the end of 2006, every year the small apocalyptic feeling of another year passed.

Like every christmsmas is basically a rerun of emotions, rituals, consumerism and urban tales I join the corps of howling wolfs with a 2004 tale of poverty, which I intend to do every chritsmas for as long as I blog: Through repetition to create a plausible cultural narrative.

Merry Christmas


In the first days of december I was poor, and that in it self is a very good reason not to be head over heels in love with Big Business.

I was poor and poverty is embarrassing and paralyzing. I was poor and I was out of cigarettes. Two things that is not a sociological surprise in The States; being poor and a passionate smoker, but nonetheless: I needed my smokes, and I’ll be damned not to get them.I had about 3 dollar and 75 cents in coins, that’s about 140 coins because I was down to counting one-cent and five-cent pieces, and 2 dollar 16 cent, sitting on my debit-card. I took the car down to the local Seven Eleven Foodstore(!), on the mercy of big business reluctant to shop there, but that was as far as the car would take me, running really low on fuel. When you are poor, it’s hard to uphold your principles.Once in the shop not wanting to disclose my poverty to the afro-American woman at the register, I asked for a pack of American Spirit Lights, and ran my card through the slit.And no surprise to me: the display says: “Declined”.“Let me just try again” I told her, and I did, and it did. The card was declined again. “I don’t understand. I’m awaiting a transfer from Europe, and it should have gone through…like…days ago” I lie in total self-denial. I’m ordering the transfer tomorrow, and only threw in the Europe fact to deroute the focus of my situation.“You know what, let me just run to the ATM-machine on the other side of the street to see if it looks different.”I actually did it, and I almost believed that it would look different, but I knew very well that it didn’t, I was in other word HOPING that it did, knowing that it WOULDN`T and it didn’t. No tengo dinero!The three dollars and seventy-five cents I meticulously had counted before leaving and left in the car in a plastic bag, were just waiting to picked up and spend. And so it goes: I picked up the coins in the car, which I wouldn’t even call money, and went back into the shop.“Well, the money hadn’t come, but if you would be very patient with me, I’ve got my parkometer coins here, and I think if I count them, it’ll pay a pack of smokes..”“No problem” said the clerk, and I emptied the bag on the counter, just as about a group of people entered the shop, and lined up behind me. I had counted as long as 2 dollar 80 cents, and piled the coins up, when the sweat started to drip. I looked at the price tags under different pack of smokes and saw the cheapest, a pack of Gold Coast: 2,79.“Allright, give me a pack of those” I said and pointed to the Gold Coasts.“Which?” says the clerk, and brings out a pack of Chesterfield, 3,89 dollars, from the rack next to the Gold Coasts.“No, no, the ones left…”“Oh, the cheep ones…-of course…sorry” she says.“No problem” I reply, as I get the pack and scrape the rest of the coins into the bag. I leave the shop stumbling, pushes the door instead of pulling, though it says PULL on a big sticker. Once outside I rip the pack open, not having smoked for hours. The smoke is good, but loose, and disappears in 6 drags. A one-minute fag to ease the long pain of being poor.

A week later when the money had finally come through I went back to the same shop to buy more smokes and in that sense expecting to prove my credibility to the same clerk: I`m not poor. It was a freak situation. But she wasn`t working.Instead it was this incredibly fat, toothless woman, who almost took my craving for a glassy donut and a cup of coffee away. On the counter lay a laminated pricelist stating the many prices of different donuts, which I by accident push of the counter with my coffeecup. The woman then picks it up places it on the counter again and with a smile saying.“Oh you guys! All you wanna do is to see me bend over….”

I havn`t shopped there since.

It comes highly recommended:
On Sunday I watch the documentary SURPLUS on DR2.
With great originality and insight it portrays the face and consequences of modern day consumerism, and focuses for a larger part at the struggle against it, represented for exmaple by John Zerzan and Kalle Lasn of Adbusters. I especially found the soundediting of the production cutting edge, and with good reason. David Soederberg of LUCKY PEOPLE CENTER (link) had done the sound design. The production as such came out as a very new breed of tv-montage slash/documentary.
One scene stood out: Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, opening a Maicrosoft employee rally, him, taking to the stage as Mussolini on PCP, sweating and screaming like a mad man, then opening his speech with four words: I, Love, This, Company.

some links:
http://www.atmo.se/zino.aspx?articleID=382 (the movie)
http://www.yelah.net/articles/lpc0607 (lucky people center)
http://www.adbusters.org/home/ (adbusters)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zerzan (john zerzan)


however, the saddest and most elitist shitnews I read at Politkens website just five minutes ago: Ruth Evensen buttkissing for special treatment at Nørrebro. Just days after literally every dansih poltician stated there is no political solution to the Ungdomshuset issue, this one rolls out:

http://politiken.dk/indland/article217064.ece

If that isnt a politcal solution I dont know what is, and if that isnt the most uncharming surface of danish politcal culture and mangement since joining the Iraq war I dont know what is.

Disobey.

Steven Spielberg, man of many movies and the stigmitizer of many of my personal fobias and director of my early teen-hood favourite movies, such as "The Duel", "Jaws", "Close Encounteer", and not the least the first Hollywood director, to direct a genuine blockbuster ("Jaws") turns sixty today.

Congratulations.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Spielberg

Waking up, at Nørrebro, dec. 17th:
Riots clearly always have a flipside. The disappointment when I see demonstraters from Ungdomshuset trashing cars, bikes, babycarriages and what not, using them for barricades and setting them ablaze: the violence becomes nothing but symbolic and a lost case. Or: it could be any case, and my sympathy crumble.

But which means are left for the squatters, the autonome movement, when politicians, in this case Copenhagen Citycouncil literally have sold out responsiblity? And what are the means when the same politicians let the proprietary right define a highly democratic problem?

I am frustrated, it is frustrating to see in year 2006, a good 400 cops in battleuniforms and dutch-cars occupying the neighborhood of Nørrebro, it constitutes a huge democratic problem, to let it happen time after time: it is nothing less than arrogant and senseless that the citycouncil sees them self free of responsibility, to see one the richest societys in the world not being able to solve the problem (which was infact solved by handing the house over to the squatters in 1982).

The agenda from the politicians seems as clear as they deny to take any responsibilty for the riots. By not dealing with the problem, they get the violent reaction from the squatters that becomes their ultimate argument for not neglecting any alternative solutions. Alas, they get what they want: away the unwanted, and their hands are seemingly clean.

Though I loathe violence, who can truly be a pacifist? I dont have the words to describe the utter rage I feel of living in a neighbourhood that have become a battlefield because of the clear-as-daylight incompetence of a few local-politicians.

two words though: no pasaran!

The following add I found under "personals" in todays edition of danish newpaper Information. Hard to translate, I will give it a try.

"Bullying, paedophilia, prostitution, violence as such, can very easyli be removed from our schools and society. I blame the priests. They are ultimately violent in the house of boredom where life is notning but a complaint. The culture is rotten to the core and alcoholic and rests on clay which smell of shit, also because it kills, calculationpapers and chaos, cultural politur (meaning either a figure or? noasrp comment). Politics and prostitution is not craftmansship, they produce poverty and nothing and in particular impotent pigs scream in the air, faque, laziness. Interested in change, call: (two phonenumbers)"

I leave it open for interpretation. The work of a bright mind or a lost soul...?

"ART WAS ARTIFICIALLY REHEATED BY THE HYPOCRISY OF BOURGEOIS CULTURE AND FINALLY CRASHED AGAINST THE MECHANICAL WORLD OF OUR AGE. DEATH TO ART!"

This contructivist sentiment is one of the opening phrases in I. Yaskinkayas book "Soviet textile of the Revolutionary Period" (on which I only googled a few commercial links) that I raced through while the host of the 40th birthday I attended on saturday, lay paralized with hangovers and kid-plague.
The book covers first and foremost, as the title states, the textile production of the revolutionary period, but also through the introduction it frames a very interesting picture of art-contectures as a public mean of control.
The conflation of art and ideologi as presented in the book shows the early marking of very talented market strategies.
Moreover the textile itself is stunningly welldone and, in retroperspect, pretty enteraining. Imagine your 3 million kroner flat with wall to wall carpets picturing woven patterns of tractors, collectification, militarization, buildingsites, factories...

klikken sie hier for a quick impression and with me on the rise of a new Utopia let us celebrate the death of Augusto Pinochet, a true enemy of communism. Lets hear the roar of The People celebrate! Klikken sie for a quick glanse inside the bedroom of spacepioneer Gagarin. And lets hear the Roar gain.

http://bellsouthpwp.net/r/u/ruzwyshn/HTMLFolder/Bedroom.html

flying to norrkôping over the weekend to celebate friends 40th birthday. and a quick glanse at this:
the swedish skærgården

lies

farewell sweet. its early morning, and its too dark. its cold. the day has reverted. i willl wrap it up, take it back to the shop, get a refund. its not that it didnt work, it was just to overall consuming. 1 2 many.

mean uturn sister love includes not going

one month into winter: every forest have a tree with a name carved into it. Ones that make you stop and rethink history, and calling out strange names and get no response. You make no connection, it can not feed you but you are hungry.
One month into winter, every year the same: You get jaded like you where on percripted medicine. You jade and the distance sneak in between insticnt and time, and in this cold, in this first month of winter, every year, you bump into the same, the selfperpatuating mass-organ: litlle jaded canisters.

xcuse me: its christmastime and I get annoied very easily. A jaded little canister.