.

If I ever were to open my own tattoo parlor, I would name it Tough Skin.
And Ethan would be my receptionist (as long as he got a bad ass discount).

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My favorite game.

My favorite game of late is a guessing game. Guests at my restaurant invite me to play it quite often. I always see it coming by the looks on their faces; their eyes squint a little bit when I feel my accent slip or when I say something just slightly awkward and I can see their wheels turning. They're wondering. And waiting. I never initiate the game, and it takes different customers varying amounts of time to summon up the guts to make the first move.

Most are shy, and exaggeratedly polite, but if they want to play, if they really want to know the answer to their confusion, they timidly ask one or more of a series of questions, which I will literally translate into English for you and your humor buds' enjoyment:

Du, er du svensk? You, are you Swedish?

Du er ikke fra Hamar eller? You are not from Hamar or?

Jeg hører at du har litt av en aksent. Du er ikke herfra? I hear you have little of an accent. You are not here from?

Unnskyld, men dialekten din...mulig du ikke er norsk? Excuse me, but the dialect yours...possible you not are Norwegian?

All of these questions are always answered the same--No I am not Swedish, not from Hamar, not from around here...No, I am not Norwegian! And then the real fun starts, the guessing game gains speed, more questions are hurled at me and I answer them all, playing along (it is my favorite game after all): No I'm not Scandinavian. No, not Polish either. Or German. Or Swiss. No, keep guessing...coffee's on me if you guess correctly, I tease. No, actually no one has guessed it correctly before. No, not from Iceland either. Serbia? No. No, no, I'm not from Brasil or Australia or England or Ireland or Scotland or France. Not from Spain or Italy either. Not Eastern Europe, not even Europe no. New Zealand? Nope, never been there. Would like to visit though. Canada? Nope, but you're getting closer...

And then my favorite part of all, the climax of the game: Well, it can't be the US right? Because you don't have that rrrrr in your accent, so...gosh, I just don't know where!

JO! Actually it is the US folks. That's where I'm from. If I remember correctly that is. I do believe I was born there. Yep, pretty sure I grew up there and lived there for 23ish years.

Then the game peters out...the questions keep on coming but it's not as exciting any more. Jack is out of the box liksom. Fun for me is over. But luckily, I know, sometime soon, I will get to play again. Who knows where I will be from next.

Game over.

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Bigotry.

I caught wind of the ridiculous debate surrounding a mosque+Muslim community center in New York near Ground Zero and almost threw my snack plate against the wall (this says a lot, I love food). Not only is the debate absolutely insane but it highlights some of the ignorance that Americans are stereotyped over. My bud Ethan put it best:

"The construction of a Muslim community center and mosque so close to the site of an attack by religious extremists is a victory against religious extremism, not for it."


I'm pressed for time and Ethan wrote it so well, so I will repost his post along with the statement that I agree 1,798, 345%:

The New York Mosque

I've been wanting to avoid the whole dispute over the planned Muslim community center, which would include a mosque along with other facilities, near Ground Zero, namely because I thought it would go away. To me, the issue seems pretty clear cut. But the fucking dispute will not die. It's even becoming an issue in the midterm elections. So, since part of the purpose of this blog, for me, is to get myself on record on issues that I care about, I think it's about time for me to comment on it.

I don't plan this to be a long post, because, as I said, I think the issue's pretty simple. There are two issues issues I'd like to cover, the first being, appropriately enough, the First Amendment of the US Constitution. In its entirety, the First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Legal precedent is that the protections of the first amendment apply not only to the federal government, but to state and local governments as well. Cut and dry. So, when people urge New York to deny Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf permission to build the community center because it has a mosque in it, they're advocating a drastic revision of American legal precedent and political liberties. Quite simply, the Constitution forbids the government intervention that many opponents of the mosque seem to advocate.

Second issue. Many opponents to the community center might not be explicitly or implicitly advocating government intervention, but rather question the wisdom of building a Muslim anything within blocks of Ground Zero. Those people are bigots. In the case of families of 9/11 victims or survivors of the attacks, I understand where their bigotry comes from, in the same way that I understand why a Holocaust survivor might continue to hate Germany decades after the genocide, or why my grandfather refers to "Japs" when he tells stories about World War II (though, to his credit, he does not use racial slurs when discussing Japan in general, just the Japanese in the war). But that does not excuse that bigotry, nor absolve us of the responsibility to combat it.

Islam is a religion of over one billion people--the second largest in the world, after Christianity. Yes, some of those people are fucknuts insane, and commit atrocious acts of violence against anyone who does not believe their specific, extremist version of the religion, including other Muslims. But the vast majority of those people are normal folk trying to lead normal lives. Many of them live in shithole countries with horrible human rights records, but, on the other hand, that's true of many Christians, too. And in the same way that the IRA, Lord's Resistance Army and George W. Bush don't even begin to represent the entirety of Christianity, al-Qaida and the Taliban don't scratch the surface of Islam.

Anyone who knows me well knows I'm not particularly fond of America. It's not because America doesn't look good on paper. It's because so many people in this country seem to have no idea about the values to which this nation is ostensibly dedicated. The construction of a Muslim community center and mosque so close to the site of an attack by religious extremists is a victory against religious extremism, not for it. That's the kind of shit this country is supposed to stand for. If we lose sight of that, then we might as well just have done and let the military run the country.

After all, they couldn't do any worse a job than Congress.
Ethan Jennings

Again Ethan, well done.
I couldn't agree more.

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Typical Friday.

I just remembered it's Friday and I probably wouldn't find another chance to post besides now. So yes, here's a little post from work! Picture taken with my cell phone, sent to my email, saved (and deleted soon after) to the work computer for your curious eyes.

In the background you see the lower section of the restaurant where I have been serving up some tasty dinners. I gave you all a virtual tour of the lunch restaurant I started working at first but haven't gotten around to introducing you to this place where I have been spending most of my time lately. Pretty fancy. The only thing that needs some redecorating here is me (had a hard time getting out of bed today and was almost late for work!).

Anyway, we open now, so I'm out!

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Recent reads.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. John Boyne. The story is told from the naive eyes of a 9 year old German boy who is moved from his lush Berlin home to a temporary house outside of Out-With (Auschwitz, which is one of the many words he mispronounces). This book is a controversial one, as the boy's naiveté and general ignorance of what was happening around him really irritates people that have been fighting Holocaust deniers for the greater part of their lives. I agree that this is a dangerous line to walk, but I liked Boyne for that. What can I say, I like danger, I like controversy. Plus it was precious to see how his young brain tried to grasp such evil, even if the realism of the story is questionable. Plus the ending rocked. I laughed, I cried, I liked it. And then I watched the movie. Liked that too.

Read it and decide for yourself if Boyne took a good chance here or if the book is a "profanation" as it has been called by critics. Mostly I am just waiting for Ethan to read it, so I can hear how pissed off he gets. Just do it Ethan, it's a short read.




The Other Hand (published in the US as Little Bee). Chris Cleave. This one pleasantly surprised me. I guess that's because I was a bit skeptical and didn't really have any expectations. Hard to have any really, especially when the back of the book says only "We don't want to tell you what happens in this book...we don't want to spoil it" and you bought it based on the cover design. I guessed it was a marketing trick, but I knowingly fell for it in the bookstore. And I was not disappointed.

We meet Little Bee in a Refugee Detention Center after she has narrowly escaped from violence in her homeland of Nigeria. She tries to "speak English like the Queen" and make a life for herself in England. She seeks out the only English people she knows, whom she met tragically while they were on vacation in her home country. The story was powerful, beautifully and poetically written and explored topics that will hopefully be a part of my career someday (I want to work with refugees).

Most of all, I loved it because it reinforces something we all know and something by which I try to live my life: we all have something to learn from each other, despite where we come from, what language we speak or the color of our skin. I laughed, I cried, I liked it.

The Book Thief. Markus Zusak. Elisa sent me this book for my birthday, and a great present it was. Again, powerfully and poetically written, with intense and complex characters that I fell in love with immediately. Plus, how often is it that you get to read a story told by Death? And would you ever expect to like said narrator? I almost feel like I lost touch with Death a bit in the middle when the Book Thief's story really took over, but luckily, he was always lurking so I didn't miss him too much. I mean the book is set in WWII after all, so he had a lot to do. It was equally uplifting as it was devastating. The style was refreshing, with super short chapters, not your typical foreshadowing and really not too many surprises. Death let us in on his doings. I laughed, I cried, I liked it. I thank Elisa for it and I recommend it.

Now I'm reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a.k.a Menn som Hater Kvinner. So far I've read only about twenty pages or so and I haven't felt the gravitational pull yet... but am looking forward to getting caught up in it.

I am thinking for the rest of this month I will spend more time painting than reading. Or at least that's a thought...

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Photos on the wall.

Some of my work is being displayed on a Starbucks wall in the good ol US of A.

Cooooool.

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I'm alive.

Jeg lever, yes, yes I am alive.

Currently I am writing you from the unemployment agency which so kindly offers free internet kun for jobbsøking (only for job searching)...so this'll have to be short.

We moved. It happened. It's a bit surreal, but it happened. So strange to call a new place home...but man we are liking it so far. It is wonderful just to have the extra space! And nice to have finally recovered from the weekend we moved where I put in 27+ hours at work and countless hours inbetween homes, moving and packing. Really looking forward to a trip to Ikea soon. To put it simply: all is well.

Not having internet from home, however, is a bit of an inconvenience. It has really put a kink in my blogging ways, to put it mildly. It has also made it difficult to pay ebills, buy tickets to the US, look for a new job (yes I really am using the computer for that purpose, I promise) or do anything else mildly productive (i.e., waste my life away on Facebook). Soon I am hoping to get this figured out. But then again, even that is hard to do without access to the world wide web--the cabel agency actually asked Lars for his email address so they could send him the activation codes etc. Oh the irony.

Work is work, soccer is soccer. Both have their ups and downs, both serve a vital purpose in my life. I've read some books, made some good food...haven't taken many pictures but do have some on display at a Starbuck's in the US. Nothing else to exciting to report...the computer aid is coming my way...

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