Butterflies, birds and bumblebees – the story of a lone child.
Here’s an excerpt from my top secret cook book/diary/adventure book from when I was 10 years old.
These are carefully written down instructions on how to create a little “butterfly farm” – the instructions invlude catching butterfly larvae, keeping them in a specially prepared plastic container with nettles, wait for them to build their chrysalis, and then watch them fly out as butterflies.
Animal rights and all those things were not really something I understood at that time (I once kidnapped a little duckling from the park..) although I was really into protecting and saving hurt animals. From a very early age, all kinds of insects were my favourite animals to study (maybe because they were all I could catch). I caught grasshoppers, spiders and big beautiful moths and I would run around with my magnifying glass and look at their little heads and legs and compare what I saw with my big encyclopedia of animals that was like my bible. I took care of several birds and kittens, and once I “saved” an injured bumblebee from a group of ants and kept it in a jar for two days (filled with leaves and other things that I thought bumblebees eat.. haha) until it could fly again. The jar had breathing holes of course. I was very happy.
Photo from 1995 with the magpie “Skrollan” that I had for a week. She had an injured wing.. but I was still sad when she finally flew away.
Every time I had to say good bye to an animal I had to make an effort to combat the natural urge to own, and accept what I knew was right. Learning about breakups at age 9, life was hard. haha
Did I mention that I didn’t have any siblings? Thank you for an exciting childhood, oh big black Polish book from 1989.
Not my life.
If there is one movie you should watch today, it’s Robert Billheimer’s “Not my Life” which premiered yesterday on occasion of the 6th EU Anti-Trafficking Day. Giving a very good insight into the Human Trafficking situation all over the world – including Europe and the US – this documentary will be available for free for online-streaming via the Sida website for a month. It’s in English with Swedish subtitles and is so spot on it made me cry several times – reminding me about harsh realities one so easily forgets about. Slavery is not a thing of the past.
Watch it. It should also be embedded in this post but it takes a minute for it to load, patience…
Price Tag
Now this, this is brilliance. This is the way development is supposed to be done! By Dutch microbanker.com
Lost
What does the Fox say?
How did I miss this? I’ve seen a million references to this online the past month but it took me until today to actually google “What does the fox say?” and find the original source. It has almost 148 million views which is very impressive as it doesn’t include nudity, violence or, actually, any sort of substance. Anyway, it’s being watched and enjoyed by millions so it’s obviously brilliant in one way or another. Who am I to judge?
No matter how insanely ridiculous and sometimes rude and politically incorrect today’s pop culture is, I love what the Internet does to creativity and humour. Reddit, 9gag and other online never-ending flows of ideas, references and meme spin-offs show that today’s kids really like playing word-games, show off their talents, and come up with hilariousness and well crafted, often inappropriate, sarcasm. Keeping up with the updates is almost impossible with the thousands of references and meme personalities out there – it’s a new culture of humour, a global uncensored forum open for anybody to contribute to, get recognition from and inspire other people at. It’s a different kind of intelligence, requiring innovation, quick ideas, a skill in digging up relevant images, and a broad sense of humour and general knowledge. One can’t just sell anything anymore, as you have to compete with the entire world for the likes and votes. It’s participatory, democratic and inclusive, and these kids are ingenious – a wonderful (and of course time consuming) trend.
One of my favourite memes are the spiderman comics with fake titles. This is what I do between all the seriousness. Laugh at sarcasm and looping references. Once a nerd, always a nerd, and I feel this is for keeping myself in the loop of humour. If that requires me to know what the fox says, I now do.
Random post
Did you know that there is a button in the Archives that says “Random post” ? Clicking it, you get to a random post from between June 2009 and today. It’s risky business for me, haha, but it’s all me and I have told you before that I use my blog like a diary, and that it has the ability to throw me right back into a moment and the way I felt at that point. Like this picture, when I clicked random post just now, it took me to the days when I used to stay in the office at UNICEF Nicaragua until long after working hours – because I had a deadline that was very optimistic from the first place. But hey, a deadline is a deadline – especially when you’re a consultant, and I really don’t mind working late when I’m excited about what I do. Not kidding!
On another, dead serious, note. I was just at the gym. And I realized my arms are ridiculously weak, while my legs are kind of super strong. After realizing that, I drove back home and ate almost an entire bar of dark chocolate. Because dark chocolate isn’t not really candy, right? haha
Click the picture above for a random post. And let me know which one you got!
22 minutes of LOVE
I am completely blissful about Active Child’s latest EP, Rapor..! Yes, even an exclamation mark right there. It has been up for streaming for a week now, and releases today (October 22nd) on iTunes through Vagrant Records. The EP has instantly been added to my list of rare but perfect albums for driving at night and singing along. What you have here is absolutely wonderful 80’s electro pop with Pat Grossi’s sweet and melancholic falsetto voice, glistering synths and some subtle but very much welcome post-dubstep vibes that reconnect you with the 2013 feel. Featured on the EP are also the vocal talents of Ellie Goulding and Mikky Ekko (Who tips on the border of sounding just a little bit too much like Justin Timberlake, but gets away with it.) The EP is only 22 minutes long and leaves me craving for more, but the six tracks still manage to provide a perfect balance between playful, painful, epic and soulful. It’s just all there, I’m not kidding. A thousand times repeat.
Friluftsliv
Dark Stuff: Jaar ft. Harrington
Darkside – Paper Trails
Psychic (2013)
Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington released the album Psychic two weeks ago under the moniker Darkside. Here’s a live session of the track Paper Trails, filmed and edited by Resident Advisor. But please, please – only press play if you have patience, speakers with a proper bass and after changing to HD quality. This live version is twice the lenght of the original, so try appreciating the hazy tunes and Harrington’s classic rock guitar the way they deserve to be appreciated – turn the volume up, relax, wait for the bass, and let yourself be taken to a darker place. The closed eyes, arms up, swaying kind of dark.