Beauty imperfected

I just went to bed, and decided to watch some tea-wee, and there was a documentary about The Doors and their overly famous song "This Is The End". Some music guy commenting it said something about "Its very obvious that they were experimenting on this song, and all good bands has got to dare to experiment, to release music that might be weird or flawed but still somehow beautiful". And so on.

I thought that made sense. The latest albums from Coldplay and Offspring were both quite experimental, sometimes rejected by their core fans for that reason. But I really liked both albums, there's a certain something to them.

Things are beautiful when it's not entirely streamlined, when it has a well timed flaw that your mind can latch on to.

One exception however; engineering. Machines. When every little part is perfect, neither doing too much nor too little, when every part is polished and fine tuned, machinery is beautiful when it's flawless. Maybe that's why Hollywoodian beauty is so perfect, we live in an age of scientific marvel, where there are few other ideals but money and technology.

For everything else, you need that spot o' fail.

The Right Stuff

If an aircraft carrier runs ashore, does that make it a miscarriage?

Some day

I'm not that fussed about cars, meaning that there are a lot of other things I want to spend my money on instead. But if I ever get wealthy, I'm getting a 70's Pontiac Trans Am:


Oh yes.

House of Fjords

Haha, look at them:

I mean, honestly, look at them. Haha

FOSS

Are you busy in the easter? I'm visiting London in both weekends of my easter holiday, I thought maybe I'd hang around in the countryside in the days between.

Ztreeng eet

I just got my guitar out, but since I hadn't played on it in ages I had to tune it massively. One careless moment and one string went to Valhalla (200 meters down the road, then take a left and then the second right. It'll the big blue building on your right.)

Fortunately there's a musix shop on my way to school, so I can fix it tomorrow without much trouble, but I really wanted to spend the last hours before bedtime making musix.

Baldness

Last night I dreamed that I was starting to get bald. That made me really sad, because my father is soon 50 and is only starting to thin, and my hair is just like his hair is.

The best option when getting bald to all Bruce Willis about it, but I don't think that would look any good on me.

Death and all his friends.

I made a post some time ago about creativity, about how creativity is a lot more about putting old things together in new ways than it is about anything else.
But the same principle applies to all sorts of thinking! Like the other night, I couldn't fall asleep and I just lied awake in my bed, thinking about things.
Four thoughts merged at this point:

1. I saw Troy on tv in the christmas holiday. I'm not a huge fan of that movie, it's a bit "Oh-hey-Gladiator-was-good-let's-make-some-classical-epic-movie". But the start is really good. It starts by Oddysseus (which is the narrator voice) says: "Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity. And so we ask ourselves: Will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone, and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved?"
2. In the same film, Achilles says: "The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again."
3. A friend mine was in a relationship with an expiry date. She was staying in Norway, he was moving to Australia. The agreement was that when he left Norway, the relationship would end. My friend told me that a lot of friends had asked her what it was like to be in a relationship like that, thinking it must be awkward. Her thoughts on it was that knowing it would end meant that the time they did have together was made even more valuable.
4. When asked, Indians are more likely to say they are happy than Norwegians are, although Norwegians are generally richer, safer and healthier.

So, if you know something will only last for a while, it becomes more valuable to you. We have a saying in Norway, "Evig eies kun det tapte". The only things you'll own forever are things you've already lost. In this case, knowing you certainly will lose it at some point allows to you appreciate it while you have it.

When put together, one could come up with a theory like this: If you live in an environment so safe that death seems almost fictional, it's harder to appreciate life. This theory could lead us to think that the happiest people on Earth are the people on the Gaza Strip and in Congo. They should live lives bristling with colour and love. But it's not fear of dying that makes every moment more valuable, being afraid of the inevitable end will only take focus away from what you do have.

exclusively some non-materialistic way of life that ensures appreciation of the "true values of life", it is awareness of the cold, hard fact that life can indeed end abruptly, possibly sooner rather than later. Norwegians on the other hand, are so unlikely to die that death becomes ungraspable, it is hard to imagine it will all end some day.

Life is short, eat your dessert first. And love fiercely.

Coffin dodger is genious.

Beautiful Minds

From Deviantart

I had a very nice dream this night. I can't remember much of it, except that some cute girl was in it, and she said some very cute things. I couldn't recognize the face, or the things she said, and if someone had ever said anything like that, I would have remembered (it wasn't anything naughty, it was just very cute. Nice). So even if my sub-consciousness have stored the face from some occasion I can't remember, chances are it made up those sentences by itself. I suppose a brain more or less flirting with itself is a bit like cheating, it knows which buttons to push, but it still made me marvel at all the things our minds can come up with. I was going to say how weird it is that it can come up with these things without us participating, but I realize our say in things just limits the extents of our own fantasy, with all our real-life rules and knowledge.

And come to think of it, people I really enjoy talking to are the one with few such rules to themselves. People that won't stop dreaming or thinking or joking at the point where common sense says "Hey, that idea is just way off."

Beautiful minds makes beautiful people.

Birtday, woots

Wikipedia allows you to check what happened on a specific date. A date like your birthday for example. I'm born on the 4th of February 1986, but I decided to check for the year and the date separately for more results:

Things that has happened on the 4th of February:

• 1677: Johann Ludwig Bach is born in Thal.
  
• 1703: 46 of the Forty-Seven Ronin commit seppuku (suicide)
• 1789: George Washington is elected as the first president of the United States.
• 1913: Rosa Parks is born in Tuskegee, Alabama.
  
• 1948: Alice Cooper is born in Detroit.
  

Things that happened in 1986:

• January 19 - The first PC virus, Brain, starts to spread. (Brainz!)
  
• February 19 - The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station. (Oh my science)
  
• April 17 - A treaty ends the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly. (lol)
  
• April 26 - In Ukraine, one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear plant explodes.
  
• May 25 - Hands Across America: At least 5,000,000 people form a human chain from New York City to Long Beach, California, to raise money to fight hunger and homelessness. (funkeh)
  
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002) - Set in 1986
  
• May 16 - Megan Fox is born.
  

And that's about it. Today I bought Prince of Persia for sexBox. It's awesome, because it's like Assassin's Creed, except it's really good and not repetitive.