stories from icemerica

classic

2008-09-03T01:58:00.004-04:00

School started today. I am tired and happy. happy to exist rather than to be back at this school. But I ate raw fruit and vegetables all day and took all of my vitamins and then I ate cheese pizza and drank orange soda. it was more orange than any soda I have ever seen. a young couple was having a screaming fight out on the sidewalk when I walked home from visiting alex. it was the kind of fight where if they were at all violent they would have beat the shit out of each other a long time ago. I like how hot it is. I was born on the wrong side of the arctic circle. I just breathe with my mouth when I pass a pile of trashbags. I swam in the sea the other day and rode the waves and before that I rode the tallest, fastest rollercoaster in the world. I went to a book-club meeting. I eat a lot of food with alex fitzgerald. sometimes we talk about the internet while eating and sometimes we talk about food over the internet. I want to go to the movies, I want to drink cider and watch youtube. I've heard Andrew watch Obama speeches on the internet all day. Obama is speaking upstairs to a soundtrack of old time hindi music downstairs.

This is alex making a stupid face:

This is siggi eggerts who has nothing to do with this post but is one of my favorite people anyway:

I like to look at the pictures of alex and pretend that he is saying "YO D00D I JUST BANGED SUM CHIX"

and then look at the picture of siggi and pretend that he is making that face in response.

I also like to look at this fucking amazing video from the 1954 Hindi Classic "Nagin", starring one of my favorite dancers ever, Vyjayanthimala. It it almost 10 minutes long but worth every second:

pakk

2008-08-25T13:46:00.003-04:00

Today I've been packing because I go to america tomorrow. Here is what I have packed:

I am getting ready to go to my sister's for dinner. My sister is a good cook. it will be a good night. Here is a picture of my sister on a beach in the westfjords last summer, fighting off evil birds with a stick:

The other day I tidied up and organized my room really well because I'm leaving and I'm going to miss my room and don't want it to be sad and messy while I am gone. Then I took pictures of it and told it I would not forget it even if I stopped living in it.

You can probably look at the pictures here.

When I looked over the pictures I thought:

"I have ridiculous taste / bad taste / no taste."

"kind of like a juvenile packrat."

"I have so much crap and so many nice friends who have made me or given me nice things"

"My bedroom is so fucking awesome and fun I wish I could travel with it."

eat fruit

2008-08-21T13:01:00.005-04:00

In 5 days I leave Iceland and go back to NYC forever. No probably not forever. But I don't know when exactly I'll spend this much time in Iceland again.

My vacation has been good. Things I have done: Eat a lot. Watched the Olympics almost every day. read almost every day. watched a lot of films. stretched almost every day. Sat in the sun and listened to audiobooks. Went through stuff in my room and felt sad that I am leaving the magical place that it is. I need to photograph my room before I go.

I have run most of my errands and done mostly what I need to do before I leave. I got 5 rolls of film developed at the fuji-film place in Reykjavik; my favorite photo place ever I think. I haven't done some things I wanted to do this summer, like try to build a website. Because it is time consuming and I would rather have my time consumed in other ways, like reading. That's okay. I'm okay. Okay to go back to america and try to be a person. A person and not a hermit.

So I will post some photographs here, because they are much more fun to look at than words. Just a couple of photos at a time, so I will have interesting content for longer. Okay. Here is a timeline:

2005:

2007:

...stay tuned for a new peppermint green item of clothing and a mouth stuffed with orange in summer 2009.

sometimes I don't know what to write so I just post someone else's poems and pretend that they're meaningful.

2008-08-06T18:38:00.006-04:00

Find a cure. Find a cure for my life. Find a cure. Find a cure for my life. Oh my god! Oh you think I'm in control, oh my god! Oh you think it's all for fun? Oh my god! Oh you think I'm in control? OH MY GOD. Oh you think it's all for fun.

---

Appropriately, I just watched 5 episodes of the secret life of the american teenager. in a row. online. That marks the beginning of my "vacation". My last day of work was today. I leave for New York in 20 days. Pretty good vacation. The secret life of the american teenager is about amercians and how good people practice abstinence and are pro-life. More specifically: pretty blondes practice abstinence. latinos are slutty. asians are smart. and african-americans are insightful.

5 episodes. 250 minutes.

vacation.

abstinence.

----

so anyway, did you know how Michael Cera's parents stole my DNA when I was a baby and made him with it? I think I'm gonna have to demand royalties.

twenty-one and dolphin friendly

2008-08-01T05:16:00.005-04:00

Yes Hello.

Yesterday was my birthday. I turned this old:

I got 30 facebook comments plus something like 4 phonecalls, 3 myspace comments, 3 text messages, 3 IMs, 1 e-mail and 1 birthday card wishing me a happy birthday.

This is comforting because it means that at least 45 people like me enough, or want me to like them enough, to feel like they should wish me a happy birthday. And maybe that means I can consider myself "nice" or "friendly" or even "popular" or something despite my regular outbursts of antisocial behaviour.

So I guess I'll use this opportunity to thank my friends, and my friends' friends, and my acquaintances for being friendly.

This is what I really wanted for my birthday:

It was also, ofcourse, the only backpack that had sold out in the past 3 days in the only store that carries them in Iceland.

JESUS I AM DYING OF HEAT AND NEED TO REMEMBER HOW TO WRITE DOWN INTERESTING THINGS.

FACE THE DRAWMA:

2008-07-23T08:54:00.006-04:00

I never want to draw a single line ever in my life again.

Drawing makes me feel like shit.

You know what doesn't make me feel like shit?

Films. I will now dedicate my life to only watching films for the rest of it and figuring out a way to make a living doing just that. I suspect it will involve a pen with a light on it.

Here is a gif of me interpretively dancing about my feelings:

late night drawing

2008-07-21T06:51:00.005-04:00

Last night I FINALLY managed to squeeze out a couple of illustration to my Butcher story. I might get paid for these so, you know, I should have done this a month ago. Anyway, I know you probably haven't read the story; I haven't published it here because it was never really meant for the public. I always thought "what are the odds that I'll win this contest. No one will ever see this." But I was wrong and The Butcher will inevitably be published this fall, although only within my school in a small paper from the Vera List Center. And maybe they'll want to put my drawings in it. I'll show you one; this is the little girl with the big dog. They have a short debate in the story about whether she got killed or not. click to view larger.

I heard there was a huricane coming over to visit us here on the southwestern coast of iceland. Judging from the weather outside it is already here. The hurricane's name is Bertha and supposedly it is not dangerous any more. I have a lot of experience living with harmless hurricanes named Bertha. My mother is one. She is a hurricane in the kitchen, for example. The results are delicious.

Bee Boy Dance

2008-07-20T08:43:00.004-04:00

I think this is very funny, I am simple like that.

Logi and I played a show on friday. Hrafnhildur & Arna had their first and last Eagle vs. Raven show at the Ibiza Bunker gallery. So we played at their opening. lots of people were there. it was kind of fun. kind of nervewracking. mostly nervewracking. But people liked it.

I am empty of stories at the moment. No I'm not. But can't seem to write them down. maybe I need to get out of bed.

I made a wordle for this blog

2008-07-18T08:50:00.003-04:00

http://wordle.net makes nice images from the words that are commonly used on a blog (click on the thumbnail to view):

DO WHAT I SAY

2008-07-13T20:32:00.004-04:00

Play both of the following two youtube videos at once,

BUT! this is important: mute the first one (by clicking on the volume button or turning the volume all the way down) and listen to the soundtrack of the second one while looking at the first one. I guarantee greatness.

---

I've been lousy at updating recently. That is because I've been trying to be a real person with a normal life. It's going okay, I'm still failing at some fundamental things though.

I had this conversation the other day at a "party":

dude: "Hi Júlía"

me: "hi...?"

dude: "do you recognize me?"

me: "no I'm so sorry! I suck at recognizing people. who are you?"

dude: "my name is ______, we used to be friends on myspace, I came to your video store sometimes..."

me: "Oh I do remember you! I'm sorry, I don't even use myspace anymore. My account more or less stopped working. I'm actually pretty upset... having been a registered user since early 2004 I felt like they owed me something and this was just betrayal"

dude: "I think myspace just sensed that you needed to get off the computer and out of the house. you had spent too much time on it and it said "stop, no more myspace for you, get out of the house, go to a party, get a life". that's why this conversation is happening"

me: "that is completely true! now I understand everything."

FOOTBALL

2008-06-16T18:45:00.009-04:00

There is another polar bear. maybe I should make this a polar bear blog. I will only post when polar bears swim over to iceland.

maybe not. they are keeping this one alive. when they shot the previous bear 12 days ago everyone said "no this was bad. polar bears are endangered. shame on you. we will not kill another one (but we wont have to deal with that because it will be decades until another one swims over)."

WRONG.

as soon as they decided to not kill any more bears the bears heard and now they are all flocking over here to frolic on the northern coast and eat ducks. the north pole is melting. they need a new home. and we have plenty of ducks. the bear is calmly eating ducks on a beach right outside of a farm up north as i write this. tomorrow professional polar-bear-catching-specialists will arrive and catch him and safely take him to greenland where he can calmly eat inuits on icy beaches.

---

I still have only one channel and this one channel broadcasts the 2008 European Football championship all day every day. Having no other choice than to watch that, I have become a major football fan. My favorite player is Zlatan Ibrahimowhic on the swedish team because he is the only one I know by name. Ofcourse the best swedish player looks super Jewy.

As for the teams, I am rooting for the Netherlands because their costumes are so amazing. orange shirts, white shorts and BABY BLUE KNEESOCKS.

and ofcourse, both zlatan and the dutch are really fucking good at football.

---

I have started to miss new york slightly. New York City is the geographical equivalent of an abusive boyfriend who is really good looking and charming in the beginning but always makes me feel like shit after a couple of months, until i leave him and then some time passes and all of a sudden he looks hot and charming again.

Reykjavík doesn't make me feel like shit, it just makes me feel bored and tired and maybe sad every now and then but mostly bored and tired. and full and happy and rested too. my job just sucks. i pretend that it doesnt but it really does. it just happens to be what i do all day 5 days a week. i will have to pretend for 2 more months. and sell my soul for money.

oh by the way.

New York weather:

Reykjavík weather:

---

there is no iceland team competing in the euro 2008 football championship but Icelanders can still play pretty decent football. Yesterday they produced the happiest, gayest football photograph ever anyway. today at work when i wanted to cry and murder i just looked at this photo.

---

tomorrow: day off. roadtrip.

News that have nothing to do with Eurovision.

2008-06-03T08:37:00.005-04:00

A polar bear swam over to Iceland this morning after hanging out on some ice that was floating around. The polar bear has been shot now. I was hoping they would capture it for our "zoo" but that would probably never happen, unless a baby polar bear decided to swim over. Better to know of a dead polar bear than a hungry live polar bear roaming around in the fog.

---

We're still having more earthquakes. And by "we" I mean "those people down south". I can't feel anything. My dad had written an article for the paper that was supposed to be published the day after the big earthquake. The next morning over breakfast he said:

"Typical. The one time in my life I decide to write for the paper they make an earthquake and fill the paper with it to prevent my article form getting printed."

mom: "why aren't you using the right bowls for the oatmeal?"

dad: "there was an earthquake. everything broke. we have no other bowls."

mom: "that's not true. nothing broke. you just didn't do the dishes last night did you..."

dad: "there was an earthquake. I was unable to do the dishes."

mom: "oh stop it."

the article was printed the following day.

---

Nothing exciting is happening in my life but I will distract you from that thought by writing more about Eurovision.

2008-06-02T18:32:00.011-04:00

I was so underwhelmed by the Russian song that won Eurovision that I couldn't even be bothered to tell you about it until now. So yes; the country that formerly ruled over half of all the other countries competing got most of the points, not a huge surprise there. I think there needs to be a Eurovision and then a separate Sovietvision. Sovietvision could fill the stage with as many awkward male figure skaters and babes dressed as demon-strippers as their hearts desired. Obviously sovietvision would be more interesting to watch, but the "old Europe" could also stop being so damn sore and start doing good in their own contest again. Because in a contest centered around bad taste extravaganza, northwestern europe just doesn't stand a chance against the former soviet union.

Anyway, Björg and I had a jolly good time watching, I lost count of how many times I said "what the fuck! Azerbaijan? What is this! they just became a country! They do not even count as a country! No one ever talks about Azerbaijan! What the fuck can possibly be going on there that makes them think up musical performances such as this one?!?! AZERBAIJAN..?"

Azerbaijan got a shitload of points and left me completely speechless. Iceland did not get very many points at all. That's fine because our song was awful, but so were most of the other ones, awful songs being the whole point of this game.

Speaking of songs that didn't win Eurovision, I heard that Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, made their performers pay all of their own expenses as punishment for not getting into the finals. That is some serious harsh shit, and makes me wonder: WHY do they not just send their own amazing Dan Bălan (possibly the only Moldovan person anyone in the rest of the world has heard of) to compete? this song would have kicked eurovision's ass (only made better by the fact that he used to be part of a doom metal band):

My favorite non-winning eurovision song of all time was this Latvian song from 2000.

They did come third so they don't really count as having done badly. However I have here what is possibly the best song to ever come last in the Eurovision song contest. The performers are Telex from Belgium. This took place in 1980, and with it I conclude this entirely unnecessary but entertaining (if only for me) study and discussion of the glorious phenomenon that is the Eurovision Song Contest.

---

I work a lot these days at my summer job. At work I play a daily game called "do everything possible to avoid having to sit by the phone and take phone calls from angry sailors." So I've been making skipper certificates, binding books of reports on the financial situation of harbors and putting pieces of paper in envelopes.

I also play a game called "eat something at lunch today that you normally would never eat". So far I have eaten some shrimp, some pork, and giant bright-blue guillemot eggs. or auk eggs, or svarfuglsegg, I think it's all the same in english and you're not going to know which bird i'm referring to so think about penguins. or look at this:

I also play a game called "eat as much as is humanly possible at lunch."

I work here.

---

Today after I worked I swam.

I swam for a while with Björg in our giant local outdoor pool in the magical time that is the late evening sunshine of magical Iceland. Swimming is better when you can wave to your friend under water as you pass each other. I swam until I thought my heart would explode and my lungs would collapse and then we sat in the seawater-pool and now I am soft and clean and lotioned and shiny and exhausted on my bed with my cat.

---

That was me trying to make you think that my life is nice.

---

And there was an earthquake. The building I work in cracked. I thought I would die for a few seconds. nothing bad happened to me or anyone I know. bad things happened to a lot of people is some towns south or Reykjavík. Some of them don't exactly have real homes anymore. No one died.

---

Good Night.

---
p.s.

spain:

GIANT EPIC EUROVISION YOUTUBE POST FOR THE POOR AMERICANS WHO ARE MISSING OUT

2008-05-21T22:16:00.007-04:00

Before I begin my epic post on the epic event that is the Eurovision Song Contest, here is a quick update:

I miraculously completed every single one of my 7 courses despite having been an epic wreck the later half of the semester. I got good grades, which is even more miraculous than having completed them all. I am clearly a magician.

I came back home to Reykjavík early Monday morning and have since then been taking it easy; reading, eating, driving around and swimming in my wonderful local pool which looks like this:

In an attempt to expand on my taking-it-easy I turned on the TV this morning, to discover that I have only one channel (the icelandic national broadcasting service). The last time I was here, we at least had two channels. Now we have one. Can you imagine that, american readers? having only one channel on your TV? No you probably can't. Not being able to channel surf when something boring comes on? unthinkable.

Luckily for me this morning a rerun of the 1st part of eurovision was on. The Eurovision Song Contest is a big televised event where each European country taking part sends in a song to be performed live on stage. Everyone votes and the song that gets the most points wins. The country that wins usually hosts the contest the following year. The contest has been held since 1956 and since then 49 countries have taken part at least once (the continent of Europe contains approximately 50 countries at the moment). I don't know of any other event that unites a whole continent in front of their television screens simultaneously to watch the same live event, so this is pretty special. In the past few years though, since those "eccentric" eastern-european countries started taking part, the contest has become too big for just one long show so now we have all these semi-finals and shit, making the whole thing far less exciting since poor Iceland never gets through to the finals due to lack of "friend-countries" (political voting is kind of big in this game). Thanks a lot eastern-europe mafia.

I grew up waiting anxiously for that Saturday night in May when my family would gather around the TV with snacks and my own homemade scoreboards to watch sparkly people sing in various kinds of gibberish on stage.

It was later that I found out that the music is mostly terrible eurotrash and almost no one who takes part is actually famous, which answered my question "why doesn't Björk just take part because she would obviously win".

I have however accepted these truths (and there are always a couple of exceptions to them anyway) and will proudly watch the semi-final tomorrow night and then the final this weekend. Except I'll be feeling proud to be european rather than Icelandic; our song sucks. It sucks so much that I'm too embarrassed to post it. Instead, here is my favorite song this year:

Sebastian Tellier for France, 2008

Following is my second favourite, although it takes a while to really start. But they have a chicken on stage. and farmers.

Bosnia & Herzegovina 2008

Some ofther notable 2008 entries are:

Spain

Belgium

Yeah I have no idea.

Iceland has been taking part whenever we could since our 1986 debut, Gleðibankinn:

My favorite of our contributiousn were the 1990 duet "eitt lag enn"
which got 4th place:

And when we sent Iceland's nr. 1 gay icon, Páll Óskar, to compete in 1997, way before being gay was trendy and before everyone accepted that eurovision is actually just a big homo fest. Eurovision still being in the closet back then, we got no points and 20th place.

Now, I just want to end with some notable Eurovision contest winners from the beginning:

France Gall for Luxembourg in 1965,
Serge Gainsbourg wrote her song:

ABBA with Waterloo for Sweden in 1974,
the second most famous act to ever compete:

Israel in 1978,
catchiest song ever, I could sing "A-ba-ni-bi" before I even knew what Israel was:

Johnny Logan for Ireland in 1980,
he went on to win eurovision 3 times. And he's hot:

Celine Dion for Switzerland in 1988,
the most famous person who ever competed:

Dana International for Israel in 1998,
THE FIRST TRANSSEXUAL TO WIN EUROVISION:

Ruslana for Ukraine in 2004,
mostly notable because me and my friends had our Eurovision party in a summer house and had to take shots every time the country we were rooting for got points. I was rooting for Serbia&Montenegro which came in 2nd place so I got very drunk. I always knew this song was better, I just didn't want to pass out before I knew who won:

And finally, Lordi for Finland in 2006,
FIRST BLACKMETAL BAND TO WIN EUROVISION:

I assume that by now every single one of my American readers is dying to be European. Yeah I would be too if I were you.

I'll let you know who wins this time around.

nice

2008-05-08T11:10:00.004-04:00

Last night
I walked so much
that I got blisters under my feet
it was nice.
The weather was nice.
I ate pizza before and ice-cream and beer afterwards.

I wish the weather was always nice in Iceland
because I am going there soon.

I just got a scallion-cream-cheese-bacon-tomato bagel.
It is nice.

I saw my school's illustration senior show
and the fine arts senior show too
last night.
Illustration won.
This was comforting.

I am somewhat redeeming myself from constantly feeling like shit
I think
mostly because the semester will be over soon.
It is nice.
But I wish I hadn't felt so shitty most of the semester,
it ruined it.

What I found at the bookstore this week.

2008-05-06T22:56:00.004-04:00

Stopped by at st. mark's bookshop on my walk home the other day. Got curious about this book just because it was all about female musicians and I myself happen to identify somewhat with female musicians. Björk was in it, she got 2 pages. And then look who I randomly found in the last chapter. It's something about stylish people who go watch bands play. I was at an Ecstatic Sunshine/ Dirty Projectors show in my hood that particular night. But of course the book says something completely different and nonsensical. I got 1 whole page though. Therefore I am now 50% as famous as Björk.

Oh and I had to pay $30 for this, what a lousy deal.

I am this forever

2008-04-30T21:59:00.002-04:00

I suck at photographing my work at the moment. sorry.

p.s. approx. 12x16 inches, graphite + watercolor + pen and ink + brush and ink. I'm not sure why people always seem to want to know these things.

smell report

2008-04-29T15:16:00.005-04:00

At the end of a semester such as this one, when I am generally freaking out about own failure at life and too busy distracting myself/paralyzed with worry to take showers, I move around in an aroma-cloud of baby powder, tea-tree oil, sugary lime juice and "stinky soap" (someone used this to refer to Dove as in the brand of my deodorant).

I'm not sure if I would rather smell like girly sweat or stinky soap. The other aromas are all pretty fun and addictive to me.

Just in case you were wondering.

---

In other news, it is almost time for the 10 year anniversary of the oldest (known) documentation of my presence on the internet. I just came across this while googling myself looking for something else. What I am referring to is my signature in the Lion King Guestbook in 1998 (I was 11). I only wrote my name and where I was from. Because that was all you usually wrote in old school, tangible guestbooks as a kid. Somewhere in the middle of this page, May 20th 1998. I like the fact that the person who wrote after me is named Sami and is from Nokia, Finland.

---

this has been me trying to distract myself. I am now going to switch over to J.D.Salinger as a method of distraction.

"all those picassos and stuff" -on art and animal cruelty

2008-04-23T00:31:00.009-04:00

I was going to write a real thing about this but I am too lazy and it is too late so I am just going to paste the (splendid) instant messenger conversation I just with Alex Fitzgerald about the matter. I did edit it for easier reading.

Before you start I want to say: I have my own very firm opinions about what should and shouldn't be done with animals. I'm not going to get into it too much, but if you want to discuss it with me you are welcome. I just want to clarify that I do like dogs. I am just not delusional about them. I also think that hippie americans should leave people who have a tradition of whaling (=iceland (japan, etc.)) ALONE. just wanted to throw that in there. ok here's what i'm talking about:

alxfitzgerald

At the costa rican bienarte, this one artist tied a dog he had found on the street to a wall, and wrote "you are what you read"

in dog biscuits on the other side of the gallery

and then he took pictures of all the people standing there at the opening not doing anything about the dog

and then he let the dog go, but he led the people to believe that it had died

and everyone on the internet has gotten incredibly worked up about it

because people like to pretend they care about things on the internet

Júlía

oh blah

alxfitzgerald

but anyway, I joined the facebook group today, after a 5th invitation

and I stated my opinion in how it was a successful piece, and that too many of the people in this group had gone as far as threatening to kill the artist without doing the proper research to find out that the dog lived, and that while people are investing all their efforts into this one not dead dog, there are thousands of dying dogs no one is thinking about right now. And I also talked about the fact that the petition for this one dog has over 2 million signatures while the petitions against the mass slaughter of tens of thousands of strays in romania didn't even get 20,000

and now I am getting facebook hate mail

Júlía

people can be so hysterical

alxfitzgerald

and seriously, if I read "HE COULD HAVE PAINTED IT OR MADE A SCULPTURE"

one more time

I think I might cry

for all of humanity

Júlía

I want to join the group just so I can tell them they are dumb

and that they probably EAT MISTREATED ANIMALS EVERY DAY

alxfitzgerald

BUT THOSE ARE NOT DOGS JULIA

OTHER ANIMALS DON'T COUNT

Júlía

and what about the dude at the tate modern with the goldfish in the blender

and everyone else who starves themselves or others or pretends to do so as performance art

are they gonna make petitions about that too

alxfitzgerald

I want to start a group about that

WHAT ABOUT HERMAN NITSCH

I should post that in there

Júlía

i wanna write them all sorts of things

"your mom is “art”"

"your mom is an “artist”"

“dogs suck and they need to die”

alxfitzgerald

"i feel really bad if the owner had lost the dog and then this guy took it and did that to him. i mean, the dog has to come from somewhere......" -group member

Júlía

they are so stupid.

there are probably more stray dogs than people over there. like in so many other places. they just hang out in the street and suffer and starve.

alxfitzgerald

I KNOW

also, I love the ones who are like “I JUST WANT TO GO OVER TO THE GALLERY AND CUT THE ROPE AND SAVE IT”

this happened in 2007.

it lasted for a day.

" Abbey Interrante (Milton High School) wrote: you know i think that the mona lisa and all those picassos and stuff are pretty good art and nothing died in the process of making those, why does a dog have to die for this! this is sad!!!!!!"

Júlía

i am going to start referring to good art only as "all those picassos and stuff"

alxfitzgerald

I want to go to MoMA

and just say "he's not bob ross" and "these definitely aren't as good as all those picassos and stuff"

fail time.

2008-04-18T13:15:00.003-04:00

I've been eternally sick. sickety sick sick. not cold and flu sick, mystery sick. It just keeps coming back. I went to the doctor's yesterday and they took my blood out of me and then I felt even shittier because I don't have a lot of it already. So I'm on the verge of failing all of my classes on attendance. I need some crazy miracle to happen for me to pass them all. If you are doing some kind of voodoo on me you can stop now. You have succeeded.

They're going to let me know if they can solve the mystery of what exactly is wrong with me in 2 weeks. great. that helps. I already waited 3 weeks to see a doctor and by the time they get back to me I'll be going home in 2 weeks. To iceland where there are real doctors who actually talk to you.

This makes me want to give up on america but i am not going to. But I want to go home and hibernate and have my mamma take care of me and make me oatmeal and boiled fish.

maybe my poor icelandic cells are just suffering from a lack of good fat white fish. maybe that's all i need to make me strong. and homegrown boiled potatoes with melted butter on top. maybe that will stop me from wasting away.

I'm sad.

winner time.

2008-04-13T23:18:00.005-04:00

I got an e-mail the other day:

Dear Julia,

Congratulations! On behalf of the jury members of the Vera List University Art Collection Writing Award, I am pleased to announce that your submission "The Butcher" to the 2007/2008 writing competition was awarded the first place in the category of creative response, with a prize of $400.

This means I wrote a story and sent it into a competition and won. The competition is for all the schools within the new school university. This means that a lot of people take part. this means that a lot of them are americans and native english-speakers. this means that some of them are writing majors at eugene-lang.

I still won. The Icelandic girl who never took a creative writing class in her life won. The Icelandic girl who just recently started writing secret stories when she was angry at people and/or had interesting dreams and/or real or imaginary conversations.

AMERICANS = PWND

This makes me happy.

Now you can all say "hey I started reading what Júlía wrote before she won an award and became famous."

joke.

I have one problem that I want to talk about. I have a borderline unhealthy obsession with real people other than myself. I guess I am interested in myself too but I am more interested in people who I know or know of. I am not interested in imaginary people. I never ask these real people permission to draw them or write about them because that would be weird. They would think I was in love with them or something. That is not the case. I am never in love with people. So I just go ahead and draw them and write about them, telling myself I'll just never show anyone. Like when I wrote The Butcher. Of course I change names and details when I write because that's easier than changing people's faces when I draw. But I still thought "I will never tell anyone I wrote this. I will not win anything in this competition because I am foreign and this story will never be published and no one will read it."

Well I was wrong.

The story is about being foreign too, in part. It's about me and being foreign and angry and tired. It's funny. The jury used the word "Irreverence" about something in my story. I had to look the word up in the dictionary because I am foreign.

Okay. this might make me seem productive. I am not. I never make anything serious. except this story and another story that I illustrated for my lithography class. I am happy with these 2 things. Even if I get bad grades, which will probably happen, I will be happy that I accomplished two things that I like this semester. Here is a picture of the book I made:

I don't want to post the inside because I wrote and drew a real person in it and I didn't ask them permission and I'm scared they will not like it. But if you want to buy one of these they might be for sale. You should ask me.

I want to now apologize to everyone I might ever draw or write about without their permission. I'm sorry.

I should do my homework. Instead I always spend all of my time making very unserious things. Like this unserious thing I made today for Alex Fitzgerald. I like Alex Fitzgerald because he makes me smile and he likes the internet more than I do which is rare. Before I knew him I thought he was a lame internet person. Then I got to know him as an awesome real person. Now we talk to each other regularly both with our real faces and with our internets. So today's conversation resulted in this:

I am going to leave it up to you to read into this piece. Here is a clue: "Irreverence."

I am going to drink my tea now, it has probably gone cold. then I will draw tesla coils. good night.

life plan and things you need in order to acquire eternal happiness:

2008-04-02T00:20:00.007-04:00

I think I am trying to fix my state of "nothingness", by sleeping less for example. And doing some other things. I feel less like "nothing" right now. Maybe it's just because I went to mama's food shop though. Here is my new life plan: I will seduce someone who works at mama's. He will in turn bring me food all the time because I practically live next door anyway. very convenient. He will like horror movies and videogames and our lives will be perfect.

Now I just need someone who can teach me mad seduction skills.

joke.

Hey. I am really happy that people like to read this even though I'm writing about "nothing". And that icelandic people read this even though I'm writing in english = betraying the motherland. ACTUAL FACT = most icelandic people read english, but most foreign people do not read icelandic. It's a twisted world, I know.

Now I will talk about fun things.

Fun thing number one: Playing chess. I really want a nice chess set now. Rachael London has one and sometimes we play chess and drink tea or red wine and that makes for a very "happy sophisticated lady"-time. I'm probably better at checkers though. I will somehow acquire one of those double time sets. Then I will seduce people to play chess with me and we will drink limeade and look like this:

Fun thing number two: Limeade. Here are some reactions to my limeade:
Rachael: "Oh my god you are so incredibly good at this!"
I think that's it. Nobody else has tried it.

Fun thing number three: The brothers Quay are coming to present their films at my school on Friday! That is very exciting! If you are not familiar with them, they are basically a set of IDENTICAL twins who want to be Jan Svankmajer. If you are not familiar with Jan Svankmajer, you should be. They are almost 60. They looked like this when they were younger:

They pretty much are pretentious for a living. There latest film is called The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, possibly the most pretentious name of a film ever. At least their pretentious shit is really good. I tried hard to find a clip on youtube that wasn't 10 minutes and incredibly pretentious but this was almost impossible. But here's one from the Institute Benjamenta, which I watched several times during my video store days.

(Parts of the beginning reminds me of Vera. She will know why.)

If you don't have patience for that, here's a short scene they did in the film Frida, probably seen by more people than all of their own films combined.

nice, yes?

Well, one can only take so many fun things in one night. I think I need to stop now.

p.s. here are some titles I considered for this post: "The Piano Tuner of Pretentious Wannabes" and "Limeade Seduction". Neither one qualified.

p.p.s. I am enjoying this book very much now, both as reading material and a headrest for when I wall asleep in class:

this is sort of "nothing".

2008-03-27T15:06:00.004-04:00

No, Jonathan Lethem did not find me and kill me. I have merely been very busy / very tired / very unmotivated. But it's not too bad. I am in a state of nothingness right now. I feel like "nothing". I am not happy, or sad, or excited, or depressed, I don't think I'm going to ace this semester but I also doubt that I will fail it, I sort of want to stay in new york this summer but I also want to go home. I don't really care. I really like eating and sleeping at the moment. This is an entirely boring state of mind to be in, this "nothingness". I hope something happens soon to fix it.

Now that we're all very informed on my current feelings, I can tell you what has happened.

Vera, Björg & Pétur came to stay with me over spring break. We were drunk for a week. well they were drunk for a week, i tried to keep up but couldn't really while doing homework and going to bed embarrassingly early every night. We ate delicious bagels every morning. We watched the entire season 3 of Felicity, the utterly terrible TV series that Mona left with me when we stopped living together in the dorm and i never watched it and I TRIED to return it to her but no. Of course we ended up watching the entire damned thing.

since they left I have been up to no good.

I'm trying to make a real website. you know I have this whole domain, juliahermanns.com, it's not just for this blog. this blog is just supposed to be a bonus. my friend gave me Dreamweaver CS3 claiming it was sooo easy to use, and even if I know html and css just writing out the code would be a bitch. But Dreamweaver is looking like the most complicated, time consuming shit right now. I really need to put up some things that are semi serious. Because I never do. I need someone to come sit with me and walk me through this. I just want a simple normal 2 column page. I will make them limeade and rice pudding. I make really good limeade by the way. help. me.

Jonathan Lethem is trying to tell me something, I am not listening.

2008-03-10T23:31:00.005-04:00

You know what I like almost as much as movies? Books. Yeah super original, I know. I wish I had a cool hobby like rock-climbing or extreme body modification. Well I don't so I bought a bunch of books last night/this morning. I'm not gonna bore you with long descriptions of them but I feel the need to mention a couple of things. Okay I need to mention a couple of long boring descriptive things.

First: Jonathan Lethem. Jonathan Lethem fucking haunts my life. Jonathan Lethem is trying to brainwash me or some shit. He is a writer. He is a New York Jew person. He is everywhere. This is Jonathan Lethem, trying to force me to think about ducks:

I first came across a book of his in the Powerhouse Arena bookstore in brooklyn in the fall. I picked up a book thinking it was on color theory or disappointed people (I was kind of disappointed at the time) because it looks like this:

But then I read the back and found out it was actually a collection of Jonathan Lethem's essays on star wars, cassavetes, new york etc. So I bought it. And read it. And it was pretty good.

okay so I am in this book "club" (bookmooch, link on the right) where you can swap your books that you dont want for books you want. I have a list of maybe 30 books that i want if someone decides they wanna swap them, and what's the first book that I am offered? The only Jonathan Lethem book on my list: Motherless Brooklyn. Okay, fine, I wouldn't mind reading something else by him, but not for a while. So it's sitting on my nightstand. ok.

I go home to Iceland for christmas and ask my mom to get me some books in icelandic from the library because I haven't read any in a while. She sort of misunderstands and gets me all these originally english language books that have been translated into icelandic. She picks up, yeah you guessed it; Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of solitude and says "this one is supposed to be really good!"

I tell her yeah I wanna read it but maybe later in english, Give me something by Gyrðir Elíasson.

Last night I hung out at the St. Marks bookstore for a while because it was freezing outside and decided to buy a cool looking book of short stories about made up people mostly because Daniel Clowes is in it (and Charles Burns did the cover and I ALWAYS judge a book by its cover):

I totally DID NOT NOTICE until this morning in school when I was reading it that, guess who, YES Jonathan Lethem has a story in it. Okay wow. I can't really get rid of this guy.

So I pick up another few books at Strand after school, including Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings that I have been super excited about. As I was reading that this afternoon, Rachael London who's sitting next to me on the couch says "oh did you buy this because Jonathan Lethem loves it?" Surely enough, THERE HE IS AGAIN on the back cover of Tomines book praising it.

What the fuck. Did someone do a Jonathan Lethem voodoo curse on me? please let me read something that he is not involved in for ONE MINUTE.

Alright. Sorry about that. I just... if my life is to be taken over by one writer I would want it to be someone I really really love and not just pretty-good-Jonathan-fucking-Lethem.

The End.

As for Adrian Tomine, he happens to be one of the first people I was into when I got into my serious alt-comics stage at around 12. I remember reading this online and being like "yeah seems like a pretty cool guy." Then I read Optic Nerve and Summer Blonde, and always just thought of him as such a typical white american comic dude, maybe because he sort of did that on purpose as I learnt in a great radio interview with him (Fresh Air with Terry Gross). Turns out I've been pronouncing his name wrong for half of my life and his new book that's blowing everyone's mind these days, Shortcomings, is sort of intensely about NOT being the person I (and a lot of other people) assumed he was for a long time. I can't even comment on it further, I am too intensely intensed out after just having finished it. Well he's come a long long way since those teenage comic strips that I linked to earlier. If you like graphic novels you kind of need to read this. I just want to say this: in the beginning of the book there is a list of characters with pictures, names, occupation, birthplace and height. Every character in this book is shorter than me.

Thanks Tomine, thanks a lot for making me feel like a FREAK OF NATURE GIANT.

(this is the sad face that Adrian Tomine makes when giant scandinavian people get angry at him.)

Two people really thought I was so american for a long time recently. It makes me kind of sad, although being so terribly ambiguous can come in handy some times I guess.

Who's going to make a graphic novel about being really icelandic and confused in america? Me? I don't have time for that. I'm too busy being mistaken for an american person.

WATCH FILMS (WITH ME) IN NEW YORK

2008-03-09T17:09:00.012-04:00

I just want to talk about films right now.

first of all, I went to see a really great one last night; Katsuhito Ishii's Funky Forest: The First Contact. A year ago I saw an earlier film of his; The Taste of Tea and fell in love instantly. It was kind of like an awesome Japanese version of the royal tenenbaums. Funky Forest was a bit more surreal and less traditional, but it was no less awesome. It had lots of great choreographed dance scenes and dream scenes, fun music and all around un-serious david-lynch-ish fun weird shit.

The cast does a great job (it's partially the same in both movies), plus Funky Forest notably stars Rinko Kikuchi (Babel) and Ryo Kase (Letters from Iwo Jima, Scrap Heaven). So if you have ANY interest in asian cinema (or like the royal tenenbaums or eraserhead (but don't take yourself too seriously)) SEE THIS! both films are showing right now at the Imaginasian theater in NYC. here are trailers:

The Taste of Tea (2004)

Funky Forest: The First Contact (2005)

Next up is stuff I want to see:

City of Men (Citade dos Homens, Paulo Morelli, 2007) now playing at the angelica. I really really liked City of God when that came out (and I've talked to some people who were peeing their pants over the City of Men miniseries) so seeing this makes sense.

Paranoid Park (2007). Watching Gus Van Sant fetishize little skater boys (like so many before him) and little Jenny from gossip girl be, well, someone other than little Jenny from gossip girl: sounds like a fun time. Now Playing at the angelica.

Funny Games U.S. remake coming soon. I really really like Michael Haneke. He is so wonderfully morbid and depressing. He makes the perfect films for me to watch when I don't want to watch happy shit. If you're into that and not familiar with him I recommend La Pianiste, Le Temps du Loup and the original Funny Games. Or hey, if your english is better than your french and you're too lazy to read subtitles you're in for a treat because Michael Haneke just remade his own movie in english! because he can do that! Because he's awesome! and Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet are in it! And Naomi Watts and some other people! But who really cares about them! Morbid + scary + Haneke = I'll see it.

Harmony Korine's Mr. Lonely. Yes! So exciting. coming soon to IFC center.

Frownland by some dude named Ronald Bronstein. This is some crazy shit. yes. now playing at IFC center.

...If you want to watch any of these with me, let me know soon. or if you want to tell me about good new films that I am not expressing excitement about. Or if you have questions. Or if you want to tell me I suck and that I'm wasting my life watching pretentious films while I could be doing my homework or eating more vegetables.