“Corporations are completely taking over our culture and telling us that we can only consume it, and we’re saying no, we’re saying we want to actually create with it, respond to it, take it, mutilate it, cut it up.”

Chances are you already know how illogically happy i get from anything that has to do with participatory culture, collaboratory culture, remixing and reappropriating etc. (That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy culture/art that’s not collaborative or participatory, most of what I am exposed to and love is in fact not. Or, I mean it is in the sense that the artist might have been heavily influenced by somebody else, or even ‘legally’ sampled somebody else/the piece of culture being a product of collaboration itself, like music and tv shows etc. But it isn’t in the sense that there is a clearly marked end product with a sender and a receiver, and the receiver is in most cases not supposed to do anything but receive. Whatever, I’m digging myself into a hole. My point was there’s a special fuzzy-happy place in my heart for the kind of culture/art that takes those clearly marked end products and then mess them up or make them better (or worse) or subvert them or analyze them & pick them apart by means of something that’s not a traditional academic analysis, eg making videos, fan fiction etc)

You can watch the entire documentary here. I’m about halfway through, but so far I’m loving it. There’s a lot about the problems with copyright, which is regrettably timely, as The EU recently extended musical copyright, from 50 to 70 years(!!) & the problem is of course how do you encourage creativity but discourage plagiarism? Oh I’d love to talk to somebody who really knows stuff about copyright and pick their brains!

So anyway, this is my current favourite vid (made by Gianduja Kiss at imeem) which sort of explores the repeating day trope in tv shows. I recently also watched this by tearful-eye at lj, and I’ve never actually watched criminal minds, I just love the music and the editing and the vid is sort of like a narrative in itself so you don’t actually have to know the show. And this is Xena and the Indigo Girls, both of which are prone to grandiose and epic declarations of feelings and meaning of life type stuff, plus has to be the gayest ever combination. And if you don’t know Xena (which I watched all the fucking time in my formative years), here’s really all you need to know:

Parc Angrignon, Montréal <3 photo taken by appaloosa @flickr

Ew, exam season:( My two main feelings about this are 1. it’ll be over soon & 2. there’s still plenty plenty of time left to study. And I bought tickets to Paris and Switzerland, but I sort of regret it. Or, no, like I really want to go, I’m just .. scared I won’t be able to enjoy it and then that will be money down the drain. I hate planning things that far in advance, it makes me super stressed, because i never know how i’ll feel health-wise. But I said ok maybe a long time ago and it’s the summer hols so I don’t have tons of schoolwork i should have been doing instead, so i guess i shouldn’t worry needlessly. We’re trying to find an apartment to rent in Paris, since I have to have a kitchen at my disposal, so hotels are out of the question. Does anybody else want to come?

und die welt hinter mir wird langsam klein

I like twitter. But I think my problem with it will eventually be that I have a preconceived notion of it as a platform for exchange of.. ideas, links, pictures, what have you. Exchange being the operative word. It’s like, I stumble across a lot of interesting stuff on the internet, at school, talking to people etc, and I think other people might find that stuff interesting too, so I want to share it. But I also want other people to share back! If it’s only one-sided it’s only fun for so long, and after a while I lose interest. Which is, arguably, my problem with most internet platforms for communication. & herein lies my problem, I don’t know enough people who are fans of the internet, or people who have the same preconceived notions about its use. So we’ll see how long I last. But for now I am @mumlerumle on twitter:)

Also: Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: It Ys Rad. It’s Chaucer in middle english! on blogspot!

we think you’re a joke shove your hope where it don’t shine

She doesn’t even make me angry. I actually find her kind of entertaining. Bring out the popcorn, she’s about to speak! I would never even think of  legitimising her arguments in any way by responding to them seriously. But now she’s being legitimised by somebody else anyway so it’s time to tone down the lol. That’s why I’ll be protesting by the opera house tonight, and I think everybody else should too. Not because I think her opinions warrant any protest, but because they are being ok’d by an organisation of some degree of  importance and legitimacy.

Blergh.  Have some Santigold instead! :.

no i was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed

I always find it hard to talk about music. I can’t even figure out what it is that makes me enjoy, or even love, a piece of music, what it is that makes that music different from the music I don’t really care about, let alone articulate it. I only know sometimes music gives me butterflies in the stomach and sometimes it crawls down my spine and sometimes i can’t stop listening. And the only way I know to talk about music is the context in which I got to know it. Where I was geographically and emotionally at the time. I guess that’s why I’m not a musician! or a music critic, for that matter.

When I first started listening to Joanna Newsom I was falling in love for the first time, coming out to myself and everybody else, working as a teacher for the first time, getting to know my grandmother better than I had done the first 19 years of my life. Her cd took up half the storage space on my first ever mp3-player and I listened to her every day on my way to work. I really can’t see any reason why I should like her music, i mean she plays the harp, and her voice is weird, really weird, it makes me cringe sometimes. But I love her! And I want to recommend her to everybody I know, but as you see I’m finding it hard to produce a glowing praise of her music.

Here’s one song from her cd The Milk-Eyed Mender:

This one is quite long and windy, but I love it, it’s from her newest album Ys:

Here’s the thing, though. I hadn’t actually listened to Joanna Newsom in a while, but yesterday I stumbled over this project that somebody’s doing, transcribing her music for piano. It sounds great. So if the harp and the voice grates on your ears too much, you might still like these piano versions:

The next time somebody recommends music to me I’m going to ask them for a story too. Something they relate to that music. Then even if I don’t like the music, I will still have gotten a story or maybe I know something more about that person than I did before.

it’s saturday night fellas!

Is it possible to get lower-back pain from having your period? OUCH:(

Nevermind the crap quality! I only had my cellphone.

Parades generally make me illogically happy, plus i wanted to feel like a good socialist, so we went to see the may day parade. It was super long and AWESOME! First came all the different trade unions (let me tell you there’s a trade union for everything, you name it) and marching bands (almost all of them playing the Internationale!) and then came the socialists and the communists and the anarchists lugging speakers along blasting some heavy-on-the-growled-vocals-and-distorted-guitar music. There was even a person from Frp there trying to give us a flyer! Oh the diversity:D  Also I saw two people with my ‘communist party’ t-shirt.

fylle ferjå til eiksund berre for å stjele svele

My theory is that the secret to keeping my blog going is for me to keep writing stupid entries. A stupid post at the top of my blog is the best incentive ever for writing a new one. So I’ll write a new post so the stupid one is not the first thing somebody sees if they come across my blog, until i realise the new post is just as stupid as the last one, and then i’ll write a new one, until.. now see how that goes? It’s brill!

Brandi Carlile  was just.. too awesome for words.  Some drunk lady in the crowd kept yelling “Josephiiiiiiiine”, so she played Josephine:   & she played one song without a microphone and her voice still carried through the entire venue & for the encore she played folsom prison blues by johnny fucking cash: & my lower back still hurts from standig too long but i would do it again a thousand times.

Whenever I’ve seen an international artist  they always say nice stuff about norway, which was nice and special the first time, but then I realised it’s basically mandatory for them to mention how happy they are to be in whatever country/region they’re in, or words to that effect. So now it’s just annoying, because i know most of the time they barely even know where they are. Don’t say something if you don’t mean it. Even if it’s something nice. Especially if it’s something nice, like don’t pretend to like something you actually don’t, that’s a little bit offensive.

Yesterday we bbq’d in the park and played footy. I was told by this little girl I should get a husband and my friend sang ‘ein likandes kar’ by side brok (partial lyrics to follow). He sounds just like sjef R!

ej lika elskovseliksira / bada i olje og ete godt med vitamina
før ej teke mej ei ronde ut for å sjekke / kika ette kjekse so e ronde og kjekke
ej lika å fare på store feite dondre / en gong hadde ei på et par-3 hundre
kilo – ho va kvitare enn milo / og altfor store te å bo på hybel, så ho hadde leigt sej en silo
ho va so gode, ho va so mjuke / det va som å gå i 2 meter nysnøv uten truge
store dame, sveitte og klame / e’kje dei over 100 kilo kan det ver det same
så helder ta sej en ronk og spekulere / på kaffor ei spice girl ej helst vil impregnere
so fe ho blå swix til heile 5 mila / for ej e en kar så veit ka ej lika