Eric wants an explanation for the somewhat anti-american stand I took earlier, at the risk of digging myself deeper into a hole, fair game: Here goes. Let me first say that I actually do like both the USA and its inhabitants most of the time, I find the constitution and the “construction” of the clogs that run society fascinating (I also find the haphazard nature of Britain’s political system fascinating, and both become more intriguing when compared). I also agree with Eric that it was founded on sound ideals. The statement I made on the list in question that sparked the fury was in direct response to a post about the “let’s spy on each other” scheme, the original poster is from the US and was clearly not in favour. I understand the motivation for the suggestion, and I can see how it would seem like a sensible idea, but think that this sort of thing is highly dangerous, and there is no need to draw parallells to Nazi-Germany in order to demonstrate the flaws of the scheme; the last time the US tried something like this was during the McCarthy era, and I can’t believe anyone would want a similar situation today, terrorists or no terrorists. As far as Mr. Bush goes, I don’t have anything against him personally, and I’m not sure that Al Gore was necessarily the better man for the job, but any left-winger gets my vote over any right-winger, especially as the left wing in the USA is not really very left wing at all, in global terms, whereas the right wing has much clearer extremist tendencies (I am aware I am generalising, I am obviously not trying to portray roughly 1/2 of the US population as extremist…), and I am inherently suspicious of anything resembling extremism in both politic and religion (and especially because they usually get rather mixed up at that point). I was also not very impressed at the way the Florida to-recount-or-not-to-recount business was handled by Bush’s team, it is not advantageous to have “the leader of the free world” elected in a way that leaves a lot of people feeling they were cheated in one way or another.

Feel free to disagree volubly, either in the comments or in an e-mail (as usual; my first name @ my domain name). If you like, I’ll explain what I think is wrong with Norwegian politics in the next installment.

Because, of course, all this isn’t to say that Norway is the perfect country, we have our share of idiots, jerks, bigots and hypocrites (and sometimes I catch myself being one of them), it just happens to be the country I was born in. I wouldn’t want to live in the US, but that’s mainly because I have enough problems as it is trying to decide whether I would rather live in Norway or in Britain, and I have no need to add another country (or three, Canada and The Netherlands would have to come into it if the US did) to the equation.

Incidentally, the person who lashed out at me after my “Man, I’m glad I’m not American” statement, was not from the US either. I am inclined to suspect her of being from Canada, as she had put quotes around the term “American”. My brother suggested that if I really wanted to start a flame-war I should apologise profusely to anyone living on the American continent not in the US and say “but there’s no good term for them other than US Citizen, which is too cumbersome, and if American isn’t acceptible, we need something else. Would “Moron” do?” (That’s a joke! Irony doesn’t really come across very clearly in writing, but imagine a very ironic tone in my voice as I’m saying this. Or rather, imagine a really blank and innocent look on my face as if I had no idea that this could possibly be offensive in any way.)

Music in my head: Universal Soldier (whatever her name is, my mind’s a blank)

Ok, so this is the sort of thing I am looking forward to seeing in September. Will bring my camera, but somehow doubt that I’ll get quite such spectacular results…

I have discovered that there is a post office in the building next-door. This is a good thing. I will still have to make it to my local one to pick up stuff, but at least I can get things mailed at lunch-time when that’s what I need to do. Unfortunately, today is a “picking stuff up” day, and I’m not going to make it by 5. It’s 32 minutes to five and the bus is supposed to take 33 minutes, and consequently normally takes more. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

Music in my head: Hit the Road, Jack

Having spent all my intellectual energy (there wasn’t much of it to start with, obviously) writing a horrendously long entry for the reading log yesterday, I will now ramble aimlessly here for a while. Have I mentioned that I’m going to Scotland in September? One of the most active members (and currently chairman) of the Norwegian Malt Whisky Society is organising a trip to the Speyside autumn festival, and following the sudden improvement of my finances, I decided to join. I also decided that if I’m flying to Scotland, I’d be a fool not to go for more than a long weekend, in order to make it down to Glasgow (The School of Art and The Willow Tea Rooms and…). And I’d hate to think myself a fool. So I’ve been randomly looking at sites with information on Scotland, as well as reading the Rough Guide, and searching for good travelogues. I thought maybe I would drop by the library on my way home and see if I couldn’t find some there. I get easily tired of guide books, but I adore reading descriptions of travelling, especially for places I’m going myself or places I know pretty well already. Anyway, I am now completely disenchanted with the library. I’ve been having increasing doubts about the extent of their collection, following a couple of “surely they must have”s followed by “I can’t believe they don’t”s lately, and today was worse than ever. Not only was there very little of promise in the electronic catalogue, but even the few things I found there that were supposedly “on the shelf”, were either not there (“missing, presumed stolen”?) or reference copies (yeah, right, I’ve got the time to sit in the library to read a 1000 page work). So, no luck. See, this is why I spend money on books… Not only do I then get pretty much exactly what I want, I also have it there, waiting, on the shelf, just for me to read. That is, if I don’t let people borrow it… I am inclined to regret lending my mother Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island, I can’t remember whether there are actually any chapters on Scotland, but surely there must be? I will have to check if the library has a copy (surely, they must have – it’s probably already out, or stolen, though), if not, I suppose I could probably get mine back before the end of September. I also need to locate a copy of Neither Here Nor There, as it’s one I don’t have and I want to reread it (I can’t rememeber whether he actually got to see the northern lights in the end). There’s also a Penguin edition of Boswell/Johnson travels in Scotland that might be worth having a look at (one of the ones supposedly on the shelf but manifestly not there), and I seem to remember R. L. Stevenson writing something of the sort, too. Can you tell I’m looking forward to the trip at all? Mmmm, an excuse to go to some second-hand bookstores again (yeah, like I needed another excuse…)

My grandmother just phoned, apparently “they” (as in the collected Friends-and-relations living in Solør – this is small-town, or rather countryside Norway) are having a visit from some of our relatives from Minnesota. Some of the people I spent Christmas with in 1999, in fact. It’d be lovely to see them again, question is: am I really up to a weekend in the country? I dunno. I’ll have to think about it. Also, there is a sad lack of second-hand bookshops in Solør. Hmm.

Music in my head: That Was Your Mother (Paul Simon)

Oh dear, just had to share this, from dust from a distant sun (I’d link directly to the post, but Tinka’s archives seem to be off their food a bit):

Overheard on bus no. 8 today:
“Oh man, I’ve discovered that if you drink a lot and get to bed late, you’re going to feel so much more rotten than if you only drink a little and go to bed earlier. It’s true. I swear. Maybe you could try drinking a bit less or go to bed earlier, I dunno..”

ROTFLOL (and at work, too…)

Janne has located a brilliant new site, unfortunately for most of you out there, it’s all in Norwegian. Sorry, guys.

Men dersom du leser norsk vil jeg altså anbefale at du tar en kikk på Bokprat. Dette er et såpass godt tiltak at det fortjener en smule aktivitet. Til tross for alle mailinglistene jeg er med på som har med bøker å gjøre, savner jeg stadig litt mer generell bokprat – mailinglister har en tendens til å være veldig spesifikke (begrenset til en forfatter, f.eks.).

Music in my head: Head over Feet (Alanis Morisette)

I’m restless. It could be because it’s Sunday evening and the weekend seems to have evaporated (nothing unusual there). What I really want to do is go for a walk on the beach, but there’s no beach anywhere remotely close suitable for walking on. I’m homesick for Worthing. I’ll get over it.

Ads on tv – I sometimes wonder whether the whole world’s gone mad. Recent examples: I refuse to watch MTV’s “Up North”, partly because the presenter is annoying but mainly because the “presented by JC” ads at the start and end figure penguins. Has Nobody told them that there are no penguins “up north” or did they just not believe it when he did? Fanta: Three young Australians are doing a radio show. They do the “weather”, they say it’s live from teh beach and that it is raining, whereas they are all in the studio and just holding the mike close to a glass they’ve just poured Fanta into. It does sound a lot like rain. Then we see them arrive at the beach. Due to their ingeniousness they have the whole beach to themselves. Fanta’s current slogan is: “Share the fun”. Anyone else see the incongruity here? “Share the fun with a selected few” would perhaps have been more apt. Then, of course, there is the ad for Shakira’s album on Norwegian televison, with a Norwegian talking about how fantastic it is. Well and good, except he can’t pronounce “clothes”. How hard can it be? And if you’re thinking “Well, a lot of people have problems with the “th” sound” you would be right, but that’s not the part he stumbles over. It comes out something like “cylyothes”. What? They were on so tight a budget they couldn’t do a retake? I will admit that there is a vague possibility that both the penguins and the Fanta ads are meant to be ironic (they might have read in a magazine that the current generation are supposed to love irony), but somehow I doubt it. And in the case of the penguins it wouldn’t help, as there are enough people out there that actually believe there are penguins on the North Pole (what else would the polar bears eat?), and we really don’t need MTV to confirm their miscomprehensions.

Apparently, a “scientific study” in Australia has found that the television channels turn the volume up for the ads and down again for the actual shows. As a result, an enquiry is being made to see if it would be possible to enforce a law that allows a blockage of the technology responsible for doing this automatically. I’d welcome such a law here, but I’m rather surprised that a study was necessary to prove the fact that this happened. All you need to do is try to watch one of the ad-based channels for a few hours. Yesterday, much to the point, I watched Little Women (not a bad movie, by the way), and to hear what the characters were saying (it IS rather low key) I had to turn the volume WAY up. Consequently, every time there was a break, I had to dive for the remote and press mute, or my eardrums would have shattered.

Music in my head: If You’re Feeling Sinister (Belle & Sebastian)

Got the modem (coolest little thing I ever saw. Gadget-freak, me? Whatever gave you that idea?), plugged it in. Windows froze. Restarted. Uninstalled the USB drivers. Windows detected “new hardware” and reinstalled the USB drivers. Plugged the modem in. Windows froze. Restarted. Tried all sorts of other stuff that really, let’s face it, wasn’t going to help. Windows froze a lot. I restarted a lot. Watched Parkinson (Jamie Oliver on Parky – way cool!). Started reading the manual thing for the MSI mainboard. Opened the side of the tower and looked at all the wires. Closed it again. Phoned Komplett.no to confirm that they really are closed all weekend (get this: their support is only open Mon-Fri, 9am to 4pm. Guess what time I’m normally expected to be at work?). Had a bit of chocolate. Decided I would restart again and go into setup to check whether any BIOS settings for USB were actually enabled. Don’t like setup, I’m always certain I’ll press the wrong button and make the unit blow up (if you’d had any idea what amount of metaphorical blowing up various bits of hardware has done to me lately without me doing anything as spectacular as entering setup-equivalents you wouldn’t laugh).

Enter setup. Locate USB settings. There are two of them. “USB Controller: 6 USB Ports”. I think that’s kind of fishy, as I can only count four, but the book says 6 and that “this setting is used to disable/enable the onboard USB controllers”. Hm, best leave that. The other setting says “USB 1.1 Device Legacy Support: All device”. And the book says “Set to all device if you need to use any USB 1.1 device in the operating system that does not support or have any USB 1.1 driver installed, such as DOS and SCO Unix.” Well, I don’t want to use DOS or SCO Unix, and both my USB devices are 2.0 anyway. It’s worth a try, the worst thing that could happen is Windows freezing again (I don’t actually think this will make the box blow up). So I save settings and exit and plug in the modem and voilla! Here I am.

Still not quite sure what that was all about, but it works now, so why worry?

Music in my head: Youth of the Nation (P.O.D. is it? I think there must have been an ad for the album on telly just now)

Uhm. Well, going to pick up the modem today, but I might not get online immediately. Turns out the “building” the company did for me only included stuffing things into the tower, not actually installing essential bits. At least I’ve already had to install the software to make the DVD-player work as a DVD-player, and when I tried to plug my digital camera into the USB port yesterday Windows hung. Three times. So it’s not just a freak. And the modem is USB. However, I have talked to the guys in support, and the drivers and such are on one of the CD’s I have (the one cleverly marked “Extras”, listing Acrobat Reader and such – I should obviously have guessed that this would contain cruical scripts…) So, fingers crossed, I should be able to sort the problem out. I am a professional. Surely I should be able to trust me?

Watch this space.

I also need to consider aquiring some word processing software. Actually, Wordpad will do me for most things, but I might occasionally need to open a Word document or something. Anyone have any suggestions other than MS Office? Experiences with StarOffice? Does StarOffice handle MS-created documents, even PowerPoint?

Oops. Just offended someone on a mailing list by saying I’m glad I’m not American (in the context of the suggested “inform on the people you deliver mail to” scheme). Should have realised that might spark someone off. But seriously, with Bush in power I’m just generally glad I’m not a US citizen, not just in as far as this proposal goes. Unfortunately, whatever the US does influences European politics to such an extent that not being American doesn’t necessarily help.

I think I’m going to become a hermit and renounce civilization (ok, so I’ll probably bring my books to the cave or wherever). Unfortunately, I’ll be just as stuffed as anyone else when the so-called world leaders (including the Europeans, Asians, Africans and anyone else who wants to join in the fun) have finished playing.

Feeling depressed now, think I’ll go home. Actually, I’ll have to go now if I’m to make the post office in time to get the modem.

See ya.

I think I solved it.

Music in my head: Stayin’ Alive (thanks a bunch, Nicolette)

People are so weird (rant warning).

On my way home yesterday I crossed the road at a zebra crossing to get to the shop on the other side. The street was virtually empty, except for me, and this guy who was parked just outside the shop, half on the sidewalk, just above the zebra crossing. As I start crossing, he starts reversing in order to turn his car, thus blocking my way. I’m expecting him to stop any moment (in Norway: A. when you’re reversing you give way to EVERYONE, B. cars are supposed to stop for pedestrians “on, or on their way out onto, zebra crossings”), but realise it’s not going to happen, and so stop for a while in the middle of the road (no traffic, remember) until he’s far enough down to make it practicable to walk around the front of the car. No very big deal, just not very impressive as far as driving goes. I muttered something to myself, but I doubt he heard. However, I probably looked rather indignant (I have this habit of exaggerating my expressions in situations like these – probably comes of watching too many cartoons or something), so he called out to me (his window was already down).

And now he’s sounding indignant/offended/hurt (take your pick): “You know, you don’t always see everything when you’re in a car.”

I answered along the lines of “well, you are rather supposed to stop for people when you’re reversing” because it was the first thing that sprang to mind, whereas what I should have said, of course, was “Empty road, bright daylight, zebra crossing just behind you – maybe you should have been using your eyes a little better?” I just haven’t had any practice, people so seldom give me the chance of telling them exactly what’s wrong with the way they drive.

Anyway, he then started muttering something about if I had any common sense I would have realised the reason he didn’t stop was he didn’t see me. Duh, I DID realise: That’s the reason I didn’t keep on walking and get run over. I didn’t actually think he was deliberately trying to maim me…

I do realise that people don’t always see everything when they’re in a car. There’s a reason why I failed my driving test several times way back when, you know. However, I always though that that was a fault of mine rather than an excuse, and I can’t remember ever thinking it was the fault of the person (or tree or mailbox) that got in my way. “You should have realised I didn’t see you” if you run someone over that you should have stopped for is about as good an excuse as “The reason I did 80 in the 30 zone was I’d had a couple of drinks”. This is why normal people say “Oh, SORRY, I didn’t see you.”

Music in my head: Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word (Elton John, actually, I’m making that up – it would’ve been appropriate, though)