Accentuate the Positive...

So I finally broke down and bought a gym membership today. Turns out that place Hreyfing right next to work isn't a moving company after all. So soon I will be working out again, which means I'll be more positive, less stressed, less prone to "wallowing in self-pity" as Das Eidles so aptly put it last night.
I just have to get over my intense fear of being ripped off by said gym, and all is good. I have a fear of commitment you see, at least when if comes to my bank account.
Now, I could fill out the rest of this blog with some very inspired ranting about yesterday's cluster fuck at the AST, but I won't. I need to find something new and interesting to rant about. I mean, foreigners ranting about insane children has been done, and done with style at that.
So you won't have to hear about the ninjas and princesses, the plastic sword fights and candy riots, or the sugar-induced psychosis and general mayhem.
At least not yet.
I'm letting it build up you see.
Letting it boil in the pressure cooker of my savage little soul.
And when I'm done moving, and have a nice little post-workout endorphin buzz going on, I'm going to let it all out.
Fear me.

So yeah...

I've decided to only blog about the positives in my life for a while.
So on the bright-side, I'm going to get 10% more pay next month, plus an extra 10-20% in back pay, thanks to one of my employers finally fixing most of my wage-weirdness. This is good.
Also, I've been made a permanent employee by the same employer, which means I'll get a entire whopping 5 days of paid vacation this summer.
Let's see...I think I've discovered a way to get over the grumpy-achy-cruddyness of me, at least I felt a lot better today...and I am slowly but surely moving my belongings over to the People's Republic of Eidles, and Zunkel just had a healthy baby boy.
Now, I know this isn't much of blog, but its the best I can do for now dear blogodytes, I'll get back to entertaining ranting soon enough...for now though, just taking it easy is good...
Anywho, here's you RHOTW.
And yeah, I know she's not real...at least she's not wearing a mask!

Perhaps perhaps perhaps

Perhaps I should save the blogging for those days when I'm feeling all sorts of inspired, instead of just sitting down after a long day of increased income facilitation, English tutoring, and hypochondria and just churning out more introspective border-line emoness?
Perhaps its time for me to admit that hypochondria or no, there is something very wrong with my shoulder (probably a pinched nerve) and I'd be better off biting the bullet and slumping on down to the doc's?
Perhaps I should try a bit harder to keep up the healthy?
Perhaps I should just give the Rvk nightlife a chance to rest, so that it will actually be fun again?
Perhaps my time tonight would be better spent packing and filling out applications rather than watching nature shows and blogging about perhapses?
Perhaps I ought to end this entry before it gets anymore trite?

Revolutionary Hottie, Hot Geek Girl, and Flaming Flati...

So I was going to write an angry polemic about the state of Icelandic politics, but then I found incredibly funny stuff on YouTube about my favorite show, Mythbusters, and my favorite Mythbuster, Kary.

But, because I can't get YouTube to let me post the video on my little blog, you'll have to follow the links to see if pretty girls fart, if farts are really flammable, and how Kary (oh so hot) got her job at Mythbusters thanks to her cute little tush...

As you can clearly see, I have neither a life, nor much in the way of pride.

As for last night, let's just say that Rvk hits back.

Admittedly it hits like a little girl, but I've been feeling fragile lately, so...

Screw it. Goin to bed.

Bingeing and Purging

So I've started the moving out process.
I won't lie, moving is one of my least favorite things in the whole wide world.
I hate it.
One reason for this is that I have a tendency to hold onto total junk, old cards, little knickknacks, random crap like that, because I somehow manage to develop a sentimental attachment to it.
I've been like this ever since I was a little kid, hauling an empty sparkling cider bottle around with me for the better part of a week 'cause 1984 was the best year ever and I wanted to remember it.
So I have to force myself to get rid of stuff, which takes a lot of willpower on my part.
The nice thing is though, just how liberated I feel when I find something with really bad memories attached to it, and I get to throw it the fuck out.
That's just so orgasmically cathartic.
Today I got to throw out a bunch of papers pertaining to a time in my life when I was depressed, in trouble financially, and nearly at the headwaters of Shit Creek with various governmental bodies. I got to throw away pictures of myself from a time when I thought I had to look like a "responsible adult" (whatever the hell that is) and hated myself for it. I got to chuck reminders of crappy relationships and broken hearts into the dust bin.
I purged like an Olsen twin after Thanksgiving dinner.
As good as it is, it does leave one feeling a tad on the empty side, so to tackle that particular trouble, I'm hitting the town tonight.
Emphasis on hitting.
I'm gonna pimp-slap Rvk so hard it'll wake up in a new time zone.
I mean, how hard can it be to pack stuff up with a massive hangover?

No bloggin for you last night...which is just as well, as for a wealth of reasons I was in a truly foul mood. Still am for that matter. But at least I've calmed down enough to not post a quasi-emo rant that would embarass the hell out of me.
See, I made a deal with myself when I first started bloggin that I wouldn't erase anything I publish. No self-censorship after the fact.
So I'm kinda happy I managed to pre-censor my whiny-ass self last night.
All the pressing matters at hand just got too damned pressing.
So I've got some hard decisions to make and no time to ponder the consequences.
Damn I hate Feburary.

To sleep perchance to dream...

Not much up for blonking tonight. You'll have to wait with trembling anticipation for my rant about Parliment.

Just tired is all. Had a long day, what with the cupboard of DOOM falling apart and landing on my foot at work this morning, the temper-tantrums of spoiled children, and the realization that I have an metric ton of shit to get done by the end of the month, and absolutely no time to do it.
I mean, I need to pack, move, and clean the old place, help Emblita put in new floors in her new place, get rid on the gianorous pile of crap I've managed to build up over the last three years of living in this appartment...it just goes on and on.

And then there's the purely mental stuff. Like even though this place is starting (starting hell, it HAS) falling apart, it also the one place I've lived the longest in all of my time here in Iceland. Three years. That's the record. Four if you count when I lived in the basement from '97-'98. So I'll miss it.

Not only that, but I'm starting to get cold feet about going back to Uni this fall. The plan has always been to finish the BA (check) take about a year off (check) to pay of debts (ummm...) then return to get the teaching certificat and go on to a glorious career as a revolutionary English instructor. But I don't want to.

I don't want to go back to the triple-the-stress-one-fourth-the-income student life. I don't want go back to writing papers about inane theories.

Hell, I'm starting to have doubts about wanting to teach for a living. And for those of you who've known me for awhile now, you know that's a major change.

So I'm going to stand up, pour myself a glass of water, have a smoke, brush my teeth, and go to sleep.

'Cause that's really all that I can do.

Living in Iceland: Lesson #1: Bending over like a good Icelander...

Went to the grocery store on the way home from work today.

Got reamed.

Fucked like a boyscout in Attica.

And like a good Icelander, I just took it.

I mean, protesting, lodging a complaint, criticising, it really just væla.
Whining that is.

So the government finally decides, after topping the list for highest food prices in the world for a couple of years, to rescind Iceland's "temporary" taxes imposed in the midst of the early-80's inflation and thereby lower the astrononical price of filling your belly by a supposed 7-17%.
So what do the stores do?
You guessed it.
They start raising the prices on everything that would have gotten a bit cheaper, so that when the taxes are repealed in March, they can lower their prices back to what they were a few weeks ago, and pocket the 17%.
And no one says anything.
No one does anything.
'Cause its Iceland and nobody likes a whiner.

I could go on and on. The oil companies that price-fixed the general public out a millions, and when finally found guilty raised their prices to pay the minuscule fine. Baugur, the company that owns most of the Icelandic retail food companies (not to mention newspapers, TV and radio stations, import businesses and one of two Icelandic shipping companies) has a near monopoly on food sales here, but when they are faced with charges of tax fraud, bribery attempts, and general bad-business practices, the public rises to their defense.

Because they helped break up the old monopoly. Decades ago.

Icelanders might complain, they might get pissy with the people working the check-out, but do anything about it? Sue? Protest? Demand action?
Why bother?
We're all too busy working one of the longest work weeks in the Western World to pay for our fucking Cheerios.

I mean, fucks sake, two cans of tuna just cost me 290ISK. That's $4.25. And this is the "off brand".
I mean, I bought a half liter of soda, a half liter of "lite" beer (meaning most of the alcohol is removed) bread, rye-bread, a small thing of Icelandic blue cheese, a chunk of the closest thing you can get to cheddar here, the aforementioned two cans of tuna, a small jar of pickles, an even smaller jar of jalapenos, and two small onions, plus the bag (which you have to pay for over here) and it cost me 2429ISK, or $35 god damned dollars!


And don't even get me started on the whole "buy local" thing. For reasons no one has ever been able to explain to me, Icelandic cod costs less in the UK than in Rvk.

All the útrás that Icelanders are so proud off, buying up companies all over Europe? Paid for by the Icelandic public. The price-gouged, over-worked, in-debt-up-to-their-eyeballs Icelandic public. ...or, in prison terms: Bitches.

Grr! Argh! Bleh! and other onomatopoeic forms of disgust!

Capitalism sucks. But unbridled capitalism, when the capitalists own things that you need to stay alive like food, sucks like a $2 whore at a sailors convention.

Speaking of whores...the next lesson is all about that den of iniquity known as Alþingi.

Once more into the breach dear friends?

As I previously ranted, I've decided that January doesn't count. Its an un-month, a liminal space between one year ending and another crawling out of bed in search of coffee. So I'm not going to beat myself up for my utterly pathetic lack of, well, anything last month.
And I'm not going to beat myself up about the utter lack of anything last week either. In fact, my bruised and whimpering inner punk is slicing off a huge slice of slack.
My stupid, inbuilt guilt, the force that drives me to show up to work sick, walk to work when not fully recovered and preform a plethora of other stupid activities is going to go away. Simple as that.
Now, this doesn't mean I'm giving up on the whole working-out-getting-in-shape-doing-something-interesting-with-my- life thing. It just means that I'm going to actually use some of the wisdom that comes with my ever-increasing age and do it right! Yeah! Hu-ha!

In other words...I'm taking the bus to work this morning.

See what I mean about inbuilt-guilt?
An entire paragraph to convince myself that its OK to bus to work while recovering from a nasty 'flu instead of slogging through the frozen tundra of Rvk in an attempt to flatten my thirty-year-old bumba...jeez...

For the record...

'Do I write a killer blog about politics and society? Do I do laundry and give this sty a good once-over? Do I bundle up and hit the hot-pot for a good hour's soak and free myself of the assorted creakiness of my muscles? Do I go see my Félo client that I haven't managed to see lately?
Or do I spend one more day laying around and doing diddly-squat?'

I did diddly-squat.

Big time.

It speaks!

Me.
Feverish.
On the couch.
Ranting.
Here.

The first step to recovery is getting off the couch...

Six days! Six whole days I haven´t left this house save for a trip to the grocery store and a trip to the doctor's.
Believe it or not, I'm almost looking forward to a day of increased income facilitation tomorrow.
Not because I suddenly love my job, I'm not that crazed.
More because I can leave this apartment!
I can't believe I lost an entire week to this stupid 'flu.
And to make matters worse, I did nothing productive. Not a damned thing.
No laundry.
No dishes.
No cleaning.
No Master's applications.
No job-hunting.
Nada.
The only thing I did was chat on MSN, surf the everlovin' web, watch DVD's and pimp out the links section of the blog.
Of course I later wimped out and removed the "Links that will make my mom blush" section, not for fear of la madre's reaction, more for fear of having prudish possible employers of me get cold in the feets.
The one ray on sunshine over this otherwise drab as dirt weekend was last night's visit by the ever-so-lovely Þórunn Sóley who came over to eat fried rice and watch Robot Chicken and Jericho with me. She actually wound eating breakfast with me too.
Not what you think you dirty-minded little blogapervs!
See, this being the first weekend of the month, there wasn't a taxi to be had in all of Rvk. Honestly.
We called for hours!
"Network Busy, Please Try Again" was all we got for our pains.
So she crashed on the couch.
But it was great to have some company.
Six days stuck at home with the 'flu is bad. But six days stuck at home with the 'flu with mostly only the company of your roommate's sister and fiance who you don't know from Adam is really really trying. Not that the house guests were anything other than perfectly fun and polite, it just kinda sucked.
So now I'm debating what to do with my somewhat recovered punk-ass this afternoon. Do I write a killer blog about politics and society? Do I do laundry and give this sty a good once-over? Do I bundle up and hit the hot-pot for a good hour's soak and free myself of the assorted creakiness of my muscles? Do I go see my Félo client that I haven't managed to see lately?
Or do I spend one more day laying around and doing diddly-squat?
I honestly can't decide.
Anywho, you've got your RHOTW...I think I´m starting to develop a fixation for masked women...
More later dear blogodytes...Sma out!

Hey hey Woody Guthrie

No matter how much I listen to him, I keep finding new gems by ol' Woody.
Like this one.
I love this music.
Simple as that darling blogodytes.

The 'F-word

'Flu.
I got the friggin 'flu.
The real one. The one that doctors give you notes that say "NO WORK UNTIL MONDAY" for.
Now, having said note is very relieving for the Catholic Work Guilt, but still.
3,000ISK to have a doctor talk to me for five minutes, and listen to each of my lungs for a total of one breath apiece, just to get a piece of paper stating what is patently obvious?
Kinda annoying.
And then there's the fact that this means no weekend fun. Hell, I'd best cancel the invite to a nice calm, moderate-drinking, dinner party so as not to infect the ready-to-burst mama and the newly baked baby that will be in attendance. Which means a lot of boredom for the Sma.
I've reached the point where the net (which is acting up, scares the crap out of me that does, without the net, what am I gonna fall back on? Books? I've fallen off the literate wagon, apparently.) is getting a might dull. I seem to have read it. All of it. And looked at most of the weird pictures too. Like the one above. Just weird. I mean, where the hell is that hook!?!?!
So I'm looking forward to a long weekend of more dullness than the human mind can comprehend.
Lucky me.
So if anyone has anything interesting to tell me about, show me, or whatnot, contact me online.
Please. I am BORED!