Yes, I said retard, so sue me!

Working nights has a way of turning your life upside down, and quite frankly I’m happy I won’t be doing it much longer. It’s not so much the working part that bothers me, not even the late factor. It’s just the impact it seems to have on my days, my sleeping patterns and my life.. It’s something that just sorta came to me this “morning” while I was brewing my morning coffee and scrambling a few eggs at the bright and early hour of 1 PM.. I’ve never really been a morning person, but I realized it’d been a while since I’d even been out of bed before 10 AM which is rather depressing considering that by the time I then get up and get ready for the day, most of my friends and whatever have been at it for several hours.. Then I’ve got to finish my six hours of work on the thesis and possibly put in a hour on whatever other chores I have to do.. And by the time I’m done with that, a lot of normal people would be about ready to call it a night.. Woo! Did I mention I’m pretty happy I’m only doing this part time night work till September?

Either way, it’s been a fun day.. In so much as reviewing and testing code can be considered fun.. It’s a pretty relaxing chore for me anyways, it’s just a slow and lengthy process.. That at the same time makes you feel both really smart and real stupid-like. Because, if you’re like me, you can’t help but at times be impressed with the ingenuity of some of your own solutions.. While at pretty much the same time being downright appalled by the stupidity of some of your errors.. Long story short, it took about six hours, but my code and the results thereof are starting to look somewhat decent and presentable.. Yay me! A few more hours tomorrow should do the trick and then we’re ready to write some more documentation and set up some meetings with my mentor to show off and hopefully not get slammed too badly.

Speaking of getting slammed, that’s about the only other thing that has really happened today. As some of you may have noticed, I woke up to this rather amusing comment accusing me of using my endearing comment about Tina being “adorably retarded” as a way to “make myself look cool by demeaning people with special needs” Okay.. Yeah.. Right, that’s exactly what I was trying to do.. Look, I know me.. And I’m not cool.. Why would I try to make myself look cool? If anything, I’m demeaning myself by being perfectly honest about a lot of the really dumb shit I do in my life. If you’ve come here for political correctness, then I’m sorry, but you’re in the wrong place. I’m not very politically correct and I never will be.. I am, however also neither cool nor mean, so if you see demeaning on here, you can be pretty sure that it’s either targeted towards myself or jokingly against the people I love and care about (or, quite possibly, Chad Kroeger and Fred Durst, but they’re fucktards, they deserve it).

Calling Tina a retard is no more meant as an attack on people with special needs than it is meant to imply that she really is mentally retarded. If you really want to employ faulty logic here, you might as well say that it’s an endearment of retarded people, given how much I care about Tina.. Or, we could just stick to the facts and not read meanings that aren’t there into random innocent statements.. It’s funny how political correctness seems to have suddenly become more important to some people than personal hygiene. I mean, come on, have just at least a hint of a sense of humor and stop taking everything so gosh-darn serious.

I find it strangely ironic that I happen to know several people who work with people with special needs, or have relatives with ditto, who have a much more relaxed view of things and a better sense of humor about the situation in general than the poster of the most recent comment..

That being said, I’m sorry if anybody feels the need to be offended by my writings, but this is my life, my thoughts and my blog.. And this is who I am: I’m loud, I drink, cuss, swear.I say and do a lot of stupid shit, and I have a borderline rough sense of humor which some people love and other’s hate. That’s just who I am, and this is my place to vent and express whatever I want and I stand by my right to do just that..

Now, can we please move on?

The Ghost of Michael Jackson and the Youtube generation

Wait, what? Yeah, so.. I saw this silly piece of footage on Youtube earlier today:

It’s supposedly a clip from Larry King Live on CNN showing an anormality spotted on camera at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. Umm, okay.. Yeah.. So, anyways, clips like these aren’t new on Youtube, but unlike most others, apparently this one got a fuck of a lot of attention.. And a lot of comments to boot!

Now, the obvious downside to social media and user-generated content is that everybody and their mother can offer their two cents on the issues. And apparently with this surfacing now everybody and their mother and/or dog is an expert on the paranormal.. Which wouldn’t actually be that bad, if it weren’t for the fact that there are a hell of a lot of idiots out there!

I don’t know about you, but I can think of a lot of reasons for an unidentified shadow caught on tape, not many of which are very paranormal. Heck, if that there is the ghost of the King of Pop, then the King of Pop makes several daily manifestations in my living room! Though, these usually coincide with people walking past my windows or the sun reflecting off something and casting a shadow.

Still, I spent some time looking at comments and was kinda confused by what I saw. Most people spent no time in sweeping away rational arguments with comments such as “Oh, that there is no reflection/shadow/trick of light!” with no reasoning whatsoever.. While proudly stating their reputation on it “definitively being paranormal” with such good reasoning as “because it looks like Michael Jackson” or “it just can’t possibly be a shadow” .. Really, let’s jump to conclusions, shall we? It’s a three second event on a piece of live footage that has not been examined by experts, and with no way of knowing who or what may have been in the vicinity when this was shot, info on lighting or anything.. Surely it can’t be a shadow or reflection of a person or something passing by outside.. That’s silly talk!

Now, now, I’ve had my share of “paranormal” experiences, but I call them that because they defied every logic explanation I’ve thrown at them and have usually been experienced or confirmed by others, not because “They’re paranormal.. Coz yeah!” – When did we become so inclined to believe that we’ll not even try to listen to reasoning before making up our minds?

But wait, that’s not all.. No, there’s more! See, the paranormal explanation isn’t the only one.. No-no, the conspiracy theorists are at it, too.. And what they want us to believe is that the footage has been doctored! “Since there is no natural explanation,” they conclude, “the film must have been tampered with!” Again, I fail to see how they rule out a natural explanation, but let’s leave it at that, turn the board on them and go “Why?” – So far the most entertaining answer I’ve heard to this question has been that of: “CNN did it to boost ratings!” .. Again.. Wait? What? First off, I hardly think Larry King Live needs better ratings, certainly not on a day where the topic at hand is the death of Michael Jackson.. Secondly: Wait? What? CNN, the biggest news network in the world, choses to boost their ratings and increase their number of views by airing bogus footage of a ghostly encounter at Neverland? With no further mention of the incident what-so-ever? Guys, sorry, but I don’t think you’ll be seeing CNN airing a “Ghosts are real, and you saw it first on Larry King Live!” story any time soon.. It’s all about a few small things called “keeping it serious” and “credibility in the media world.”

Incidentally this revolutionary theory were set forth by a couple of Danes in a comment threat where they, not five minutes earlier had entertained themselves with comments about Americans being stupid and gullible.. Kinda ironic, isn’t it?

Either way, since we’re apparently at a place now where we don’t need to provide reasoning or backing for our arguments and opinions, I’ll pass my judgement on the footage now: “There is most certainly a natural explanation for this footage because, yeah!”

I like you better in Tequila form!

Following my trip to see AC/DC in Copenhagen, I’ve spent a few days regrouping, restituting and recovering in Nyborg at my dad’s and his family. It’s been an all-together good experience with me doing what I do best: Eating other people’s food and drinking their expensive beers and wines.

As a new bonus, my dad has actually gotten with the program, pole vaulted into the 21^st century and bought a wireless router, so I now have Internet connectivity on my laptop when I’m here. Well, okay, that’s a truth with modifications, thing is, it’s down right now so I haven’t actually got Internet at the moment. Either way, it’s caused me to keep up somewhat with the outside world and work on my thesis alongside goofing off.. Oh, and doing yard work!

No, this is true.. Johan doing yard work! I know, that does sound odd, and yes, I had no idea what I was doing most of the time. But I got suckered into it yesterday anyways. All I was doing was really trying to take a walk to clear my head and somehow I got pulled into helping out. Not that I really knew what I was doing as I stomped along in the garden sporting my $200 designer shoes and looking utterly lost, but I managed to rake a lot of soil.. And apparently destroy a lot of would be plants in the process.. I will claim no responsibility for this, though, I made it fully clear to everybody that I had no idea what I was doing before being left to fend for myself!

The end result was a unanimous decision that it would probably be better if I just returned to my books.. Which I gladly did, but not before – in true Johan fashion – wrecking complete havoc and causing myself sufficient amounts of pain and bodily harm. See, I decided on completing one final task before returning to the books – namely helping one of the neighbors dispose of my dad’s mom in law’s Agave.

Anybody here know anything about Agave? Well, I didn’t.. Other than the obvious fact that it’s a cacti-like plant which is used in the production of tequila (count on me to know this and nothing else). Apparently it’s also a really decorative thing that will eventually grow pretty damn huge, at which point your dad’s mom in law might want to get rid of it.. And that’s where my learning process began. As it turns out, agaves not only sport torns that sting like a motherfucker, their juice is also part of their natural defenses and as such is a grade A irritant to most mammals.. Humans included. Again, no one had bothered to tell me, so I showed up for the disposing process wearing nothing but gloves and a t-shirt.

Things went well for a good long while. The agave plant itself was located in the dear old lady’s basement and my helping hand, the neighbor had already been wise enough to cut down the plant sufficiently as for us not to get stung by the needles and reduce the weight… Smart that. We now only had a 120 pound root and a few exposed branches dripping with fresh juice to carry to a conveniently placed dumpster down the street. So I grabbed the thing with my exposed arm and off we went.. And things were good for a good long while until we started struggling with getting the damn cacti-like thing out of the pot and I started feeling a mild stinging sensation in my arm. The ensuing conversation went something like this.

Me: “I thought you said you’d cut the thorns off”

Neighbor: “I did!”

Me: “Then why do I feel this… Holy fuck.. Ow!”

Neighbor: “What?”

(At this time we both look down on my exposed arm and see red rashes starting to form in several places)

Me: “Well, this is a problematic result..”

Neighbor: “Doesn’t that hurt?”

Me (whimpering ever so slightly): “Somewhat?”

Neighbor: “You’re not allergic to these kinda things, are you? You should probably go wash that.. And maybe let Birthe know just in case you start falling over or anything..”

Me: “Thanks, that’s really reassuring, I’ll go do that”

And with that, I left the neighbor to bring the empty pots home and went to wash my arm which was, by the way, now burning ever so slightly more than my face did the last time I fell into a wasps’ nest.. And yet, as I stood there alternating between washing my arm in cold water and in soothing aloe lotion, I couldn’t help but giggle a little at my own ingenuity when it came to constantly finding new ways of hurting myself.

I eventually calmed down enough to go look up into on the agave plant only to find that articles about it contained serious health warnings saying that contact with the juice of most agaves will cause acute inflammation and blistering of the skin lasting up to two weeks and itching sensations lasting up to a year after the inflammation has died down.. “Swell,” I thought, “once again something that could have been brought to my attention yesterday!”

But I’m not one to complain, really, the acute burning sensation died down after some ten hours and is now only a bit of an itchy sensation which is a lot easier to ignore. my skin has now gone from bright red to interestingly dry, striped and blistered. Iffy as that may sound, it’s actually a huge improvement. I sure hope it doesn’t wear on for a year, though, I could think of better things to do with my time than spending it resisting the urge to scratch my arm.

And I can think of better things to do with agaves and agave juice than causing bodily hard to innocent computer geeks.. I’ll stick to the tequila next time, thank you very much, at least that way I’ll only have myself to blame for any resulting bodily injuries or discomfort.

Also, I think I’ve had my fair share of yard work for the summer now. If I ever get rich enough to own a house with a large garden, my main priority will be to also get rich enough to be able to hire a gardener! Hah!

Eurotrip 2009, Day 1: Kolding – Brussels: The Long Hard Road Into Hell

Following a lot of discussion and calculations, Tina and I had decided that our epic journey towards Brussels would start at 7 AM which was all fine and dandy except that none of us are really morning persons, so the aspect of getting up at 6 AM really wasn’t that thrilling. Especially not for myself who had been working the night before and only made it home at 1 AM thanks to my colleague covering a bit for me and a German cabbie who offered me a fun but expensive ride home.

 

Regardless, we somehow managed to get up at 6 AM, me after about two hours of interrupted sleep and Tina after a little more but with a cold or whatever to add to her not feeling too fresh and chirpy in the morning. After a bit of texting back and forth, many of them containing phrases along the lines of “fucking hell it’s early in the morning!”, Tina arrived by car and picked me and my various belongings up from outside my house at 7:15. I happened to be carrying both luggage, dinner for Friday music for the ride and various bottles of wine so I was quite happy with the whole picking me up arrangement.

 

The task ahead of us was seemingly simple: We were stocked up on coffee, rock music, we had a map and driving instructions courtesy of Google Maps (long live Web 2.0!). We had four countries, 800 kilometers and a 7h20m ride ahead of us.. But as we know by now, in the world of the Johan, nothing is quite as simple as it looks on paper.. But that’s not to say that things didn’t go well for a while..

 

Having poured ourselves a cup of coffee, we tore into the rising sun to the tune of Marilyn Manson’s “Antichrist Superstar”, turned onto the motorway and headed due south, making the border in no time and chatting happily as we crossed into Germany where I jumped right into the role of idiot tourist and started snapping pictures of such idiotic things as German rest stops.

 

The German Autobahn (motorway) is a pretty interesting place: They’re large, wide, built for speed (there are in fact, in most places, no real speed limits) and in certain places in horrible conditions.. Which I guess is not too surprising as they were built in Hitlers pre WWII Germany – that is to say the 1930. Luckily, a lot is being done to fix this, but what no one had told us was that this very effort was going on at this very time – in a lot of different places all at once. As a result, during the course of our trip, we were  to become frighteningly familiar with the German concept “Stau!” Stau is a concept generally feared by Danes and other tourists alike. It refers to traffic or congestion that can seemingly pop out of nowhere in certain places and last for hours and kilometers on end. Some cases are worse than others but once you’re stuck there’s generally no way of knowing when you’ll be out and moving again.. As such, road signs of “Staugefahr!” (danger of congestion) have become dreaded signs for Danes heading down the German Autobahn.. And let’s just say, we saw our fair share of these signs and had our fair brushes with the Stau experience.

 

 

Stau on the Autobahn.. A bit of a tight squeeze we're in!

 

First time around, it really wasn’t too bad, only unexpected. When traveling over Hamburg, which we did, you can generally expect to get stuck in or around the tunnel leading under the river Elb simply because there are a lot of cars that need to go down some essentially old and very narrow tunnel tubes. By stuck of luck, we didn’t get stuck here.. But we did get stuck in a bit of road work around 70 kilometers north of Hamburg.. Our first brush with Stau which lasted a little under an hour and really wasn’t too bad (on me at least) because we spent the time chatting, scaring the passengers of random (slowly) passing cars by blasting rather a lot of Slipknot rather loud, and just generally laughing at weird sights and passing cars.

 

All things considered, we made it through pretty quickly and tore through the Elb tunnel where, owing to cosmic karma, we didn’t get stuck. We emerged on the other side and drove by Hamburg’s industrial harbor, which is a pretty amazing sight, and continued due south before turning westward on Autobahn A1, passing more road construction work and general mayhem without getting too stuck and eventually made our first pitstop at one of the more fascinating places I’ve ever been to! See, Germans employ another strange concept that I’ve chosen to refer to as “Pimp my Rest Stop”-ism! Apparently, in an effort to draw customers and seem better than the next man, Germans create really luxurious and stylish rest stops featuring strangely appealing architecture, an array of services, shops, restaurants and various forms of accommodations.. It’s all rather confusing and fun! The place we arrived at, I immediately christened “The Burger King Motel” because that’s essentially what it was.. A combination of a Burger King franchise and a motel.. With a restaurant, a cafeteria, service station, small shops and various other goodies thrown in.. Including the fanciest rest rooms I’ve ever seen – a German struck of genius that’d make even the Japanese go “Whoa!”

 

 

The Burger King Motel!

 

The toilets were so fancy, actually, that they set you back 0.50 Euro to use.. And no cheating!! No, they actually had coin operated turnstiles at the entrance! But.. Those .50 Euro were well spent.. For starters, your hard spent money earns you a .50 Euro voucher you can redeem when purchasing stuff from the shops or restaurants , secondly they give you access to a strange, brave new world of high tech toiletry.. We’re talking soothing colors, soft music, self-cleaning toilets, censor operated faucets and tissue dispensers.. And nice recordings of pleasant female voices greeting you in several European languages.. I was so taken aback by the whole experience that I actually got lost on my way out, much to the amusement of the cleaning lady and Tina who was waiting for me outside.

 

Still weary from my bathrooming experience, we stocked up on water and Red Bull from the service shop amidst greetings of good morning which I found kinda weird seeing as I’d already been up for five hours, but then realized it was still only 10:30 AM. We then went on to the Burger King part of the “Burger King Motel” and got our eat on. I, being really overly tired and wired on caffeine, had a good time laughing at Tina for ordering about twice the amount of food I did.. Which really wasn’t that funny in retrospect, as she actually ate less than I normally would have, but I was seriously sleep deprived.. So it seemed funny at the time.

 

Having finished our early lunch, we piled back in the car, blasted more rock and metal and headed on, sipping our precious Red Bulls and looking for trouble. Red Bulls are always a fun part of visiting Germany. They’re understandably outlawed in Denmark because of the more or less lethal addition of various vitamins and what have you in obscene quantities.. So sipping them in other countries make you feel kinda like an outlaw while you get to enjoy one of the few energy drinks that actually have an effect.. The subsequent sugar crash is another story all-together, but I figured out that the trick was to keep drinking and not worry too much about your intake of vitamin B soaring over 2000% of your recommended daily intake.

 

But I digress.. Back to the story which now took a turn for the worse. Apparently the A1 is undergoing really heaving renovation and expansion, so saying that it was a road working hell is probably putting it mildly.  We got more or less stuck in countless kilometer long stretches of construction or seeming deconstruction, but it really wasn’t too bad until we hit the stretch of road heading into the fair city of Bremen – and a 70 kilometer stretch of road work goodness. It was interesting to say the least. We were stuck in traffic for god knows how long and when we finally started moving again, we realized that they’d actually closed down an entire stretch of the Autobahn and were leading the traffic off of it and onto the smaller roads in the greater Bremen area. You’d think this was a problem for a couple of happy go lucky Danes cruising through Europe with only a couple of Google Maps directions to aid them.. And you’d be wrong, because Tina and I are awesome! 

 

We spent a fair time navigating by use of common sense, sheer fucking luck, general traffic, a sense of direction and a Dutch car in front of us which we figured was heading towards Holland – the same direction as we were going.. Only they eventually stopped so we were on our own.. And still somehow made it out of there alive on the first try.. And right back onto the A1 when it opened up again. Which we thought was pretty f’ing cool and spared no expense in congratulating each other and ourselves on our awesomeness.. The only minor problem being that the whole thing had set us back about another two hours. So by now we were about five hours into our journey and had only made it about half way to Brussel. So we took advantage of the no speed limit part of the German Autobahn concept and sped on towards the Dutch border with no mentionable complications other than a rest stop for gas and more Red Bull, and the by now ever so common stretches of slow moving traffic due to so-called infrastructure improvements.

 

 

Being led off the motorway at the Dutch border, this is the only pic I managed before the MPs showed up

 

Holland, it turned out, was.. Not as fun as I remembered it.. For starters their border checkpoints kinda looked like something out of the Cold War. We’re not really used to passport control in Western Europe these days owing to the Schengen agreement, so for the most parts we just speed into other countries on the motorway. In Holland, though, we were guided off the motor way and through a strongly guarded checkpoint. I thought it was all rather funny and were snapping pictures until I realized I’d left my passport in the trunk, so I had to crawl back and get it while we were still in motion and conveniently produced it before the police and MPs showed up, at which point I also stopped taking idiotic touristy pictures of everything.. In the end we had no trouble getting through, though, they actually didn’t even want to see our passports – guess they were looking for someone that wasn’t us.

 

We didn’t spent too much time in Holland, we only had time to see a few greenhouses for growing tulips (the Dutch are NUTS about tulips), some more road work and an infrastructure even more confusing than that of a German Autobahn grid overrun with road workers.. Oh and we had time to chat a bit with Zascha who called to see if we were planning on showing up in a foreseeable future to which I could only reply that, really, we were doing our best.. But all in all, Holland wasn’t too bad, or too long of a stretch.. It sure was a hell of a lot better than our first impression of Belgium which we soon entered into with a feeling of “Holy mother of God, we’re in Eastern Europe!” I mean, really, the Belgian motorway had this whole industrial, boring, run down and monotonous look and feel to it.. And it didn’t get a heck of a lot better once we got off at a rest stop as we both had to pee pretty badly.. Only to discover that there were no means of doing so, just a parking lot and a small strip of business that probably had been open for business.. Some time in the early 70’s.

 

Quickly, we moved on, and things didn’t get a hell of a lot better for the next 60 odd kilometers or so, until we finally found a stop that offered not only a service station but also a rest room.. Which cost less to use than its German counterparts but was also substantially more run down and rather than turnstiles were operated by a Flemish lady sporting a paper cup, a broom and a weird habit of talking to herself. She seemed oddly happy when I, not having any grasp of the Euro coin system, paid her a Euro to use her bathroom and even gave a free pass, saying that I’d paid more than enough.. Or something along those lines.. Before going back to talking to herself. Popping back out from our Belgian rest stop experience, we set out for the last 40 or so kilometers which also turned out to be the most testing of all.

 

We kicked things off by making our first and only wrong turn as we merged onto the wrong motorway a few kilometers later as the one and only and really small sign designating our direction was partially covered by a fast-moving truck. Luckily, I’d spotted parts of it thinking that something ending in “ssel” could probably only be “Brussels” which Tina agreed with.. And even more luckily, though merging wrong, we somehow ended up on the motorway we were supposed to be on, only heading in the wrong direction.. So in theory we were only supposed to exit that particular motorway and then reenter it in the right direction.. A seemingly uncomplicated task that was made substantially difficult by the nature of the one way road we ended up on and.. You guessed it.. more road maintenance. We eventually made it, though, already cursing and cussing at Belgians by the time we hit the right motorway in the right direction..

 

 

Stuck in four lanes of barely moving traffic.. and rain.. 20 kilometers from our goal.

And headed right into another damn spell of traffic and congestion! This time clocking up all of the four lanes of the E40 motorway leading into Brussels, apparently owing to an accident. By now, the clock had approached 6:30 PM and both of us were pretty fed up with things when Zascha texted me enquiring about where the hell we were and I could only tell her that we were about 20 kilometers away, hopelessly stuck as two cars had apparently crashed into each other and spun around, taking up two of the four available lanes. All things considered, things could have been a lot worse.. And as if we hadn’t had enough bad luck, they were about to get worse as we made it past the accident site onwards through a couple of road forks that weren’t in our map or directions.. And straight into Brussels rush hour traffic! Which meant that we were stuck on some major boulevard with no idea where we were, in which direction we were heading and seven lanes of traffic around us, all of them apparently looking to be in the same lane at the very same time. 

 

Brussels is not a fun city to be lost in.. At least not by car during rush hour. Street signs are only posted on the corners of buildings and are ridiculously small and hard to read from the center of a seven lane boulevard.. As a result, we were playing a pretty funny game of trying to figure out where exactly we were and calling back and forth with Zascha who was sporting a map of the city and some local knowledge, obtaining directions and then frantically trying to get in one of the provided directions through the barely moving mess of traffic that was Brussels during rush hour. I’ll be the first to admit that I was cracking at this point.. Two hours of sleep, 12+ hours on the move, constant confusion and what have you.. I owe Tina a lot of respect for not only managing the whole, long drive, but also keeping her cool throughout it and the rush hour hell. She also really did try to cheer me up and spread good spirits by being her own merry silly self and I love her for it.. Which I chose to show by either acting broody or snapping uncontrollably.

 

After what seemed like hours.. And probably was hours, we finally made it not only in the right direction but also to where we were supposed to be.. More or less.. We did admittedly spent some time driving around on smaller one way streets before finally making it to Zascha’s street and then spending some time driving around looking for her exact address and a place to park.. The end result being that Zascha spotted us from the window and called us telling us to stop, then ran down with an umbrella (it was, of course, pouring rain by then) and guided us around, looking for a space to park.. Which we eventually found, parked at, shut off the engine and prepared to unload.. We’d made it to Brussles.. Only about five hours fashionably late!

 

To be continued.. 

Danish word of the day: Overspringshandling!

There’s a new word sweeping the Danish speaking part of the world (all six million strong!) like a kind of literary inflation. No, I’m not talking about “finanskrise” (financial crisis), “svineinfluenza” (swine flu) or even “Hyskenstræde” (a street in Copenhagen ravaged by anarchists run amok last weekend).. No, I’m talking about “overspringshandling” – a word that is enjoying increasing popularity with Danish students, young and old alike, every year at right around this particular time as they gather round to start work on their BA projects, MA thesises.. Or exam projects in general.

It’s kinda ironic that even with five years of studying communication, language and translation, I haven’t been able to come up with a fitting translation that really convey the meaning and semantics of said word. A literal translation would be something along the lines of “the action of vaulting over something”, whereas a more explanatory and paraphrased translation would be something along the lines of “to perform any arbitrary action with the main purpose of postponing the undertaking of a pressing chore at hand.”  - An overspringshandling may come in many ways, shapes or forms, such as spending time on Facebook, hanging with friends, getting drunk or going on impulsive or unmotivated road trips to random countries and/or places.

Now, I’ll admit to always having had a strange fascination with this particular word, mainly because I find it pretty hilarious that given  the relative limited vocabulary of the Danish language, we have words to cover concepts such as this. But I will also say that I have in my five years of studies.. or at least recently, been pretty good at not falling victim to such childsplay, I’ve actually managed to concentrate on my thesis.. Ahem.. Till this week anyways.

Maybe it’s because we’re off to Rock Am Ring in less than a month and I feel that I need to do some planning. Maybe it’s because Tina and I finally, on pretty short notice, arranged to go to Brussels this weekend and be with Zascha on her birthday and I feel I need to somehow plan that, too.. Maybe it’s because I’m working extra shifts at work.. At any rate, apparently I’ve been in need of some time off and as such have had a pretty hard time concentrating on the chores at hand.. At any rate, I find myself spending an increasing amount of time doing things such as travel planning, researching camping arrangements at the Nürnburgring and the compilation of road tripping playlists.. Sheesh!

And it’s not like I haven’t tried.. I really have! I did my very best at doing research Saturday evening.. And it went pretty well for a while. See, I’m doing a pretty decent effort at integrating a technology called Topic Maps into the work for my thesis – I won’t bore you with the details coz I know most of you don’t come here to get your geek on, but it’s a pretty interesting technology that I hope will really help me in my quest. So, I was reading up on it and trying to exemplify the core concepts of topics (or objects if you will) in my own words using examples revolving around the person “Lars Marius Garshol” (one of the key players in the creation of the topic map standard) and, since I found him to be a blogger as well, the concept “Lars Marius Garshol’s blog” (his personal blog, duh!)

This endeavor went well for all of five minutes until I actually started reading parts of Mr Garshol’s blog and discovered that he was not only a really good writer, but also had a profound interest in beer, pubs and all things good in life.. Uh, so yea, you can probably imagine where things went from there.. Fast forward about four hours and I’m still busy sipping a quality brew and reading reviews of beers I’ve never had, looking at pictures from pubs I’ve never been to and reading recollections of events I’d no idea ever took place. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Web 2.0 is such a delightful waste of time!” – and, as you’ll be able to guess, I didn’t get a single constructive thing done for the remainder of that evening.

So thank you very much, Mr Garshol, for keeping me entertained for a good 6+ hours, and for completely screwing up my concentration! Overspringshandlinger, indeed.

God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You \m/

Most excellent dudes and babes!

And kudos to whoever can spot all the cameos

Web 2.0 – What a delightful waste of time!

I’ve been stuck inside a lot lately. It’s the downside to being a MA student, I guess. Apparently your thesis needs to be done in six months, come hell or high water.. Meaning that waiting for the weather to turn cloudy and bad before getting started really isn’t an option.

But it’s all good. I’ve had a lot of time for sitting around listening to music, I’ve had a lot of time for playing with Web 2.0 tools and technologies as part of my thesis on Web 2.0 and the problems of user-generated contents. Actually, I probably spend a little too much time playing with Web 2.0 technologies.. But therein lies the problem, I have a seriously addictive personality and me writing anything about a technological development that have spawned a lot of really addictive websites and services, in retrospect, probably wasn’t the best idea ever.. But my choice has been made and so there you go.

The general theme of my thesis is about how the whole Web 2.0 development has made it both easier and more appealing for the average Joe (Joe Six-pack, is it now?) to contribute contents to the web – be it in the shape of social networking, posting pictures or videos, engaging in user driven media sites or blogging – and how this creates an increasingly growing problem when it comes to storing, indexing and working your way through this whole mess – without too much getting lost somewhere in between an endless barrage of blog posts, status updates and holiday pictures.

My focus is on blogging (well, duh!) but with one of the central awesome/confusing/helpful/annoying aspects being that everything ties into everything else so nicely and seamlessly (check the sidebar to the right for reference, featuring both my pictures, recent plays on Last.fm, Blogged Position and what have you), needless I spent a lot of time playing with and looking at different technologies.. It’s such a delightful waste of time.. Mostly because some of them are actually pretty fun and addictive.. Add to that the fact that I always have Facebook, email and Instant Messaging running in the background.. And I think I’ve finally managed something that no man before me has: Successful multi-tasking.. Okay, scratch successful.. I guess that’d involve me actually being ahead of the game and really getting things done, huh? Either way, I’m certainly getting a lot of things done… Some of them even productive.. Some not quite so!

In the not so productive department, I did something I swore I’d never do.. I joined another Web 2.0 fad.. Namely Twitter! In m defense, I was drunk at the time, so I barely remember.. But I apparently did! And that’s all she wrote. Twitter is a bit of an odd breed which has really has no other purpose than allowing you to tell the world what you’re doing in 140 characters or less. It’s like text messaging for the masses and you’d think it’d be incredibly stupid.. Which it kinda is.. But it’s also surprisingly addictive.. And made me realize why Facebook suddenly changed their site to have such huge focus on status updates as compared to everything else.

Apparently we’ve all become such internet whores that we feel the need to tell the world what we’re doing on a regular basis.. And I for one am loving it! So, in the spirit of being all Web 2.0 and internet whore like, I’ve set up an account and linked it with my blog.. So now you can follow my messed up little life on an even more regular basis.. Great, isn’t it?

What’s that? Oh.. Yes.. I agree, I really need to get out more!

Gone Insane, But The Memory Remains..

I think I’ve just met Marianne Faithful’s character in this video.. It was.. Interesting.. Mrs Svend Nicolaisen? Fuck you, you faded Prima Donna!

Three years of drunken rants.. And still going strong!

Today is exactly three years ago, to the date, that I started this blog. Back then I had no idea if it would even catch on and if I’d even still be blogging after three weeks, let alone three months.. Or a year, two.. even three for that matter.. But hey, here we are.. Three years later, and apparently I still have more or less coherent, relevant or sane commentary to provide on my life, every day events, recent happenings and the world of all things related to good food, good drink and random acts of self-destruction.

It always amazes and humbles me whenever I stop and look back like this.. I mean, I started out with two regular readers and no real sense of direction and purpose.. Three years down the road, I still have no sense of direction or purpose, but I dare say I have a little more than two regular readers. Of course, people have come and gone over the years, but still, in the long run, an average of 70 or so of you drop by on a daily basis.. Which is just plain cool! And with my 710 posts in 1095 days, I’ve almost fulfilled my intention of giving you a reason to drop by every day.. It’s still 0.64 posts per day, after all.

Apparently research shows that the average personal blogger is female and in her early to mid twenties. My long hair and the fact that I relate well to women aside, I think I’m failing pretty miserably at fitting into this stereotype. A lot of my readers do, however, so maybe that makes it all okay..

Another thing that makes me a misfit is my above mentioned lack of sense and direction. Apparently to gain success and long-time following in blogging, you have to narrow your scope, pick a single topic and a sense of direction in your blogging. I never really found out about this until about six months ago and in true Johan FTW (Fuck The World) fashion, I’ve chosen to blatantly ignore those directions in the six months or so I’ve know about it.. Apparently I’ll never have success.. I don’t know.. 70 readers a day, fans on four continents and a peak record of 1450 visitors in a single day.. I’d say I’m doing pretty well! And I, of course, thank every single one of you for making the whole ignoring the rules thing  still worth doing.. It’s mad for some pretty.. Ahem.. Interesting posts over the years and some quite interesting experiences..

I sometimes wonder why I’m still doing this after all these years, and then I’m like.. Oh right.. Coz it’s a hell of a lot of fun.. And because people bitch if I ever stop updating for too long.. I guess I’m a bit of an eccentric exhibitionist.

Of pandas and Jethro Tull

I spent a surprising amount of time last night on MSN discussing whether or not a Giant Panda’s supposed inability to maintain its own equilibrium while standing on one leg and playing the flute should necessarily disqualify it from becoming the front man of British classic rock band Jethro Tull.

Hmm.. Wait, that probably sounds a little weird, and it probably was.. At any rate, it made me think that I probably needed to get more sleep.. And/or a new job as to keep my mind occupied and not wandering so much.. It all started with this pic:

Which for whatever reason instantaneously reminded me of this rather famous shot of Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull:

The similarity, as you can tell, is striking.. Which of course sparked the, at that time, humorous discussion of a giant panda fronting Jethro Tull.. My only problem being, that a panda couldn’t possibly stand on one leg..

No worries, my worthy opponent countered, Ian Anderson was probably doing so many drugs in his heyday that he was lucky to get up on one leg as well. Which then spawned a heated discussion about whether or not Ian Anderson was ever on drugs.. Which lasted for all of five seconds until this gem of a video was discovered on Youtube

showing Ian Anderson more drugged up on stage than you’d thought humanly possible.. But, for some reason, still able to perform.. And they claim LSD is bad for you? Tsk!

There never was any conclusion as to whether or not a panda could do the job.. Who knows, maybe Ian even thought he was a panda during the performance, or thought himself chased by pandas.. The only real conclusions that were drawn were that people did a fuckload of drugs in the 70’s, that I don’t think I’d want to see to see a panda on copious amounts of LSD attempting Ian’s dancing and chasing about in this video.. And of course that Jethro Tull are strangely cool in some way. And that I need more sleep.. And something to keep my mind off things.. So I don’t end up having discussions like this and wasting my time telling the world about them..