sometimes I don't know what to write so I just post someone else's poems and pretend that they're meaningful.
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.
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.
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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:
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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.
Nothing exciting is happening in my life but I will distract you from that thought by writing more about Eurovision.
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.
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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 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.
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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.
GIANT EPIC EUROVISION YOUTUBE POST FOR THE POOR AMERICANS WHO ARE MISSING OUT
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.
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.
