Books I've read in 2011 - January

Mysteriet Ingeborg Køber by Ivo de Figueiredo
Saturday by Ian McEwan – AUDIO
Musketerene tyve år etter, volume three by Alexandre Dumas
Nation by Terry Pratchett
Den inre kretsen by Mari Jungstedt
Operasjon Isbjørn by Eirik Wekre – AUDIO
Push by Sapphire
Blind Faith by Ben Elton
The War of the Worlds by HG Wells – AUDIO
The Little People by John Christopher
Den tredje søsteren by Terje Bjøranger
Udyr by Lotte Hammer/Søren Hammer – AUDIO
Myrstrå vipper by Rolf Jacobsen (Gyldendals lille bibliotek)
Lonesome George by Henry Nicholls
The News Where You Are by Catherine O’Flynn – AUDIO
Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential by Brian Ashcraft/Shoko Ueda
Flat Earth News by Nick Davies

12 printed books, 3,374 pages.
5 audiobooks, 46h 34m.

Favorite fiction:
I'm very predictable - I've got to say Nation. I'm not just saying that because it's Pterry. It really is fantastic. One of his best. Read it and see for yourselves. :-)

Favorite nonfiction:
Hard to choose ... !! I read four nonfiction books this month and three of them could easily be my favorite. (The book about Japan was interesting, but shoddily edited, so doesn't quite cut it. :-) I think I'll have to go with Nick Davies. That book is probably my most important read this month, and was also extremely well written.

Favorite audio:
Hard to choose again. James Wilby read Saturday, so ... ? ;-)

Potential read for next month ... ? :-D

Quote of the Week

Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of the astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy.
Carl Sagan

ESC 2011: Norway, third quarter-final

Last quarter-final ... !! Henrik Ibsen's birthplace brings us ... an arena with lots of colored balloons, and Anne Rimmen's nicest dress so far this year. :-) Ready for takeoff ... !! :-D

Entry #1: Nothing Remains, written & performed by Susperia. Metal! Right? I'm really not into this genre, so I don't know exactly what kind of metal these guys play - black, death, what else? I've been thinking that we ought to send this song to Düsseldorf, just because we dropped the ball last year - it would have been SO AWESOME to have put Keep of Kalessin on stage in Telenor Arena. But alas, it wasn't to be. And now I'm not at all sure that I want us to send this anyway. It's so ... tame. It's much more melodious that I expect from this type of music, so it sounds kind of wrong, it doesn't really sound like 'real' metal. Not at all sure about this entry now. I'm starting to think that we'd look like wusses if we sent it. And we're supposed to be the serious metal people. Help! o_O I do agree, though, that it's great with more variation in the contest. In principle. o_O

Entry #2: Simone Larsen, Moh Denebi, Jennifer Brown and Björn Djupström - Gone with the Wind, performed by Noora Noor. Our queen of soul. :-) Well, we already know that it'll be performed very well and professionally with great stage presence. And a very good voice. As for the song itself, it's ... my favorite so far tonight. Catchy and kind of unusual ... it might get some attention, the chorus is a bit different. I like it. Fingers crossed. It's not an international winner, but we could hold our heads up with this one. :-)

Entry #3: Tor Einar Krogtoft-Jensen and Christoffer Bergesen - SOS, performed by Girl Happy. Inspired by Romeo and Juliet, this is an impossible love story between a girl and a robot. I know, whut? Fugly costume, weird choreography, weak vocals and just a dumb concept. The song isn't half bad - at least the verses - but it's totally ruined by all the shit surrounding it. Alexander Stenerud, where are you when we need you?? This could have gone somewhere if he'd taken over ... but as it is it just goes straight down the toilet. Hope to not see this again.

Entry #4: Simon Walker, Grethe Svensen and Tommy Berre - Like Dreamers Do, performed by Grethe Svensen. She's a very experienced singer but is making her ESC debut now. A ballad ... not a lot of those this year, so that's nice. Good voice, very expressive. Classy lady. Anne Ida says that this is giving her West End vibes ... I get that, but that can work. :-) It's a pretty good entry, not very memorable, but nothing wrong with it. And she has great stage presence, which may be more important than we think - AFAIK the audience will be able to vote throughout the entire show this year too. Svensen will appeal to older viewers, that may be a plus. But I can't see this winning, I'm afraid. Well, we'll see ...

Entry #5: Agnete Johnsen and Emelie Nilsen - Dance Tonight, performed by The BlackSheeps. Yes, that's how they spell their name. They started the band before they'd learned to conjugate English properly. See, this is why teenagers shouldn't be pop stars. >:-( This band has actually won the ESC once before - they won the Junior version in 2008 with their runaway hit Oro jaska beana. So of course the media are full of graduation jokes. It'll be interesting to see how they'll do in the grownup ESC. The song is ... pretty catchy, actually. I like it. But why is the song in Norwegian when the title is English? o_O Oh, wait, the chorus is in English. But why? Oro jaska beana was a mix between Norwegian and Sami - maybe that's their thing, mixing languages. I've really only heard these two songs by them. Odd. Well, I like the song, it's good, and they're fun to watch. We'll be seeing this entry again.

Entry #6: Stella Mwangi with Beyond51/Big City - Haba haba, performed by Stella Mwangi. Another linguistic melange - the verses are in English and the chorus in Swahili. Mwangi is originally from Kenya ... and is supposedly a big star there. Too bad they're not EBU members. >:-) This entry is being touted as a real feelgood song ... and I guess that's true, although I'm not too impressed initially. But hey, the chorus is great. I love the chorus ... and so does the audience, they're really digging it. Which is a very good thing, that's very important in the international final, cause that really does come through the screen. But this song is so weird ... it's like the verses aren't by the same writer/composer, they're so not the same quality as the chorus. So I really don't know what to think about this entry. I really like parts of it. o_O It's like the Swedish entry the year before last ... a very noticeable disconnect between verse and chorus. Weird. Good luck to Stella ... I don't really know how this will turn out. Although it must be said that my hopes aren't very high.

Entry #7: Knud Kleppe - Fire Below, performed by The Lucky Bullets. Kleppe is the band's singer, so it's their own entry, which is a plus. But that's really the only positive thing I can say about this entry. It's the first time for rockabilly in our national contest, which is good, cause we like variation, but ... it's still not good. I can't even tell the difference between the verse and the chorus, it's all just one annying buzz. Highly irritating. Will sink without a trace. Good riddance.

There were some technical difficulties during the first entry, so Susperia is performing again ... and they're sounding SO much better this time. This is actually metal. I'm very pleasantly surprised. I may vote for them now. :-)

Almost time for the results ... my guess, let's see. Susperia and The BlackSheeps are in, and Noora Noor, I can't imagine she'll be beaten out this soon. Then finally Mwangi or Svensen. I don't know who I'm rooting for. I voted for Susperia. :-)

Interval ... Sigrid finds Mr Skien, who's a lot more ... sparkly ... than Mrs Ørland and Florø. The musical entertainment is Didrik Solli-Tangen - of course, we're in Skien! :-D - and Bjørn Johan Muri singing the latter's entry from last year. I am so sick of that song ... we have the radio on all day at work and it felt like that song was on every twenty minutes for months and months. Sheesh. Fun performance, though.

Semifinalists:

Susperia - Nothing Remains

The Lucky Bullets - Fire Below

WTF?? That enervating noise pollution?? Sheesh. Norwegians really are idiots. >:-(

Finalists:

The BlackSheeps - Dance Tonight

Stella Mwangi - Haba haba

OK, yay for that, at least. But they really need to do something with Mwangi's song. Up the oomph on the verse. :-) I like the sheep song even more this time around. So ... mostly OK this round. But sheesh ... !! I'm so surprised that Noor didn't get through. I was so certain she'd make it ... in fact I was so sure that I didn't vote for her. Ho hum ...

A turtle book

But at the same time so much more.

I just finished this book today. It's pretty short, only about 195 pages plus notes and bibliography, but still so informative. An easy read, it's a popular science book, but it's wonderful, I love it. The story of Lonesome George is just amazing. Read it and weep.

Do dead people speak English?

Apparently so.

I'm sorry to be blogging about TV two days in a row, it's not that I'm obsessing over TV or anything, it's just that this is so interesting. Bear with me.

I'm watching Fem, a channel that I usually avoid like the plague, except for a movie maybe three times a year ... but tonight it's just too interesting to miss, I have to watch this. Lisa Williams live in Oslo. You know who she is, right? She's one of these despicable fraudsters who pretend they can communicate with the dead and give grieving people closure. OK, I'm sorry, maybe she's not a fraudster. Maybe she thinks she's really doing it. Maybe she's not despicable, just delusional. That would maybe be slightly better. Maybe. But anyway.

She's done a live performance here in town - or maybe more than one, I'm not sure - and this totally shitty TV channel (its primary demographic is stupid women with underdeveloped critical thinking skills) has turned that into a TV show. Pandering to the lowest common denominator. >:-( I'm watching it out of morbid curiosity. Kind of my duty as a skeptic. But it's depressing, it really is. I don't understand how people are falling for this stuff. And I don't understand how someone has the stomach to do something like this to people who are mourning their loved ones. There's a woman in the audience who lost her husband three weeks ago ... ! and Williams brings her forward and supposedly gives her messages and shit. The husband wants her to give the wife a hug. It's sickening.

She makes mistakes but isn't called on them. When did he die, it was two years ago, right? No, three weeks. Oh, OK, but I'm getting something about two years, was he sick for two years? See what she did there? Now that pisses me off. And why does she need to ask ... OK, she says that she's got someone's husband ... on the line, or whatever, and 'I'm in this section here'. (I just hate that woo talk, you know it when you hear it, it's so annoying. Energy and balance. Sheesh.) Then she asks 'who here lost their husband recently?' What does she need to ask that for? If the guy's supposedly right there, then why can't he tell her which one is his wife? That would be SO MUCH MORE IMPRESSIVE if she just picked the woman out of the crowd, instead of making her come forward. There are so many people there, there's bound to be someone who lost their husband 'recently'. Oh, and define 'recently', please.

What she says is so vague, yet people say afterwards that she just described them to a tee. It's fascinating. They want to believe, so they do believe, even with so little to go on. It's really sad, and disgusting at the same time. Don't get me wrong, it's her I'm disgusted at, she's exploiting these poor people. And nobody calls her on things ...

... like my main question here, which is also the title of this post, do dead people speak English? Williams is from the UK, but right now she's in Norway, we speak Norwegian here. In the intro she was shown backstage establishing her connection with the spirit world (using a computer, interestingly enough) and she was saying that she felt like the Norwegian names were difficult, she was worried about getting them wrong. (The only name that's been mentioned on the show was pretty easy for her - Tommy. :-D) So she's not familiar with our language. The first person she brought up on stage was a man, I'd say in his forties probably, who really struggled with English. I'm not saying he can't speak it under normal circumstances, maybe he can get along, but in this obviously rather overwhelming situation - she 'connected with' his father, mother, father-in-law and sister - he really struggled to put a three word sentence together. Based on that I'm willing to bet a pretty significant amount of money that his father wasn't exactly fluent either. In fact I'm quite sure that the father's English skills would have fallen in the category slim to none. So how did he communicate with Williams, since they have no language in common? Hm.

I know, don't tell me - spiritual communication isn't like our helpless mortal speaking! She communes with the dead and they share their minds with her. Aw. They just show her things in images and feelings. Really? She seems to be getting things that are really specifically phrased - information-wise not much, but in the phrasing of them quite specific, if that makes sense; not like she's just relaying vague impressions - and the way she talks, she says that he's saying, she's saying ... Tommy's mother is such a chatterbox, she's constantly talking. Huh?

I also wonder a bit at how fantastic all these people are. They are all so wonderful, she loves them, they're so funny. Why don't these psychics ever connect with all the real shitheads out there, the narcissistic psychopaths, the abusive parents, the bullies? What do they do if they tell someone that their dead father is present, and the two of you had a very special relationship, didn't you? What if the person answers yes, their father molested them for nine years? I mean, that would be a pretty special relationship. Then what would Ms Williams say, I wonder?

Whatever she'd say, of course they wouldn't put it on TV. >:-(

'Uppdrag granskning'

I was going to mention this last week, but I forgot ... I blogged about something else instead, I bet it was important, let's see. Ah, yes, Failbook! Very important, certainly. :-D But what I've been thinking I ought to mention is that the new season of Uppdrag granskning has started. In fact it started last week. I hope all my Scandinavian readers will watch this fantastic documentary series. It's on SVT1 on Wednesdays at 8pm, with usually three reruns over the following days. It's also broadcast online simultaneously and can be watched online later as well, just go here. There will be 21 more episodes this season, excluding tonight's.

I always try to catch this if I'm able ... they do such fantastic research and reporting, and deal with so many interesting issues. I wish we had a program of this quality in Norway. Last week's episode was about a man convicted of child molestation who was in prison, but who was 'trusted' to the extent that he was let out daily - of course he abused this trust by renting an apartment in a quiet neighborhood, pretending to live there and work nights (he had to be back in jail by 9pm) ... he insinuated himself into the life of this little community and of course ended up molesting another little girl. But whose trust did he abuse? The prison authorities were fully aware of his having the apartment - they even helped him move. This despite the fact that he had been diagnosed as a pedophile and experts considered him highly likely to reoffend, AND that he had downloaded I don't know how many child abuse pictures from various places online, using the prison computer. Seriously, WTF is that about. Who's not doing their jobs in that place? That was a very interesting episode and I think it's great that UG dug around in this story.

Tonight's episode - I'm watching as I write this - is about IKEA and its founder, Ingvar Kamprad, and how he has not at all released ownership of the company as he claims, but has set up an incredibly complicated network of companies to hide away crazy amounts of money in Liechtenstein and avoid paying taxes wherever possible. Nothing illegal, but at least IMO rather immoral. They have a Twitter feed on their homepage and I see that a lot of viewers are disappointed ... at least most of those who are tweeting. ;-) Supposedly this is a non-issue, in their view. Not sure that I agree. It's not the end of the world, definitely not. But IMO it is interesting, because when someone, a company or a person or whatever, portray themselves in a certain way ... in order to sell more stuff, get sympathy, etc, and in reality they are very different from the image they construct, perhaps even the polar opposite, that is worth knowing. (Sylvia Browne comes to mind here, for some reason. >:-) For instance, this completely mistaken view that IKEA is Swedish. The company as a whole benefits hugely from that, I'm sure it's very significant in the way it's perceived all over the world. But it's not Swedish, it's Dutch. It hasn't been Swedish for I don't know how many years. But wait, is it Dutch? Or was it Belgian? No, the head office is in ... Luxembourg? No, that was before, now it's in Liechtenstein ... isn't it? Where the hell is it?

No, tax planning isn't illegal. But when a company like IKEA does it, goes to extreme lengths to hide it, and conceals it even from its own employees, that's something I for one think is good to bring to the public's attention.

Watch Uppdrag granskning, people ... you'll learn something.

Weirdness on the streetcar

So, I had dinner at Calyx and N's place tonight ... K seemed to really like her birthday present - fair trade toys from Friends, go check out our selection if you need a present for a child. :-) On the streetcar back downtown I was listening to music and not really paying attention, but glancing around at one point I noticed an older man who seemed to be having trouble punching his ticket correctly. I'm not sure how old he was, but maybe around 60 ... ? We were at one of the stops and he had a ticket (or at least a piece of paper) in his hand and was sort of leaning over the little machine that punches the paper tickets, and he was trying to get it punched, but apparently having trouble. Another passenger, she was sitting in the seat just behind the machine, got up and ... my eyes may have been deceiving me, but I would be willing to bet money that she showed him how to punch the ticket properly. She put her hand towards the machine and said something to him and then he did get the ticket punched. At first I thought she was his wife, just because they were about the same age and they talked to each other and seemed friendly. I thought he was going to sit down in the seat in front of her. But no.

That guy was the driver. o_O After punching his ticket, or whatever it was, he got back behind the wheel, or whatever steering device streetcars have, and we drove off.

WTF?