The last couple of weeks have been highly uneventful mainly because I've been trying to get all my ducks in a row in an attempt to finish my thesis. But now it's done and I'll be handing it in tomorrow before noon. Not only will that mark my first day as an unemployed member of society. It'll also mark the beginning of ten highly eventful days that I'm quite looking forward to.
It kicks off tomorrow with a celebratory dinner followed by the musical stylings of Willard Grant Conspiracy. Then Friday there's a party at the university, where I'm looking forward to telling anyone who'll listen that I don't actually attend university anymore. Sunday, we're going to Copenhagen and the same night the plan is to attend Fray Day, which I assume will be packed with the capitol's bloggers. We're going to Copenhagen to catch the David Bowie/The Dandy Warhols show, but while we're there we also plan to check out exhibits by Roy Lichtenstein, Helmut Newton, and Verner Panton and catch up with friends.

And finally the following Friday I'll be attending my ten year high school reunion. I have had very little contact with the people I went to high school with, so it'll be interesting to see everyone again. Most of the people from my class I've seen in the last five years, but I'm sure there are people I haven't seen since we graduated. And there are a couple of the guys I used to hang out with, who I'm really looking forward to seeing, so it should be a fun night. I definitely don't have those Romy & Michelle hangups about going.

I said the last weeks have been uneventful, but I actually went and saw The Scottish Play yesterday. I'm not a huge Shakespeare connoisseur, but I have actually read Macbeth, so I knew the story, which I think is a big help any time you watch a Shakespeare play. I was a bit weary before the play, because the words modern interpretation always makes me think of spandex pants, people smearing weird stuff on each other, and uncomfortable nudity. But thankfully they used a translation from the 60s and kept pretty much to the original story. The only modern things were the set design, which was very sparse but worked really well, and the music which was by local techno-folk trio Sorten Muld, which also worked well.

The main things that didn't work so well were primarily the choice to make Malcolm a total wuss by either the director or the actor. And I wasn't too impressed with the casting of Macbeth, either. For some reason I have an image of Macbeth being a large man with black hair and a black beard, and the guy they had chosen was too old and pasty to fit my idea of Macbeth. Also, he had a rather large tattoo of a dolphin on a target on his chest and shoulder, which I found a bit distracting since he was bare chested or wearing a leather vest for most of the play. But basically the play was pretty good and we had great seats, so we were very close to the action.

But like I said tomorrow is my last day as a student, which means technically I'm looking for a job now. I won't get around to actually applying for anything until I get back from Copenhagen, but if you know someone who needs someone like me to do something, which has to do with the media business, some kind of writing, perhaps editing online content, or anything internet related that doesn't include programming and setting up servers I'd totally love hearing from you.

Is it just me or has a lot of famous people died recently? The last two to kick it are singer Robert Palmer and author George Plimpton both of whom I thought were pretty cool. Palmer always had that suave look going like Bryan Ferry and besides Addicted to Love I liked his work with The Power Station. Plimpton has written a ton of books including Edie: An American Biography and has appeared in as different movies as Pumping Iron II: The Women and When We Were Kings (the last one being a personal favourite of mine). They usually say celebrity deaths come in threes, but there's been five or six celebrity deaths recently, so I guess there's been an inflation there as well.

I recently noticed that Aaron McGruder has published a compilation book called A Right to Be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury. I already own his first two books, but it's not really clear if these two are included in this new book or if this is all new material. Does anyone know what's included in this new book? Because if it's all new stuff I'm so getting it.

I finished writing an abstract for my thesis today, so I'm basically finished now. I'll probably check the whole thing through one more time tomorrow, but I honestly think I've dotted the last T and the whole thing is ready to be printed out now. I was asked recently if this wasn't a huge relief and I replied that I'll be relieved when I die (like George Costanza). A bit of an overstatement of course, but I've known for a while that I'd be able to hand something in on October 1st, so the deadline hasn't been a real stress factor. However, I have been worried about the quality of the thesis and if it would be good enough for me to get a passing grade, a thought which quite frankly has freaked be out from time to time. But I've come to the conclusion that if it isn't good enough now, then there's nothing I can do about it. But although I do expect to pass I'm very much looking forward to getting a confirmation of this, so I don't have to worry about it anymore.

To celebrate that the thesis is finished I ordered the new Bowie album and the new Madden 2004 game (hey, if I'm going to be unemployed for a while I need something to do in the afternoon) and then I sat down and watched Annie Hall.
Here's a tip for you: If you ever have sons make sure they're introduced to healthy, wholesome male role models like Kofi Annan, Lance Armstrong, or Dalai Lama. Personally, I grew up reading books about Andy Warhol and watching Woody Allen movies, which I think has helped turn me into the neurotic, pessimistic, NYC obsessed cynic I am today. It's a little creepy when you realize that you're honestly able to relate to stuff that is said as a joke to point out how miserable a character is. However, Annie Hall is still one of my all-time favourite movies and the scene where Woody revisits his old school always cracks me up.

The song Stupid by The Long Winters has been one of my favourite songs for more than two months now, but I've had problems figuring out the chords for it. They aren't available online anywhere, so I finally sat done today and after a while I finally figured out the opening chord progression, which has been driving me nuts for ages. Just like last time I've added my transcription to the More section, so feel free to check it out if you know the song (and feel free to leave a comment with corrections especially about the C#m chords). Also, like last time the chords get a little screwed up here, so I've made it available for download as well.

More...

The word 'Metrosexual' has popped up on my radar a couple of times lately. I think the first time I noticed it was when Gawker linked to an entry by Dong Resin, where he complains that it's not a sexuality at all. Which is a fair complaint. And then yesterday the term was picked up by ESPN's Page 2, where there are two articles on this new phenomenon.

The first, Nothing Sexy About Metrosexuals, is written by a woman who's had it with pretty-boys like Derek Beckham and Jason Sehorn. She likes men, who are a bit rough around the edges and a bit clueless, when it comes to clothes and personal hygiene products:

"Call me crazy but I don't ever want to hear my boyfriend utter the word "jasmine," unless he's apologizing for something he did with a stripper."

And in the second article, Are Mike and Mike Metrosexuals?, they quiz to ESPN radio DJs on their opinions about clothes, colours, and drinks. Here's an example:

ESPN: Can guys wear salmon pink colored shirts?
Mike Golic: No. The only salmon pink should be on your plate because you're eatin' it.

ESPN: Is it ok for a guy to wear a salmon pink shirt?
Mike Greenberg: I'd have to see the pants.

No prizes for guessing which one gets called a woman during the article.
Oh, and just for the record - I may look like a bum now, but as soon as I land a well-paying job I'll turn metrosexual on you so fast your heads will be spinning.

Someone should get Alanis one of those "Hello... Springfield!" guitars

Today was my last day at work. I quit about a month ago and promised to stay on for the remainder of the month, and now I'm finished there. I worked there for about 18 months and for a student job it was okay. But lately I've been really fed up with having to do other people's dirty work, so I must say it was nice to leave it all behind today. The people at work were really nice, so I went around and said goodbye to everyone, which was a good way to end it. Hopefully, that was my last performance as an unskilled labourer and from now on it's fascinating jobs and tons of money all the way.

According to an article I've used in my thesis, If you really want to know, ask a blogger, you people out there have all the answers. So here's a question for all you graphic savy readers: How come the screen shots I've taken look terrible when I use them in a Word document, and how do I make them look nice?

The way I've done it is I've pressed Alt+Prt SC and then pasted the screen shot into PhotoShop. That's left me with a screen shot, which looks perfectly nice with a resolution of 72 pixels/inch and then I've saved it as a JPG-file. I've then cropped and resized it so it would fit into the document. But when I inserted it in Word it looked absolutely awful. So what I need to know is if there's any way I can create screen shots in a better resolution than 72 pixels/inch or if there's something I can do afterwards to make them look nicer in the Word document. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Oh, I also need some tips for some graphics I can use for the front page of my thesis. I need to illustrate weblogs, community, writing, or something along those lines. I've looked around to find something I could "borrow", but so far I've come up empty handed. So again any help will be greatly appreciated.

Other than that things are going pretty well. The paper has been read through by different people now and I'm trying to fix the stuff that has been pointed out to me was wrong or could be improved. And generally I'm feeling more optimistic about the end result. The thought of flunking has been driving me nuts the last couple of days, but I'm feeling a lot more confident that I've written a decent paper and that I might even get a half decent grade on it. So that's a nice shift from being worried sick for 18 months.

I just finished proof reading and editing the 70+ pages of my thesis, so things are looking good right now. I still need to rewrite the outline and my closing remarks and there's a chapter or two I need to look at some more, but basically I'm done-diddly-done.
Obviously, I still need to add some illustrations and print it out, but it looks like my plan for being able to send the thesis out to people for further proof reading Saturday is still working out, which is good.

Just like most people here in Denmark I caught some kind of flu/bug/cold thing, which means I kinda have a fever, a headache, and a sneezing situation going here, but I just don't have time to be sick right now, so I've chosen to ignore it as best I can. Besides, I plan to take Sunday off, so while my peeps are proof reading my thesis I'll be hanging out with some other peeps most of the day. A friend of ours will play his first game as safety, so a group of us are going out there to see him murder some receivers. Should be fun.

But other than that I've done very little but sit here and try to add some structure to my thesis. It was mentioned to me that if I was going to use phrases like "it's a well known fact that..." or "it has been widely discussed that..." I might want to back that up with a reference or two, so I've had to surf around for all kinds of articles, which could back up some of the things I've taken for granted as common knowledge. And the couple of times I haven't been able to find a reference have really driven me nuts (because I know I'm right and that I've seen someone claim something of the sort at some point - I mean why would I just make this stuff up?).

There's been a lot of stuff going on the last week, which is why I haven't written anything lately. First, I held a lecture on weblogs, which went well. Instead of trying to explain everything about weblogs and communities I briefly explained the technical aspects and then quickly went over to looking at how weblogs are used by companies. The people I talked to were going to create weblogs to document a design process, so after talking about weblogs in a PR context I talked about the benefits of writing and using a weblog to reflect on your project.

I think it went rather well, but I talked way too fast, so I burned through my notes in no time. Thankfully, I enjoy public speaking (unlike a lot of people), so I didn't have any real problems thinking of new examples and points that I didn't think I would have had time for. We wrapped up with a bunch of questions and I tried to show them how easy it is to create a blogspot page. Unfortunately, there were network problems either at the University or at Blogger, because I couldn't sign up for a new account (which kinda messed with my "create your own blog in five minutes" spiel). But I could show them how to post and publish using my own account, so I guess they got the general idea.

Since then I've been to the University's 75 birthday, which was celebrated Thursday with a sports day and Saturday with concerts and dinner. I only watched the sports stuff for about an hour, but Saturday I was out all day watching bands, attending the dinner party, and the after party. I'd gotten invited to the dinner party by a friend, so I was seated at a table with members from his department. But next to me at the end of the table were a group of Chinese astro-physics PhD students, who sat by themselves and spoke only Chinese. I didn't talk to them until I noticed that one of them was trying to open a Coke bottle with a beer bottle, but was failing miserably. Now, if you live in twist-off country you may not be aware of this, but usually you need a bottle opener to open your beers and sodas. But I don't think there's a single Dane, who isn't able to open a beer using another beer, a knife, a key, a screwdriver, a lighter, or whatever else might be handy at the time. So I asked the guy if I could help him out and ended up teaching these Chinese rocket scientists how to open beers using an unopened bottle. Since it's basically a question of technique they figured it out eventually and then wanted to open everything with a cap on the table. But I told them they'd have to drink anything they opened, which made them cool down a bit.

And Sunday we went to see AGF get three very needed points. The club had given 4000 free tickets to the University as a birthday present, so one section of the stadium was packed with students and teachers, which was pretty cool. And later that night I followed Jamal Lewis break Corey Dillon's rushing record when he stacked up an amazing 295 rushing yards in a single game. He singlehandedly won the game for the Ravens, who don't really have a QB controversy because both Boller and Redman sucked against the Browns. Hopefully, one of them can redeem themselves against the 0-2 Chargers on Sunday.

But I guess the highlight of the week was handing in a piece of paper to the secretary at my department with the title of my master thesis and the date I'm expecting to hand my thesis in. The date is still October 1st, which means I need to work really hard this week if I want to have a finished paper more than a day or two before I have to hand it in. I still need to do a lot of rewriting and rereading and there are a lot of technical elements I haven't even looked at yet. So I'm expecting the next week to be murder, but hopefully the thought of finally being able to graduate should get me through.

I'm still hanging on to October 1st as the deadline for my master thesis, which means I only have a couple of weeks to turn 50-odd pages of unstructured observations into a proper thesis. So I'm a little stressed about that especially because I have to work and do other things as well while trying to write and edit my paper. Like tomorrow I have to give a lecture on weblogs for a design class at the department I belong to at the university, which means I've had to prepare, get articles ready, have meetings and so on. But now that I've prepared everything for tomorrow I'm actually quite looking forward to talking to these people. It'll be interesting to see which questions they ask afterwards and if I'll be able to make them even remotely enthusiastic about using a weblog as a part of their design project.

Last week I wrote an entry about not recognizing someone on television, who should have been a familiar face. I asked if anyone could guess who it was and I was very surprised when first Vicky and then Alyse recognized him as Pete Burns from Dead or Alive. The reason he was on television was that Dead or Alive have released a new record, Evolution, this summer and the single is a new version of Spin Me Round. When I first saw the video I was sure it was a cover version and the singer was a woman. But since the singer didn't have a shirt on in the video I then figured it was probably just a weird looking guy. And when the text came up to reveal that it was Dead or Alive I had to figure out if they had reformed with a new singer or if Pete had just had botox injections and a couple of facelifts. Here are two pictures which visualize his transformation:

Check out those lips! Is it so strange I didn't recognize him? I don't know what happened to him and why, but he looks really different now.

I haven't done a lot of surfing lately, so the only link I can pass along today is this interview with Douglas Coupland from The Morning News. I received my copy of Hey Nostradamus! the other day and I want to get started it on it soon (if you buy it make sure to get the European hardback version. It's absolutely beautiful.), but since I'm currently reading Oliver Twist right now it'll have to wait a while.

Unless you've been living under a rock (or perhaps in Europe) you'll know that football season has started. People are making predictions, starting pools, setting up fantasy games, and planning get-togethers all because they want to see their team go all the way. We don't have DirecTV here, so we only get one game a week, which means if I'm lucky I'll get to see one Ravens game this year. But to kick the season off properly they're showing two games tonight and to get into the spirit I've invited people over to see the games. So we'll be watching Kansas City Chiefs featuring the oldest player in the league and future Hall of Famer Morten "The Great Dane" Andersen take on the San Diego Chargers. And afterwards it's the 49ers against the Bears, so I expect we're in for 6+ hours of great entertainment.

There's been written a lot about the preseason and there's been made a lot of predictions about who will go all the way this year. But as always it's almost impossible to predict beyond the playoff slots. A month ago the Falcons looked like a contender for the Super Bowl, but after Raven Adalius Thomas put a hit on Mike Vick they now look like they might not even be able to make it to the playoffs. Personally, I hoping for the Ravens, but I think a more plausible Super Bowl guess is Tennesse vs. Tampa Bay. But both teams need to have a solid running game instead of relying on McNair and the defense respectively. But those are the two teams I think will go all the way this year.

There has been written a ton of articles about the new season, but the most fun article I've read is Bill Simmons' two part article based on quotes from Top Gun. All the best quotes are in there and are somehow linked to players or coaches with guesses about how they'll perform this year. It's good stuff and I also agree with him on this playoff predictions (although I think the Bengals will surprise and make it to the playoffs with the Ravens).

So if you're into football I hope you'll enjoy the season. And if you have no interest in football I promise you I'll try to keep the football-related entries to a minimum.
I just realized how insanely time consuming it is to follow sports. If you follow three teams like I do and you try to watch the international soccer games, Champions League, some of the other cup games, and you try to keep up on the sports news you pretty much have to be unemployed to have time for it all. But thankfully I should be unemployed this time next month, so this Fall I should have no troubles keeping up with everything.

Party Week is still in full effect here, so last night we went and saw free concerts with Mikael Simpson and Mew. Simpson is a critically acclaimed singer/songwriter, who among other things have written a song about Bjørn Lomborg, who published the much maligned The Skeptical Environmentalist, called You Are Not a Real Bear (Bjørn means bear in Danish). Danish politician Pia Kjærsgaard got zinged as well and footballer and local hero Stig Tøfting received a touching tribute when Simpson changed his lyrics and sang "Stig Tøfting can always return home" (Tøfting is now playing in China, but rejoined his old team AGF this week to play a friendly match against the national team on which he has made 41 appearances).
He also revealed that this was the first time his parents saw him perform, so they received applauses from the crowd (twice) and he managed to talk a bit about the city and some of the recent, unpleasant events, which have taken place here. It might be a cheap trick to customize shows like that to whichever town you're playing in, but it definitely works which is the most important thing.

There were quite a few people at the Mikael Simpson show, but the place was absolutely packed, when Mew hit the stage. Obviously, they mainly played tracks of Frengers, which meant it was pretty much the same show they've been playing the last two years. Maybe that's why I didn't think it was that terrific. I've seen them a lot the last couple of years, so even though the old songs have been rearranged for the new record (five of the tracks of Frengers appear on the record Half The World Is Watching Me and She Came Home For Christmas is from their debut A Triumph For Man) they're pretty much the same. Don't get me wrong - I still think they're a great band and their songs are remarkable, but they seem to have chosen to focus on the quieter songs and seeing as Jonas Mew is the epitomy of a shoegazer there was very little contact with the audience. This approach works a lot better in a small venue, but in a fairly large square filled with people who are checking out the band because the show is free it's probably a good idea to try to do something to envoke the interest of the crowd. But even though the show wasn't great I'm still really looking forward to their next record, which hopefully has a bit more guitar on it. I honestly think they have a decent chance of getting a break on the international scene. They still might be a bit too weird for the Coldplay crowd, but if one of the guys would just hook up with Julia Roberts or someone like that I think they have a shot. Until then though if you haven't already bought Frengers you definitely should.

There are things I'll do
That could really hurt you
Don't you just love goodbyes?
Don't you just love goodbyes?

 

I was watching German tv again this week and I saw a face that wasn't familiar at all, but should have been. Do you recognize the person to your left? Let me know if you do and if you know what happened to him please do tell. I'll write an entry about him in a few days and add a few more pictures and if no one has been able to guess who he is I'll also reveal his name then.
(hint: You should know him if you've followed 80s pop culture)

I hate it when I can't access my email. The university's servers were down for about 24 hours, which meant that all of yesterday I was without email. I wasn't expecting anything really important, but there were a couple of mails that I knew were coming, and it really bugged me that they were floating around out there out of my reach. And I didn't know if the mails people were sending me were stored somewhere or if they were bouncing driving the senders mad. I really need to move both my mail and my Warhol site to a more dependable server especially if I'm gradutating next month.

The new album by The Raveonettes is out now (haven't received my copy yet, because of some Amazon related trouble) and has gotten mixed reviews. But obviously Rolling Stone thinks it's awesome.

The reason I made sure to tape the VMAs wasn't that I was afraid I'd miss it, but because it was shown live and therefore uncensored. The show has been on a continuous loop since it first aired, so there has been plenty of opportunity to see the winners and the performances, but also to see Chris Rock's opening monologue with more stuff blanked out than a Sunday crossword. Obviously, there was some cursing and references to violence (You've been Punk'd! Well, you've been ______), but the stupidest thing they blanked out was during the American Idol bit. Rock is riffing on how Idol is the only show where they don't have expert judges and says: "Having Paula Abdul judging a singing contest is like having _______ _______ judge a dancing contest". Seriously, they might as well not show the monologue at all instead of ruining the jokes. It's like the George W. Bush Joke That Isn't A Joke, when you pull the name out.
Now, if you haven't seen the show the part which was blanked out was Christopher Reeve. Not Crack Whore, Fat-Ass Bitch, or whatever, but Christopher Reeve. I know it's not socially acceptable to make fun of crippled people, but I think this is taking the PC-train a few stops too far.