christ’s heaven-journeys squeeze day

spend the day at work, surfing the internet for porn in a conference room. it’s very nice and relaxing.

Note to self

Buy books and sofa.

Self-abuse is an overall improvement, no?

MPD Psycho

TWIN PEAKS is supposedly a nice show, but could it ever hold a candle to Multi Personality Detective Psycho? Hardly, as with everything spawned by western culture, be it through the clever minds of pretentious artists allowed to tick away unruled, or something vaguely described as aesthetical evolution, it always emerge a lot… more, when raped, maimed and eaten (in arbitrary order) by the Japanese. Which of course applies to everything, in due time. ”All your base…”.

THOUGH AS most “phenomena”, thisn’ also has its ups and downs. MPD was shot for TV so naturally Takashii goes all out yonder to make the footage look suitable crappy. Of course, that might also be a by-product of limited budget. I’m still very happy to see they opted for visceral, graphic imagery rather than filthy OC-fashion footage. Can’t wait for the blood & guts to show up on prime time.

I’M SURE there was a red line somewhere, but I kind of lost interest when taking a wee long pause in writing. I leave you to draw your own conclusions about where this mess was heading, while I remain the stolid advocate for excessive violence throughout entertainment.

//en

It’s toasted

2 THINGS; For unknown reasons, I’m getting increasingly obsessed with alpacas. Super cuddly.

I’m also enjoying a brilliant hangover this morning. It’s been a while since I managed to overdo it by equal meassures. Correction: I’m not hungover yet. Still drunk, sort of thing. Expecting to be in a right state around lunch.

EDIT: TURNED OUT my health-forecast was rather accurate; by fuck one of the least productive Fridays ever. I normally get more work-work done on a day off. Almost worth cos the beers went down listening to Curly Anns gig at Stampen. Awesome!

All work and no play

That’s it Mr. Giraffe, get all the marmalade.

They came to Sweden

…AND THEY saw that it was gooood. Had a really nice time with the japanese. All curteous and bowing and trading business cards with both hands. Translation and exclamations in Japanese lent an interesting quality to the whole affair. They were pretty much happy with us, and them being a very potent client, we’re muy happy with them. Oh yes indeed we are.

AS USUAL after succesful meetings I wind up with shitloads to do. Yay me. Not in a position to complain though, cos after succesful meetings I also end up taking the “meetees” out for lots of drinking. Fun things happen when you treat japanese people to Akvavit. Both Skåne & O.P. in this case. I was invited to Japan 3 times over and had a 30 minute recount of a famous Noh-dance. In japanese. (I gathered there was no nudity involved, but it still sounded like a very culturally rewarding way to spend an afternoon.)

THE DAY after, I couldn’t quite bolster my usual swagger. Easily remedied by downing a couple random pills and 2 cups of coffee. Enjoyed yet another meeting, continously sipping coffah, winding up with even more to accomplish very soon. Then we signed a distribution contract with the lot, had some champagne and they went off back home again. I ate one monster of a muffin / cupcake, had some more coffee and headed out to the House & Home Expo.

EXPOS ARE great fun, as I mentioned earlier. There was a slight “style-clash” between me and my colleague, on account of me wearing my best suit, and she some painters’ gear. They had rather acceptable coffee. Thanks to my rather slick and threatening look for the evening, she was favoured by most of the “interesting” people with “entertaining” queries. Hurrah.

THE SATURDAY was mostly spent sleeping, wandering about Stockholm, having some excellent food at Tullen Bar & Kök and lots of drinking and, kind of, club-hopping around my small home town. Pathetic though it may seem, I don’t have any issues going somewhere alone (in my small home town, that is), cos one always meet someone familiar and thus no longer have to feel like a lonely alcoholic.

The friend who I was starting the evening with was slightly condecending on hearing that I actually had dinner alone, at an “establishment” and was equally so when I continued to the next bar by myself. Fuck off. I chatted around with more people that evening than you do in a week.

CAN’T REMEMBER how the Sunday turned out. Therefore concluding that it wasn’t exciting enough to bother writing about.

//Champloo!

btw: I forgot to post this’n earlier…

Big in Japan

DOCTORS ARE fun. Especially when they diagnose your current condition as originating from a latent viral infection in the sensory nervous system. Won’t bother to mention the name of this “condition” as I’m convinced that the nasty sounding quality of it carries very well across translation. I did get some good bits out of em though: it’s not contagious, it won’t need treatment, by the time I got worried enough to see a doc, it was already healing. F*cking A.

On the subject of health, my co-workers were a bit annoyed with me for saying that I’ll definitely win our annual health evaluation. “Not a competition” my, by comparison well excersized, ass.

MY FAVOURITE clients in Japan are coming to meet with me. Yay! As I’m pretty much empersonating my company, and thus the inexcusably substandard services provided by it on occasion (or not, as it were), I’m rather expecting having to add Seppuku to my resume.

ON FRIDAY I will, for various reasons, be co-representing my company at an expo. Great fun.

//N

Revelations

AFTER SOME hours of experimenting and thoroughly enjoying myself with AOL Radios multitude of channels, I accidentally assaulted the few colleagues in my proximity with a blast of Behemoth. I also, very carefully, noted that colleagues by default do not approve of death metal. How the hell should I know?

I’m very pleased to announce that I’m still employed.

//GRAAAAARRRR.

Business as usual?

WHEN I got home yesterday, from a very demanding but nontheless pleasant weekend, I collapsed. Literally, collapsed on my bed and slept for ~6 hours from sheer exhaustion. First time ever, and I must confess to envy people who can come home from say, a normal day at work, and do that. So incredibly nice not being able to keep your body moving/thinking and surrender to your otherwise subjugated “instincts”. I must start drinking like this every weekend to wear myself out properly.

MY WEEKEND started already Friday morning when I met up with my clientele at their hotel. As expected, there was plenty of tax free vodka around, most of it headed my way, and me suitcase was lightly stuffed accordingly. Success!

After greetings and hugs and conversations we had them all ushered onto a bus which took us out to Xxxxxx where I beaming lead them on a tour around our bran nu factory and old trusty warehouse. Then we continued to a hotel complex for meeting and discussions. I managed to hold a coherent and productive lecture on our new products, much appreciated by the attendants, so I really hope there’ll be some demand for next season. In the evening we enjoyed a refreshing 3 hours of sauna with plenty of drinks and birch twig whipping. It takes some serious skill to get it right. Note that my colleague and I, who were raiding the local woods for said twigs, only managed to find the real painful type of twigs. Success!

I also recall we had wine sampling later in the evening, but then again I might not. Tasty!

SOCIAL Activites on Saturday involved laser skeet, kayaks, more sauna + drinks and karaoke. All carried out extraordinary well from under a veil of nasty headache. Russians were cheating cos they were out fishing and resetting themselves with cognac at 7 am. Fell asleep in the sauna for a bit. You don’t miss a blanket in there. Success!

WE ALL packed our gear and left the wicked place the next morning. Nobody looking particulary happy about it. Or something more physically connected, but who am I to know? Bus back to Stockholm and then a soothing Diet Coke on BK when nobody was watching me anymore. Nice train ride back home with a couple of other dishevelled looking people who’d seemingly spent a night out on town the day before, and by the looks of it really regretted how it all ended.

THE HARVEST for client meeting 2008:

• 1 bottle of Hendricks Gin
• 1 bottle of birch vodka
• 1 bottle of Eiswine
• 1 Santana CD
• 1 flask of Beefeaters Gin
• 4 invitations to different countries, which I of course must act upon in due time.

ONE THING I found out this meeting is that when people come up all “refreshed” and wants to talk business and markets and expanding - it’s basically not worth it and they’ll actually appreciate you for stalling them until sober enough to take notes and stay with the topic (one party at least).

//N

крим/симферополъ

I HATE devaluated currency. According to bank index the Ukrainian one should be way out there alongside the Biafra dollars or something. My knowledge of international, or even general, economics is scarce at best. So… one thing I wasn’t bothering to be aware of was that the conniving buggers had managed to get their money to actually be worth something again – at least inside of the country.

Now, as always when I’m back at Arlanda, I’m thinking “maybe should visit the money exchange and rid myself of useless cash?”. Oh f…ing noes. The gentleman, behind ~½ inch of fist proof lexan, kindly informs me that no one deals with this currency outside of that country and it’s also slightly illegal (or something) to bring it with you once you leave.

If anyone feels like owning a migh fine set of genuwine Ukrainian bills is a good idea… you know where to find ‘em. An unbeatable EXR at that.

Except for the irksome monetary FAIL, I highly recommend Ukraine (and the Crimean area in particular) to any traveller with decent command of Russian. S’pose it’s a bit like Greece in the summer. Only more communistah.

FIRST DAY was more or less spent on 1. Kiev Airport 2. Plane to Simferopol 3. “Gipsy Cab” to Alushta. By the 2nd part it was all dark and nighty so I couldn’t really see that I was headed for this amazing little town next to the Black Sea. Nice evening consisting of much pondering over The Gimp Cell in my room (pic coming soon) and watching the night people from my balcony. The night “crowd” on a Sunday night was admirably drunk and gently singing to themselves.

SECOND DAY started with failing to get a decent cupacoffee. Then we met up with our very friendly customer and various key staff of his. They’re all quite nice and easy going but wouldn’t speak much English. Fortunately though his assistant was there to translate. Yay! we get on this bus of theirs and embark on our daytrip. Five minutes into the journey Edi decides we should have something for breakfast. This was at ~10:05.

On our way, our first stop was this wicked eldritch trout farm c/o remnants of the communist parteeh. Not exactly what I’d get off on, but I can’t deny that I found it a pleasing sight.
 After watching this cool trout sensei in fatigues feeding the trout we moved on to visit a mini orthodox farm hamlet, where everyone wore robes and radiated the prefix “Brother”. Surreal chanting, they did.
 

The “end” of our journey was caves. I have to hand it to them though, it was a really nice set of caves. Walked around in there for about 1 hour, listening to what I’m sure was a very interesting tourguide. Still haven’t managed to learn the difference between “Shtalagmitski” and “Shtalaktitski”, but I got a lot of groovy pictures of both.

I reckon one of the things to put on your bucket list should be “Check out trippy cave while on some vicious evil substance”. You’d think twice before touching a rock again.

"From the finest rotting wine produce, with a healthy infusion of kerosene and that distinguished tinge of formalin."

 

On our way back to Alushta, succumbing to the whims of Edi the Thirsty, we had a pit stop for some tasty snacks and my first taste of Yea Olde Crimean Blacke Dethe. It wasn’t too bad after a couple of swigs, but then again it wouldn’t be the first time human taste buds took the day off (Grappa, anyone?).

THE EVENING proceeded nicely with walking, drinking and talking on the beach of the Black Sea. We all wound up at this rather nice restaurant which’s Vodka stock could easily be on par with the Kreml. I’ve rarely been so appreciating over having had something to eat before the drinking started for real. Wouldn’t dare to indulge in dancing with the cute girls of my customers staff because, after all, I was there on business. I opted for swimming in the Black Sea instead, which seemed a very reasonable and decent thing at the time. Still does, as a matter of fact.

THIRD DAY began with some drowsiness and then much rejoice over the abscence of a spectular hangover, which I had been expecting. And honestly felt a grain of disappointment at for not showing up. Of course it did, but by then I was halfway up a Crimean mountain plateu. The view offered some consolation.

It won’t show on this picture, or any other of mine, but in the far distance you could see these curious golf ball looking structures. Upon asking my friends about them, there were some issues with finding a suitable translation, they turned out to be radar sites (?) for the much-disputed Star Wars defence system.

After strolling across the plateau, stopping for sandwiches and wine, we reached a cape with these old ruined fortifications hacked right into the mountain. Apparently it was the last point of defence aginst the Tartars / Turks / Martians, when they decided to make war on the friendly mountain people. The latter didn’t make it, but fought valiantly and caused huge casualties to their enemies. The big piece of rock was highly contested in the local wars due to its strategiv values and so on. Yawn.

We were all feeling a bit fagged and fashed by the end of the evening, so after a few customary sips of vodka we called it a night. I spent we too much of mine watching the horribly fascinating Russian overdub of Batman. Amazing how Hollywood only manages to gets me interested when recast in the mould of former Soviet.

FOURTH DAY I was heading homewards again.  Paid visit to a small shop of “ours” in the area enroute to the airport. Off to Kiev, all charming passport controls and suspiscious looks. Transfer through Copenhagen, with a throng of suits on, what else, important business. First cupacoffee, decent one at that, for a couple of days.

EXPLOITED. That’s what Ukraine should be. It’s such a waste of country when they won’t bother to learn English. Once they do, it’ll be a seriously competitive destination for tourists around Europe. If not only for the joy of using my otherwise useless bunch of their money, I’d quite enjoy going back on my own:

• Very good looking. People.
• Liberal interpretation of traffic laws, at best, calls for exciting cab rides.
• Cheap?
• Vodka.
• Food.

//nemlan