| Profil de MikeRottin' in DenmarkPhotosBlogListes |  Outils  Aide |
Rottin' in DenmarkJust because you do drugs doesn't mean you shouldn't brush your teeth 2 novembre Premature evacuationOK, I tried Blogspot, di'int like it, looked around more, and settled on some new shit called Vox. That's the new home of my blog now: http://rottenindenmark.vox.com/
23 octobre The blog is movingI totally hate this redesign, and I wanna be able to embed stuff, so now I'm at rottin-in-denmark.blogspot.com.
Expect lots more YouTubage.
UPDATE:
Fuck that noise, Jack. Blogspot expected me to know HTML and shit, so I moved my shits again. Now it's at: http://rottenindenmark.vox.com/ 20 octobre And while I'm in a blogging mood...... here's a few images from a really cool Danish art/design duo
... And a hella disturbing story about how the Danish government is keen to send a 15-year-old immigrant back home to Sri Lanka. Where there's a civil war going on. And his only living family member is his 17-year-old brother. Who no one can find. Baby got backOK, so I've been blog-lazy for the past few weeks, sue me. I would try to justify this by saying that nothing interesting has been going on, but actually, the reason I haven't blogged is that I've been positively *swaddled* in radical shit lately. These are the highlights, all of which probably warrant their own entry, but I've got places to be, son. I'll keep the reflectional accessories shorthand.
I've been in Denmark a year now: Still coming to grips with my Year of Living Danishly. I've simultaneously become more Danish and more American over the past 12 months. This has manifested intself in myriad ways, but mostly it means that I'm terrible at small talk, but I do it very loudly.
More Danish legal 'tardiness: I got a 'living in Denmark guide' from the American embassy the other day, which blithely informed me that displaying any non-Scandinavian flag on Danish soil is illegal, and that I should check with 'local authorities' if I want to display the Stars & Stripes. I wasn't exactly planning on draping myself in my nation's colors or anything, but that's some Borat shit to tell people they can't show their own flags.
I met two Talkative Danes in one week: Only people who live in Denmark realize how rare and awesome this is.
Experienced more Danish racism. Or something.: There's only one black guy out of 80 people at my work. On a recent work retreat, I was assigned to share a room with him, but I didn't know that his name was Tom. So I asked my coworker, 'Hey, what's this Tom guy look like? I should introduce myself.'
'Oh, he's tall, with a .... afro haircut.' he said.
'You mean the black guy?' I said.
'Um...yeah.'
Went on a Danish work retreat: Team-building, wheeeee! I'll spare you the borey details on this one, but I ended up getting A) drunk with a bunch of UN people and B) stung by a jellyfish.
I've started speaking Danish at work: OK, so it's pretty much Danglish at this point. I'm getting there.
Moved into new apartment: My new neighborhood and my new roommate are far cooler than me. But I am now in much closer proximity to both cheap kebabs and brutally honest fashion advice, so it's a step forward.
Thinking lots about the future: OK, I'll save that one for later. I have to go buy the biggest American flag I can find... 2 octobre No place like 'HolmI've just re-entered my little island existence from a tremendous weekend in Stockholm, which I've decided is my favorite city in Europe. The Swedish landscape looks like fishnet stockings, and Stockholm is laid out on something like 40 islands, with cool little bridges and ferries in between. I've pasted map-porn below.
The weekend mostly consisted of hanging out with my esteemed host Anders and sampling assorted slivers of Stockholm daylight (of which there is little) and nightlife (of which there is an inspiring surplus). I was also privy to The Swedishest Thing Ever: As we were biking through a park, Anders pointed out a little Philip Seymour Hoffman-looking dude in a cap and mittens and said 'Oh, that's a member of Abba.'
Yes, I saw a member of fucking Abba in Sweden. Now I have to go back there next weekend to see the other three members and complete the whole set. 25 septembre Lund-in'Mobbed up to Skaane (the Southern, Denmarky bit of Sweden) this weekend to check out the Lund Festival. For the uninitiated, Lund is a Euro-style college town, which pretty much means that there's a massive church, a sprawling campus, at least three H&Ms, and very little else. Lund has a population of something like 50,000, and 40,000 of them are college students. The rest are people shopping for moderately-priced knitwear.
Lund oozes Swedishness. The women are beautiful, the men are giraffes, the teenagers are gothed-up, and everyone wears scarves. The festival was a low-key thing (No elk kebabs? Bullshit!), but just hanging out in the low-angled Scand sun, trying to ignore the giant Dracula-clouds of crows above us was enough action for a Saturday afternoon anyway.
I posted some pics below. You can tell it's fall here because every building looks a scene from fucking 'Independence Day'. Don't blame me.
Oh, bonus pics: We went kayaking on Friday after work in the Copenhagen canals (Danes say they're clean enough to swim in, but come ooooon), so there's some-a those scattered in. 12 septembre Lawd, Mo' DramaHere's a list of the saddest (real!) book titles the poor Stranger intern has come across this summer:
Addendum: The page this is on features an advertisement for a nightclub called 'Optimus Rhyme,' so books aren't the only genre that needs to tone it down. 8 septembre Great moments in e-mail: The returnI sent the following picture to Kelly, which got the following reply:
Does anyone in Denmark understand why that screengrab is so funny? Wait for it...And now... The best entry on Overheard in New York ever.
1 septembre We made it, Ma! We made it!That thunderous, erudite 'Booya!' you just heard was Seattle reacting to the most recent Census press release: We smart, baby!
Yes, Seattle is America's 'brainiest city,' with a whopping 52.7 percent of the population holding a bachelor's degree or higher. That's roughly double the national average and exactly 547,902 percent higher than the Iowa average, where there's actually just one guy who "went collegin'," named James Ashfield, who is currently unemployed and trying to lose his Freshman 15.
And what is the comparable rate in brainy, cartoonin' Denmark? 44.5 percent. After having spent a year hearing about how stupid we Americans are, allow me to just quickly re-'Booya!' before thinking about this in depth.
OK, so you can't really compare Denmark and Seattle since 'higher education' here really means our equivalent of a master's degree. Also, Danish people with degrees appear to have actually 'learned' stuff, whereas most higher-educationed Americans seem to think that 'book' is only something you do to a hotel room and 'South America' is the part of the world that got hit by Hurricane Katrina last year.
I still revel in this victory, though. Next time a Dane gives me shit for being a dumb American, at least now I can respond with 'Nuh-uh! I'm from the educatedest part!'
28 août Earnin' down the houseOnly in a country this weird is it a problem when businesses make too much money.
The Copenhagen Post reports this week that 7-11s and the other flourescent-lighted, coagulated-pizza merchants in this city are earning too much in revenue, and should be forced to close down on Sundays. The stores are capitulating by agreeing to stock less tobacco and newspapers to cut back profits a bit.
I think I speak for the entire Expat Nation when I say 'wait, WHAT?!' Politicians are annoyed that people are buying from stores too much? And the solution to this is to make them all less convenient and sell less shit that people want? I mean, I'm shocked that anyone even attempts shoppage on Sunday, since that is this country's weekly Hangover Holiday, but if there are enough people that want shit on Sunday, what's the problem with getting it?
This problem is, of course, more complex than I'm letting on. The real reason Big Sister wants to make these places close is to protect smaller stores, and it's awesome that at least one government in the world has that in mind. But, in classic bureaucrat fashion, they're using laws that target everyone to solve a problem that's only being perpetrated by a few companies. It's like using an Uzi to kill a hummingbird. Why not just limit the big corporations from doing anything, like, profitable and leave the small businesses to do whatever they want? Seriously. 7-11 has a huge advantage over the humans that run corner kiosks. Why not use the law to level the playing field? It's about time the retardation of this government did something worthwhile, and besides, they don't even sell fucking Slurpees here. 24 août I'm a Slav 4 UOK, I was gonna lay off the Sputniks for awhile, but I just came across this photo caption on an article called 'The Rise of Organized Crime in Russia':
The dude is holding the keys to his Benz on his tombstone. I didn't even know you could do that. Depressing statistic of the day (non-Russian edition)My job description is slowly turning into Faith in Humanity Abandoner. Look what I found today:
I guess I'm not particularly shocked by this, I've just never thought about it before. I don't really know how I feel about gun control, since (like abortion-control or booze-control) it doesn't seem to actually stop anything, it just shoves it underground and makes it seedier. But on that logic, we should just legalize everything filthy so we can regulate it. My mind goes around and around on this. Anyway, there you have it: Worldwide gun-death statistics. For no reason at all. Tomorrow I'll post raindrop-on-roses stats and the Whisker on Kitten Index to make up for it, I promise.
21 août If everyone followed Jack Bauer's instructions, the show would be called '12'I've been knee-deep in season 5 of '24' for the last few days. I'm totally fascinated by how completely awesome and utterly retarded it is at the same time. Look at this synopsis of one character in season 2:
'Menaced by a cougar'? The genius of the show is that you don't realize how retarded it is until you try to explain it to the un-Bauered. This season, for example, has had an airport hostage crisis, an attack on the first lady, a Moldavian hooker with a gun, a plane hijacking, and Kiefer threatening to cut out the chief of staff's right eye in the first four hours. If it was a play, we wouldn't even be to fucking intermission.
I'm completely hooked, of course, and I even cut short my Friday night plans (i.e. muddy-voweled drunkenness) so I could Bauer for a few Hauers on Saturday. Russia vs. DenmarkI'm still writing this report on Russia for work, and I came across the following as an explanation for why Russia has the highest rate of on-the-job injuries in the Western world:
So Russians respect power above everything else. I think Danes are the opposite: They respect law above all else. It's really ingrained in the culture here, and you can see Danes get really squirmy when you talk about downloading music illegally, or crossing the street against the light, or the Italians you lived with who shoplifted cheese with D.B. Sweeney enthusiasm. But now it's got me thinking: What works with Americans? What do we respond to? I think the whole King George thing has given us an instinctive hatred of power, and law definitely doesn't have the hold over us that it does over Danes. (Wanna show me your tax return? No? I didn't think so.) I don't really have a theory on this. I'm just being struck by the thought (for about the 800th time this week) that I'm hella glad I'm not Russian. 20 août High DanxietyI've been bitching about this a lot lately in my head, so I might as well take it public: There's something weird about people in this country.
You know those spoiled kids from the suburbs you went to college with, who were totally cool ... as long as everything went precisely as planned? I never realized it until now, but pretty much everyone in Denmark grows up like those kids. Everyone is well-fed and swaddled in a system that gives them what they want when they want it.
We have a lot to admire the Danish system for, but one of the consequences of that system is that people here are often very particular about the way they do things, and the skin on their comfort-zone bubble is often very very thin, so the slightest puncture can send them into 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!' spasms. Examples:
No one here eats leftovers. And if they do, never if they're more than a day old.
When people at my work come into the kitchen to boil water for tea, if the water in the kettle has already been boiled, they throw it out and fill up the kettle again. Yeah, you wouldn't want any of that filthy boiled water getting in your tea.
My roommate's strict 'each household item shall have but one function' policy. "No, Mike, those towels are for hands." "Oop, that's the white-bread cutting board." "Stop, that soap is only for dishes."
The fact that every time I ring my bell to pass someone biking -- not exactly a Halley's Comet-rare occurrence -- Danes get rattled, like I've just yelled 'AIDS!' or something. Now I just do it to watch them swerve.
There are a million other little examples of this, but I think the boiling-water one serves as the best metaphor for life in Denmark: I don't want anyone else's boiling water. I want mine.
Butt Pirates of the CaribbeanThis weekend was Gay Pride in Copenhagen. This might have started out as a 'we're here, we're queer, get used to it' political statement, but now it's pretty much just an excuse for the solarium-rotisseried Ikea-biters to find the smallest piece of fabric possible, cut two leg holes in it and fire up the dance music.
We've all had those weekends
How is it that Overheard in New York makes me simultaneously nostalgic for America and completely revolted? 18 août Life becomes the movies, part 2This time it's fucking Zoolander. This is from the New York Times this morning:
Happy palaceI'm reading this book by one of my old professors at UCL called "Artificial Happiness," about how Prozac and it's little, yellow, different brethren keep people from doing anything about their sad-bastard existences. The whole thesis is that unhappiness tells us when to leave a bad job, a crappy relationship, a sucky town, etc., and since anti-depressants turn off the unhappiness, everyone is just staying in whatever rut they've burrowed themselves into. The author, Ronald Dworkin, profiles tons of people that are blissed-out in some really toilet-bowl situations, and I liked this one because Dworkin's about one adjective away from just calling this guy a miserable fuck:
Is it me, or is modern life becoming 'Blade Runner' faster and faster? 14 août Bum RussianI'm writing a big report on Russia for work right now, and I spend most of the day reeling at its sheer fucked-upedness. A sample, as reported by MosNews:
More abortions than births?! Are you fucking kidding me? But wait, it gets worse:
That one's from the British Medical Journal. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Britain, so I feel like the editors were just like 'Damn, Russia's fucking dire. We gotta publish something about this.'
I hope all the money I've been spending on mp3s from there is helping out a little. We all have to do our part...
11 août In the village, the peaceful villageI have spent the last two months with 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' stuck in my head because the church across from my work chimes every hour with the first few 'a-weem-a-way' notes. There is simply no rational explanation for this.
Maybe it's a rotating thing, though, and next year it'll be 'Everybody Hurts' or something. Ahhh, the nurturing embrace of the InternetWhat I love about the Internet is that the route to the information you seek always takes you through at least 3 unhinged, vitriolic diatribes to get there. I was searching for movie news today -- entirely pointless considering that movies don't get released here without the customary Mousketeer lifespan waiting period -- I came across the following rants:
On Daniel Craig, the (appallingly sexy) new James Bond:
This 'Netted bugflucting comes from, of all places, a Bravo TV host's blog:
Can't we all just get along? 9 août I'll take 'big nose and curly hair' for 200, AlexHere's the first paragraph of a five-paragraph e-mail from Seattle:
Mazel Tov, motherfucker.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
