Many Machines on Ix

My new synth setup is taking shape:

* Get the Korg MP4 overhauled and ready for action
* Purchase a JD800
* Land the Sequential M-trak
* Matrix 6 is up for bounce
* SY99 may have to go to finance the 800.

I'm kinda reluctant to let the 99 go, I need those D/A converters more than beer. This is a mean lead-machine, but weak on bass. What I really use it for is strings, pads..backing! This is a backing machine that retailed at NOK 45.000 in it's heydays.

The Korg is just wild. 4x VCO, a wife-beatingly brutal SSM and my favourite arpeggiator. About 60 or so knobs, it totally outperforms one of my faves, it's little brother Polysix, in sound, style and action. The SCI Multitrak is somewhat the weak link in terms of performance, but damn..it looks great and sounds cheaper than a nigerian escort. Just gotta _love_ that. Thumbs up for Sequential.

So..the JD800...it will be my own personal rocketship control rack. What a beauty. Gleaming lights, elegant lines, dozens upon dozens of sliders..and it's all digital havoc. I'm thinking, what the 99 has in sound, the 800 has in everything else. Given my recent caving-in to tactility, I can only hope it sounds as great as it seems to feel. But it's a lot of money...but hell, the best looking piece of gear in the world apart from the DX1 (oooooh I want a DX1).... I could starve for that one.

TODAY: \o/ Line \o/

Summer in the city

Things are falling into place \o/

The sun goes down on me

Some people are allowed to go down on me, some not. The sun, however, is quite out of my control. I wasn't very surprised when I read this article.

For those of you who clicked and though "oh, that's a lot of text", it basically claims that solar storms affect people. For those of us who have even a basic insight into cosmology, this isn't even slightly surprising. The way we see things isbasically that matter is compressed energy. We use energy. Energy is all around us. Energy, to some extent, must affect us. Solar winds are energy and/or magnetic forces (that in turn will affect energy). So, solar winds, to some extent, is very likely to affect us. This is kinda obvious, but...

I guess there's a number of circumstances that affect us in ways that we don't even comprehend, and on many levels to boot. Say, you eat stuff. The components of what you ate will affect your organism to some degree, for instance hormonal flow, proteine intake, hightened/lowered oxygen diffusion etc..Exposure to powerful radioactive emissions can make your cells disintegrate or produce spontanious and volatile cancer. Etceteras etceteras.

Some days I feel and look great, some days I don't. Some days there's something strange going on, some days are just boring.

My point is, I belive there's a multitude of agents that can and will affect us to certain extents. I really think people should stop thinking so normatively about other people. We just really can't figure out all the circumstances affecting us. A very wise (middle aged) woman I knew used to explain away other people's behaviour a lot. I don't hold completely to that, we do have free will and usually the ability to implement it. But she was of the forgiving kind and I admire that. I think she knows there's a lot of things we, as jury and judge, just can't take into account when we make our verdicts.

update

My new job is going well, so I'm working a lot these days. No time to rant around here. All is well in the country, things are starting to pick up rather nicely. Summer is coming. I will get a tan. I will feel well. I will listen to Daft Punk, Weekender and Seb Leger....drink beer and have fun (when I don't work).

Today is Digitalo. Today is a good day.

Preemptive cat story strike

There's a cat story coming up at Line's blog (norwegian), so for once I'll try to beat someone to it by being first rather than 3 years too late.

One fine spring morning I arrived at my old residence at Verftet, which as you can see is more or less sea borne. Punch drunk at five in the morning I headed out on the balcony to have a last Lucky before sleepy-sleepy, barely able to stand right. The balcony is built over the local fjord, but the house foundation rests on an old dock that has large stones as foundation. Going over the evening's flaming success (and correspondingly the after party's crushing defeat), I thought I heard some meowing-like sounds.

Fair enough, there's some old metal pieces in the sea right below, so I thought maybe they were swung about by the current (the tide was rising). But no...the meowing-like sound persisted and I dared a "pussy pussy pussy" statement in the general direction of the next-door apartment. Upon this rather lame thing to say, the frequency and intensity of the sound picked up dramatically, I bent over, looked around and WHAM....I see a grey little kitten trapped on a minute ledge in the dock foundation. And the tide is rising.

Panick-stricken, I called the police. I knew they had a boat and drunkenly informed them about the crisis at hand. My "sister-in-law" (not technically, but..) woke up and joined me on the balcony. She had heard the cries for help and was awfully worried when I pointed at the cat. Police called me back then and said their crew was sleeping and there was no way they would pay for a full rescue operation. The kitten is trapped 50 meters from closest "shore". I'm totally wasted.

For those of you who didn't know: Jumping into the atlantic in spring time when you're drunk is the equivalent of jumping from a Himalayan peak whenever, drunk/sober considerations aside. You will (get cramps and) die. I went into one of the storage rooms and started flipping through my bro's leisure items, trying to find one of his drysuits ("It will keep me warm!") or life-vests ("I may float around, entertained by cramps..but still float). I couldn't find anything, Tonje called my bro, who said "Wear the suit and you'll sink before you can say 'I'm a kitten saving hero'. And no, there's no vest".

He was however kind enough to inform us that his old wind surf board was in the garage and that it would float. So there we are, one Bærum-girl and one slacker carrying a 40kg board to the chosen insertion point. Dressed in tees and shorts, I hop onto the board and paddle over to the screaming little creature in the well renown norwegian success-position, telemarks-nedslagstillingen, barely able to balance myself on the board. Boldly, with eyes fixed at least a kilometer beyond the horizon, I navigate over to the new desperate little animal.

With a manly grip around it's chest, I actually managed to paddle myself back all those meters too. Very luckily, the wet little kitten was totally calm, I'm very certain I would fall into the frigging fjord if it had made a jump for it. Paddling over to an overjoyed Tonje, I felt relief. As a geniune hero born in the wrong time, I proudly handed the cat over during a cacophony of happy meows, hopped onto the shore, picked up the board and carried it back to the garage.

I then gave the cat a warm shower, Tonje opened a can of tuna. As if nothing had happened, kitty just started licking up and find a place to sleep. Knowing it was a neighbouring cat, we released it once we realised it didn't want the tuna hence depriving us from the pleasure of seing it eat peacefully.

After this, my facial expression is mostly that of me boldly looking a kilometer beyond the horizon. Unless of course I'm very tired and my eyes basically resemble those of any given fish.

Chanel girls continued + LP evening

So, the night out with John from Lonely Planet was somewhat sick and wrong. The company was excellent, but the places.... We started at Biskopen, which I at least don't resent and, discussed for some time where to head off. John had visited Sjøboden the last time he was here and absolutely loved it. Obviously, we had to go there.

Granted, the place was half deserted, but a miserable singer/songwriter/entertainer doing blues-like covers in an unholy blend with overweight and ugly girls younger than me trying to score drinks from 40-50 years old stril (don't ask)...IN A MARITIME ENVIRONMENT.... Luckily John agreed the place was awful and we streaked to less scary places.

So what's this about Chanel then? Quite frankly, a lot of women with just a twang of class wear no. 5 and I don't have a problem with that. Chanel, however, does. That's why they presented "Chance", the new mark of the better woman.

I love Chance. The smell is so intoxicating it's become a biologial trigger to me. It's divine, it's magic, it's woman. Once I get a wiff, I forget manners, social code, my better self and generally find the situation unbearably present. It's instant nasal love, if I may put it bluntly. Every now and again, there will be a woman who will actually wear the perfume with grace. If passed by such a Kitsune, the sky goes purple, the stars turn into silver, gold, diamond....I mean, this stuff is pure allure.

So...kitsunes used to be rare and quality through and through. My big sorrow these days is that all of a sudden, Chance-smelling girls crop up from nowhere. In the last two months, there's been a downright inflation in the smell. To my great horror, there's hardly a day without this hitherto magical substsance crossing my path. Granted, some of the women wear it with no vain. I would even say that one or two of them wore it to great effect. But just anyone? No.

It's many years since I first smelled bliss. Now this gem, this one of the hallmarks a great woman, is becoming popularized. Consumed. Worn like a pair of jeans. Drained from potence. Abused to the tragic death as seen by it's predecessor, no 5.

And I weep.

Today: Eurovision Grand Prix and probably Music sounds better with you at Strædet.

Friday by eight

I promised everyone to write a "Digitalo & PowerBlytt" posting but you'll just have to wait for that goodie.

It's friday by eight, this is my third weekend within 7 days. Uponwy my arrival in the City of Bergen today I went to my favourite cafè (I go there every day), met some favourite people and a new character. He was an american. I made jokes about it. Nice guy though, and after a while it turned out he's Lonely Planet's correspondant in Norway. This is typically the kind of character my kind of people will pick up for the weekend; Just jolly great fun.

We headed off for Naboen (!), had dinner, beer and a Fernet. I'm home for some C&S, quick blog update, checking my MySpace account and just have a cigarette by myself.

Nothing particularily interesting happened 16th/17th of may except the demo submission. Spent money I don't have, were tipsy most of the time, looked for some interesting people in the usual reference space and unfortunately paid a visit to the most miserable club in town; Kamelon.

Checked our ADSL subscription today and realised we're being screwed over by NextGenTel. Called them to complain, they didn't even have a file on us (= my flatmate, Jon Marius). Got mad at them, referred to the expert systems (which I have access to at my job :D) and they got pretty mad at me for having access. I told them I work at another ISP. I think I ruined my NGT counterpart's day. Will fuck them totally over on monday.

TODAY: Visit strange and unknown places in Bergen with Shogan, Janniche and John, the Lonely Planet journalist. Get really tired by by 4 am (a reoccuring problem after I started working again) and head for home.