands we sat quietly nibbling them in our seats, enjoying the brainwashing Disney experience.
That was then. Going to the cinema these days is a totally different experience.
A year ago I went to see the new Batman film, “Batman Begins”, you know, one of those films that manages to please both sexes. The men get to satisfy their hunger for blood and meaningless violence, whilst women sigh and long for Christian Bale’s luscious, willing lips, but Christian Bale’s bedroom habits is not the issue here, so let’s move on. The problem is that tiny bar of chocolate that was tiny back in 1989. In eighteen years it has grown into a cornucopia of sugar orgies, and it hurts both the eyes and ears, my friend.
Sitting there waiting for the Batman to Begin (tee hee... oh come on, one cheesy line and you roll your eyes at me?), I was almost trampled to death by a wild herd of teens carrying a truckload of king size drinking cups, king size bags of chocolates and various other candy goo, the boxes of popcorn were like skyscrapers and the bags of crunchy, crackly crisps could be heard from miles off. Jealousy struck me at first, staring down at my, still, tiny chocolate bar with tears in my eyes, but then it hit me that I wasn’t sad because I wasn’t part of the sugar and snack orgy, I was sad because the cinema had lost it’s innocence.
Once upon a time a tiny chocolate lasted for two hours. Now, it’s gone before the first annoying ad rolls across the screen, and you used to be able to SEE the screen, free of huge bags and cups and greedy hands raping the aluminium and cardboard designs on the rows in front of you. Actually HEARING the film is also a lost bonus. Today you’re wrapped into a frenzy of crunching, crackling, smashing, popping, slurping and oral prostitution that makes you wish you could read lips...especially Christian Bale’s lips...mmm. In the entire room chocolate wrappers, empty bags, deformed or tasteless popcorns and empty bottles fly about looking for new homes, rolling down the stairs to the rhythm of the cinema swine’s’ chews. And I, lover of all sugary things and defender of their eaters cry my bitter tears in my seat, accompanied by an empty chocolate wrapper, and I pledge, just like Batman, that next time, next time I’ll get them. I’ll show them how it’s really done, because if you can’t beat them, join them, and then booby-trap them. They will beg for mercy when I come strolling with my very own popcorn machine, cotton candy maker, slurpee dispenser, hot dog stand, baskets of hot nachos, ice cream machine and crates of assorted chocolates, and I will whip their pleading snack craving bodies with hot dog breads and straws till they...
Ok, chocolate rehab for me...
It’s summer, sweat is dripping, the neighbourhood kids are screaming for ice cream, kiddie pools and nail guns, and the average Norwegian goes to the shop to wallow in the divine summer fruit that is the Norwegian strawberry, claimed to be the best in the world. It all sounds quite idealistic, doesn’t it? And it is too...for anyone who doesn’t have to sell these evil berries.
This freak relationship Norwegians have to strawberries may be hard for any foreigner to understand, but I’ll try my best to make you afraid, very afraid. My experiences working in the fruit and vegetables department at a grocery shop have given me many a nightmare about the demonic berries and their blind worshippers.
Every summer it all starts so innocently. The first Belgian strawberries arrive in shops in June, in moderate plastic boxes, and nobody really cares. They are expensive, and they have no taste (besides, Belgium is too close to Nazi-Germany, and we can’t have that, can we?), but still, you can bet your ass that during the day a couple of customers will have mashed 1/3 of the berries in the box just for fun, to find out if the berries are of the right tasty texture, and then, when the berries are mashed, they don’t want to buy them because they are mashed, so you have to throw away the whole box. Money well spent, hey, but that’s life dealing with the public in the service industry, I know. But then comes July, and the savage beast in the average Norwegian strawberry customer slowly awakens to the sight of the first NORWEGIAN strawberries. Normally shy, quiet and civilized Norwegians all of a sudden turn into wild, nasty gorgons, and they all worship the same god: The perfect punnet of strawberries.
Having worked in a shop for many years, I know that the myth of the perfect punnet of strawberries is just that, a myth. Berries come from nature, and nature fucks up pretty often, but you can’t educate beasts, so the knowledge stays with me, and me alone as I from a far watch it all take place. Like the holy crusades the strawberry customers form long lines of troops like on some prehistoric battlefield as soon as the first crates of strawberries have been put out in the morning by the most courageous member of the staff (or just the one to loose the paper, rock, scissor match in the backroom). Then it all begins. The crusaders storm the fruit counters like greyhounds on speed, they toss about the crates to get to the best punnets at the bottom, because logic says the best one is always at the bottom. They claw, shove, hiss and spit, elderly women bang their younger and stronger opponents on their heads with their walkers and canes, distinguished middle aged businessmen blind the others with squirts from their lethal ink pens, young girls come running from the other side of the shop and use their stiletto heels to do a pole vault over the crowd of vultures that have formed a Berlin wall around the crates, and yet another summer of hell has officially begun.
From the outside all you can see are the green coloured crates flying passed your ears with a swooping sound, combined with the screams and shrieks coming from the orgy that once was the fruit counter, but which will from now on be known as “The Battle at the Fruit Crates”.
When the customers finally realise that there is no perfect strawberry punnet to be found, they steal shamelessly from other punnets to compensate for the lack of perfection in the one they decide to buy, so that when they reach the till to pay for their prey, the punnet looks like it’s going to explode into a bloody summer sweet berry bomb, and they look at you with Bambie-eyes like they had nothing to do with it. And as you’re trying to get them all through the till, pretending not to notice the death threats passing through the crowd, a crescendo of questions fly through the air back where the orgy is still going strong, “how much are the strawberries? Are they Norwegian? Don’t you have any fresher berries out back? Where are the strawberries? Do you have strawberries? Can I mash the berries and force my husband to lick them off my feet? Strawberries! Strawberries! More strawberries!!!”
Only when the last punnet is sold and has left the building there is silence to be found in the shop. The sore sobs coming from the fruit manager huddled together in a corner is the only sound that cuts through the silence and joins the bangs of elderly women slipping on the strewn around and mashed strawberries on the floor, forming a deadly trap, and sends their victims sliding into a pile of apples. The staff get together for a pep talk and a quick psychiatric check up, and there is always that one guy that breaks down and has to be forcefully removed from the backroom on a jack lift by friendly men in white coats, to get a cuddle and a encouraging free piece of candy.
The cold sweat is taken over by normal sweat, outside on the roof pigeons gather peacefully, and in the parking lot children play with a dead cadaver of some road killed animal. All seems so peaceful, but the memories won’t let go, and the threat of a new day and new strawberry sales makes watching Jaws as a kid a laughing matter. Summers will keep coming, and somewhere out there strawberries are growing, growing, growing to the rhythm of evil laughing back at you.
If you ever plan on going on a holiday to Norway, make sure you bring a weapon of your choice. 
Anyone who has ever seen Alfred Hitchcock's ”The Birds” has had an excellent occasion to develop a mild to intense fear of birds, perhaps you even break out in outbursts of cold sweat and girlish screams any time an evil little sparrow has a feeding frenzy in your backyard, and as he ravages that poor, defenceless worm or seed with his horrifying beak, he tilts his head slightly to give you the evil eye, just for a tenth of a second, so you’re left wondering if you really did see what you think you saw. Was it an illusion, or did that sparrow just let you know who’s on top of the food chain in your back yard? You’ll be waking up screaming for a week on end, that’s all you can be sure of.
Personally I’ve always viewed birds as cute and cuddly animals, you know, that sweet way they tend to just...fly around...and...do stuff. You know, they eat...and chirp...and nest and shit. However, resent happenings have left no doubt in my mind that birds are EVIL.
Now listen, window cleaning may not be at the top of my priority list when it comes to preferred spare time activities, but when mother nature slaps me across the face with a hellishly dirty window that makes the neighbours cross themselves when they pass my house, I manage to take a hint. And that’s what I did, I rolled up my royal sleeves and did my best. The result was naturally stunning, so stunning it couldn’t be photographed, sort of like the presence of Zeus can not be viewed by mortals, it would simply kill them...and besides, who takes pictures of their newly cleaned windows anyway? Ok, I do, but that sort of ruins my whole point here, so work with me.
Having finished, I spent a few hours admiring my reflection in the shiny, sparkling glass square, then night came and I was forced to go to bed, but as I had done a good days work, I was quite happy about it. It’s what met me the very next morning when I pulled back my curtains that still makes me cry to this day, and luckily I managed to pull together enough brain power to take a picture this time. If you have a weak heart, look away now:
Five wormy napalm bombs had been dropped on my beautiful window in a wild shitting fest, with a precision that even would bring shame upon the only sober man in the loo at a night club after midnight. The actions that took place that night will forever scar my window. I keep wondering how birds manage to dive towards their target at such a speed, without ending up as a red dot on the rain gutter above, but then I remember how birds are EVIL, and that evil has the best tricks and the most dedicated kamikaze fliers, whilst you, the simple mortal with the shiny windows...you have cleaning detergents.
All kids go through a faze where they decide to never be like their parents. They make a heartfelt sworn promise over their Nintendo-consoles that they will never learn to appreciate mom-pants, prunes or Tom Petty. I used to be one of those kids, until today. It all suddenly dawned on me that I’ve become just like my father. That which was not meant to happen, has indeed happened, and the process of becoming like him has had quite a lot of time to sneak up on my sub consciousness. All at once I became aware of the similarities that had been increasing rapidly for months (NB: all sport haters are advised to leave the premises, this is painful to read).
1: After having poured myself a glass of milk from a milk carton, I simply FORGOT to put the milk carton back into the fridge.
For you this may be as normal as having your 27th- birthday party at a nude roller disco, but what you need to understand is that my dad is the kind of person who buys food, comes home and just puts the bags of food on the kitchen counter. He then leaves the kitchen to go watch some football or read the paper, twice, just in case he missed something, and these are activities that may take whole days to finish. Be it ice cream, milk, cheese or frozen meat, that food is dead and buried unless I just happen to stroll into the kitchen by accident (yeah right, we all know a woman only enters the kitchen for one thing, and she never leaves unsatisfied). One thing that he never forgets to put in the fridge though, is the BEER. Bless his manly heart. Ugh, ugh.
2: During the last football match with my local team SK Brann (don’t sit there looking stupid, look it up and love them), in which Brann naturally had the favour of the gods and brutally slaughtered their opponent, my two brothers, my dad and I were discussing the match. There’s nothing odd about that, you say, and no, there wasn’t, until I said something I shouldn’t, or shouldn’t have been able to say. Complaining about shitty defence players, I used the word “backroom”, a very footballey term in Norwegian, that just sort of popped out of my mouth. Now, to put things straight, I don’t know football terms, I merely watch and enjoy, I’m a woman for Christ’s sake! If I ever had anything to say about “backrooms”, I’d call them “the side of the football field where the keeper is”. So for something like this to have entered, or more like exited my mouth in front of such an audience, is almost on the verge of a scandal. All of a sudden I found myself at the centre of attention, and in my dad’s shady eyes I could see the spark of fatherly love begin to grow to new heights. This far surpassed any A I ever got on a test, any boyfriend I dumped because my dad didn’t like the way that boy pronounced Bob Dylan’s name and even that bottle of gin I got him for his birthday when everyone else got him socks, this was LOVE, the sporty kind.
I immediately had to leave the room, running to the bathroom to splash water on my face and cry in the shower to the sounds of German acid techno, over and over again I checked my reflection in the mirror to see if I could still recognise myself, and to some extent I did, when I turned slightly to one side and pouted my lips.
To understand my reaction to this, you need to know that for years and years and even more years (bloody hell, I’m not THAT old!), my dad has lavished tons of football facts, results and quotes on my brothers and me, and we all just sort of turned a blind ear and went on with our crayons or insect torture, thinking nothing of it. It was just sports, right?! I’ve always thought that my brothers and I were immune to this cruelty called “love of sports” and our dads constant “voice of God” from the corner of the room, until now. Now I realise we’re all fucked.
3: The other night I was casually typing away at my keyboard in some sort of brain dead inner monologue in front of my computer, when I all of a sudden had this shooting pain in my thigh. It was like an old grenade injury from the Vietnam war acting up on the nerves in my thigh, and whilst I was sitting there hugging my leg, and the faded memories of my fallen mates from the battle of Quangwhothefuckcares flashed before my eyes, it dawned on me once again that I had yet another dad-syndrome. The old war wounds from the time my dad was in the navy and there ALMOST (not really at all, just pretend) broke out a conflict between Norway and Russia when they discovered a secret Russian submarine in the Oslofjord and had to kindly escort it out of there (secretly hoping the Russians would at least leave behind some floaters of vodka). You know, that injury he got from standing on deck waiting for orders, staring at the calm sea, yes, exactly, that brutal one right there. Not to mention what he got from the Korean War, even though he was born in 1954.
Other times it’s his old top athlete-injuries that act up on him when he’s casually lounging in his TV-chair. Some of the classics are “the thigh pull”, “the ankle snap” and “the back pain”, which all just magically appear whenever there are dishes to be done. You just watch, next I’ll be blogging about my time in the Boa war.
4: Even though I’ve not been able to stand peanuts at all my entire life, lately they’ve started to taste heavenly to me. We’re talking about a kind of food that has been my dad’s life source and snack ration for 50 years. Any time of day, any occasion calls for a peanut or ten. In this house, peanuts are as healthy as vegetables and fish, and it can cure anything from a mild headache to AIDS.
5: A Thursday night when my dad and I were watching some meaningless program on TV, up popped a couple of teenagers to answer the reporters silly questions about material values or something. The teens were of the kind that you see hanging on a street corner with an S-shaped posture, saggy trousers, gigantic headphones, shrieking mobile phones on a leash and a coke bottle glued to their spotty lips (don’t ask me how lips can be spotty, too many bad memories), so naturally I couldn’t suppress a comment about what a waste of space those teens were, hearing their answers about how they couldn’t live without their i-pods and that their parents were dumb. I think it went something like “kids today, have they no shame?”, and in an instant I could feel my dads cold stare at me from the side. Ice filled my veins as I slowly turned my head to meet his gaze, there was that little smile at the corner of his mouth, and the love spark in his eyes again and there was no turning back. Sobbing, I broke down right there in the living room, realising that nothing says more about the loss of youthful spontaneity and old age than criticizing the younger generations.
Tomb, sweet tomb, here I come. I might as well join a football supporter club and learn to enjoy the fine cuisine of hot dogs and beer, and the literary genius that is the sports section of the newspaper. Bring in the clones, thank you and goodnight!
From the very beginning many a man (and woman!) have claimed the Christian God to be a man. Maybe that is so, considering the crazies that say God speaks to them and tells them to eat vanilla ice cream instead of the expensive sort, so they can save their money for cool Christian knitted vests or whatever, and hey, some women even claim to have been impregnated by God. Wow, imagine the child support on that baby! But that’s a long stroll down crazy lane, and although I’ve had plenty of sunny walks there, I’ll keep it short for once.
According to my theory, God is nothing but a dyke, complete with a deep voice that would make any woman throw out her vibrator, a hairy lip only a middle aged man who’s been married for 20 years and doesn’t give a fuck as long as he can wank in the shower could pretend to not see, luxury condo-pores and a body like the face of a spotty teenager with girl problems. I firmly believe this as much as I believe I one day will dance naked on fuzzy pink clouds with Liam Neeson, and I will hereby put down the hard facts for my beliefs.
Firstly, let’s look at women. Why do we suffer like we do? Isn’t it enough that we with age look like a whale blubber accident on a bad day? Did we really have to be dealt out all the two’s and three’s in the deck? When a woman meets the man of her life, or just settles for the guy who doesn’t insist on going out to a restaurant without putting a shirt on, but luckily has two arms so he can wipe his own ass...partially, a long and painful process of having to house train this lovely chap follows. After that we have the immense pleasure of sleeping with him as a reward, but even there the woman has been deprived of her ability to enjoy sex, and she is reduced to a two minute interior architect; “Hmm, are those nicotine stains on the ceiling? Those curtains are very last year, aren’t they? What is that blow-up doll doing in here?!”. When it comes to reproducing, women have really drawn the shittiest straw, though. Normally, nine months of suffering, followed by a human interpretation of a tennis ball machine, with even MORE delicious suffering would be called “torture”, but you don’t see any Amnesty fanatics marching in the streets to free the pregnant women of the world, do you?
Women are also born with an uneven bodily fluid balance, that’s why we constantly shed excess fluids through our eyes, happy, sad, horny, knocked out, women bloody cry any chance they get. Also, the female hearing isn’t as well developed as the man’s, seeing as women have a tendency to talk in a loud, shrieking manner, and repetitions occur constantly and mercilessly.
Not done yet, you ask? I’ve just gotten started, my furry friend. What about body hair? Yes, don’t pretend like you didn’t know women had tons of it, in every nook and cranny you’ve thought about putting your willie since you were a teenager, but lacked the courage to do as you love life too much. What better curse than to make women have to shave, wax or pluck it off every day for 87, 9 years? Perhaps having her do that for 98 years, yeah, yeah Mr. Smartypants. Mind you, the positive side to this is if a rabid plant disease should knock out all the cotton farms in the world, and every single sheep suddenly dies from some exotic, unpronounceable virus that’ll make any news reporter orgasm just thinking of the scoop, then, yes, all that shed hair would come to use.
So why are things this way? The only explanation that comes to me, is what I already made pretty damn clear in the title so you, or any uptight Christian with their panties in a bunch wouldn’t have any trouble finding it; God is a woman! When God had created Adam and Eve, she rapidly discovered Eve’s huge bosom and slim waistline, especially that her breasts were bigger and waist were slimmer than hers, and from there a woman’s only rational thinking / raging fury is easy to predict, isn’t it?
But what about the man’s curse, you ask? Yes, I know, God doesn’t really like men either, and that’s where the dyke-part comes in. It’s hardly a coincidence that God gave the human male a widely spread terror of having a small willie, when he has one of the smallest willies in the animal kingdom. Also, sometimes the hair on their heads is too lazy to climb all the way up to their heads and settle for blooming from ears, nose and upper back like everlast steel threads, and they are ridiculed and forced to wear silly hats made of genital hair from a Syrian mule. Not to mention that men got stuck with women for a mate, I mean, any man would manage with a beer and a strong right arm in the long run, but they now have to put up with Eve with a capital E for Ennoying (work with me people, my time is scarce!).
All the persons that have claimed to have talked to God clearly just fell victim of a reverse drunken tranny trap, maybe God just looks like one of those women who seem to have been dropped into a paper shredder at birth? Anyone who’s ever tried to put back the pieces of a shredded object knows the end result may make you cry with pain, and that’s probably why God is a bit touchy about everything.
Any woman with a shred (tee hee) of maternal instinct will elbow her way through the crowd and ask “why would God kill her own son if she’s a woman? Women are kind and sweet and warm hearted and they don’t even fart when they are alone at home”. Let’s be real. We all know that mother’s in law are a nightmare and a half, so what other than that killer instinct hit God when her precious Jesus laid his eyes on that tart, Mary Magdalene? The best way to get her little, innocent boy out of there and back to his heavenly home is by the angel express, no? “You die – We fly”?
“So what then, doesn’t God like anything or anybody?” you ask. Of course she does. God enjoys a good game of water sports (killer tsunamis), a game of twister with friends (hurricanes and tornados), some Celestial Grand Theft Auto (do I really need to spell this one out for you?) and watching the exciting second season of the TV-series “The Gulf War”.
All of us pathetic mortals better hope that God isn’t one of those women who loves a man with kebab in his moustache.
This is my best theory yet...but it just has this teeny, tiny little flaw, which you would hardly even notice unless I spelled it out in neon letters for you: GOD DOESN’T EXIST.
