Mind matters

Okay, today was the fifth time that I’ve locked myself out of my own appartment. I was going to the store to buy something to eat for lunch, at 1.30 pm. The same moment the door closed I realised that I had only brought with me my wallet. My keys and cell were still inside!

I tried ringing the doorbells of my neighbours to see if someone could lend me a phone so I could call Jenny who has a backup key for my appartment. No such luck.

Here’s a picture of the door and the EVIL lock which probably was designed by some EVIL GENIUS who tried to score some EVIL points on petty mischief! You don’t need a key to lock the door, it locks automatically once you close it.

Here’s me trying a forced entry, but failing miserably.

Here’s where my keys were, in the pocket of my jacket.

I decided to walk to the local pizzeria and buy pizza for lunch. The nice guy taking my order also lent me his cell phone so I could call Jenny. She said she would be home from work around 4 pm. So I ate my pizza and then walked to the library, which is only a couple of hundred meters from my place, and spent a couple of hours reading magazines. It was quite nice!

I read magazines such as Hemmabio, Arkitekten, Arkitektur, Bergsport and Cap & Design.

At 4 pm I walked home and met Jenny and got my backup key! Yay!

Next time I will make sure I am wearing more suitable pants than my thin pyjama pants!

Yesterday, on friday 16:th of march, me and my friend David journeyed up to Stockholm to watch a show with Dolly Parton.

I’m not a huge country fan myself, but I like the music style of country and bluegrass enough to know who Dolly is. I’ve seen her on some of the talk shows like Letterman, Leno, Parkinson and such and she always comes of as a centered woman who knows who she is and isn’t a bit ashamed for that! And I have great respect for that. So, I’ve been a Dolly-fan even without being a fan of country itself

The reason I knew about the concert and got tickets to it is David. The tickets were $100 + travel expenses. He asked me if I would like to go and see Dolly in Stockholm. It didn’t take much thinking to answer yes to that question! I have never been to a big public event before, and have been dying to know what it is like to be in a place where everyones attention is focused on a single person.

So on friday we left Linköping and 11.30 am. Well in Stockholm we parked at Globen, where the concert was going to be held, and then took the subway into the city. I managed to squeeze in a 1 hour date with a guy I had been chatting with on QX - qruiser, and it was really nice! I’ll defintively date him more! We’ll see what that’ll lead into

At 19.30 the concert started. Globen was packed with people! I don’t know how many, but probably between 7-10 000 people. It was a glorious concert! To be in the presence of a Mega Star such as Dolly, it’s a life time experience

She started of with some early songs and quickly added Joleene, one of my favourites, to the show. Then she progressed into playing a lot of instruments! She played violin, piano, guitarr, banjo, flute and some stringed instruments that I don’t know the name of. It was impressive!

Dolly was also a lot of fun to behold. She had a really sparkling, glittering dress when she entered the stage. She started of with jokes like:

“I thank you for the money you paid for the tickets to be here… I really mean it! I need the money. It takes a lot of money to make someone look this cheap! I mean, I really love to have glittery stuff on me. Like this dress. Do you think I overdid it?”

I did recognize the most of the songs since I’ve been listening to Dollys records over the past weeks to prepare for the concert. And she played all my favourites, which are Joleene, My coat of many colours and Turn, Turn Turn. The concert really took off when she sang Working 9 to 5, when all the crowd stood up and danced to her song! It was amazing!

The concert was easily 5 out of 5 in my book. She was a lot of fun and has a great singing voice! And it was great to get to watch her live, because she truly has a great personality that shines through in her performance.

Last time Dolly was in sweden was in 1978, then the crowd wasn’t that big, because a woman like Dolly, with big breasts, blond hair and who liked herself that way, was something that wasn’t so accepted in sweden. Now the scene is quite different. All the tickets to her 3 shows in sweden sold out in the first day when they were released.

If I ever get the chance of seeing Dolly perform live again, I’ll definitively take it!

I like stand-up comedy and comedy in general. Me and some of my friends usually talk about the latest comedy shows or comedians we have seen (on the internet, not much comedy here in Linköping!). Some of my favourites are: Eddie Izzard, Pablo Fransisco, Dylan Moran and Victor Borge.

Today I found Steve Hughes. Here’s a video of him:

Here’s an excerpt from the video above, towards the end of the video:

Steve’s talking about the Heavy Metal subculture, to which he himself belongs, and how many men in that subculture are homophobic and he’s impersonating a heavy metallist

Heavy metallist: We don’t like’em Steve, we don’t like’em.
Steve: Who mate?
Heavy metallist: Porker’s mate. We don’t like’em.
Steve: Why not mate?
Heavy metallist: They’re not real men, mate. They’re not tough.
Steve: They’re not tough? They fuck men! That’s hardly gay!

Link: Steve Hughe’s myspace profile

Today, when I was catching up with my daily feeds, my eye caught this story about an Iraqi minister of the Iraqi National Library and Archives (INLA). He started writing a blog in november 2006. It’s basically his diary, published by the British Library.

I started reading the entries for february and was caught. The life that unfolds on these pages is, for me, extremely fascinating, and worrying. I was fascinated by the story, since he details how life is in Bagdad right now and what he is doing in order to keep the INLA running and assuring the safety of his staff. It baffels me how people can live with such violence surrounding them…

After I had read the february entries, I read the rest of them too. He has some statistics about sectarian violence that his staff has had to endure and due to the New Security Plan, which was implemented in february, the violence has drastically dropped. So there’s hope in the february entries, which is good to have when you read the entries before that!

Here are som excerpts from his blog:

13 November, 2006
I received bad news, as soon as I arrived to my office. In my absent, INLA was bombed twice and snipers’ bullets broke several windows. Fortunately, no body was hurt. My staff withheld these information from me, when I contacted them. They claimed that they did not want me to be worried and to spoil my visit.

Diary for the Week 16-21 Dec.
My staff received their monthly salaries on Thursday, owing to the bravery of two of my employees, who work at the Accountancy Department. The two young women transferred the salaries (81 Millions Dinar = US$60,000) from the Bank to our building in secret. It took them five days to complete the operation. The Bank is located in a dangerous area, where the terrorists can attack at any moment.

31 January, 2007
A huge explosion shock our building. I hurriedly went to the second floor and saw a thick black smock rising from a car in al-Bab al-Mudham round-about (200 meters away from the NLA). I asked the security to prevent all members of staff from going outside the building, fearing that there might be another car-bomb. I learnt later that around 15 people were either killed or injured in the explosion. Among the victims were shoppers, passengers and drivers.

12 Febryary, 2007
Before leaving the building, I met Miss Ma., who lost her brother few weeks ago. She wept as soon as I offered her my condolences. She told me that her family decided to leave Baghdad permanently and live in Basra in the south. I promised to help as much as I could, and wished her good luck.

I highly recommend to read it! It certainly helped me gain some perspective on my life and my problems. They don’t seem that big now.

Link to the blog: http://www.bl.uk/iraqdiary.html

Apparently there’s an american basketball player called Tim Hardaway who said that he hates gay people. Of course this didn’t go unnoticed in the comedy shows. On one of them, Jimmy Kimmel Live, the former Star Trek actor George Takei (who played Hikaru Sulu in the Original Series, and who himself is gay), made a little fun of Tim Hardaway. Take a look at the video.

I must say, being a gay man myself, that George Takei just skyrocketed on my list over people I think are cool!

In my post An inconvenient truth my friend Peter posted a link to a speech by Al Gore when he appeared on TED - Technology Entertainment Design. He talks a little more about what we can do to minimize our CO2 emissions. But the fun thing is that he’s really hilarious in the first part of the clip!

Video: http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=al_gore

On last saturday, 24:th of february, the budo club had a day of gaming! We played a lot of different party and board games, like Chess, Munchkins, Spank the Monkey, Go, Carcassone, Great Dalmuti and much more. Those were just some of the games I myself played. There were a lot of them

From that event Corren, the local newspaper, has published an article! Here’s the article, in swedish only unfortunately. I’m a local celebrity! This is actually the third time I appear in the paper, I think.

Article: http://www.corren.se/archive/2007/2/25/j3azppk0jg0earv.xml