Product Conundrum

Wrap your head around this, dear readers:

A couple of years ago, one distributor - let's call him A4 - drops by the store to tell us about this wonderful now product - let's call it product P - that he's selling. Product P, he tells us, is made by people that used to work for another and vastly inferior brand that makes product S. Now, product S is made in China just like product P, but product P is the object of a whole lot more love, care and quality control than that generic, made-for-the-money product S. Ok, we say, we'll give product P a chance. You can never have too many affordable thingamajigs in your store, anyway. We already have a few product S's in the store, so it'll be fun to see if product P sells better, we say.

So, time passes, and we sell very little of product P. We try it ourselves, and it's certainly not bad - however, the same can be said about product S, really. We don't think about it too much, and go back to selling product R which everyone likes (both us and the customers) and we sell heaps of.

A month ago, distributor A4 sends out his regular, longwinded and bloated information e-mail about new products and such and guess what: he's dropping product P. It didn't sell as good as expected, and they want to focus on a new, and much better brand. Can you guess which one? Ah, yes: product S, of course. Yes, product S is now elevated to the status of product made with a whole lot of love, care and quality control, while product P - which was previously in this glorified position - is now thrown down in the dirt.

And people wonder why product PR (in all forms) make me giggle. Teehee.

Oh, and anyone who can figure out which products and which distributor I'm talking about will get the wonderful prize of absolutely nothing. Which, coincidentally, is roughly equal to the substance and integrity of said distributor's sales pitches. *giggle*

An ode to the laundry room

Oh, laundry room:

Where the good inhabitants of your apartment building meet to socialize and engage in friendly banter; where strangers' eyes meet in brief moments of forbidden desire or unabashed disgust; where the intelligentsia gather to plot their next reality-altering scheme (such as keeping the laundry closed on Sundays and thus making sure nobody can do their laundry on the only day they have the time to do so); where the janitor's notice board is constantly covered in a glorious mix of complaints, questions and nonsensical, semi-poetic dabblings.

Where quiet battles are fought over who booked the dryer first or stole someone's bleach;
where little old ladies will gently persuade you into letting them have the washing machine for
another 30 minutes (and nobody says no because it would be like saying no to your own
grandmother), thereby nudging the already rickety booking schedule into a magnificent
collapse; where socks disappear into thin air, only to manifest themselves four months later
in a tattered, washed out state after having been stuck in the dark realms of the leftmost
washing machine where not even the keenest of eyes could see them, or strongest of hands pry them free from their ever-rotating iron cell; where the principle of "love thy neighbour" is put to the test every day as you find your clothes strewn all over the usually less then squeaky clean laundry room floor.

Where creatures big and small - of both the human and non-human kind - roam freely among the comforting warmth emitted from the large electrical mammoths that leave our laundry in a state of variable decontamination; where the strong, concrete walls block all cell phone reception and leave you blissful isolation from the brouhaha of the outside world (and prevents your mum calling you and nagging about that thing you were supposed to pick up somewhere).

Oh, laundry room - my life revolves around thy existence and thy etheric booking system!
Oh, laundry room - may thy electricity never be absent, thus leaving my clothes wet and full of detergent!


(I really, really need to get my own washing machine.)

Unwords!

(Disclaimer: This blog entry is mainly composed of things copy-pasted from Unwords.com. I know some people frown upon this kind of creative laziness, but it's Friday - sue me!)

I love words. Big ones, small ones, strange ones, funny ones - they're all friends to me! Now, sometimes words evolve (or degenerate, depending on your point of view) into new words and then they end up on Unwords.com - a super-duper site for new breeds of words! I've taken the liberty to list a few of the entries here, to whet your appetite for more...

Destinasia - a. (n.) Going upstairs or downstairs and being unable to remember why.

Disconfect - a. (v.) To sterilize the piece of candy you dropped on the floor by blowing on it, somehow assuming this will "remove" all the germs.

Docuphobia - a. (n.) The fear of using documentation, usually resulting from some previous traumatic event such as programming a VCR.

Drylowgraph - a. (n.) Any strange, unintelligible symbol that accompanies the washing instructions on clothing labels

Malbingophobia - a. (n.) The fear among some bingo players that they have incorrectly marked a square, and calling "bingo" could cause them not victory, but public humiliation.

Meandrathal - a. (n.) Any person in an exhausted state of mind in which they wander aimlessly, sometimes with low blood-sugar, in a shopping mall, video store or the like.

More words at Unwords.com - go there now!

A waste of space

Two minutes ago, I realized that none of my MSN contacts where online and I felt a sting of loneliness and abandon - like being locked out of the playground, or not chosen for the "cool" team for the soccer match.

Then, I realized that realizing this was all rather sad - borderline pathetic, some might say - and filled my cup with coffee and started writing this blog entry.

Alas, while writing this I realized that spending time, energy and precious blog-space on this specific theme was indeed a bit sad aswell, and most likely a good indication of my current state of blogger's writer's block. So I'll stop, right here.

Too late now, anyway.

Meh.

A blogger's lament

Dear readers of late,
I bring saddening news:
My blog's in a state
of writer's block blues!

So this Blogger entry
(though rhyming quite well)
is quite elementary,
as I'm sure you can tell.

It's not so by choice,
or fate, if you will:
For uttering my voice
is usually a thrill.

It's not that I'm lazy,
or tired or sad,
it's not that I'm crazy
(or ate something bad).

The reason my site
is lackluster and dull,
and lacking in bite
when it should have been full:

The reason is this
(and I hate to admit) -
I have nothing to say,
and thus nothing to submit.
----------------------------------
(Ok, so that last line
didn't rhyme all that well:
I don't always refine,
but at least I can spell!)

OMGWTF?! - DeLighTable

There are coffee-tables, and then... there are COFFEE-TABLES. The DeLighTable from Kloss is one bad-ass table. Woah. Me want. Badly!

Master of the Toast

I'm basically a slightly reserved, if not shy, guy. I prefer the safety of a shadowy background to the bright spotlights of centre stage. I don't crave attention.

In spite of this, I have a remarkable talent for ending up in situations that require me to drop a few of my inhibitions and act as if I enjoy being in the spotlight: My day job require me to talk to strangers every day, I've played live music for small crowds a few times, I've given some presentations and speeches and now I have one more thing to add to my growing list of things I've sworn I'd never do: being toastmaster in a wedding.

Yes, my good friend Mikael was married to his Grete this Saturday, and by chance (or Mikael's remarkable negotiation skills) I had ended up as the toastmaster for the event.Woah. Seeing as neither me nor Mikael (I'll refer to him as M from now on) had a particularily good idea about what this whole toastmastering business was all about, M figured it'd be an easy job ("Just announce the menu and the speakers... oh, and stay sober.") and I figured he was right ("How hard can it be?"). So, with this settled, I left for my Summer holidays and M went about his business reassured that he'd chosen the right guy for the job. Ahem.

A week before the wedding, I get the first call from M's mom. Ok, so there are a couple of more minor tasks that I have to see to during my forthcoming toastmaster gig. I take notes, and she says she'll send me a short list of suggestions and questions on e-mail a little later. Now, keep in mind that the job description as written by M was about three lines - M's mother's list was about two pages. Oy vey! At this point, I felt the need to do a little research on this whole toastmaster thing, and stopped by a few wedding-themed websites to get some ideas. Bad move. The first site described the toastmaster as the guy with the responsibility for the wedding dinner. All of it! I was starting to feel a little clammy. A second website described him as a cross between a stand-up comedian, presenter and maitre d' - now, a flicker of panic embraced me for a short time.

So, what to do? Analyze. Sort. Arrange. Prepare. These words are my personal mantra whenever I'm thrown into situations like these - and as I said earlier, I tend to get thrown into them wether I like it or not. Being a methodical geek, I prodded M's mom with questions so I could see what I was heading into. A small family wedding, about 55 guests, mostly people I've never met. Right. I made a list of all my tasks and then a rough schedule for the night that I sent to M's mom. I prepared a few anectodotes, and some light-hearted introductions to myself and a couple of the speekers (that I knew). The schedule was revised a couple of times (new speekers, songs etc.) but we ended up with a nice, structured plan for the day that would be of great help to both me, the kitchen and M's mom.

How did it all go in the end? Pretty good, actually. We were on a tight schedule, so my plan was constantly changing during the day, but all speakers gave their speeches, many a song was sung, and a tired but happy toastmaster could treat himself to some coffee and cognac at about nine o'clock in the evening.

Would I do it again? Well, I can say "no" but like I said: I seem to have a talent for ending up in these situations...

Assorted goodies

Ok, ok, so I am resorting to stea... uhm... borrowing nice links from good sites like Ektopia, I-am-bored and other worthwhile places these days - hey, I haven't got the time to write witty blog entries ALL the time, ok? OK? Right.

Let's start with todays musical curiosity: Twink makes sickly cute (but oh-so-great) toy-like music, and their remix of NIN's "The hand that feeds" sounds like a cross between a sugar-coated Goblin and... well... NIN, really. Check it out here: Twink vs. NIN - have a peek at their MySpace page too, while you're at it.

"City Paradise" is a nice piece of audio/visual art by Gaelle Denis - atmospheric and whimsical.

Finally, some game-music nostalgia as performed by the Video Games Live Orchestra:

Eye Candy!

Feast yer eyes on this gorgeous piece of animation courtesy of MTV Asia and Ben Hibon:





..could someone turn this into a series, please?

Kraftwerk live in Oslo, August 8th 2006!

At last: yesterday I FINALLY got the chance to see the band that without doubt is THE most influential electronic act throughout the times: KRAFTWERK! Yeah, baby! Ralf and Florian did their thing with Fritz and Henning solidly filling the roles of Wolfgang and Karl (or was it the other way around?). The four old Germans rocked the house - well, shoegazed the house - for a good two hours, running through classic after classic: Man Machine, Computer Love, Radioactivty, Autobahn, Tour De France - they were all there.

Of course, when "The Robots" was finally performed near the end of the concert, the now famous remote-controlled robotic Kraftwerk-lookalikes replaced the quartet to much (and well deserved) applause and cheering from the audience. Speaking of which, the audience was a fascinating mix of young and old, neatly dressed 40-year olds and red-shirt-and-black-tie wearing 30 somethings, goths, rockers and synth-freaks, and the ever present "Look at me, I've got no musical taste, but I go see every major band that plays in this town just so I can wear their official tour T-shirt and tell all my friends I've seen them live!" bunch. Ahem. Nothing personal against you guys, but seriously: an R.E.M tour T-shirt at a Kraftwerk concert? Puhlease...

All in all, this was a great experience: Great sound, great visuals, a sweaty but very enthusiastic audience (I was practically dripping with sweat by the end: Sentrum Scene is HOT during Summer gigs) and the chance (perhaps my only) to see some truly monumental artists within my musical genre of preference. I was grinning like a fool during the whole show, and let me tell you: these days, there are only two things that put a grin like that on my face, and Kraftwerk live is one of them. The other... isn't. ;)

Space

(Disclaimer: if my somewhat overactive brain has somehow nicked any central themes or ideas here from your favourite song/movie/book - then I assure you it's purely coincidental and all in your mind. Really)

Space is a strange thing. No, not that big, unfathomable darkness in which our tiny speck of a planet is hanging, but space as in that somewhat smaller area that's surrounding us at any given time. Space breathes, it expands, collapses, twists and warps and can turn from a comfort zone to a cage in a fraction of a second. It can be a massive field of freedom or a suffocating void of emptiness. Space - or lack of it - is what makes a room seem crowded even when occupied by just two people, or a crowded room seem enormous and empty - apart from that person whose space you share at the moment.

Space has voids: not the mind-bogglingly huge ones, but the small, people-sized ones. Ever noticed that special emptiness left behind by someone close or special to you? It's not the same space that was there before, but a space without meaning, without substance. Space without substance may seem like a ridiculous idea, but I suspect some of you know the feeling (or a similar one, although differently phrased): like the face of a loved one suddenly missing from a family photo, the image incomplete – something is missing.

Why this sudden obsession with space, I hear you ask. Well, my space (not MySpace) has been invaded. It was not a hostile invasion, but a quiet, comfortable one. I made some feeble attempts at resistance, but this space-invader (pun intended) was a cunning and stealthy opponent and I was outsmarted, out-gunned – my line of defense broken and left crumbling in the hands of the invader. Slowly, the space in which I've been residing started growing, its outer perimeters harder to monitor and the invader found a way in – and my space will never be the same again. For now, this invader's space and mine seem to have formed a symbiotic relationship – each person's space leaving a vacuum in the other one's when that person is not around.

My space is no longer empty. :)

Holy AT-ST, Batman - It's a Japanese Land Walker!

Right, so it looks a lot more intimidating when NOT moving - even with its high-powered lazer-cannons... uhm, I mean, high-powered plastic-ball shooting cannons - but, dude: it's a walker! A walker! And it walks! Well, sort of...




Hmm, I wonder how much this thing would set me back: I've already injected way too much money into the invisibility cloak, the flying car and the personal space-station - I'm running low on cash.

100 Awesome Music Videos!

Bless the kind-hearted music geeks over at Pitchfork for compiling this fantastic list of music videos... YouTube, we love you!

Pitchfork Feature: 100 Awesome Music Videos

Don't think I'll get much work done today...

More YouTube Turntablism Goodness

Ok, ok, so I'm a sucker for high-quality turntablism - sue me! Here's C2C at the 2005 DMC team world championship, giving one hell of a performance musically and showmanwise:



So... Anyone want to argue that DJs can't be musicians? No?

Erik Mongrain - tapping virtuoso

Well, well: just when you think you just MIGHT become an adequate guitar-player after all, along comes Mr. Erik Mongrain and crushes whatever confidence one may have established:



Dammit, why can't all you talented people just keep your stupid show-off videos to yourselves? *mumble, mumble*

Hrmf.

Could someone initiate something like this in Oslo?

You've got to admit that the guys in Improv Everywhere stage some truly awesome - and massive - public scenes of "chaos and joy". Their Mp3 Experiment (part III) put a big smile on my face and must have made the day for the 600 participants, too.

Improv Everywhere: The Mp3 Experiment III

Check out the video and music/soundfiles a bit down on the page to get an impression of what this is all about. Big respect to the gang for pulling stuff like this off, considering the amount of work involved.

If someone wants to start an Oslo division, I'm all for it.

A tale of two Speakers

Disclaimer: This is all a fictional tale of... ehm... fiction. The names have been changed to protect my sanity. This story is in no way representative of my usual working day, and if you think it is you can go boil your head. With some carrots.

Today was another hot day at work and by lunchtime I was getting bored: very few customers had come by - they were probably all at the beach drinking piña coladas - and I felt the need to do something:


Then I remembered the new speakers I'd received that morning: I could go down to the demo-room and hook them up! Now, hooking up speakers is much more complicated and dangerous than people might think, so please remember that I'm a trained professional: don't try this at home! So, to prepare myself for this ordeal, I paid a visit to the Temple:


The Temple supplies us with the Nectar of Life AKA coffee. And it's free for all the employees! The spoils of working in musical instrument retail... So, with the Power of the Temple rushing through my veins, I sprinted down to the basement:


Of course, hooking up new stuff means unwrapping new stuff. Which means opening boxes. Lots of them. While boxes are mostly cool - apart from those little spike things that sometimes hold them together and that cut you when you try to tear them apart - boxes containing big, heavy speakers is a bit of a nuisance: you open the lid, discover that there's ANOTHER slightly smaller box inside, then try to wrestle the speaker out of the box without slipping a disc or getting a hernia. Like I said, leave this to the professionals:

Of course, inside this particularly heavy and hard-to-handle box, was another heavy and hard-to-handle box:

Speakers finally unwrapped, it was time to give them a proper inspection - all speakers are harvested from gigantic speaker-fields somewhere in China, and sometimes grow aggressive or scared during the journey over here. So the first thing I do with new speakers, is to talk to them for a bit - just general smalltalk like telling them where they are, what price tag they will carry and what music they'll be playing, that kind of stuff - before they settle in. This particular batch was very co-operative and friendly, I call them Bob, Joe and Larry:


Suddenly - I don't know if it was because I mentioned playing "Korn" at loud volumes - Joe attacked! He launched at my foot with a mean look on his face:


The pain was unbearable as I barely managed to retract my foot from Joe's vicious attack!


Luckily, I managed to escape mostly unscathed, even if my foot hurt for a long time afterwards.


I gave Joe a reprimand - you've gotta show these speakers who's boss - and even if he sulked for a bit afterwards, he was behaving nicely. After a bit of rest, I went and got the cables I needed. Cables come in two variants, wild and domesticated. The wild ones are mostly found in and around concert areas and are ferocious, unpredictable beasts: they will launch at you for no apparent reason, become tangled if you even look at them the wrong way or simply disappear from where you put them mere minutes earlier. Wild cables are for roadies and other trained specialists - in retail, we mostly work with domesticated cables. While they too can have a mean streak, they'll behave nicely for most of the time if you know how to handle them:


The cables were a little unruly - probably because of the presence of new speakers: speakers and cables are known to have territorial issues - and one of them looked particularly mischievous - it was crawling all over the place, and started trying to entangle me:


I tried talking sternly to it, but it simply wouldn't let me go! In the end, I got a hold of its head and gave it my best animal-like snarl - that seem to tell it to back off:


With the cables under control, it was now time to start connecting them to the speakers and my mixer. Of course, this is another hugely complex operation that I will not bother your tiny little minds with:


Sadly, even the greatest of minds sometimes get baffled by the wonders of modern technology:


The speaker-attack and the cable-wrestling had drained me of precious energy, and I was getting very, very frustrated:


Something had to be done to resolve this, so I retracted to contemplate on this problem for a while:


After much and almost unfathomably complex thinking, I realized what was wrong - I had an epiphany:


All out of coffee! Of course I can't do complex speaker hook-uping without massive amounts of caffeine in my blood. I ran up and got another cup, and treated myself to a proper coffee-break:


Aah, sweet, sweet nectarine! Thou blesseth my tastebuds with thy black beauty!

Re-energized by the Gifts from the Temple, I soon figured out the problem and got everything up and running smoothly. Shortly after, the sweet tones of Massive Attack filled the room: the mission was a success!

Transformers teaser

More goodies for the fanboys: Grab the "Transformers" teaser over at Michael Bay's website and tell me you're not getting a wee bit excited...(edit 11.08.06: changed the link to the official website)

Transformers teaser @ The Transformers website

Oh joy!

The C64 orchestra!

Ok, this is simply cool beyond all coolness:



Oh man, Rob and Jeroen are old geezers! Fabulous stuff, sure hope there will be made a proper audio/video recording of this when it's performed in September.

Some more info here.

Life vs. The Movies

You know what separates real life from a movie? A director. Well ok, a few other things too, but mainly a director. Take dialogue, for example; tonight I saw someone off at the train station, and as we were talking our conversation came to a halt several times as the PA announced the different trains' arrivals and departures. Fair enough. Still - have you ever seen this problem in a movie?

Person A: "So, there I was, minding my own business, when Joe came and..."
(screech - click)
PA: "THE TRAIN FOR LILLEHAMMER WILL BE ARRIVING AT LINE 12 IN 3 MINUTES"
(screech - click)
Person B: "...."
Person A: "Err... Where was I? Oh yeah, Joe's gonna leave the company."

See what I mean? With the director in place, the same scene would have played out like:

Person A: "So, there I was, minding my own business, when Joe came and told me he's gonna leave the company."
Person B: "Really?"
Person A: "Yeah, that's what he said."
Person B: "..."
(screech - click)
PA: "THE TRAIN FOR LILLEHAMMER WILL BE ARRIVING AT LINE 12 IN 3 MINUTES"
(screech - click)

In a movie, the director neatly gets rid of all these little distractions and annoyances to get things flowing smoothly: cars won't woosh by in the middle of an intimate conversation, people don't yell and laugh in the background of an emotional moment between the main characters and PAs don't bellow out their messages during dialogue - they neatly fit them in during pauses. Cafés, bars and discos are never louder than that one can lead a conversation there, and the music will always be lower in volume when someone whispers or lowers their voice.

So... Am I asking for life to be more like the movies? Not by a longshot - it would be a total bore. Just making an observation, that's all.

What, you never spend time contemplating these things? Geez...