bloody zit, sour patch, dinner connections, flamboyant tundro, three stooges

A bunch of brain runoff:

SOUR ADVERTISING
I have been looking at candy on the internet -- prompted by a "Try our other... Sour Patch EXTREME" blip on the back of the movie style packs of Sour Patch Kids that my Michigan/Pittsburgh friends brought back for me after their X-Mas/NYear's trip home. I saw some new Sour Patch Kids commercials that were pretty good and they reminded me of a Canadian slushie commercial that I loved a while back.

Just by the name you should be able to tell if you have the stomach for this commercial -- well maybe not -- the commercial is disgusting/disturbing yet beautifully done and deeply sweet and real (again in an intense disturbing way) -- think: Larry Clark's oeuvre. The ice/sugar flavor drink (I am not saying SLURPEE cuz that's a brand and it isn't one of those) was called Bloody Zit!!! (my exclamation points - not the drinks) and I totally would have tried it. I get a real disappointing subjective time thing when I watch this commercial now. The first couple times I saw it were eternities -- all anticipation. The sound design is simple but fitting so it helps to turn the volume up.

The other unternet (that is a typo that I am keeping - can someone invent an unternet please) candy discovery of the week is UMEBOSHI HiChew. HiChew is like Japanese Starburst and UMEBOSHI is wicked good super salty japanese plum stuff that I grew up with cuz of my half hippie parentage. It's like salt licks for little macrobiotic boys. If it weren't super expensive everywhere and probably hard to find here (haven't tried) I would have inordinately high blood pressure. IN OR DI NAT LY.

BUILDING COMMUNITY (the tense drifts a bit here because it is lazily modded from the original email I sent out)
Recently I attempted to put some community building infrastructure into place in this little international student village I call "bleh" which means home in the language of disappointed people. I came home one day and took a nap and woke up a little later than I intended to and wanted to share a meal but all of the friends I could reach had already eaten. I knew there were others out there who hadn't eaten yet and who wanted company but I didn't know how to find them. I wound up having dinner with my nice new Italian roommate so everything turned out fine for that night. BUT... I decided that I didn't want to be in that position again. I sent an email to the ISU (International Student Union) email list that says most of this and posited that we didn't all have to be so poorly connected. Most of us use here Skype to stay in touch with folks at home... but we can also easily use it to stay in touch with each. I created a public chat called "MOHOLT (the name of the student cillage) DINNER CONNECTIONS". Err... I ran out of email to cop from...
Anyway it totally didn't work. People came into the chat room and just never said anything. Everyone kept telling me how much the love the idea but nobody used the damn thing. It got a bit more muddled over the next few days as other folks tried to change the tech (yes open systems/sources/structures are better) and wound up splitting everyone into multiple places right as we were first trying to form up.

Today I sent another email to the list... kind of long. About other community building idea stuff: like a "leave some stuff you don't need, take some stuff you do" space and an actual full time meeting/hanging-out/interacting space and just generally asking if people gave a shit. Basically this place bites for actually connecting with other folks. There are like 15 hours a week where you know that other people will be around in common space. 6 of those hours are movie screenings and the rest are mostly open hours at the ISU - which means drinking students being too loud and drunk blah blah blah.

I think maybe my target should not be the ISU which is mostly early 20 something students who want to party and maybe don't care to make our shared boat better for the next 20 somethings that come through to party. There is also ICoT (International Club of Trondheim) which is made up of older more family oriented folks - mostly from non-western countries - maybe they care a bit more. Maybe not.

SPROUTS
I sprouted lentils this past week. Super easy and the nutritional value supposedly goes through the roof. I should have made a nice salad but I got too lazy and didn't really have all the things I needed and they were plenty tasty with just a bit of olive oil and some salt. Ate the last few today with a squirt from my new bottle of sriracha.

SKI (whatever)
I am going to Sweden for a "ski trip" from Sunday until Thursday. I will probably not be near a computer almost the whole time. I mostly plan to sit around and read and draw and use my newly purchased embroidery hoop to put some cool stitches in something. Maybe I will try to find some rental snow shoes and I will go dumpstering in one more country. Shoot - if I don't bring my computer I will have NO MUSIC. I hope the apartments have a radio. I bought more lentils and some mung beans today and started the initial sprouting soak so I will have some decent sprouts by the second day of my trip.

PACKAGE
I got a package from Emma and Annie that has specific opening instructions which involve other people taking my picture as I open it so they can see my reaction. I will have to adapt the rules slightly because my room is a mess and I shouldn't bring people in there. I also hope there is nothing in there that can't wait another week to get freed from the package because I think I won't get it open before I leave for Sweden.

THREE STOOGES
The Marx Brothers and The Three Stooges. Funny ass old jew dudes. Huh?
I need to give The Marx Brothers a chance but I grew up watching The Three Stooges on Saturday mornings on WSBK TV38 and always planning to stay awake through the New Year's Eve marathons but never really succeeding. I have downloaded a few of the earliest ones and haven't decided how I feel about them. The shorts just seem so short -- not enough can happen in 20 minutes to make them really good. Need to watch more. So far I can only confirm that Curly's "Woo woo woo!" noises make me titter and that they were also shown in Columbia as "Los Tres Tontos" or something along those lines.

Oh and I will now go hunting for a torrent for The Herculoids - Zok and Igoo were lamest in that order. Tundro by far awesomest (I always like the charging juggernauts) and Gloop and Gleep pretty cool also. Useless human characters. To understand the supposed FLAMBOYANCE go read comments from the last blog entry. It is worth it. Nature is awesome. Real nature AND cartoon nature.

Sorry. English falls apart in there because I wanted to get this done and sleep as I have a lot to do tomorrow to get ready to go to Sweden. The Swedish Bikini Team was an american advertising scheme and nothing (directly) more.