Sunday, July 25, 2010

Norsk Trevirke

Get in, Pop.

Let's go!



The family land.


Wooden boats need to pee, too.



A kid with a boat...
...and three blondes in tow.
Play on, playa.

Hei Dritfugl

I never would be able to operate a clothes dryer or navigate the transportation system if it wasn't for Google Translate. It's just so darn useful. I'm currently applying it towards translating box-trucker lingo into Norwegian. Cabbies won't know what hit 'em.

Skitne Kjærlige

Norway is a land of peace and tolerance. As long as you are not hurting anyone, everyone will let you love however you want to love. With such an open mindset, anything is possible.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Øl, Øl, Øl (del en)

Time to get down to business. Beer in Norway is either hit or miss. If its bought in a supermarket or at a bar, it's most certainly a miss. If you get a beer at a regulated liquor store, then it's almost always a hit. It's also double the price. Such a sacrifice is mandatory in the ongoing mastery of sensual pleasure through inebriation.


Here we have some summer styled beer. It's light, it's refreshing, but doesn't taste like much of anything. It's basically Coors Light, with isn't a bad thing. It's not exactly a good thing either. B-


Hrrm, Aass Fatøl, eh? Let's give this a taste... THRWPPPP!! Gag! Man, did they ever capture the essence of Fat Aass. Ugh, that was one of the worst beers I ever came across. Thwrp, thwrp. Gross. D-

Velkommen Tilbake


Now this is more like it. Trees, trees, trees. Green, green, green. Air so fresh, you want to wash its mouth out with soap.


This is the view from my cousin's porch in Oslo. Well, its more the suburbs of Oslo, but unless you are in the heart of the city, it's all one big suburb compared to New Yawk. Not a loudmouthed goon or pitbull in sight. The flat overlooks a large, clean lake and campground where you can hear little kids singing in unison and splashing around in the water.


Norway at the stroke of midnight. It's a challenge to get accustomed to both the time zone change and the fact that it doesn't really get dark until 1am. I always spend the first day sleeping in tweaky fits like a dreaming dog, and become curmudgeonly cantankerous after awaking. Then I have a beer and get my act together.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Hjem Er Så Trist

I have this new concept that a travel blerg should begin by showing where the hell the blergger is coming from, before they start showing pictures of the place they are going to and start raving on all about it. This way, the people reading the dumb blerg can get an idea why the visited location is so highly regarded and idealized through the eyes and fingertips of the dumb blergger. If readers think that he is being pretentious, or romanticizing the vacay spot too much, they can easily refer back to the his hometown and say, "Oh, I see now where he is coming from: he lives in an overpopulated hustlefuck and steps in sidewalk dogshit once a week. No wonder he loves this holiday place".


Here we have my room, just as I left it, this picture taken literally as I was walking out the door to Newark Airport. Stuff upon stuff. Crap upon crap. An aloe plant that I'm taking out my life's frustrations on by killing slowly through exposure and dehydration. Abandoned artworks. My expansive wardrobe. I just noticed I left a half-drank Grolsch on the shelf in the bottom left there. That's gonna reek in two weeks. But wait, I can eliminate the stench with the can of Lysol on the right. The cycle of life continues.

This is our housecat, Paxil, the feline embodiment of neurotic self-destruction. All of Brooklyn's anxiety and woebegone is channeled and funneled into her little cone there, and she deals with it by way of a morbid compulsion to lick herself. She licks until her hair comes off. She licks until she has sores. She licks herself until the sores have sores, and then she licks some more. We have recently learned that this type of behavior is common with other black runt cats in the neighborhood. They should organize and seek group therapy. Stay cool, Pax.


Ugh. I can smell this picture just by looking at it. I pass this nightmare almost everyday of my life. The newspaper and periodical distribution units filled with chicken bones and styrofoam. The obsolete public phone that I've only seen beaten upon. The violation-ripe bakery some thug was shot outside of, wandered into, and died. The NYU condos lurking in the distance. Not to mention the current temperature here is akin to sitting in a hot 1982 Chevy Celebrity Station Wagon, with the windows barely cracked, while being panted on by the family dog. Ugh.


Goodbye rampaging dumptrucks! So long black trash bag pyramids and the miserable whiffs you bequeath! To the random come-from-nowhere street parades, car stereo whomp-whomp, knucklehead pitbulls, and the good-for-nothing 90th precinct: Get Bent! I'm outta here you jerks! See you in two weeks! The time has come for my return...

...my return...

...to Aquavit City.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Techie Diffs

Shit. Stay tuned. I left the cord that hooks the cam up to the comp. Shit. Stay tuned.