Little Corner of Ania

I survived walking around a whole day in those shoes =)
I think I deserve something. Like, a medal or something like that =)

Hmm...so what's the big deal with karaoke? I can see that it can be somewhat fun at home with friends, preferrably after a couple of beers or whatever, and somewhat painfully fun when exposing (mostly lesser) talents at some old pub or the dreaded Danish boat, but.... what makes the Norwegian public broacast channel actually make their own TV show based on karaoke, where you can watch a bunch of random more or less known people sit, look uncomfortably into the cameras and sing along to whatever song they chose to sing....and they actually allow random people to make phonecalls and sing through the phone for whole Norway (who choses to watch anyways) to hear... whee! And yes, this is karaoke in it's purest form, non adjusted, non enchanted and whatever they do with the sound at the television...(no, it's not pretty either). And it's been going on for ten weeks.

1. I'm amazed that I've actually watched this show for more than five minutes once
2. I'm maybe more amazed that the NRK, the public broadcast channel in Norway, actually spends *our* money (we're forced to fund this channel, no expectations..well maybe the King of Norway, what do I know about it) on this.....eh...piece of entertainment which should only be watched if you have had enough to drink yourself.

I might have expected this from TV2. More likely TVN. But NRK? *boggle*


Ofcourse. I may be wrong. I might have tuned in at a bad moment. This show might actually have been great. This might be fun for more people than those attending. Maybe it's really nice to show that the love of the song is more important than someones actual ability of singing. On TV. (We got Idol too, so shrug).

Maybe.

-.-

I'm glad this Karaoke-TV season is over now.

Lookie, I found the most cutest little thing the other day that I just *had* to have...isn't he cute?? :) He's now accompanying my chellphone, dressed like a little blue elephant...

I tried to convince Simen to take the other one (Winnie teh Dolphin), but he simply refused to :(

<3 cute things!

By the way, have I ever mentioned how I love Monty Pythons songs? Their texts are always splendid, and they have a way to make the sound/theme/arrangements really fit.....they're simply really small masterpieces....."Eric the half-a-bee", "Every sperm is sacred" (love how they mix the boychoir in and let them sing parts solo and stuff), "Lumberjack", the theme to the Brian movie (never really fancied the "Always look on the bright side" one though), "Sit on my face" (*blush*), "I like chinese" & so on....

You really gotta hand it to the participants - when you attend a competition that goes on for days, knowing that you'll have to look forward to at least two accidents involving scraping up your bare skin in up to 60-70 km/hour (if you're lucky)...and yet, when the accidents occur, you know that you have to keep going, (almost) no matter what....

It kinda puts things into perspective doesn't, comparing them to the wussy (yet sassy) footballers who seem to be more and more occupied with how they look these days. These cute, little footballers really seem to like to roll around on the grass crouching and yelling when they just stumble over each others. And they keep lying on the ground until they got the judges attention at least.

You don't really see the same behaviour from the tourers when they fall off and slide across the road do you? Naa, they clench their fists, bit their teeth and hurries to their bicycles trying to get on it as fast as possible.

Now that's sorta admirable in a sadistic way.

Although I fancy J.K. Rowlings world, I've been annoyed about the main protagonist, Harry Potter, for quite a while now. He's such a "woe me" spoiled, childish brat, who's good at whining and feeling sorry for himself too often. Sure, he's got his reasons, but he does seriously bug me too often. And I'm like, get over it, stop acting like a child....(which he actually is, something I guess I tend to overlook). And have Dumbledore ever failed him, not earning his total trust?

Ohwell...I guess that having a flawed protagonist is good and actually to prefer to godlike heroes, but jeez, a little less annoying Potter woudln't hurt imo :p

Oh, she's getting better and better at writing methinks, didn't really fancy her two first books but she's gettin' there =) And the intro to "the half-blood prince" was very clever, loved the twist on introducing us to what's happened since last book. And the death makes sense.... it really does :)

I must admit it. Whenever someone notices that "Hey, you're from Oslo aren't you?" because of my dialect (yes I've still kept it thankyouverymuch!), they're so making my day. It makes me beam, feel more happier & kinda radiate (I think :p). I've lived at these parts of the country (Bergen that is) for close to seven years now, and although some evil people (you know who you are!!) claims that I've been.....assimilated into a Bergenser (or worse, Askøyværing), I simply refuse to believe that. I don't wanna! And just even saying something like that to me is so mean!

I'm also really totally devastated that my oldest kid seem to not notice my dialect at all but rather go for the local one.....poor kid :( So the baby is my only hope left I guess....hrm...now I'm sad again...grr..

Norwegian journalists are becoming more and more lazy. VG Nett have the last few weeks started to headhunt their own, custom-made interview objects, with headlines like "Were your baby made at a music festival?" "Are you between 25-30, single and going aboard to Asia this summer with friends?" "Have you experienced trouble complaining at storebought stuff?" --- all ending with "We want to get in touch with you!", linking to the emailadress of whoevers on the case.

Actually, headhunt is a wrong word here, it's rather -- they want their objects to come to them. Personally I find this interesting - it sorta allows the journalists to picture a specific case then by simply just view through the replies they get until they get the right person(s) that corresponds with what they were picturing. I'm sure this isn't new at all, I mean, big companies and stuff usually send the media a couple of people with this and that kind of experience, and give them a pretty much custommade story - like, if the government got a paper or new rule or whatever they're about to publish, they tend to do this - find a couple people with a nice story that's interfering with whatever they want publicity about, and send them to the journalists. Or the jorunalists are searching various interest-newsgroup or board, to look for specific objects and ideas, and/or maybe even advertise at the respective newsgroup/board for their case/story. The new thing here however is the openess about this customthing. They're totally openly searching for this and that specific kind of story, sittin down waiting for people to come to them. And anybody can read this as long as they drop by their webpaper, and think, "oh, but I got the story they want", or "oh, I know someone who's...."

*shrug* This isn't really a big deal, I'm just noticing a(nother) new trend which I find sorta amusing.....soh :p And because they've been advertising like, four times a week or so it seems to me and it's simply not anything I've seen before =)

Daytime television. Just thinking of that word makes me shudder. What's on the TV at daytime? Nothing! Oh, apart from the daytime soaps, if you consider that television at all - which really, really bugs me.

It's however quite somewhat amusing to watch these shows if you do so with a little distance. Take "The bold and the beauty" or whatever it's called. My grandma used to be an avid follower of this show, telling me things like "Oh, that guy is so mean!" and "You better watch out for that woman, she's dangerous!" with a serious and often very indignant face on behalf of the poor victims on the screen. It was almost so I wondered if she was aware that it was just a television show. And a not too good one either, imho.

So, what's going on in a daytime soap? Well.

• There's always secrets and underlying alliances going on. (well duh!)

• When two people talk about a secret, you can be damn sure that there will be someone overhearing that conversation, and this person will either be a) the person the secret is about and who's not supposed to know about it right yet, or b) an evil person who's so gonna use this newfound knowledge to his or her own adventage. (cue: closeup montage of either a teary, bigeyed, shocked woman or an evil smirk that just tells you 'uhoh trouble incoming')

• If someone becomes pregnant, you can never be sure who actually fathered the baby - usually it's not the one the woman officially is dating.

• Everybody is dating everyone. Even doubledating. Or trippledating. A lot of recycling going on :p

• The innocent victim is always helpless, got huge puppy eyes and always crying (think Krystle from Dynasty). Don't forget oh so innocent.

• The evil antagonist is never trustworthy. If for some reason this person should happen to speak the truth for once, noone will ever believe or help him/her until it's too late.

• There's a lot of crossediting. A lot. It's like, hey, let's dwell five seconds at this situation, then show five seconds of another then go back and show another five seconds of the first situation and allow one setence to be uttered before going back to the second situation and so on and so on. Personally I think it's because they doesn't want to spend too much on too many scenes, so they try to milk the few scenes they got for whatever it's worth. And they think the viewers really loves to see the actors breathe only. Or watch the cute, little tear slowly emerge from the corner of the actress eyes before rolling down her cheeks. Suff like that.

• There's a lot of monologues uttered by people completely alone. It's as if the writers either thinks that people actually do speak out loud for themselves or they doesn't bother finding actors able to communicate such things silently.

• It's not rare that these monologues happen while the actors are holding a picture or a letter or something in their hands. Like, "Oh why oh why did I ever let you go.....I promise, by God, that I'll never ever do the same mistake again!"

Anyways, I'm aware that these are like, well used concepts (or rather, clichés) in any show on television, but somehow it just seems so.....well....easier to catch in daytme shows...it's so...obvious and not as subtle...than in other sorta.

And no, this still doesn't mean that I'm actually watching these shows...I'm just sayin cause it bugs me how easy it is to find such clichés in these :p

I briefly watched this danish documentary on TV the other day, called "Modern addiction" - about two gamers who were addicted to the net. Lots of blah blah blah which I've heard or read several times before, so I was swapping back and forth a lot. One quote catched my interest though - there was this guy saying how he wasn't sure who or how the real "him" was - the persona that surfaced on the internet, or the real life persona. On the internet he was easygoing, upfront, chatty and bold. In the real life - well, he was and felt shy and preferred to stay home 24/7 so he could continue his social life on the net. He hated to be forced out to shop groceries, and wished he could just order food and get it delivered at his door all the time. So, which side showed the real him? The shy one? The social one? He looked kinda sad when he asked about that I think..

Now that's an interesting issue, in which Sherry Turkle, a professor (I think, she must be that by now at least :p) who's been into people and computergames also have touched several times in her researchs throughout the years (ever since the late seventies!). In her book, "Life on the Screen - Identity in the Age of the Internet", she tells about several people with similar experiences - they're a completely another person on the net - some claims that this net-personae is their real self, others aren't sure and struggles with the same doubts and identity-crisis as this guy. Others again claims that the net-personae is just a (staged) play, they're pretending they are someone else just for fun, but know very well who they really are themselves. There was this girl who was shy in the real life, but when she was on IRC she was bold, outgoing, she said things she would never have dared to say in the real life, etc etc etc... she said that she hoped that the real her was the one she was on the net, but she didn't really think so - the real her was the personae she was in real life.

I've also written a paper on a similar issue myself, where I was looking at some EverQuest players and how they chose to pick their own personalities ingame, and well, although I limited myself to the game and their game-character, you can draw similar lines into any other activity that's done on the net where you meet other people - boards, chatting stuff like IRC or MSN and well, stuff..

What I think about all this? Well, I guess this is a well known cliché - we all carry situational masks - the person we are at home with our parents usually differ from the person we are at work, at school, with friends... how can you say that the person you are when you're with your mom is the same as the person you are when you're with your best friend, or the person you are when you're with several friends? We usually adapt without thinking, and I believe that the person that's you on the net also is a part of the real you - or maybe more correct - just another part of you. Hm. Which makes me think of that Nicky Yee dude and his facets. Anyways. A very interesting issue methinks :)

Sleepytime now :)

Haha, this just made me laugh - Million Dollar Question;

A young boy went up to his father and asked him, "Dad, what is the difference between potentially and realistically?"

The father thought for a moment, then answered, "Go ask your mother if she would sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars. Then ask your sister if she would sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars, and then, ask your brother if he'd sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars. Come back and tell me what you learn from that."

So the boy went to his mother and asked, "Would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?" The mother replied, "Of course I would! We could really use that money to fix up the house and send you kids to a great University!"

The boy then went to his sister and asked, "Would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?" The girl replied, "Oh my God! I LOVE Brad Pitt I would sleep with him in a heartbeat, are you nuts?!?!?!"

The boy then went to his brother and asked, "Would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?" "Of course," the brother replied. "Do you know how much a million bucks would buy?"

The boy pondered the answers for a few days, then went back to his dad.

His father asked him, "Did you find out the difference between potentially and realistically?"

The boy replied, "Yes... potentially, you and I are sitting on three million dollars... but realistically, we're living with two sluts and a queer."