The Cocoabean Princess

The Daytime Shame Syndrome

2009-02-24T21:56:00.005Z

A weekday off from work has a lot to be said for it, we all crave it, personally I'd kill for it, but when I finally have one, an interesting psychological occurrance takes place.

Since I was a kid (I'm obviously kidding, I was born like Athene, fully grown and ready to talk back to my parents), it's been imbedded in my upbringing that running loose in the daylight hours on weekdays is bad. Why, I never really understood, it may have something to do with too much enjoyment, empty shops with nobody in your way, no queues, no pervs trying to feel you up on a crowded bus, and thus, something oh so sweet is also oh so bad and forbidden.

So I went to school, I went to more school, and I started working, all in the daytime. In my job I have to work every other weekend, which means that I, every other week have a weekday off to compensate (like a boring tuesday night can really compensate for a moist, regrettable saturday night of not knowing where the hell you are). Thus leaving me free to roam around as I please for a whole day.

At first I was excited, woohoo, I'll go walking, go scare some kids or grannies at the park, but you quickly realise that you wake up nearly as late as they go to bed, and when you do get up, you're too afraid to go outside. What if you see someone you know on just a greeting basis, and they think you are unemployed or homeless, or slightly prostitutional, because let's face it, who else roams the streets on weekdays except freaks and mothers with their babies? And you certainly aren't pushing any carriage around, and whilst we're being honest, those love handles come from your chocolate babies. You can't go up to the person and say "hey, I've got a day off from work" because you don't know them that well, and if you did anyway, they'd think you were one of those freaks that talk to strangers on the bus.

Even your neighbours become your own worst enemies. What if they happen to peak out the window just as you're leaving or entering the house at an unreasonable, homeless person time? Naturally you've got the perfect excuse for why your neighbours are also at home at the time, they are either retired (at the age of 35?!), unfit for work (unless it's off the record) or a mom to be (that's surely just a love for chocolate cake that's starting to peak out at the belt line). All this makes you a prisoner in your own home, and let's face it, your place isn't exactly fun central.

You lie in, the extreme version, trot around in ugly clothes your partner would burn in a black ritual if he or she ever saw, over-eat, watch tv til your brain hurts from too much womanhood on display, and sometimes you might even try to take up a lost hobby that once was lost for a reason. You can't knit for fuck, and your paintings are that of a five year old crackhead...no, I take that back, THAT I would pay to see!

Shame creeps in just around dinnertime, boredness, panic at how little of your day off is left, the feeling of skiving, lying to your mum about having tummy aches to stay in because it's snow outside and you know your face will be buried in two feet of white pain before the first bell rings. You grow more and more sure that this day in particular must have been the best day ever at work, something extraordinary happened, everybody got a bonus or free chocolates, a palace in France, a night with Christian Bale (after anger management).

But they never did, and you long for your day off once again. For the shame, for the angst, for the isolation from the pain of public transport.

Coherence

2009-02-24T21:03:00.000Z

Horoscope for Cancer

2009-02-01T22:24:00.000Z

Feminism versus My Boyfriend

2009-02-01T21:46:00.005Z

I only just got my first boyfriend. Aaaaw, teenage sweetheart love, you may think to yourself, but no, I'm 26, which I presume makes me insanely picky, or maybe just a freak. What can I say? I'm a big softy romantic freak in that case.

Suddenly having a boyfriend actually introduces changes into your life, and I am not talking about the obvious ones, like waking up to a smelly man every morning and having no say in who gets the biggest cupcake, but rather the traditional clichés you thought was only a remnant of male chauvinism. I have this old antique cabinet I got from my grandmother when she got so old she basically returned to a teenager status and was no longer allowed to live on her own, and for the last five years one of the lower cabinet doors has been completely fucked up, it probably lost a screw back in 1955 and has been hanging all crooked, like a depressed, self-cutting emo, every time it's been opened. Now, one of the first things my boyfriend did after noticing this, was smelling down the nearest hammer in my place, I swear to gods I didn't even know I had one, and going at it, like his life depended on it. Now the door actually shuts completely, no longer spilling out my scary personal stuff to strangers visiting, because let's face it, good things gets put on display, bad stuff is hid in cabinets and drawers.

I've also had this kitchen light that hasn't been working since I moved in here, basically because I stuffed a light tube up there once and no lights came on, so therefore it was deemed broken. I came to terms with being only a meere mortal and lived like a goth for a while, but along comes mr. manly man and pops the tube in place, voila, there is light. I vaguely remember throwing myself around his neck for a second before my strict equality of the sexes-upbringing whipped me back into a couldn't care less-throwing of one shoulder and a thank you.

I must admit I sort of worship my boyfriend in an unhealthy Waco-way after all this magic. I suddenly grasp the fantasy many women have about handymen and men in general wearing tool belts, it's like a sick prehistorical instict telling us "this is the way to things around the house actually working!". Sure, I could have managed to fix it myself, but to me it seems like such a pain in the arse to have to do, something so invisible that I can't brag about it to others. I can spend hours finding the right curtain for a room, but putting in a nail where it's needed is just excessive work. I'll be the first to say it; WOMEN!

Feminists never tell you this, but when you're sick or just really tired, the man will actually hoover the carpet for you, and go to the shop to get your candy for you...it's like some sweet, grown up surprise, like sex was when you were a teenager. We've been had!

Die, Speedy Gonzales!

2009-01-16T21:55:00.006Z

Answer me this; What is wrong with people who ALWAYS, no matter how much time they have, sprint across a zebra crossing either as the green man is turning red, or in between cars as they are passing? They are SO busy they can't bloody wait one minute to not risk their lives playing car bumper tag. Where's the fire?! Where's the naked woman offering herself to them?! Is there a bomb somewhere I need to know about?!

On the positive side...there is a positive side to it. The immensely pleasurable feeling of actually having waited for the green man to lure you over the crossing, and then accidentally catching up with that guy who ran past you like he had a satanic cult meeting to reach. There he is, in all his unhurried glory, not busy at all, just window shopping like the speedy bastard he is. It takes all my inner strength to not give him a sideways knee kick as i pass, but I'm not speedy enough to get away alive.

Friends say I move like a snail, slow, majestic and covered in guck, but atleast I get to stop and eat the roses on the way.

The Menopause Witches of Eastwick

2009-01-12T23:55:00.006Z

I attended my first official "grown up party" the other day, and I say it like that because I consider myself to be forever floating in an imaginary Peter Pan state, between a naughty child and a responsible adult with loads of money and fancy kitchen tiles. You might remember that special day you were allowed to upgrade your kiddie-table for the grown up-table at birthday parties, it felt sooo emancipating, like a huge rock in a greenhouse, right?

It doesn't work quite that way when you're 26 and end up at a party with 40 - 50 year olds, and yes, you can hold your liquor in a literary conversation, but when it comes to making wicker baskets you whimper like a child with no money in a candy shop. Instead you are left to study the other guests, and especially the middle-aged women.

There seems to be some sort of evil conspiracy going on in the world when it comes to middle-aged women. If you've ever been to an all-girls party for divorced women, you'll know what I'm talking about. When a young woman in her prime of life laughs, it is a beautiful and aesthetical thing, a light whisper of a chuckle, but when she hits her 40's, welcome the Balrog fire monster from Lord of the Rings! It's painful and scary to witness the hoarse gargle all those fairytales taught you to fear as a child, it's loud and shrieking and comes from the deep of the scary female sex, where all is hidden, but nothing revealed. Yet there you are, surrounded by chirping witches. Especially when the laughter happens in unison there will be chills down your back and through your marrow, it's like an over-dramatized replay of The Witches of Eastwick, only there are no ending credits, it just goes on and on. You try desperately to be unwitty and dull, but the nervous sweat on your upper lip makes them snarl for more. Dirty jokes fly across the table, they whip out their brooms and dance in a chilling noisy frenzy that could wake the dead...but only really wakes your dad...who fell asleep in the corner of the sofa.
Maybe it is a natural defence system evolution has given us women. When our husbands find younger wives, when our kids turn against us and choose all-green curtains instead of dotted ones, and we stumble in our own breasts getting out of bed.

Either way every woman in the world should be given a decibel measurer when hitting menopause. Evolution gave us loads of useless things, but we improve them all the time. Let's make it mandatory!

The Wee Dance

2009-01-12T23:26:00.007Z

I know I've already covered the subject of uncool bodily fluids and the bad timing that usually follows them, but what can I say, it has a lot to be said for it.

Now, if you're a sad person like me, and you think having a good time with your friends is parading around a dark room with epileptic seizure inspiring light shows, sweaty people in skimpy clothing that try to touch you when you walk past, and ear shattering grenade-like sounds some people like to call "music", drinking highly over priced poisonous liquid colour additives in order to actually like the place enough to stay there the rest of the night, you will know what I'm talking about. If not, stop looking at me and keep reading your Bible, little boy.

It's the wonderfully entertaining cultural event that can only be properly enjoyed when it's happening to other people than yourself. It's the wee dance.

You'll see it at night clubs or bars with only one toilet per sex, lines and lines of women, sometimes men (but come on, there's never a line in the men's toilet, bastards), wiggeling, squeezing, stepping, riverdancing, throwing wild tics and tantrums, thrashing and whining, all to keep their lemons intact til that magic toilet door opens. Like fancy shamans from a different world they conjure up the demons of the force of the drunken wee wee relief, like samurai's with no skills or control what so ever, but a very pressing mission. The artform deserves its own music style, something like a cross between Rednex remixed with Enya, you just never know if it will take off in a frantic linedance or end in a mellow hymn to the waters of below.

If only it were a mating ritual, or something useful, but alas, it is an artform doomed to be forgotten with the shady guy in tweed by the bar, who asked you for a dance and a PayPal donation...

Christmas Aftermath

2009-01-12T23:17:00.001Z

Shit Reborn

2008-06-08T18:29:00.001+01:00

I don't get out much. That way I manage to avoid human contact and the problems that brings with it, but sometimes even I have to go out and get life's necessities, like useless plastic thingies that satisfy my materialistic ego, candy and pretty shiny things (because I’m a girl). That's when it happens. Not being built like a camel, I all of a sudden have to wee, right there in the torture of a shopping centre, like the rest of the worlds population, except royalty naturally.

In a wild panic I try to round up the nearest toilet, forcing my way through old people and children like a brute on caffeine, and when I finally find that lovely green sign with Lego people demonstrating that this is where joy is unleashed, there is also a tiny sign next to a coin slot telling me to "please spit up some coins, I only take these specific kinds of coins". I peek into my wallet, only sporting larger notes (because I’m so god damned rich, that’s why) and the phone number of that Tottenham fan I only liked because he fell off the bar trying to dance the Macarena, but doing so he looked like Batman folding out his steel wings. Eyeing me from a coin exchange window is a security guard, and I have a sudden urge for my clawing hands to have a close encounter with his collar.

Is it not enough that going shopping at a shopping centre is like being raped from behind by an elephant, both price- and space wise? Walking in a line from the sliding doors to the exit, listening to pan pipe music covering the great touchy feely movies of the 90’s, kids crying, housewives moaning at the lack of cheap pastel trinket shit, subservient men whimpering behind their mad, shopping wives, scratching at their collar, sweating behind a grandmother with her seven grandkids who wants to know whether the stiff price on the ugly, canary yellow sweater she's thinking of buying for her and her husbands anniversary has anything to do with the hurricane that trashed the cotton farms in Egypt, and when she may expect it to end. Being caught behind elderly people with their walkers of terror and mothers with their wide SUV-like twin strollers, never letting you pass unless you go all Gandalf on them, and that’s when the security guard comes and takes you away, and that way you will never get to the loo anyway. Come to think of it, they should really pay ME to come there to shop.

But there I am, doing my little full bladder dance whilst waiting for the security guard to give me back my change, knowing all too well why all shopping centres have café’s or Burger Blings on every corner selling jumbo sized drinking cups, making the customers into living urinary tracks financing the richie rich tool that owns the centre. Perhaps a tiny portion of it goes to the hard working immigrant cleaning the loo’s, which he spends buying knitting pins for his wife back in Gracklapkistan, that’s all great yeah, supporting the industrial development of third world countries, but we know most of that money goes to richie rich and the state, which means our loo money ends up in the pockets of our politicians, and there you have it my friends:

Shit turns to shit.

Women's Football and a long trip down Shame Lane

2008-05-01T19:55:00.001+01:00

I was watching sports the other day, there’s nothing unusual in that, it’s what happened when my brain started functioning after the long cop-out break it usually takes when watching muscly men running around in circles. All of a sudden I realised that I wasn’t watching football anymore, I was watching WOMEN’S FOOTBALL!

In some conspiratory way the TV station had thrown an allocation of sex quota in my face, and hence they lured me to get a dose of talent less oestrogen hormones in movement in between the real football. From being filled with manly men doing manly things on the field, my TV was taken over by skinny, square-shaped housewives and dykes running around like newborn calf’s, their hands swinging from side to side like transvestite homos on a breast prosthesis sale, something that didn’t really help their running around like drunken orientation runners without maps, missing the ball every chance they got. They weren’t that fast either. All of them could have been beaten by any old, drugged hag in an electrical wheelchair lacking electricity, but moving forward because of a slight slope in the field, and I started suspecting that the TV producers were really showing me a replay in slow motion.

It took me three minutes to remember where i put the remote control when panic finally struck me. What if someone caught me watching women’s footie? The rush of fear in my veins made my hands slippery with cold sweat, and dropping the remote, having to drop to my knees to pull it out from underneath the sofa, repositioning my finger to the correct button and actually pushing took too much time. I had no chance in hell to change the channel before my football crazed dad came walking into the room, and by then it was too late for any apologies. Whilst he broke down into an apoplectic seizure only broken up by slightly feminine whimps, I started to realise that I had disgraced my own flesh and blood, and there was no forgiveness for my sins.

Many women will call me a traitor, making fun of women’s football, but I’m a mere victim of my parents’ influence. I mean, I was raised believing that this is normal. The only real football is British Premier League for men, and as a woman, I can’t help but fall victim to the easy choice between watching manly men or sweaty women run around. My dad is a football fanatic who claims he was born on Boleyn Ground on the birthday of West Ham United’s former managers mothers aunt, and when he finally takes a dive, his ashes are to be spread over the field (West Ham supporters, you have been warned). All this has probably been like inspirational notes for “The Omen”, all signs leading to one thing: we’ve got a football fanatic on our hands.

From my childhood I have vivid memories of him filling his days with nostalgic football religious ceremonies whilst other people went to church. In the evenings he would play the supporter song over and over again, singing along with his husky, glass shattering whiskey grated voice. At parties, weddings and confirmations he wore his West Ham shirt with pride, and he actually married my mother in the middle of a football field. Personally I sort of fear the day he confesses that I was conceived on a football field too, although in some ways I already know it, but the pills make me forget. We’re all the same there, I like to think my parents only had sex three times, one for me and my two brothers, and preferably they were insanely drunk at the time, or better yet, my brothers were really the result of my mothers close relationship to that guy that shouts out the numbers at the local bingo. But I digress. My dad would read his private bible, the big book of football statistics and results in the Premier League, which sadly came out once a year, and we soon had to rebuild my parents bedroom to make room for them all...AFTER he threw my mother out, that is. The house was painted in appropriate colours of course, and the curtains in the living room were really shower curtains, because they were the only ones my mother could find that had bubbles on them.

Now I’ve always viewed my dad as slightly eccentric, maybe a tad footiepsychopathical, especially after that one time he removed my name from his will because I dropped the remote control during a West Ham match, hitting the floor made it change the channel just as West Ham scored (a rare occasion as we all know). Throwing him self over me in a wild panic to get the remote I caught a glimpse of his cold eyes, and knew that had I not been a girl, he would have skinned me alive. After that incident I’ve preferred to stay away at friends houses whenever West Ham play or there is some cup or league going on, making great effort to not wake the beast, until this unfortunate accident involving the women’s football came along.

For ages he refused to talk to me. He did once, when we were at a family dinner and I had tucked my skirt into my pantyhose coming out of the toilet, but he waited a couple of hours to point it out to me. At night I could hear him cry himself to sleep, playing his “I’m forever blowing bubbles”- record on repeat, or rewinding and replaying the video of the highlights from the 1966 world cup in between his manly sobs.

As time passes my dad’s disappointment will fade, but it will never disappear. He still hasn’t forgiven my older brother that one goal he let in as a keeper on the local junior team for seven year-olds. That’s actually my first memory from the football field, when my dad tried to strangle the referee and an armed football mum on the sideline, and later, he had a flashback to the olden days when he was a footballing menace, ran onto the field, shoved one of the seven year olds out of the way and gave the little keeper mental problems for life as he put his lights out with the ball when he couldn’t run out of the way fast enough on his tiny legs.

There may not be much you can do about people who see the face of Jesus in the grassy patterns of a football field, and at the age of 52 still scribbles “West Ham Rules” on loo walls in local bars, but I trust my mother to stop my dad when he tries to rename my younger brother Noble, but trust is a fragile bubble.

Read this rant and get three Mongolian princesses, no extra charge!

2008-04-27T13:43:00.005+01:00

That the world today is run by commercial empires and evil capitalists is something even that weird bloke down at the local pub who never wears a shirt, is able to realise without much effort, and so most of us have lulled ourselves into a cotton candy reality where we think we just have to live with all the ads, banners, posters, sounds, shrieks and flashes that are crammed into our every orifice day and night. Ads are wonderful after all, right? We've all experienced how a little shopping can cure the bubonic plague and poverty, changing your brand of cat food will make your wife more sexy and loving, changing your hair colour will make you slim and forever running around on some beach with tons of young, scrumptious, half nude men, and buying a new car will save your marriage and the environment.

Seeing as you are most likely reading this on your computer, unless you're just some freak that prints out all the blogs you read and take them with you to bed at night, you too will have noticed the hysterical, blinking neon orgasms that pop up on the sides of what you're trying to focus on. Who in their right mind can concentrate on a boring text about prerural deconstruction issues in Videberg-styles when there's a hot, half nude woman luring you into a membership at the Bird Watchers Association, or some hypnotic whirling spiral makes you buy the new shades with a built in mp3-player. Watch out for those offers that seem just a tad bit too good to be true. Getting one pair of free woollen socks if you say yes to take in three Mongolian princesses and marrying them is not a particularly good deal… If you're a woman.

Many may not think ads on TV is such a bad thing, seeing as it gives them a chance to run to the toilet, beat their wife or walk the dog, but there are only so many times I can wee in one hour. The worst part about TV ads though, is the volume. I know you've experienced what I have. It's a late, calm, sleepy winter night, you and your partner are lounging in the sofa, clawing each other like there was no tomorrow, whilst watching a shitty romantic film about "life" with a lot of crying. All is quiet, the only sounds protruding the silence is the mellow squeals of your neighbour ritually slaughtering a goat. Suddenly you both jump, your bodies are elevated and smashed against separate walls by the intense volume of the commercial break on the screen cutting out the terrible, but calm tuba solo of the film. It's like going from a harp number to Gene Simmons on sewing machine oil and lemonade.

Like the man you are, you know it's your job hauling yourself across the floor, to the sounds of your loved one's hysterical sobs, throwing yourself forward to grab the remote and turn down the volume, but even though you just saved both your lives, the only thing you can think of is that you won't get any tonight. And it's all the commercials fault.

Once, I went to my local cinema, and sitting there in the dusky dark waiting for the terrible mind raping experience of some Hollywood flick to start (I have my weak moments, like all the rest of you lot), AFTER having paid my 100 NOK / £ 10 / 5 $ / € 12 and being bled for another violation buying a bar of chocolate. During the intense ad marathon before the film started, there was an ad for the cinema itself, marketing possible private clients in the room, it informed us that "Nobody minds ads at the cinema - Advertise at Bergen Cinema".

Yeah… Yeah… People LIKE sitting 20 minutes in a dark room with strangers learning about chewing gum and sanitary pads. There was only so much I could do not to pull a Hulk there in the dark, jump up screaming, ripping off my shirt and spilling my precious chocolates into the afro of the person in front of me, foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog whilst running down the isle up to the big screen, falling onto my knees and screaming "why, god? Why?!"
Ok, I didn't do any of this, but leaving the cinema afterwards, I was cruel enough to NOT throw my waste in the bin. Take that, Bergen Cinema!

For those of you who have been deprived of contact with the opposite sex since birth, your first and foremost contact with ads is when you check your mailbox every morning (you know, the box outside your door, you modernistic bastard). No matter how well you know that death trap your mailman has left for you, you know you have to open that box to get your new issue of "Better Boobies Exclusive", and every time it's the same. Once you open that lid, brochures and fliers shoot up and out, smacking you in the face and burying you in a ton of pornographic ink fuse and diabolical paper, and none of your neighbours can help you, because they are all suffering the same fate. To help myself, I've put up bright stickers, approved by the Mail Service naturally, that say "No ads, please", or "Only addressed mail", but it never helps. Now and then an inattentive, or just pure evil mailman ignores the thirty stickers completely, and when I think I'll be safe checking my mail, in reality my hand is soon caught in an ad bear-trap when I put it in the mailbox, and I thrash around on the ground in a brutal death roll, thinking that that mailman will surely die for this.

The same thing happens a lot when I take the bus. Now, the only thing you can do on a bus is stare. And think. But when one of those things are taken away from you, you get angry, and you start writing about it online, like a sad degenerate. Like when the bus passed a parade of nude people protesting. Everybody on the bus were all eyes and mobile cams, but I, I was staring into a gigantic poster telling me how wonderfully fantastic this new phone company was. Ads stopped me from seeing naked people. Nothing makes people angrier than missing nudity!

Despite the hostility many show towards commercialism, working with commercials is still pretty popular. Even my own father got a job in a media and ad company a couple of years back. My first reaction was naturally shock, disbelief and a short trip up on the roof threatening to throw myself onto the spiked iron fence below, but when I had been tricked back down with candy and flattery, I tried to look on the bright side of it. I even visited my dad at work to meet his new colleagues, they were all very nice, too nice indeed, because they invited me to join their morning meeting, and I knew it was too late to escape when those huge, iron bolted doors were closed behind me and the Circle Master lit the black candles in the pentagram on the floor. They all started chanting the name of evil as I crawled into a foetal position in one of the corners with my doctor and pharmacist on speed dial, knowing all to well this would scar me for life.

Let me just make my point clear. I hate commercials, I hate ads. Unless it's used for promoting this wonderful blog, of course.

The Smoke-Break Syndrome

2008-04-26T20:43:00.012+01:00

I know smokers are on everybody's hate-list already, but to be honest, I don't really give a shit if I breathe in second hand smoke, farts, pollution, body odours or stupidity. Everyone has some unbreakable habit that annoys the hell out of others, unfortunately in most cases there are no angry mobs raging around every corner ready to put a stake through your heart if you let a bad joke rip, but I'm sure with the same amount of marketing, like anti-smoking campaigns, that can be arranged too.

No, let's get to the point. I don't smoke, it just happened that way because I'm not cool, I'm a neat freak and there's no room in my life for a second addiction after chocolate, but there will always be friends, parents and boyfriends that smoke. That's all fine and dandy, as long as they put out a candy dish to keep me satisfied, no, my beef with smokers is a very different one. It's the smoke-break syndrome.

If you are a crumble socially damaged like me, that'll probably be about 50% of you (I see you silent freaks on the bus every day trying to pretend I'm not staring at you, don't lie to me!), you will nod in agreement in just a few seconds. If not, get lost...till my next post that is.

So your boyfriend has taken you to meet some of his family, be it uncles, cousins or those other accidents we call family members, and you've never met any of them before. You put on your nicest dress, with the lowest level of tartiness, you smile and pretend you won't ever divorce his sorry ass when you're both 40 and ugly, and your boyfriend takes care of most of the talking, whilst you nod and contribute with a "yes", a "no" and a blatant lie about the delicious cake. All is well. Right?

Wrong. Suddenly, your smoking boyfriend gets up, pulls out a pack of cigarettes and moves towards the terrace door. Naturally he can't endanger the lives of others with that rusty, bloody knife he puts to his lips, nooo, and ruing aunt Maggie’s lovely acid yellow drapes, certainly not! He goes outside to smoke, and then it happens.

The empty faces of all his family members stare at you in anticipation. Silence smothers everything. Their eyes follow your every move, and that's when you start staring back. You don't know what to say, because you don't know them, you don't care to either, and you're too intelligent for stooping to the intense low of talking about the weather, clearly you can see from where you are sitting that your boyfriend has icicles hanging from his nose hairs out there. You all take turns looking at your boyfriend, trying to force him back in with telepathic threats of another world, you pretend to have an itch on your ankle just to have something to do, and somewhere a cat is dying outside, instantly you wish it was you. A chair creaks, an uncle coughs, someone has the decency to ask if you want another piece of cake, and even though you almost caught your death trying to get it down the right hole the first time in its awfulness, you grab it with both hands and say thank you five times and contemplate kissing the hands of the person offering it to you, till your boyfriend finishes his cigarette and comes back to end the silence continuum of social disturbance.

Oh, don't bloody act like it hasn't happened to you.

Dentists - Unorthodox Rapists

2008-04-20T00:14:00.001+01:00

It’s a beautiful springy day, ah, just smell that fresh fertilizer rich air as you get off the bus and cross the road to your mailbox, you find a penny on the street and do a little Chaplin-jump of pure joy, the kind that makes your passing neighbour cover the eyes of his little Cavalier King Charles spaniel just in case you’ve completely lost it, but it’s a good day, that’s all. Nobody tried to strangle you with a phone cord at work, and newspapers read “chocolate makes you a better person – proven facts!”. Maybe today will be the day for a mailbox filled to the brim with exotic parcels from less exotic admirers (like that scary bloke down the street with no eyebrows), free chocolate samples and free midget porn. Today is the day, indeed, nothing can burst your bubble now!

Except for that little card greeting you at the bottom of the mailbox, like a dead body in the pool, a chocolate stain on the back of your white trousers, a moustache on a ridiculously pretty man... It’s a notice on your annual appointment at the dentists.
You hear a violent scream, and soon realise it came from your own self. The postman, now returning to his car having done his job for the day, twirls around rapidly, and making a swishing movement with his hands screams: “I know Taekwando!”, but it’s not him you want to kill today, no matter how much rubbish he crams into your violated little mailbox on a daily basis, it’s yourself. You know you’re a grown-up now, no more begging for ice cream at the shop, no more playing with anorexic plastic dolls, and certainly no more mum and dad lying to you telling you you’re all going to the circus to get you to the dentist without anyone dying in the process.

Regular maintenance of your fangs is all that’s gonna keep you from a mental institution, if your parents weren’t lying about that too. Without your teeth looking all swanky you won’t get a job, you won’t get laid, and you can’t have any more hard candy. Now, I don’t know about you lot, but that last thing is what scares the hell out of me, and therefore I have accepted a certain evil into my life. I need to visit the dentist, but I won’t go without a fight.

The days after that fatal card, pass quicker than a sexy blonds musical career, you wake up bathing in your own sweat, and have a little swim before changing the sheets for the tenth time that night. Tuesday morning all your die hard friends show up at your door, forcing the bottle of vitamin pills that you’re threatening to kill yourself with out of your hands, as you hiss and spit like a snake on crack, but pretty soon they have you hogtied and helpless in the back of a Volkswagen on the way to the dentist.

I don’t know if I’m the only one to notice this, but the waiting room in a dentists office is always so bloody light and airy, like you’ve already died and gone to heaven, surely just another trick to make you fight the dying process in the dentist chair a bit less enthusiastically, but the stench of cleanliness and dentisty chemicals slap you in the face to remind you to keep fighting. Your friends seat you between a spotty kid with the whole bloody transsibirian railroad jammed into his mouth, and a sad case of a middle aged JAWS syndrome, can anyone say YATZI? As you sit there, watching the other tooth victims go through all the ladies magazines in hope of a glimpse of flesh, you start to wonder whether your fear of dentists is a tad bit irrational, until a chilling roar of immense pain from the next room shatter the glasses of the spotty railroad kid and makes your friends run for cover. Two seconds later you find yourself smeared onto the glass exit door, whilst three strong male dental secretaries round you up like a mad bull at a rodeo. You manage to get a hold of a wooden coat hanger, and rip off two pieces to form a cross against the unholiness of the situation, but once the gates of hell open into the dentists office, there’s no doubt in your mind that Jesus doesn’t care about your dental situation, unless your teeth touch alcohol or genitals.

And so, you find yourself strapped to the mechanical chair, with a bright Gestapo lamp stinging your eyes, and a shadowy figure of a man leaning over you whilst putting on latex gloves, which is never a good sign, unless... No, there are no unless’es, sorry. Some things I have learned about dentists during all these frightening sessions over the years, is that they always have gigantic nostrils. I sometimes like to think it’s nature’s way of distracting you from the pain, just like a terrible car accident you can’t stop staring at, even though blood is spraying everywhere, like a fountain. Also, they always lie to you when they say what they are about to do, because never ever, in 25 years, have I heard the words “immense pain” or “suffering”, come out of a dentists mouth.

So there he is, approaching you with some gigantic crude power tool in his hands, ready to violate you in the most passionate way he knows how. In truth, dentists are nothing but well educated, paid rapists, who just happen to rape you in the wrong orifice, with the wrong tools, but that’s a whole other political debate. You’ve finally had it, sneaking a hand out of the strap you’ve been fighting for ten minutes, you blind the dentist with a squirt of extra minty toothpaste, which leaves you just enough time to get to the door, diverting the two dental secretaries with a tiny mirror and various other pointy objects you grabbed whilst fleeing. Coughing up cotton balls in between the curses, you make it to the door, throw yourself out onto the street, cheering for joy. Cheering for the freedom, cheering for the sunshine, and the endless toothache that will make you a soup eating bastard the rest of your days... Oh well.

Cow-ntry Charm

2008-04-18T23:12:00.001+01:00

As we all know, western countries have an on-going issue with young people moving to the bigger cities and leaving their rural hometowns and farmland behind to be pecked at by crows and extremist Christians. As long as there is money to be had, it will be had in a cool environment, and let’s be honest, why spend your days looking at cows in the country when you can look at coffee shop cows in the city instead?

Norway is no different in this matter, we just have less people to go around, and therefore have more farmland and nature than cities, a farmland that is quickly turning into forests and muddy hell holes we love to praise in tourist brochures, but have the sense to never seek ourselves (Christ, we’d get our wooden clogs dirty!), because nobody is there to take over the family rake when the old folks take the final toss in the hay. So the youngsters flee for their lives, taking with them their abilities to ace playstation games and post cat fight videos on You Tube, and leaving the country originals behind to roam the fields alone... with cows,,, Let’s face it, that’s a scary combination.

And with the leaving of the masses, whole communities are shut down, the politicians spend their money on prostitutes and exclusive ornamented benches carved from Chinese über-expensive stone that was probably carried from the quarry to the shipping boat on the backs of poor, poor little polio-crooked and sniffling children with splinters in their achy toes. Fitting benches for a fitting park in a fetching city.

Fine, nobody wants to live in a place where the talk of the town is a runaway goat or a lost knitting pin at the church club. I live in quite a rural place, I actually moved here from quite an urban area a few years back, and that’s probably why I see the contrast like it were poo in snow, but I’m too ignorant to care. Either that, or I’m addicted to freaks and cows, like all you others are too, but you have the sense to view it from afar, online. What I keep wondering, in between how good I would look in a cowskin cape, is what made the country such a shitty place in the first place? Did it just become shitty because everyone left and took the cake with them? Or was it just always shitty? Is the country indeed just a grander version of Mariah Carey?

I don’t care much for extensive cultural diversity or a pulsating entertainment industry where I live, like theatres, cinemas, brothels etc., but I don’t care much for the local film club at the church either. I swear the same educational black and white film about the “Hitler Jugend” has been running in a loop since 1947 every Thursday night. The post office, bank and café shut down years ago, when the local authorities decided to spend the money financing designer sofas in the main offices in the city, and I’m sure, in a few years time, they are gonna start shutting down the benches, road signs and trees that are still here, to ship them off to some third world country in dire need of rest, directions and trees to fall over them and kill them during the next hurricane.

Come, come, the stout farmers out here don’t mind shuffling the snow off the eleven mile long road to the nearest city every winter, it just makes them stronger for the annual log carrying contest in the spring. And a little odd. The shops sell nothing but coffee grains, cat food, enema’s and prunes, if you are so unfortunate to stumble upon an acquaintance, no matter how little you know them, you will be sucked into a vortex of trivial shit talk about the weather and crops, oh, and the weather, and when you start screaming hysterically after 30 minutes of meaningless sentence filling words like “well, well”, “that’s just the way it is”, “those pesky kids”, they start asking who exactly you were again.

The people left behind in the country can easily be divided into three categories: There are the old nazi-hating grannies and gramps who built the whole town with their own hands, and who now terrorise teenagers with the stench of blue mold cheese and old diapers. Their favourite past time activities are blocking the isles at the local shops on Saturdays, going to church and punishing the younger heathens and sinners still at home sleeping off Saturday night’s woo-hoo’s, with church bells, and making the sidewalks and nature paths unsafe with their electrical wheelchairs.

Then there are the poor unknowing immigrants and asylum seekers that, immediately after getting their residence permits, walk across the street from the Reception Centre for Refugees and rent the first apartment they come across. Like all the others. Still, they show quite a lot of creativity when it comes to shouting curses to native Norwegian girls in miniskirts passing by.

I believe the third, and last, kind of country dwellers may very well be the answer to why birth rates plummet, scorches and dies. They are the freaks, the originals, the cross-eyed Bob and Anne, who wear the same golf attire every day and tend to dry hump the cashier at the local shop if they go shopping alone. Noooo, it’s not right to make fun of people’s dysfunctions you may say, unless it’s obesity, but hear me out. The day the local politicians prioritised buying a new church altar in solid gold for the 10 die hard Christians still left here, instead of spending the money on chaperones for horny and hungry mental cases, I STOPPED CARING.

Notice, I will not talk about the usual teenagers that spend every night drinking classy homemade brews and go on a pissing spree on their mopeds to rebel against prices on furry review mirror dices for their cool cars, and that is because they are actually the NORMAL ones out here.

Perhaps letting the forests enclose small country towns actually is for the best, that means more time spent chopping wood, and less molesting cows. Not that I will oppose to the exotic fresh breath of genes that would introduce to Incestville...

Shark attack!

2008-04-13T23:30:00.000+01:00

Being Singled Out

2008-04-13T23:22:00.002+01:00

I accidentally came over an interesting political TV-debate the other day. Of course I will throw in an “oh, of course I frequently watch a lot of political debates on more important issues than what I am about to tell you about, all the time, all the time!”, before I tell you that it was about single people, and how they should have the same tax benefits and economical safety nets as married people. The topic really caught my interest, as I, amongst many other hipsters my age, actually like being single, to a certain degree, or just have been involuntarily single since forever because I suffer from the Seinfeld dating syndrome that renders me unable to not go hysterical over other people’s annoying quirks, and therefore I am left sad and alone, with need for a bigger lotion budget.

To me it sounds logical that singles should have tax cuts, being the only one to chip in on the rent every month, but a little text box at the bottom of the screen, enabling viewers of the show to share their sick opinions on the matter with the rest of the nation, showed I had a world of simpletons against me. One woman’s opinion in particular caught my attention though. She thought tax cuts for singles was outrageous, seeing as being single was completely voluntarily.

Oh really?

I don’t know what hippie crack generation this woman grew up in, but let me introduce her to the scene that takes place in all the bars and night clubs all over the country, hell, all over the world for that matter (welcome in, foreigners, now settle down). Saggy tits and steelhairy women’s legs popping out of way too tight pink tube tops and mini skirts, after dusk, like a reversed Cinderella fairytale. On the other side of the dirty bar, male chicken breasts are puffed up and doughy beer bellies sucked in to the spine, as the Ukrainian techno beats start their beautiful message of love and sheep. Standing close enough to other people will expose you to painful pick up lines and conversations, like ... (insert terrible or comical pick up line from last night, you know you have one).

In the toilets, dead drunken, divorced middle aged women toss about their lunch, dinner and cocktails all over the dirty porcelain, to the background sound of hysterical fourteen year old girls crying their mascara off in showers because one of them got dumped during the night. Back at the dancefloor, elderly, pasty and overweight men trail the crowd, shiny Kojak skulls and saggy trousers, blinking their eyes at anything that is still considered a mammal, having to fight off immigrants from all parts of the world just happy to be able to get laid without having to marry anyone, or anything.

Think about it. You won’t have to try too hard, because I know you’ve seen this. These are the beautiful souls you are supposed to bring home and tell intimate secrets about yourself to, like how you’re afraid of clowns and Tom Jones, and then let that person loose at family gatherings, where the story of how you wee’d in all your mothers guests shoes that one time when you were three will ricochet across the room, in between dead dry cake crumbles and luke warm coffee. This is the person you will share a bank account with, knowing that half your income will be spent on shiny, pink, crystal unicorns or geeky cosplay action figures. This is the person that will raise your kids to believe that “Desperate Housewives” is as good as life gets, and soon you will start to agree, quoting the show every now and then, like a proper Hitler-jugend would.

Yeah, yeah, I know, most people don’t even meet their significant others in bars, but through friends or at school, but SOMEONE has to be friends of friends of that scary bunch filling those night clubs every evening. We just don’t like to admit that sometimes horniness takes us to a dark place.
Either way it can’t be said that we choose this lifestyle of loneliness completely voluntarily, it would be like saying all Iraqis love Americans because they don’t all go busting a bazooka-cap in their American asses. From a distance, the opposite sex can be kind of cute, kind of like lion cubs are, before you put your fingers through the fence and discover a new way of screaming.

Sure there is a small community of hard boiled singles that actually enjoy being alone all the time, but usually their need for solace is followed by an incredible amount of involuntary body gases and intimate itches. It may very well seem like young people today have become so egocentric and focused on their own special needs, that we would all be superstars under a microscope. The perfect mate has become a believable reality now that we can talk to anyone everywhere online, see genitals in free flow on webcams for free, and if you no longer can find a perfect mate in a café or bar, you can order him or her online, no one gives a shit, unless you try to pay in cash. Which reminds me of an urgent matter; where the hell is my 2 metres tall Christian Bale clone, delivered complete with batteries, a loin cloth and serving tray??
Still, having all these opportunities of finding the perfect mate only leaves us in realisation of one thing, even the world isn’t big enough for our special partner needs.

Some things just don’t work as well when you’re alone. Who’s gonna file a missing person’s report when you following a drastic Mexican dinner, where you showed off by juggling five chilli’s with your tonsils and had a swallowing accident, end up in the bathroom for five days with the complete collection of Conan the Barbarian comic books, chewing the shower curtain in this ritual to manhood?
Who will you send as a trusty representative at boring family parties when there’s a really important football match on, and your cousin has squeezed out a pair of twins that need to be praised for hours on end?

Personally I’ve come to the point where I don’t really get excited by much other than chocolates and pretty, shiny things (no unicorns yet). I’ll function just fine on my own when I go insane and start eating cat food whilst watching women’s football, but i bloody want a tax reduction whilst being that damn happy.

Rodney King flies again!

2008-03-24T17:01:00.001Z

I decide to walk home from work one dark winter night, understand this, where I live, sidewalks are a rarity on such quiet, narrow, Norwegian mountain goat country roads, where fat-ass American SUV’s and humans live side by side in perfect harmony, until someone dies. And so it has been since WW2, I swear to God I can still smell the German curse words mixed in with the asphalt. Anyway, I’m starting to sound like my grandmother, there I am, walking along, when suddenly the headlights of a car hit my face, and it rolls up beside me. “POLICE”, it says on the doors, and loe and behold, there are even two COPS sitting inside, rolling down their windows.

Just as my brain starts realising what those big, bold letters on the car door really mean, everything starts moving in slow motion. Panic floods me, adrenaline slides through my veins like ADD-children on a water slide, my impressive collection of back hair stands up in awe to get a better look, and my whole body goes into escape-mode. Suddenly, throwing myself, head first, over the fence to my right, tumbling down the grassy hill towards the concrete factory down there at the water’s edge, where the dogs are waiting with forks and aprons and tiny salt shakers, hitting the icy water and drowning like a pathetic villain seems just right at that moment, even though I’ve never done a scrap of evil my entire life. Weeeell, ok, there was this one incident when I was about three years old, in the sandbox, with a red plastic bucket that strictly speaking wasn’t mine, oh, like you haven’t ever experienced acute plastic colour blindness?? Look it up!

So I’m still standing there, my life flashing before my eyes, at least the three last hours I can still recall, toes curling in my shoes, cold sweat breaking through the deep and intense fear wrinkles on my forehead, and all I can think of is that I have two chocolates in my handbag that I can’t take full responsibility for not being loaded with marihuana or ecstasy by some angry chocolate factory employee with a grudge against blonds with intense chocolate cravings. Fucking factory workers, I knew they’d be the end of me!

“You’re wearing really dark clothes, so I want to give you a reflector”, says the female cop behind the wheel, and her male, pussy whipped feminism victim sidekick that’s not allowed to drive because he wee’s standing up, nods and backs her up with a “yeah, you are kind of dark”, and they proceed to laugh a little, probably some kind of calming behaviour they learned in Terrorism Class. Now get this, it’s not illegal to not wear a reflector in this country, but you get harassed by drivers and treated like a lepra patient if you don’t value your life enough to walk around looking like a neon-version of the Michelin man.

The female cop starts roaming her pockets for a reflector to give me, as I ponder whether I’m in the first faze of a new Rodney King episode, the way they keep referring to me being so “dark”, and the coppy way they make their hands look like guns, making those cheesy clicking noises with their mouths, like they were in a Beastie Boys “Sabotage” tribute video. In the dark all cats seem grey, or something like that, and cops still wear batons and have painful elbows, so I went for one of my all time trustworthy girlie-smiles, the kind that melts grannies hearts and make your uncles wanna touch you in inappropriate places, accepted the reflector bowing and scraping myself against the asphalt, and yes, I do admit, there wasn’t much keeping me from actually touching the ground with my bare lips, whilst I sobbing promised to never, ever, never do what I had done again, whatever that was all about, but I didn’t kneel for Zod. No, no, the inner strength you think you have, when watching American cop series where stupid murderers are grilled under a Gestapo lamp whilst they give away EVERYTHING in a high pitched girlie voice, laughing so confidently and being so sure that YOU would NEVER give away anything, that assurance is gone like a bar of chocolate in a woman’s hand.

I admit it now, I lied like I had never lied to anyone before, about how I hadn’t planned to walk home that night, and that the buses only came once every solstice out there in the country. I even made room for a cute chuckle I thought would make them fly at me, heads first and batons second, but they seemed convinced by my blond plaits and school girl smile, and let me run along, without taking me down to the sound of screaming sirens and emergency code callings, something I at times now find slightly disappointing. Grabbing my reflector and thanking them for it, I got out of there faster than any drug can make you think you’re running.

And the moral of the story?
Before the police threw themselves at me that night, it had never even occurred to be to lie to anyone, it’s simply too much for my simple female brain to hatch out, but my local Police District has made me a raging criminal! I’ve lied to the police, and I’m not even ashamed about it. Next step on the ladder to crime is smoking, drinking, crack and downloading music online. Next time I see a cop car I’ll know that trip over the fence and into a certain death in the icy water will be worth it, to stay an example citizen of my community.

And I never go anywhere without my reflector.

Bananasheiks

2008-03-24T15:56:00.000Z

Where clothes go to die

2008-02-03T21:03:00.001Z

Most of us are all too familiar with the ancient mystery of the disappearing left foot sock during laundry. If you’ve never heard of this phenomena, it probably means that your mommy is still doing your laundry for you, and that only increases chances of her also picking out your clothes, your dirty magazines, she mashes your potatoes for dinner and kisses you nite nite before she tucks you in with your teddy and local tart every night. I’ve had my fair share of sock mysteries during my short life, and I’ve experienced the immense terror of having to wear my baby brother’s neon-purple Teletubbies socks to school after having had a wild wrestle match with 32 single socks in my drawer. At times my struggles have gone so far that I’ve actually considered painting or tattooing the socks directly onto my feet, once I even came up with a theory that my socks are gay and in dire need of some homo exorcism at my local church, but it would only be cheaper to buy new socks, and thus I was fooled into the docile stillness of stupidity and never ending socklessness.

Still, some days I just give up and wear unmatching socks, I mean, it’s not that big of a deal unless you’re walking around with one West Ham United supporter sock on one foot, and “I HATE FOOTBALL” on the other. Then missing socks will be the least of your worries.

Although it makes a thrilling topic, the issue of missing socks isn’t really my main target in this text. I’m cranking it up one level, yes, I know, how will you manage to keep calm in proximity to such intense excitement? Settle down children, I want to discuss the topic of missing CLOTHES. Tell me you’ve never experienced waking up after a long, steamy night dreaming of Benny Hill lifting you up on his white steed and doing unmentionable things to both you and the steed, throwing yourself in the shower and coming out only to discover that you don’t have a single decent piece of clothing to wear? I mean, sure, you’ve still got your leather vest and cap, but you weren’t really feeling up for an aching ass that particular day.

What you don’t know at that instant, is the evil pact forged the day before, when you thought you were doing good by putting your dirty clothes in the laundry basket. A pact between your favourite shirt and the washing machine. All you know is that you’re left naked, wobbly, and late for work. At first you’ll find yourself head first in the dirty laundry basket hissing your way through week-old undies and sweaty shirts with various crusts of delight, you could have reached China if not for the nice men in white clothes that come to get you and make it all better again. And so, straight-jacket it is, problem solved.

I personally enthusiastically believe the theory of clothes being living beings that are easily insulted and very grumpy. If you ever leave home without your raincoat, you know it’s gonna rain like hell all day, and who’s the one getting wet? Your clothes.

If you’re on a blind date, after twenty-two years of desperate celibacy that is threatening to clog up your lovetubes, and the guy looks like he’s thrown himself off a high story building into a meat grinder, only to become his German surgeons personal sex toy for 3 years, until he got released yesterday, and his personality matches his lovely exterior. Who’s the one getting up close and person with this freak when he, during the first five seconds of the cinema ads throws himself over you like a licking-mad rabid dog during mating season, and you reach for your acid pills from the really-bad-date-I’d-like-to-die-now-please-kit in your purse? Once again, it’s your clothes. And when you finally find some man worthy of genitalia-mixing, who doesn’t get to be part of the fun, but instead is thrown mercilessly onto the cold, lonely floor before you both do mortale backflips into the bed and fornicate till your DNA fizzes all over the place? YOUR CLOTHES, for God’s sake!

Only special clothes ever get to attend fancy parties, the expensive elite of your clothes, so it wouldn’t be outrageous to claim that us humans are practicing a form of clothes apartheid. Are we clothes racists? Are our best clothes the superior race that gets to live large and hang in the nice closets, and our everyday, grey clothes have to slave all day with you at work, school, the gym and terrible dates, only to be flocked together in small, dusty concentration-closets?

If all this is true, perhaps clothes aren’t that fond of staying alive for long periods of time, thus they need a place to die, free from shame and suffering. After all, clothes don’t last forever, unless you’re Ötzi the ice man, and that’s just not a good pose for anyone. Some clothes choose to die with style, whilst you are wearing them, when you’re bending over to pick up your bus pass you just dropped on the bus floor, with your bum towards the rest of the passengers, especially right in the panorama-view of that hunky chap right at the front, and the silence is shattered by the tearing sound of your trousers’ bottom parts going their separate ways, right before you throw yourself into the back of the bus, wanting to die, because you know that day, and that day only you were wearing your Kermit panties, and sew the pieces of your humiliated bum back together again with toilet paper or dental floss, at work. Other clothes are more discrete and just wait till they are in the laundry basket. That’s when they sneak away silently, like poachers in the night, until you’ve attained a new love handle or three, and you can’t fit into them anymore. That’s when they mystically reappear for a new life on your little sister’s well-shaped fourteen year old ass.

Perhaps one day we might be so lucky as to get a glimpse of this lost world, in an exciting expedition behind the washing machine, narrated by David Attenborough himself, where we’ll wander around aimlessly for days until we find that mythical place...Where clothes go to die.

The Curse of the Cinema Snacks

2007-10-14T19:14:00.001+01:00

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...

On average Norwegians and Strawberries

2007-10-14T18:15:00.001+01:00

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.

The Birds

2007-10-14T17:07:00.001+01:00

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.

T-shirt for that very sensitive man

2007-10-14T03:00:00.000+01:00

Tales of Terror - I've become my dad

2007-10-14T01:46:00.001+01:00

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!

Why God has to be a woman

2007-10-14T01:40:00.001+01:00

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.

Headstrong debut - Eat me!

2007-10-14T00:24:00.000+01:00