On a police car, four helicopters and a Canadian mountie

I must be going crazy, and I'm drinking peppermint-chocolate tea.

No, bear with me here. I could be going crazy. There is no sure-fire way of telling. My hair is too long. Or rather, it's in need of a cut. Not necessarily a get-much-shorter-cut, but a get-rid-of-the-split-ends-cut, for sure.

Jess is failing high school. It's before he becomes Peter Petrelli, so he still has that to look forward to. Or not. I don't know what happens to P. Petrelli in the end, as I never made it past season three.

My knee is making a weird noise. Icky. Rory is valedictorian. And I don't know what "valedictorian" means. I could google it. I know the gist. But there are red pandas in the world, and my boyfriend bought me a comic book.

Nick Offerman's "American Ham" is really great. But then Nick Offerman is really great too. And ham is okay, I suppose. I'm not a huge fan, even though ham is probably my favourite breakfast meat. I'm not that big a fan of "pålegg" in general. (I'm sure I've explained the oddity of the Norwegian concept "pålegg" before, so I'm not doing it again, In case I didn't, you can google it, or worse, take my clue from the valedictorian debacle and decide that you probably know what it is and remain in ignorance, while you distract yourself with another episode of "Gilmore Girls").

The turtle is staring at me judgingly. Probably because it knows I should be transcribing Henry Kissinger's notes instead of sending myself angry Facebook messages. Yes, I do that. Cruella can be truly cruel. Mari replies in kind (which is to say, not kindly).

I like seeing people happy. I think that is a sign I may not be going crazy. Or at least a good quality. Also, my laptop is running out of battery, and I'm starting to be annoyed at Lorelai. A little. We'll make up.

I suppose I should get to the point if there is one. (Or, I could plug in the laptop. That would avoid the need to make some sort of point.)

I've come to realize that one of the biggest challenges of my current line of work is to actually go to work on the days when it just isn't working. When I'm not working. Not being capable of working. When all I can do is be disgusted by the world and myself and watch "Gilmore Girls":

I've also come to realize that the valedictorian is the one wearing a slightly different robe than the rest, who holds the speech during the graduation ceremony, and I actually cried a little, during Rory's speech. It's an emotional episode.

I don't have a point, and my tea is getting cold. I might be going crazy, but at least there is another season to watch and new days to fail and fall down and stand up again. And maybe enjoy the fact that the title of this post does not match its content. Again.

On tricks

I am tricksy. Sure, I am also dependable, nice, friendly, outgoing and pleasant. True, I can be annoying, overbearing, cruel, petty, lazy and disgusting. But most importantly for the purpose of this post, I am tricksy.


I play tricks, sometimes on others, but usually on myself. See, while I know I am dependable, I frequently ignore this because it is more comfortable to be lazy. While I favour being nice to people, I sometimes deliberately choose to be annoying or even cruel (why, how else could I justify being a “Cruella”?). However, whenever I go out of my way to indulge in my negative traits I simultaneously make an effort to hide it. I try to pretend I am not petty while I secretly take great satisfaction in the fact that others struggle too. But I won’t admit it (except I just did…). Likewise, I won’t admit that I have a weakness (apart from here on my public blog), and I won’t admit that I cheat or lie or fake (not that any of those things have ever happened. I give you my word!).

Many of my blog posts are written from my desk at the university. Ideally, nothing other than my skittish (I’m using this word because it fits on so many levels. The irony level. The “perhaps not the word a native speaker would choose, but interesting nevertheless” level. The “pronounce it with a Norwegian accent and it takes on an entirely different meaning” level) thesis should be written from this desk. Clearly, that is not the case. I’m willing to bet that 80% (at least) of the words produced here were never even intended to go into my thesis (blog posts and Facebook status updates included). Then about 80% of the words intended to go into my thesis are eventually edited away. This means that the percentage of the total words I write from this desk that actually go into my thesis is disturbingly small.

And yet I pretend to plod away every day. I’m not even sure I am fooling anyone, but pretending that I do makes me feel better all the same. Therefore, when I stare blankly at a random spot outside the window I try to look like I am pondering what caused the transition in US foreign policy towards the Middle East between 1956 and 1967. In reality, I am trying to decide whether I’d like to cut bangs again when I go to the hairdresser sometime soon. Until I have an answer to the very important question above (the bangs one, not the Middle East one) I spend hours watching my hair grow, pretending to solve important riddles that require footnotes.

One last confession before I call it a day. Lately I have pretended that I am too busy to blog. While it can be argued that I actually am, evidence suggests the opposite. The past two weeks I have spent an admirable number of blogable hours on Facebook; reading The Secret Garden for the 73927643th time; watching Glee (and some random sitcom that wasn’t even all that funny, but once I had started watching it was hard to look away); trying to remember books that I have read and subsequently plotting them into goodreads.com (thanks a lot for that distraction…); and having “serious” discussions with my friends in the cafeteria.

In short, I work my butt off to keep my good girl cover from blowing. I wonder how much I’d achieve if I put all that energy into actually being a good girl, as opposed to pretending? What an idea…

On fate

For someone with both legs firmly planted in an “I don’t see it until I believe it” tradition, I am strangely prone to believing in fate. I don’t do God, auras or aliens, but I do believe that there is such a thing as “meant to be”. Now, just to make one thing clear right away – I’m not necessarily saying this applies to love. If there is only one person out there in the whole wide world that is meant for me, I certainly don’t have a very good chance of finding him among the 3,3 billion others out there, now do I? (For all we know, he could live in Tuvalu, and I might never get to even meet him, little less hit on him…) But, at any rate, love and statistics are not the topics of this blog. Music and hair are.

Remember a few weeks ago when I asked for help in finding a CD that I should have, but didn’t buy at the Mall of America? I received some helpful comments, and a suggestion. Could the CD I was looking for be Feist’s “The Reminder”? Again, my musical guru, J.M. Hunter helped me discover new music I loved. I am still not 100 % sure it’s the same CD, but from what I could hear on YouTube and Pandora (before my un-US-ness ripped it away from me), it sounded very similar, and I decided to buy the CD. However, since my stay in the US was coming to an end and I was facing the problem of how to bring everything I’d bought back to Norway, I decided to let the Feist album wait until I got back home. Besides, I had already bought a number of CDs that I would need to familiarize myself with until I could refill (I find that I usually need at least a week between new CDs, otherwise I end up listening to only one of them – which is bad since I tend to buy them in heaps, and then I won’t buy any for a year or so…).

One of the CDs I had bought was a complete impulse-buy. I was in a Borders store, it was on sale, and I thought the cover looked like it might be Damien Rice-ish. I was wrong.

The CD I bought was by Flight of the Conchords, and it’s called “I Told You I Was Freaky”. (Boy, they are not kidding, but I was not to discover this just yet.) I had never heard of Flight of the Conchords before, so I was more than a little disappointed when I discovered that the first song was a rap song. I can tolerate rap, but only in very small portions. It’s definitely not my favourite genre. This is partly because it’s often so lyrics centered, even if the lyrics often aren’t very complex (“maddafukin’ b**ch yo I wanna fuk ya yo, let’s go into da house and do da lopsided dance”) – or at least that is my prejudice. Because frankly, I would not know.

[I am very sorry that it is taking me so long to get to the point. No hair in sight yet – I promise there will be some, but let me reassure you, it’s not going to be a hairy rapper. They are often bald. By choice, I think.]

I would not know because I don’t listen to lyrics. Almost never. At least not until I’ve heard the song about a million times. Until then, the voice of the singer(s) is only another instrument to me. I am more likely to be able to recite the guitar riff or the drum solo than the lyrics of any given song. What catches my attention in music is the rhythm, the melody, the use of instruments (including the voice of the singer). So when I heard a rap song from a band that meant nothing to me, I filed the CD under “bad impulses” and moved on to reacquaint with Cat Stevens and to form a brand new relation with Neil Diamond (thank you “Glee”!). However, due to my tendency to put any new music I buy in the music library on my laptop (which automatically synchronizes with my mp3 player whenever I plug it in), my automatic playlists would jump to a song from this album every now and then. I soon discovered that there was more than rap music on this CD. In fact, it seemed to contain music from many different genres. I was intrigued, but I still did not listen to the lyrics…

[Where is the HAIR??? The hair is approaching… So is the point. We still have a few miles to cover, though…]

Jump to this morning [finally!]. Since I moved into my new apartment (actually, my friend’s apartment) [I thought you said you were jumping to this morning?!?], I have been keeping a very un-me schedule. I absolutely HATE not having enough down time, and the proper amount of down time can only be achieved when I spend a considerable amount of it at home, not asleep. This is where I’ve failed lately. Since I moved into the apartment on Thursday, I have slept and showered here. That’s all. I haven’t even unpacked yet – it’s a mess to say the least (good thing my friend won’t be back for another two weeks – I’ll have it tidied by then, I hope…). In addition I have had problems getting up in the morning (it looks like I missed this time zone as well…). This morning [hrmf! Do you really mean it this time?] was no exception. I got up later than planned, and once up, I was hesitant to leave home immediately (it was, after all, nice to see the apartment in daylight) even if I had planned to have a full day at the University. When I finally did leave, naturally, I missed the tram (which is the fastest way to get to the University from here). Instead, I took a bus, which would lead me to the metro. [The POINT?!? Get there!!! Now!!!!] Right by the bus stop, however, is a mall (“Oslo City” aka Hell on Earth, for those who are familiar with the place). I often try to avoid Hell on Earth, but as this was late in the morning, I didn’t think there would be much rush, so I entered on a whim.

Back to music. My whim was actually more of a rushing of something I had planned for later today – to buy the much awaited new album of my favourite band, Kent. I went to the record store, got the CD, and left, happily. Now, critical voice that type in brackets, we are moving fast forward again… [Yes!!!]

I went to the University, spent a few hours there, about 50% of them in the cafeteria, but hey – that’s what I’d missed about the place. Then I again decided to pay Hell on Earth a visit. There are a number of things I needed for the apartment (such as a radio in the bathroom – I figured that maybe it would be easier to get up in the morning if I didn’t have to stay in bed to listen to the radio – which is what I’ve been doing. My friend has the most brilliant alarm clock. It’s one of those that light up a few minutes before it rings – or in this case, the radio starts – which is supposed to make the awakening process easier. I can’t say that it is extremely effective, seeing as I’ve overslept every morning since I started using it, but it’s way fun. Anyway, radio in the bathroom…). Hell on Earth is the place to get them.

I walked around for a while, finding most of what I needed, and then I decided to pay the record store another visit. I wasn’t buying anything, of course. I had already bought a CD today. I was just going to have a look…

This record store is a two storey one. On the bottom floor, they have most of their CDs; while upstairs, they have DVDs. Since I had already been downstairs today, I was upstairs now, looking at DVDs. I emphasize this because if I hadn’t bought the Kent CD earlier, I would have been downstairs, and probably not bothered going upstairs at all. If I hadn’t, nothing of the following would have happened. Suddenly, I saw something interesting. They had a Flight of the Conchords DVD!

This is when the hair comes in. [There is hair? I had completely forgotten about that by now..]

I had picked up the DVD, when a young lady came over to me and signaled that she wanted to speak to me (I had ear plugs with music in them, so it’s a good thing I speak body language). I unplugged, and she explained that she was looking for models [don’t get carried away – the sentence goes on] for her exam in hairdressing. She needed a model for a bob, and I had long enough hair for it to be cutable. Basically, what she offered me was a free haircut.

I have relatively long hair. I’ve let it grow (though cutting it every now and then, like anyone growing their hair long should) ever since I went to Japan in 2006. This is how long it has taken me to have long hair. Which means I was a little bit hesitant at first.

The thing, though, is that I don’t have a proper hairdo at the moment. Since my hair is fine and light (Nordic to the last straw…), it doesn’t do much. I can’t train it to form in luscious shapes for the life of me. Especially when it’s not cut in a “do”. So I’ve been wondering if I should pay a visit to a hairdresser soon, and actually, I have been thinking about the bob. Now the opportunity fell from the sky, and I realized I needed to grab it.

I gave the girl my number, and we decided that Friday morning worked for both of us. When she left, I looked at the DVD in my hand again. Perhaps the whole world except me knew this, but apparently, Flight of the Conchords is a comedy duo from New Zealand. They have their own TV-show (the first season of which I was holding in my hand), where they do parodies. I had no idea that I had been the proud owner of one of their incredibly funny albums for weeks.

I figured that the free haircut saved me about 500 kroner. Thus, my visit to the record store (in addition the Flight of the Conchords DVD, I got two other DVDs, and, finally, “The Reminder” by Feist) was paid for by what I saved on not visiting a real hairdresser. On my way home I listened to Flight of the Concords on my mp3-player, and this time I also listened to the lyrics. I very nearly missed my bus stop. It’s not funny, it’s hilarious! (The rap song is about how rappers have feelings too – for instance when they make a nice meal and nobody compliments the food, their feelings are hurt!) Further on, I now realize that I have in fact seen these two New Zealanders before, on some American show (according to Wikipedia it’s probably either Letterman or Conan O’Brian). I now look forward to my 360 minutes of uncontrolled rolling around on the floor.

On a concluding note – my friend has a very fancy stereo [how is that concluding? I thought we were finally done with the digressions…]. It takes several CDs at once. Right now I’ve let it play through my new Kent album (another brilliant one. So far I think it's not quite the individual hit song album "Du & Jag Döden" was, it's more in line with "Tillbaka till samtiden" which was much better as a whole album but had few individual hits. However, Kent has yet to disappoint me – I love them!) and the Feist album. I am now fairly sure that this indeed is the CD I left in Minnesota. And even if it isn’t, it has succeeded in letting my mind accept that it is, and thus rest. Plus, I really love it.

All in all, this has been a good day musically. Now I might consider watching an episode of Flight of the Conchords before I go to bed. I will probably dream of evil scissors cutting my hair, though…