Books I've read in 2011 - December

Kvinne blant krigsherrer by Malalai Joya
Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card - AUDIO
The Killings on Jubilee Terrace by Robert Barnard
Veien til verdens ende by Sigurd Hoel - AUDIO
Damenes detektivbyrå nr 1 by Alexander McCall Smith - AUDIO
Diana, volume two, by Alexandre Dumas
Egalias døtre by Gerd Brantenberg - AUDIO
Til salgs: Mariana, 15 år by Iana Matei
The Quiet American by Graham Greene - AUDIO
Snobs by Julian Fellowes
The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany
Sjiraffens tårer by Alexander McCall Smith - AUDIO
Moral for vakre piker by Alexander McCall Smith - AUDIO
Fyrster i tåkeland by Emberland/Pettersen, eds.
The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith - AUDIO
The Great Crash of 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith
Akimbo and the Elephants by Alexander McCall Smith - AUDIO
Kurtby by Erlend Loe - AUDIO
The World's Most Fantastic Freaks by Mike Parker

To bring or not to bring ...

... a turtle on one's Christmas vacation. That is indeed the question. I'm going to my parents' tomorrow for five days, and I am so torn about whether or not to bring Raphael. I brought him last year ... but that was for his health, because he was so strongly affected by the severe cold we had last winter - what was it, the coldest November for 104 years? - and I was seriously concerned that if I left him at home he would hide himself away somewhere as soon as I walked out the door and sleep for 120 hours ... underneath the carpet, or wherever he'd end up. (That's not a joke about the carpet.)

It's not good for him to be on dry land for that long, so I wasn't too thrilled about that idea ... and ended up taking him with me on vacation, which he wasn't too thrilled about. It was very confusing for him to be in a totally new place like that, even though he had his pond and basking spot and everything. (My mother also wasn't too happy with him being there, she has ophidiophobia and is repulsed by his supposedly snakelike head. :-D But his presence did not adversely affect her health.)

This year it hasn't been anywhere near that cold ... November was extremely mild, in fact, and it's only over the past few days that December's gotten really cold. So I don't have the same worry as last year. But I'm still thinking about taking him with me. He'd probably be fine at home alone, but I know that he's only really interested in one of the two. He'd much rather stay home than go anywhere else, obviously - turtles like familiar places - but he definitely doesn't want to be alone. He wants to be with me ... ideally in physical contact with me, and ideally all the time. I may have mentioned this before; he is rather oversocialized now and overly interested in human contact. Well, at least contact with me. Reptiles supposedly dislike that, but Raphael seems to have missed the memo on that one.

The past couple of weeks I haven't had much time to spend with him, for obvious reasons ... Christmas preparations and all that that entails ... and I can tell that he's not too happy with that. He wants my attention --> is not getting my attention --> is not happy turtle. Five days' vacation would make it possible to spend a lot of time with him, but then of course he would have to be there with me. So I'd have to bring him, even though he won't be happy about going there. But he would be happy about spending lots of time with his precious twolegs. So what to do? To bring or not to bring?

If only turtles could talk ... :-)

Blog neglect

Sheesh, time flies ... ! It's been a week already since my last post, I don't know where the time has gone. o_O I know I've been really neglecting the blog recently, this month especially ... it is of course a very busy month, so let's blame it on that. I'll do better again soon. Fingers crossed. :-)

YES!

I totally vote for this! Surprise! :-D

WTF are they doing here?

'They' being, in this case, Helen Mirren and Rosario Dawson. They are hosting the Nobel concert tonight. I am of course not watching. But I really am wondering WTF these people are doing here. Same old, same old ... I ranted about this last year too, you can read that post here. And I have to specify that like last year, I have nothing against Mirren and Dawson as such. They're just so stupidly irrelevant. And it's so embarrassing that they're here ... that the whole concert and celebration is set up the way it is. Sheesh. Read my post from last year, I already said it all there. :-)

But I also want to say, and this is not repeating myself, since he just came out with this now, that I totally agree with Michael Nobel in his views on the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Geir Lundestad needs to go. Don't even get me started on Jagland ... but Lundestad, seriously? When confronted with Nobel's criticisms he actually laughed. What an arrogant prick that man is. I for one totally agree with Nobel that the Committee have exceeded their mandate to an appalling degree. I'm not sure letting the Swedes take over would make things any better, but something definitely needs to be done.

How about changing the committee from a final resting place for washed up politicians into, I don't know, a team of normally intelligent professionals with relevant backgrounds and expertise? I don't know, it's just a crazy thought I had. Crazy ...

Name and shame

There's clearly something wrong with the laws in this country when guys like the scumbag in this article is walking around as a free man. And working a new job, no less. (The article is in Norwegian, but I'm sure that all of you reading this, if you're not Norwegian, have people just as scummy in all of your own countries too.) It's so wrong that it's actually possible to deliberately scam people out of their money - inflict economic harm on others for your own personal gain - and risk no legal sanction for it as long as it's done the right way. Well, 'right'. And they call it 'business'. Shit. What kind of business is that that doesn't produce anything, not even money, just numbers? Fuck 'em.

Now that the harm is done, what IMO is also really wrong with our laws is that Aftenposten in this article is - I presume - not allowed to name the guy in their article. Since he hasn't been convicted of anything, it's probably slander if they do. Fuck that shit too. People like this should be named and shamed. All of Bergen should be plastered with posters of this guy. And I would really like to know where this guy works now so I can avoid that institution at all costs.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to know that. Fortunately, in our brave new world of information everywhere I'm sure someone will be able to suss the guy out and start a group, or whatever, against him on Facebook. I'd theoretically consider joining that group.

A beautiful poem

I'm not much for poetry, but this is just beautiful. I love this. So wonderful what can be done with words.

Postcrossing annoyance

Can I just mention one thing that really annoys me on Postcrossing? It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I always feel like ... well, it really pisses me off. I won't name names, but if this applies to you, you should seriously reconsider what you're doing, because pretty much everyone else who comes across you on the site thinks you're a cheap hypocritical bitch.

Isn't it incredibly annoying when you either get somebody's address, or you get a card from somebody, and you see on their profile that they specify that they don't want ad cards ... and then you go to their wall and see that pretty much EVERY SINGLE CARD they send out is - you guessed it - an ad card? Kinda like the one they just sent to you, say.

Yeah, that seriously pisses me off. >:-(

SNOW!!

This afternoon at work the phones suddenly disconnected, and just then I noticed that it was snowing outside. It had been snowing for a little while but I only noticed it then. Totally unrelated of course, but still. :-) I'm not much of a snow fan generally, but right now I'm thinking YAY! :-D You know, as long as it's only a couple of inches and not three feet.

What if he's right??

Well, she spells it 'Stephenie', but other than that I think this is spot on. It really is the only sensible explanation. Alas.