My new cap

I have been looking for a cap for several years, but havent found something to my liking that wasnt to small for my mutant head. This one is perfect. I like green, both for street fashion and in nature. The three yellow circles are the symbol of Christiania - Copenhagens semi-free city.

In this shady bodega, just before closing time, in some bystreet in Christianshavn I convinced my good friend Sh0 to sell me the cap he had bougth the same day.

I was taking the train back to Malmö that same night, and Sh0 where supposed tobuy a new one before flying to Oslo next evening. But he did'nt. I wonder why, this is like the coolest cap ever.

And when I gave it back to him just to take a picture of it with its previous owner, its deflouwrer, he smiled this wierd smile. I think maybe he is smiling 'cause he's proud to be recognized as a man of excelent tastes.

Malmöfestivalen

The 25th Malmö Festival happend to take place just outside our doors the first weekend in Malmö. It was sort of cool, there was a good mood and even though most of the streetstands kinda sucked, and the whole 'For the people - By the people'- thing they had going encouraged a few radical freaks to speak their mind... I acctualy would recomend it if you like street parties. Lots of ok bands, people drinking and smoking in the street and really something for every flavour.

How can you not lov DIY?

Photo by Camilo Pozo.

Malmö ii

Malmö is a windy city on the southern tip of Scandinavia, connected to the Continent and Copenhagen by a brigde. The tower in the background is a watertower camuflaged as some kind of strange, well, tower. It even has fake windows!

Traveltime to Copenhagen is about 45 minutes; Sweden beeing cheaper than Denmark in everything but alcohol and sigarettes and Denmark giving higher vages gives Malmö a lot of comuters working in Copenhagen and living in Malmö.

In Denmark you have to be 25 years of age to marry a foreigner; rules in Sweeden are more lenient and there are a lot of "Love Fugitives" in Malmö. Thats kind of sweet and romantic. Malmö also has a immigration-problem that makes you worry for the future of european liberalism. How many chanses and generations should we give for men to behave like men?

One night we went to a small roundabout park full of street people of all etnisisities. It was a littlebit dogdy situation. But we bougth peace and admittance with a couple of beers.

Daytime Malmö is a bussy city of 250 000 people. They have a strong sense of regional identity, and are perhaps as little swedish as I am norwegian.

There is a lot of political activity, especialy on the liberal side of things, but strangly Sweden have a conservative gouvernment and powerless labourunions.

They did manage, though, to be perhaps the first modern city in the world to allow women to bathe topless in public baths. I didnt check it out (allthough I sort of regrett that); but more than to ogle titties I wonder wheter this was inspired by feminism, anti-islam or perhaps even both...

This bike is sweet.

My grandmother wouldnt let my grandfather buy my father a moped when he turned 16. So he bougth one for himself, used it twice, and then 'lent it' to my father. Aparently this thing was a pussymagnet is the sixties - but having misunderstood God himself my father tried to keep 'pure' and all virginlike. Perhaps to my great fortune.

Back in Lodz all dogs in the city where well behaved. I guess because polacks have a more 'hands on' aproach to problem canine behaviour. These guys where nice though. I wonder what they where discussing.

I could have been a contender!

Quite a few things have happened since I came back home, but in blogtime Im sortof still back in Malmö in july/august. I'll try to quicken it up, but beeing in sort of a depressive state it takes quite the initiative even to brush my teeth. This picture is taken while Im doing some editorial work for a friend in my fathers apartment in downtown Malmö.

Cyberpulp Lovestory

While I never seem to be able to finish something I have made some fine starts. Cyberpulp Lovestory started out as a genre experiment; I might continue writing on it one day (if health and God permits) but for now it is on ice.

As an experiment I tried posting the first few pages of the story in a blogspot-blog. Having the beginning in the end really does'nt work out, and ads inbetween the posts are probably a littlebit to disturbing.

I will continue looking for ways of dooing this. If you have comments on the story/characters or know of any good novel-style blogs dont hesistate to comment.

Thesis Advice

I found the following little joke on komplexify.com's joke pages. The comic strip is unrelated, by norwegian nerd-genious Mads Eriksen.

Thesis advice

One sunny day a rabbit came out of her hole in the ground to enjoy the fine weather. The day was so nice that she became careless and a fox sneaked up behind her and caught her.

“I am going to eat you for lunch!”, said the fox.

“Wait!” replied the rabbit, “You should at least wait a few days.”

“Oh yeah? Why should I wait?”

“Well, I am just finishing my thesis on ‘The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves’.”

“Are you crazy? I should eat you right now! Everybody knows that a fox will always win over a rabbit.”

“Not really, not according to my research. If you like, you can come into my hole and read it for yourself. If you are not convinced, you can go ahead and have me for lunch.”

“You really are crazy!” But since the fox was curious and had nothing to lose, it went with the rabbit. The fox never came out.

A few days later the rabbit was again taking a break from writing and sure enough, a wolf came out of the bushes and was ready to set upon her.

“Wait!” yelled the rabbit, “you can’t eat me right now.”

“And why might that be, my furry appetizer?”

“I am almost finished writing my thesis on ‘The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves’.”

The wolf laughed so hard that it almost lost its grip on the rabbit. “Maybe I shouldn’t eat you. You really are sick…in the head. You might have something contagious.”

“Come and read it for yourself. You can eat me afterward if you disagree with my conclusions.” So the wolf went down into the rabbit’s hole…and never came out.

The rabbit finished her thesis and was out celebrating in the local lettuce patch. Another rabbit came along and asked, “What’s up? You seem very happy.”

“Yup, I just finished my thesis.”

“Congratulations. What’s it about?”

“‘The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves’.”

“Are you sure? That doesn’t sound right.”

“Oh yes. Come and read it for yourself.”

So together they went down into the rabbit’s hole. As they entered, the friend saw the typical graduate student abode, albeit a rather messy one after writing a thesis. The computer with the controversial work was in one corner. To the right there was a pile of fox bones, to the left a pile of wolf bones. And in the middle was a large, well fed lion.

The moral of the story: The title of your thesis doesn’t matter. The subject doesn’t matter. The research doesn’t matter.

All that matters is who your adviser is.

Marvels Civil War

[Spoiler warning. But the conclusion is 'don't read it'; so you probably can read the post anyway, unless, ofcourse, you're a fangirl.]

There are two major 'superhero-universes'; DC (Detective Comics)'s universe with Batman, Wonderwoman, Superman, Joker (and many many more) and fictionalized cities like Gotham and Metropolis. The other big player is Marvel Comics who's Marvel Universe is paralell to our own and contain characters like Daredevil, Elektra, Spiderman, Captain America, Project X, Hulk, Iron Man, The Punisher and hordes more.

While I ofcourse have always dug DC, I used to love Marvel when I was a kid. But over the years that love has soured a bit. Marvel has won a reputation of treating its creative staff like any other (often freelance) officeworker, and even fucking some of its greatest creative geniouses in the ass. When I heard the news the other day that Disney have bougth Marvel, I was not at all surprised. They seem to have the same company culture.

It will be interesting to see what the power of corporate america can make of this union - there just might be some amazing shit coming from their end the next few years. But most likely whats left of Marvel will be tamed by their new master, and we will have a neverending supersoap with no amazing shit inbetwixt like Elektra, some of the Wolwerine stuff et cetera.

I havent really been following Marvel for the last 10 years or so (just picking up a book once every to years or so on an airport or whatnot); but with the Disney-thing I decided to take a deep dive into their current universe.

The best and worst part of Marvel has always been the way they do all kinds of crossovers, guest apearances and even whole storylines going not just in "Project X" or "The Spectacular Spiderman", but crossing all over the place forcing fans to buy (and try) all kinds of publications featuring (but not starring) their hero. A Marvel-fan will often have a favourite hero she follows almost like a favourite soccerteam; normal fans go to all the home matches - a dedicated fan attends away-matces aswell (and some people read everything and are like soccerguys who will even follow north american soccer if there is nothing else on). This system ofcourse makes for more money for Marvels shareholders; but not neccesarily to better art and storytelling.

A friend (who chose to be anonymous due to the humongous shame of beeing a fangirl) was friendly enough to loan me her almost complete "Civil War" storyline. 106 comics later I have seen much good work, a storyline that simply isnt good enough, some stuff that simply was bad (like the whole bit bout the "Moon Knight") and a few exeptionally good pieces. It was so comic I even LOL'd a few times.

The whole epic ran from february 2006 to febrary 2007. It is interesting to see how liberal and close to their times the story is. The war splitting heroes and villians in two camps according to their view on the "Superhero registration act", a panic-bill pushed through the US senate 5 days after a disaster where a badguy kills 608 people (60 of them where children) with his super-exploding power during an arrest-attempt by some inexperienced superheroes filming a superhero-realityshow.

Captain America defects and starts the resistance, soon old friends face eachother and the battlefield with old enemies fighting at their sides. Unregistered (but not neccesarily anonymous/masked) superbeeings are called"unregistered combatants", tauntlingly close to RL "unlawfull combattants". They are jailed ("detained") in "the negative zone", an interdimentional space where US law doesnt have much of a say, not unlike Guantanamo, Cuba.

The pathetic end; where Captain America after giving freedom a face and a name with a hardcore Rorchach-attitude ("I will never compromise. Not even in the face of armageddon.") suddenly gives up because of some collateral civilian damage; forces me to simply advise against reading this... mess, unless you are a true fangirl.

I must admit, though, that I am a little curious as to the faith of now outlaw and self-outed Peter Parker/Spiderman. And with Disney now; there is great potential. For ultimate crap and possibly even timeless epic art.

Frank Miller

I've been rereading most of my Frank Miller-collection for the last few days. Mr. Miller has been a hero of mine since I bougth the first issue of Return of the Dark Knight back in the late 80's. I was no more than a kid, but I was instantly hooked.

For the longest of time Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, was the eternal 29 year old. In a flight, on mr Millers 30th birthday, stricken by the fact that he now older than his childhood hero, the outlines of the plot was made.

55 year old playboy-superhero Bruce Wayne has retiered, the world has changed; still ridden by his inner demons the ageing man again enters the fray. Return of the Dark Knight is one of the finest, if not the finest story in mainstream comics. (The 15 years older sequel DK2 is no more than fine: recomended for fangirls, but civilians can safely spend their time and money on something else.)

It might ofcourse be argued that his work on the Elektra Assasin mini-series rivals that of his Dark Knight - but Elektra Assasin is Millers own original work and thus more like his later independent work such as 300.

His older work on Daredevil (methinkst from 1980 onwards - his breakthrough as and artist) is greatly entertaining and truly among the very best of the mass-produced comics of its time. Its interesting to watch the artist grow as a draftsman and storyteller - and you can already see his special talent of creating, building piece for piece, epic tragic characters with a strong mythos.

For the most of the 90's he was working on (his own creation) Sin City for Dark Horse Comics, and while everything is not great - the finest of his Sin City-stories are masterpieces blending comics and film-noir; and unlike his later success 300 the book is way better than the movie.

His later work seems a bit off - but I think we still can expect some truyly amazing stuff. His political views might shine a light on a way of thinking that makes for great heroes: "Nobody questions why we, after Pearl Harbor, attacked Nazi Germany. It was because we were taking on a form of global fascism, we're doing the same thing now ... It seems to me quite obvious that our country and the entire Western World is up against an existential foe that knows exactly what it wants.... For some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we're up against, and the sixth-century barbarism that they actually represent. These people saw people's heads off. They enslave women, they genitally mutilate their daughters, they do not behave by any cultural norms that are sensible to us. I’m speaking into a microphone that never could have been a product of their culture, and I'm living in a city where 3000 of my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never could have built." (wikipedia).