Yesterday I read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I remember reading this as a little kid, or having it read to me, I’m not sure. All I know is that I loved this story in my younger days. After having read it again now, that hasn’t changed at all, in fact it has only gotten better. I think every adult should read this book at least once in their lifetime, even if you won’t necessarily get a life changing experience out of it it’s still worth it just for the cute story. But you never know, maybe you will?

In short, the story is about a little prince that travels from planet to planet, each one inhabited by a single adult. The little prince then asks each one several questions and partake in conversations with them, learning what each one considers important in life. It’s all very profound, cute and enjoyable.

The ending still resonates inside me and I smile every time I think about it: Look up at the sky. Ask yourself, “Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?” Read the book, and you too can enjoy the full charm of this sentence.

I read I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell by Tucker Max a few days ago. I think the description sums it up pretty nice: My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead. But, I do contribute to humanity in one very important way: I share my adventures with the world. I first discovered him from his site where he first started sharing these stories, so I sort of knew what I was getting with this. As much as you might hate him, it doesn’t change the fact that these stories are so hilarious that you just stop caring.

It’s kind of sad that kids growing up these days won’t have action heroes like Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Norris, Bronson, Russell, Seagal not to mention countless other 80s macho men to look up to. Instead they have to settle for guys like Vin Diesel and The Rock. I’ve more or less always hated Vin Diesel, but to my surprise I found myself actually enjoying a movie last week that stars just him. That movie was Find Me Guilty, and presents us with a completely different Vin Diesel than before. The movie is based on a true story about the longest mafia trial in US history, where Diesel plays Jackie Dee, an underling in the Lucchese family. Charges are filed against 20 different men in the family based on the RICO act, including Jackie Dee. Contrary to the other guys being indicted, he decides to defend himself in court, something which creates a lot of funny moments. I was pleasently surpised by this movie, worth seeing.

The last years I’ve relied on Tiny Personal Firewall as my firewall program (the old 2.x version that used to be free that is). That was until today when I decided I needed something that felt a bit more powerful and adjustable. I’ve tried a lot of firewalls out there, but I’ve never been able to find anything that I’ve felt satisfied with. I think the closest I came was Kerio’s free personal firewall, the only problem with that is that it freezes up a lot for me for some unknown reason, and it feels really slow and unresponsive when using it.

Today I discovered a hidden gem amonst the bloatware: Comodo Personal Firewall. Their page might make it seem a bit generic and dull, but it truly is a great program. It has a lot of customization options regarding program and access rules, and every time a new program tries to use an internet connection you’ll get a popup dialog asking what to do (optionally, you can turn this off and rely on the firewall’s internal database of safe programs to allow). Granted this isn’t a new feature or anything, even Tiny Personal Firewall had this, but it’s the overall impression that it conveys which makes it feel a bit more advanced. Something like that. Anyway, download it if you are in need of a light weight firewall program that doesn’t suck ass.

What you see on the left side is what I discovered in my latest book shipment from Amazon. The box looked like it had been run over by a truck or something. Luckily only one of the books was badly damaged, The Amulet of Samarkand. This is a pretty high quality hardcover book, so it must have taken some force in order to disfigure it that much, the book is completely bent and has a severe rift going down the cover. My first thoughts were that Amazon sucks ass, but to be fair - it was most likely some idiotic terminal worker that fucked it up and it was completely beyond their control. My second thoughts were: fuck, now I’ve got to go through that whole refund/replacement ordeal and ship the stupid book back. I’ve been quite lucky during my online ordering years, only once before have I had to go through this step, but it’s a real pain in the ass going to the post office and filling out all the forms needed etc.

Now here’s why I’m completely in love with Amazon. Not only do they have a great selection of stuff at reasonable prices, but after filling out a refund form on their page, 1 hour later I get this wonderful message:

With a big corporation like Amazon, you’d might think that the service would suffer, but the few experiences I’ve had with customer service has been absolutely fantastic so far. They seem to do everything right.

I’ve slowly but steadily been increasing my movie watching lately, and although I’ve seen quite a few these last days, I do not have the energy to write anything about any of them. That is, with the exception of V for Vendetta, which I saw yesterday. I had been looking forward to this for quite some time, and the wait was worth it… I guess. Though it really had too much of a Hollywoodesque flavor and production for me, I still couldn’t help but to let a smile grow across my face as I was watching it. Most of the credit for that should go to the main character appropriately named V, I took an instant liking to him, and the way he was portrayed in the movie.

For those of you who might now know it, V for Vendetta takes place in a futuristic Great Britan, now a fascist state. Our masked crusader, if you want to call him that, holds a grudge against certain members of the government, after being subjected to biological experiments earlier in his life. He has assumed the identity known as V, wearing a Guy Fawkes mask (the closest you’d come to a terrorist during the 17th century), and executes terrorist attacks against the state. By doing so, he is slowly regaining the people’s will to live a proper life and makes them realise they can’t accept this totalitarian regime any longer.

Here’s a small clip that I extracted from the first few minutes of the movie when we are first introduced to V. In conclusion, a lovely enjoyment despite its Hollywood faults.

Had the most amazing, (sur)real-like dream yesterday. I was lying in bed watching England versus Trinidad-Tobago, even though I’m not that interested in football anymore. We’ve had some informal and internal betting thing going on in #elma.no, referred to as tippegjøn - which I even took the time to make a site for, so that’s the only reason why I’ve been watching the World Cup games these last days.

Anyway, back to the dream part. I wasn’t really sleepy, but I somehow managed to fall asleep during the game. And having already slept earlier, I was in an overtired state, which for me has the effect of making dreams more memorable and vivid if I have them. This was one of the most real dreams I’ve ever had I think. I remember I was lying in the dream as well, it felt like I was on a field of grass or something. My eyes were closed, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t open them. I suddenly felt something on top of me, and I realised it was this beautiful girl (even if I had my eyes closed, I figured that out somehow). Then I could feel her warm breath near my mouth, and in my mind I just wanted reach out and hold around her, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t do it - it was like I was restrained and couldn’t move or do anything. I felt her breath getting warmer, heavier and closer to my mouth, until I finally felt the wonderful sensation of her lower lip against my own. She had the softest wet lips and our tongues eventually met into a passionate kiss.

I woke up, wanting to get back to the dream, but to no avail. The dream left me sort of confused and rather excited, it felt so incredibly real. Then I just got depressed thinking about how it’s been 2 years since the last time I kissed someone.

Just got back from this year’s first jogging trip - as well as the first sort of exercise. Woah, I’ve never felt so out of shape in my life, this was beyond bad. I had to catch my breath after 500 metres, then every 300 metres after that. I guess all in all, I didn’t ran much more than about 3km total. Hopefully during the next runs I will see some improvement.

There is something you have to understand… I’m the macho man. I’m the best. All you other guys are just girly men!. Thanks to Karlis for that :*.

I’m surprised that I’ve lasted this long to be honest. I kicked my coca cola addiction cold turkey some months ago, it was easier than I thought really. Trying to become a bit healthier, although I’m not always that successful when it comes to food, but there’s some pleasures I just can’t be without. Life is ok these days, except for this shadow hanging over me about finding a job, I’m at a loss for what to search for and apply for. Oh well, it will work itself out somehow I guess.

Yesterday’s dinner: wienerschnitzel and baked potatoes with game sauce. If you’re wondering why my meals looks so sparse, it’s because I’m extremely picky when it comes to food, and I’m not a big fan of all kinds of accessories, dressings and that sort of stuff.

I’ve always liked Solefald, a norwegian black/avantgarde metal group, but it wasn’t until these past few weeks/months that I properly digested all their material and discovered how insanely lovable they truly are. They play a very distinctive style of black metal, although not black metal in the traditional sense, but in a more innovative and experimental way. They use this incredible mix of clean and growl vocals, and aren’t afraid to mix in various non-metal instruments, with heavy usage of piano and saxophone for instance. You’d do yourself a great favor if you checked them out, specifically these songs: Nutrisco et Extinguo, Third Person Plural, Hyperhuman, Crater of the Valkyries and my favorite one; When the Moon is on the Wave. This last one has been stuck on my mind constantly the last weeks, it is so fucking amazing. I hadn’t paid much attention to the lyrics of it before, until some days ago when I looked them up and noticed that they’ve used part of an old poetic text written by Lord Byron called Manfred. I’m not much of an appreciator of poetic stuff, but I do have some respect for the people that actually manage to write poems that doesn’t suck completely. I have to hand it to good old Byron, he had some skills, I really love the part that was used in the lyrics for the song.