Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
I’d like to know why the authors on this blog seem to always write in sync with one another? We’re like women who have lived together for way too long and have our periods at the same time. Yes, I just compared BRBcoffee to menstruation. Booyah!
What I really want to write about today is….HALLOWEEN! Now, while I often look down upon the ways of “typical” Americans, I must confess that I am probably one of the worst when it comes to partaking in meaningless Halloween rituals. I honestly have almost no clue where the true origins of this holiday come from, nor what significance it holds in history, but that’s where Wikipedia comes in handy. To roughly summarize, it comes from the Celtic holiday known as “Samhain” which, “celebrates the end of the ‘lighter half’ of the year and beginning of the ‘darker half,’ and is sometimes regarded as the ‘Celtic New Year.’ ” The aforementioned Celts believed that the doors between this world and the “other” world became easier to pass through. They welcomed the good spirits and warded off the bad ones with costumes and masks. So, I guess that explains where the whole costume thing came from. Of course, if you were truly trying to honor the past, you could only wear scary costumes. That seems very limiting, no? I mean, if we had to adhere to those rules, you’d never be able to see me as Elton John (a costume which must wait one more year until I’m 21 and can therefore maximize its glory), and that’s a travesty that I just can’t live with.
So you know what I say? Screw those traditions! I want Halloween to be about ridiculous costumes, and massive amounts of candy which lead to obesity and cavities, and carving pumpkins into completely non-original faces and, and, and! And everything which brings joy! If you haven’t noticed, this world is kind of in the process of hitting the fan, so to speak, and so why not use a certain day every year to goof off and enjoy life? Ahhh, but it’s the devil’s holiday! Children that dress up as witches (AKA Christine O’Donnell, hahaha) are blasphemous! Lighten up, my hardcore Christian comrades. Halloween was founded upon an equally unbelievable platform as Christianity, but at least it’s not killing anybody in the process!
Anywhozille, I plan on spending this Sunday with my family, watching/re-creating Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video, eating some candy originally intended for trick-or-treaters, and simply enjoying the fact that Sarah Palin is not president.
Good day!
Someone buy this for me, please?
[poll id=”20″]
Tomorrow, I head to ye ol’ town of Dayton in order to help prepare for my, let me think a minute, third cousin’s funeral. I mentioned her in an earlier, emo blog, but I think I have come to terms with her death and whatnot and so I’m feeling much better about things. I don’t know if it’s wrong of me to say this, but I’m actually kind of looking forward to the funeral. It’s going to be the closest thing my paternal side of the family- scratch that, they are my only extended family- has had to a family reunion in years upon years. By no means are we a large family, but it seems like people used to make more of an effort to get together on the holidays and such. For one thing, everybody started dying off. For a second thing, everyone moved away. The only ones left in Dayton are my grandmother and great-grandmother. Anyways, I miss it and so I’m looking forward to seeing everyone, be that moral or immoral of me to say.
In other news, Sarah Palin is a 10th cousin of Barack Obama. Crazy times, yes? What I want to know is how the devil they can trace back that far. I think most of us would be lucky if we could trace back 3-4 direct generations, let alone know all the cousins and distant relations that correspond to each. Mayhap the world of political breeding is similar to that of Royalty- it’s a small pool and inbreeding is bound to occur. Mayhap that is why they are all so fucked up in the head…
Ello!
Found this entry piled among my drafts, and I thought I’d finally publish it. This is the story of why I am studying towards becoming a teacher:
It pretty much goes back to a teacher I had in physics back in high school. Physics was not a subject I did well in. I got Ds every test. But for some reason, instead of helping me, this teacher hated me. He hated me ridiculously much, it seemed.
After every test, he would say this in front of the entire class: “Vegard, your test results are too low! Do you not understand the subject? If you need help, you can come ask me!”. That is fucking humiliating to go through after every test, in front of everybody!
That’s not all of it of course, because every time I was at school, the teacher seemed angry, and only went through what he had to then sat at his desk with his papers the rest of the class. But I heard from my friends in the class that when I wasn’t at school, he was happy and told stories, and it was awesome being there. So i felt like if I showed up in class, I would ruin it for the entire class!
That year, I only had absence from school Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Those were my physics days. When I woke up, the thought of meeting this man made my stomach turn!
I made a vow, never should any student have to go through what I went through. So I am becoming a teacher, because if I can keep even one class from having a teacher like that by having me instead, I will deem it a success!
Ole Jan, fuck you!
Vegard
Hi, my name is Frida, and I’m an alcoholic a procrastinater.
For the past month I’ve had a dark cloud over my head. Somedays I’ve forgotten its existence, other days I’ve simply ignored it, but I can’t ignore it any longer, simply because it’s due in 3 days.
What is “due”, you might ask? Well, I’m glad that you did. (And if you didn’t; Shame on you!)
My assignment for the course in Public Politics and Administration. It counts for 30% of my final grade, and I have chosen to write about the theory of power having 3 different sides to it. This theory is made by the author of the curriculum-book; A norwegian professor in the studies of International Conflicts, a subfield in the glorious world of political science, which I happen to study. His name is Øyvind Østerud Oeyvind Oesterud Oyvind Osterud a typical norwegian name.
We got the assignment more than 3 weeks ago. I read the different alternatives of subjects to write about, chose one, read the alternatives over again and chose another one. All three alternatives looked easy enough, which is good. One of them was about the medias varying functions in a norwegian-type democracy. I really wanted to choose this one, as I went to a guest-lecture about it last year, with the norwegian genius politican of guess-which-party Sigurd Allern. Only problem being looking up all the details, which is a lot of work, and i decided to do the easier assignment instead.
One tiny problem though: I know nothing about Østerud’s theories on power. And the book is written in a confusing and irritating way. Or I’m just way too bored with school to find it interesting.
I have spent the past 3 weeks doing nothing. I have worked, sure. And I’ve been to meetings. I had a public letter in some local papers on the war in Afghanistan. I was also in an article on the new rules of absence in norwegian high-school. I turned 20 years old and celebrated for three days running. I hung out with friends. I went to a farewell-party for a friend and his wife going to Africa. I read a really good book. I started reading a kind of boring american-classic (The Catcher in the Rye, it gets better after page 50). I had a friend from Tromsø visiting for some days. I did everything I could to not work on the assignment. I procrastinated like crazy, and I became the queen of procrastination.
And now it all comes back to bite me in the ass!
This is what I can tell you about power and force:
It is the means to achieve goals. (The words of Østerud, and therefor the main-definition in my paper.)
It is when a subject (A) in some way affects the choices of an object (B).
It is an acting party’s ability to overcome opposition to achieve a wanted goal or result.
It is used in relations between human-beings.
There are different kinds of power and force:
There is physical or psychological force, often enforced by governments. Examples being fines for breaking the law, jail-time, etc. This is seen as morally and ethically o.k. (As long as the enforcer has jurisdiction.)
There is manipulation, in which the receiving part of the force is unaware of it. This is concidered bad and immoral.
There is persuasion, based on argumentation and this requires a competence in the field of discussion. Also on the good side, ethically. (Even when lying through your nose, which seems weird to me…)
Then there is the use of authority, which is a legitimate use of force. (Unless you’re an anarchist, according to text-book. I’m not much for anarchy, but I hate it when the authorities use force, so I guess I kind of am one anyways…)
This is what I can tell you about the three different sides of power and force, based on Østerud’s theory:
There is the actual process of election, the participation in the process: The people who vote, the people who run and the people who get elected.
There is the non-determined: The cases that don’t get attention, because of lack of interest, or because of being a too touchy subject, or perhaps because someone with power will gain on it not surfacing. (Corrupt politicians? Noooo way! What a cliché!)
And there is the creating of opinions in others. From an authority, the educational system, parents, government, etc.
Now I have to write this down, use examples to demonstrate force being used by the norwegian government, the state or the sovjets municipalities, and place them accordingly to the three different sides of power and force.
Not too hard, you might say?
Well, no. Writing a two page-essay on this wouldn’t be hard. But I have to fill 5-FIVE-V-||||| pages of this shit. And I have to find primary sources, secondary sources and learn how to use them in an essay. And I have to do this in three days.
And in these three days I also have 2 concerts I want to attend, 3 parties people expect me to come to (and that I really want to go to!), a meeting and a sleep-deprived state that needs to be mended. See my problem now?
Funny side-note to this submission: While writing it in an attempt to continue my procrastination I learnt more about the subject than I did in the two hours prior to it, when I actually tried working on it. Irony, in a good way, and I think I have the first page layed out in my mind.
Song to fit this blogpost: Magpie Eggs-Moddi (A norwegian, young artist worth checking out!)
Untill next time:
Live long, and procrastinate!
Frida
The Queen of all ye procrastinaters
Soo, somehow I’ve managed to angle my other entries mainly to animals, and this was not intended. But neither was I avoiding it! So with “Speed Bumps” as the title to this entry of awesomeness, (no!?) I’m going to tell you about the speed bumps in Trondheim… Starting with me becoming a taxi driver I had to drive around in the City to pass all the tests to get my taxi drivers license.
While driving around getting to know the city I started noticing that there were speed bumps every-fucking-where! Speed bumps is clearly the devils gift to small and lowered cars. Most speed bumps in this godforsaken town are meant for buses to drive over without bumping (insert whichever word you think describes it best.) Well, the thing is, these bus bumps are so narrow almost no one needs to adjust their speed to get past them. Most modern cars are wide enough to avoid the bump, but sadly, not allways tall enough not to scratch down on it. Myself, I do not notice them at all actually, but this makes me think… Why the hell do they make speed bumps like this, when i can drive over it in more than three times the speed limit without feeling it. This clearly makes it loose it’s purpose. It’s supposed to make me lower my speed, but I don’t, and I doubt there are many that do…
Other places they’ve managed to make the regular full-width-of-the-road speed bumps but these are so fucking pointy I can’t even drive over them in half of the speed limit without it being uncomfortable and destructive to my car. What the hell? And again, other of the same kind are so low or long I don’t even notice the effect they’re supposed to have.
You’d have to be driving a Nissan Micra or a minimalistic car like that to be bothered by most speed bumps around here! I am sure this is why we can’t have nice things around here. On average there are 1 speed bump in every single street in Trondheim. This makes around 3000 of the motherfuckers, and I got to learn the name of every one of them on my test this upcoming Tuesday! The sad part is: Now my car is halfway broken, and the lack of brakes are not very funny…
As you were!