first, i'd like to address the fact that i'm in a vicious blog challenge with my ol' pal kuma-dude. he is currently in the lead by 1-0, but i'm looking to even things out with this very post. i don't know if i can match his awesome blog skills though, this is a quote stolen from a recent post of his and if you ask me, it is beyond hilarious:
"Leonardo DiCaprio was just on TV, in an ad for some random property development. This was followed by a program where celebrities learn how to re-use a paper cup in various, wondrous ways. Yup, I'm in Japan again."
but maye that's just me. hopefully, it's everyone. how can i match this? i don't think i can! all i have planned for the day is a rant about cheese slicers. yes, cheese slicers.
about three and a half years ago, i Went Vegan. like the creation of the universe, this is widely regarded as a Bad Move. or maybe not, but it's not easy and for a please-everyone type like me, it's hard to say no to so many good things people want to share with me. i still reckon it's the ethical thing to do, but socially it's really hard, since there is pretty much no dish that "normal" people eat that you as a vegan can eat. this forces you to either look like some kind of weirdo who just eats lettuce and mashed potatoes, or to just hang out with vegan copies of yourself all the time, neither of which is very appealing. while there are plenty of mega-delicious vegan dishes, they are not that easy to come by unless you cook them for yourself, forcing you to go diy to a very large extent. this means that living the sweet life as a vegan requires time, planning and love of cooking. and not being lazy. i love cooking, but i don't always have the time, i'm horrible at planning and i'm lazy. 1 out of 4 = does not cut it. also the whole issue of looking like a weirdo at restaurants equally does not cut it. after a year and a half or so of strictly vegan, i once again succumbed to the joys of cheese and eggs. but i digress, severely. the whole point of getting into this subject was that when i went vegan, i demonstratively threw out my cheese slicer to make sure there was no going back. i felt it was an important characteristic of my home as a vegan to not contain a cheese slicer. this was another Bad Move, as there are perfectly delicious and overpriced non-dairy cheeses that would love a taste of the cheese slicer. but out it went.
and so, when i got home a few weeks ago, again living the life of a cheese eater, i found myself unable to consistently make long and thin slices of cheese. so i bought a cheese slicer, the first one i saw, at lagerhaus for 19:-. it is a useless piece of kitchen equipment. it is essentially unable to slice the simplest of cheeses. it makes a very thin slice, is weak and unevenly sharpened. and the sharpest bit is not very sharp. this, my friends, is a useless item. it could not slice a cheese on the sliciest day of the year if it had an electric slicing machine. and it is NEW! i just bought it! why would you make a product like this? have you no pride for what you do? lagerhaus, i'm looking in your general direction. and this is in the country that is supposed to be at the leading edge of technology for cheese slicers! i have gone on and on about the awesomeness of the cheese slicer during my trips around the world, and then i get THIS? me and will made scones at his house a few days ago, and naturally he had cheese to use as a topping, and to slice it he had an obviously leading edge-tech cheese slicer that was rippled. this means that the cheese slice gets less contact area against the slicer, which in turn means that situations where the slice sticks to the slicer and then rips into several pieces when you try and get it off, are avoided. people, this is the stuff we should be concentrating on, not cheese slicers that can't even slice when they're brand new! 19:- down the drain and back to square one.
i'm disappointed and embarrassed.
also, check out dinosaur comics today. it just doesn't disappoint. or embarrass. also, my current favorite song is "i'll believe in anything" by wolf parade. my friend alanna sent me a mix cd a while ago and it had both a live version and an album version and i was absolutely stunned. i still am. funny thing is i have the wolf parade album, i think i bought it in vancouver, but i never really took a big liking to it and i certainly missed the awesomeness that is "i'll believe in anything". luckily, i can make up for it now and listen to it over and over again. perhaps you should too?
Friday, February 16, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
the qc
now i know you're all positively dying to read about exciting australian adventures...but not today and possibly not another day either, because i'm quite lazy.
no, this post is all about a webcomic.
those of you who know me may have noticed my rambling about dinosaur comics and xkcd. (they're both awesome!). well, from today i think i'll be rambling about another one.
right, right, the name and link.
questionable content.
also, my luggage got lost on they way from sydney to copenhagen. but they found it and delivered it today! huzzah! also, there are few things more boring than sitting in a chair on an airplane for 24 hours. i'm sure you could figure out that on your own, though.
i feel like recommending a song. so i will. the song i recommend is "john wayne gacy, jr." by sufjan stevens. you should listen to it and the whole illinois album. it rocks as much as any album that ever rocked, possibly more.
no, this post is all about a webcomic.
those of you who know me may have noticed my rambling about dinosaur comics and xkcd. (they're both awesome!). well, from today i think i'll be rambling about another one.
right, right, the name and link.
questionable content.
also, my luggage got lost on they way from sydney to copenhagen. but they found it and delivered it today! huzzah! also, there are few things more boring than sitting in a chair on an airplane for 24 hours. i'm sure you could figure out that on your own, though.
i feel like recommending a song. so i will. the song i recommend is "john wayne gacy, jr." by sufjan stevens. you should listen to it and the whole illinois album. it rocks as much as any album that ever rocked, possibly more.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
wayfaring stranger
contrary to popular belief, i did not perish during my christmas adventures; i am, in fact, still alive. and kicking.
many cool things have happened, but i am in quite the hurry right now, for my australia journey has only a day and a half left to it, and there are lots of things that i have postponed during the course of the year, that i would like to do before i go. and time is running out. hopefully, i will still remember most of the things when i'm home, so i can write about them then.
but corals are cool. and the rainforest is cool. and weird tropical fruits are cool. and woodford was cool. ditto the blue mountains.
exciting times on a plane ahead. sometimes i think the earth is a little too big.
many cool things have happened, but i am in quite the hurry right now, for my australia journey has only a day and a half left to it, and there are lots of things that i have postponed during the course of the year, that i would like to do before i go. and time is running out. hopefully, i will still remember most of the things when i'm home, so i can write about them then.
but corals are cool. and the rainforest is cool. and weird tropical fruits are cool. and woodford was cool. ditto the blue mountains.
exciting times on a plane ahead. sometimes i think the earth is a little too big.
Monday, December 18, 2006
plans
ok, tomorrow me and rachel are leaving for cairns, where we will spend a good week checking out awesomeities like the GREAT BARRIER REEF and also other things such as tropical rainforest and a whole day tour to different food plantations. my main concern right now is, as usual when it comes to traveling, that i will miss the flight. i am sure most of you are familiar with this feeling. other fears include:
- the hostel has misplaced our booking somehow, and is now full, and all other hostels are also full
- not waking up and missing tours that meet up in the morning
- not being able to get to the airport for our 6 am flight on the 26th. yes, we have a flight on boxing day that leaves at 6.00 am super-sharp. but it was cheap! and pretty much the only flight still available on that day when we finally got around to booking.
after cairns we will fly to brisbane on said flight, from where we will take the train to woodford for the woodford folk festival, which lasts until the 2nd. then, two days with rachel's grandma in brisbane, then home on the evening of the 5th and sleep for a while before going to see the mountain goats IN CONCERT. my use of capitals is heavily influenced by ryan north, if you do not know who this is, please click the link to your left that says "dinosaur comics". happiness will follow.
that's it for now. gotta go pack.
- the hostel has misplaced our booking somehow, and is now full, and all other hostels are also full
- not waking up and missing tours that meet up in the morning
- not being able to get to the airport for our 6 am flight on the 26th. yes, we have a flight on boxing day that leaves at 6.00 am super-sharp. but it was cheap! and pretty much the only flight still available on that day when we finally got around to booking.
after cairns we will fly to brisbane on said flight, from where we will take the train to woodford for the woodford folk festival, which lasts until the 2nd. then, two days with rachel's grandma in brisbane, then home on the evening of the 5th and sleep for a while before going to see the mountain goats IN CONCERT. my use of capitals is heavily influenced by ryan north, if you do not know who this is, please click the link to your left that says "dinosaur comics". happiness will follow.
that's it for now. gotta go pack.
Monday, November 27, 2006
all of the evils of this town
for barbecue reasons i went out to rachel's parents last weekend, barbecueing some ever-so-funny-looking veggie sausages and eating a salad with top players such as mango and honey-roasted macadamia nuts. good times! but it is not really the point of this post. on the way back, we were going to catch the usual train to the city, but alas, repairs and improvements were being made on the train tracks and there were replacement buses that were very slow (but air-conditioned). on the bus, a guy started talking to me, first asking how long the bus would go, then the usual where i'm from and then, after a while, we pass a hospital and he says "see that, that's windsor hospital, i have to go there". silence. "i've got cancer, but i won't do the chemo cause i saw how it hurt and killed my dad". he then talks about how he would be alright with dying, but that it would just kill his mom. then he starts crying.
i won't say that it's something about australians and being open, because he was actually irish, i'll just stick with the fact that i don't think any stranger has been that open and honest with me before, and i'm sure i'd never be. we go on to talk about music and he asks me about alex harvey, jim morrison, jethro tull and a lot of other old rock bands that i sometimes know and sometimes don't know. he starts talking about his junkie life and hows he's wasted his whole life on drugs and how they've taken everything from him - money, house, wife and screwed with his brain, how he's been in mental hospitals, had paranoia and some of the worst things he did while on drugs. i feel genuinely sorry for him and think that life certainly isn't fair and an easy thing, and how this guy is just beyond any hope. life wrecked by drug addictions and terminal lung cancer, hard to top that for bad situation. i think that he's just incredibly strong to be able to deal with that and not be ashamed of it and talk about it. when strangers start talking to me on buses i usually get very uncomfortable, but i'm genuinely happy that this guy did and it made my day an interesting one instead of an annoying one spent on a slow bus because the trains were cancelled.
also, this is the second person i've met here that's got terminal lung cancer and decided not to get it treated. chances of treatment success are pretty low, and it's very painful. so please, people i love and care about, don't smoke.
i won't say that it's something about australians and being open, because he was actually irish, i'll just stick with the fact that i don't think any stranger has been that open and honest with me before, and i'm sure i'd never be. we go on to talk about music and he asks me about alex harvey, jim morrison, jethro tull and a lot of other old rock bands that i sometimes know and sometimes don't know. he starts talking about his junkie life and hows he's wasted his whole life on drugs and how they've taken everything from him - money, house, wife and screwed with his brain, how he's been in mental hospitals, had paranoia and some of the worst things he did while on drugs. i feel genuinely sorry for him and think that life certainly isn't fair and an easy thing, and how this guy is just beyond any hope. life wrecked by drug addictions and terminal lung cancer, hard to top that for bad situation. i think that he's just incredibly strong to be able to deal with that and not be ashamed of it and talk about it. when strangers start talking to me on buses i usually get very uncomfortable, but i'm genuinely happy that this guy did and it made my day an interesting one instead of an annoying one spent on a slow bus because the trains were cancelled.
also, this is the second person i've met here that's got terminal lung cancer and decided not to get it treated. chances of treatment success are pretty low, and it's very painful. so please, people i love and care about, don't smoke.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
peter and the dream of horses
yesterday it was melbourne cup day, which is the day when people on horses get more attention than any other people in this nation. except possibly people with extravagant hats glued (or at least so it appears) to one side of their head, coupled with expensive, often extravagant and almost exclusively horribly looking clothing. this is because the powers that be are not stupid and have created something for the women to do when the men waste their money on betting. and yes, that sounded very sexist and is not really true anymore (rachel was certainly more uppity about betting than me and i saw several reports on fashion contests for men at the race track), so maybe you should disregard that statement. attribute it to the overly cynical part of me.
the race this year was won by japanese horse "delta blues" closely followed by "pop rock", also japanese and the horse i decided to place my hard-earned $$$ on. i won a whopping $4.20. i also bet on another horse for both win and place and my total betting expenses were $8, but hey, a $4.20 win is still a $4.20 win.
that's all i got for now. another day, another quintessential australian experience experienced.
the race this year was won by japanese horse "delta blues" closely followed by "pop rock", also japanese and the horse i decided to place my hard-earned $$$ on. i won a whopping $4.20. i also bet on another horse for both win and place and my total betting expenses were $8, but hey, a $4.20 win is still a $4.20 win.
that's all i got for now. another day, another quintessential australian experience experienced.
Monday, November 06, 2006
everything's coming up zoidberg
my life is thoroughly unexciting. however, that never stopped people from updating their blogs and shan't stop me.
i am in sydney and it is somewhere between vancouver and lund. minor differences at best, such as the vegemite selection in the supermarket, the mysterious absence of black beans and the ubiquity of very small lizards. in vancouver it was the ubiquity of normal-sized squirrels, in lund it's...people on bikes. (side note: in minneapolis last summer, i borrowed betsy's bike one day to speed up my exploration of the neighborhood. funny thing was, there was never anywhere to park the bike. not a single bike stall graced my eyesight over the day and i was forced to chain the bike to various road signs and such. i am not mentioning this to reinforce the cultural stereotypes of americans, it's just that i really like bikes.)
i have seen weird animals. they were cool. previous to this journey, my only encounter with the platypus was in the south park episode where kenny turns into a duck-billed platypus (which, on a side note, is a tautology as far as i can tell), but now i have seen them for real and fellas, they are the shiz-nitz. an egg-laying mammal with a duck-bill and waterproof fur that searches for food in the water with electrical sensors AND has got poison in the back claws! i may not know much, but i know that it totally kicks the kronhjort's ass. and it does it so much that i had to get a platypus plush toy. does it rock? do you even need to ask?
there are also other very cool animals, including but not limited to: wallaby, echidna, wombat, bilby, cassowary, emu and of course the ever-so-loveable kangaroo.
the echidna is a very hip and stylish animal, similar to the hedgehog but with a hipper and more stylish snout, and some additional curl-up-to-a-ball capabilities. i really like hedgehogs so with the echidna it was love at first sight.
also, we have cats. the guy who has the house we're renting a room (or, more correctly, a granny flat) in is one of the biggest cat-fans to ever grace god's green earth and has three of the nicest cats ever. i'm slightly allergic to cats, but as long as they are kept outside the room and i don't touch my eyes with my hands after patting them, things are working out. i like cats. and if you for some reason doubt my statement that graeme, the owner, is a rather large fan of cats, here's a little story: about when i arrived, he started to become really sick. coughs and blood clots and other nasty things making it tough for him to walk and fatigued and other less than stellar things. after a couple runs to the doctor he was finally admitted and stayed there for a week and a half or so. we were planning to visit, but before we got there rachel got a call where he asked if the cats were okay, rachel asked how he was, he said that he had lung cancer and had decided not to get it treated and the doctors were giving him four months. but he just called to make sure the cats were okay.
he's home now, he's gotten an oxygen-making machine and his family has come over from britain and thailand. it's been nice to have some people in the house, when he went in to hospital it was just us and the cats and it's just not enough for a house that could easily fit three or four more persons. i think it will be pretty horrible when he starts getting worse, i don't like death but i hope i can handle it alright. he will most likely die while in the house and either me or rachel will be the first one noticing. death's a natural part of life and all that, but it's still pretty crap.
so anyways.
i got a job. it's a pretty nice job, but doesn't pay that well. i'm translating health and safety information from english to swedish, and boy am i learning about parts of the body i never knew existed and illnesses i never wanted to know existed. it's pretty interesting and at least related to my degree in some way. it's also part time and work at my own pace, which is pretty good. the only thing that's bad is that i don't meet any people, i just sit on my own in a cafe or computer center all day.
ok, there's a guy making extremely irritating noises in a microphone now, so i am out of here.
i am in sydney and it is somewhere between vancouver and lund. minor differences at best, such as the vegemite selection in the supermarket, the mysterious absence of black beans and the ubiquity of very small lizards. in vancouver it was the ubiquity of normal-sized squirrels, in lund it's...people on bikes. (side note: in minneapolis last summer, i borrowed betsy's bike one day to speed up my exploration of the neighborhood. funny thing was, there was never anywhere to park the bike. not a single bike stall graced my eyesight over the day and i was forced to chain the bike to various road signs and such. i am not mentioning this to reinforce the cultural stereotypes of americans, it's just that i really like bikes.)
i have seen weird animals. they were cool. previous to this journey, my only encounter with the platypus was in the south park episode where kenny turns into a duck-billed platypus (which, on a side note, is a tautology as far as i can tell), but now i have seen them for real and fellas, they are the shiz-nitz. an egg-laying mammal with a duck-bill and waterproof fur that searches for food in the water with electrical sensors AND has got poison in the back claws! i may not know much, but i know that it totally kicks the kronhjort's ass. and it does it so much that i had to get a platypus plush toy. does it rock? do you even need to ask?
there are also other very cool animals, including but not limited to: wallaby, echidna, wombat, bilby, cassowary, emu and of course the ever-so-loveable kangaroo.
the echidna is a very hip and stylish animal, similar to the hedgehog but with a hipper and more stylish snout, and some additional curl-up-to-a-ball capabilities. i really like hedgehogs so with the echidna it was love at first sight.
also, we have cats. the guy who has the house we're renting a room (or, more correctly, a granny flat) in is one of the biggest cat-fans to ever grace god's green earth and has three of the nicest cats ever. i'm slightly allergic to cats, but as long as they are kept outside the room and i don't touch my eyes with my hands after patting them, things are working out. i like cats. and if you for some reason doubt my statement that graeme, the owner, is a rather large fan of cats, here's a little story: about when i arrived, he started to become really sick. coughs and blood clots and other nasty things making it tough for him to walk and fatigued and other less than stellar things. after a couple runs to the doctor he was finally admitted and stayed there for a week and a half or so. we were planning to visit, but before we got there rachel got a call where he asked if the cats were okay, rachel asked how he was, he said that he had lung cancer and had decided not to get it treated and the doctors were giving him four months. but he just called to make sure the cats were okay.
he's home now, he's gotten an oxygen-making machine and his family has come over from britain and thailand. it's been nice to have some people in the house, when he went in to hospital it was just us and the cats and it's just not enough for a house that could easily fit three or four more persons. i think it will be pretty horrible when he starts getting worse, i don't like death but i hope i can handle it alright. he will most likely die while in the house and either me or rachel will be the first one noticing. death's a natural part of life and all that, but it's still pretty crap.
so anyways.
i got a job. it's a pretty nice job, but doesn't pay that well. i'm translating health and safety information from english to swedish, and boy am i learning about parts of the body i never knew existed and illnesses i never wanted to know existed. it's pretty interesting and at least related to my degree in some way. it's also part time and work at my own pace, which is pretty good. the only thing that's bad is that i don't meet any people, i just sit on my own in a cafe or computer center all day.
ok, there's a guy making extremely irritating noises in a microphone now, so i am out of here.
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