23.05.2010: this is me back from america. a little wiser, a lot fatter. happy to be back. happy to be able to sit out in the courtyard and not worry about not doing anything. at least for a couple of days. to be able to be comfy without air conditioning. to be without that constant hum. it's nice.

i can finally wear a pair of shorts. and eat nothing but raw fruit and vegetables. beans and lentils.

now i have to deal with over half a metre of new books/comics and 2Gb of photos.

instead i'm woken up at 6am/12pm (depending on your frame of reference) by guys dancing in the street, blaring music out of their car stereo. i'm missing something here. something strange. i couldn't have been asleep more than a few hours. i find myself lying awake confused. the room too bright. i considered getting up and having breakfast. i didn't get jet lag - i completely short circuited my day rhythms. but nevermind.

the night before we'd caught the tail end of the copenhagen carnival. the bit where we cycle through the park at dusk, through the descending smoke or mist or whatever. thumping techno off behind the trees. weaving between all the drunk people who don't know how lucky they are to be able to drink out in public. me knowing how lucky i am to be able to ride my bike again. i didn't realise how much i'd missed it. how fast you can travel with so little effort.

then the struggle of getting up at 10am/4am. still confused. but to even more luck, after accidentally timing being in toronto with the toronto comic art festival, we get back just in time for the copenhagen one. a much more manageable affair. listened to charles burns and frank quitely talk, got my run of flex mentallo signed by him. and a little sketch of grant morrison. why not? saw chris ware, friendly chap. missed him talk though, would have been good to hear his discussion with daniel clowes and charles burns. there was even some cosplay. which was a little embarrassing.

now more of than courtyard business. i think.

26.04.2010: maybe from my new silence you can presume that i've finally made it through the ash clouds.

our vague plan is to hang out in toronto, travel up ontario, then to new york, and finally hit boston.

i'll be on-and-off available so don't be email shy. let me know what's going on. and i'll be back in copenhagen may 22nd. thereabouts, volcanoes permitting.

21.04.2010: from my silence you'd maybe presume i was in new york by now. but no. some planes are escaping but out flights have been put back to next monday (26th). i can't be bothered to discuss the fiasco any further, not right now. but i'm putting on a happy face and am fully aware i have no right to complain. i know my inconvenience is nothing but hypocritical.

but i truly am in time wasting mood this week. waiting. doomrl. so i went to the library and picked up douglas coupland's latest book. i enjoyed jpod, but by no means could i say it was great (and definitely not after it became a franchise. maybe it was meta-irony, i don't know). i think 'generation a' might be. so far at least. it reads more like chuck palahniuk, so i can totally pretend that i'm not two books behind on him as well (i hopefully have twelve hour train rides ahead of me to catch up, so no problem).

anyway. this has been our weekend. constantly checking airport websites. waiting on our booking agent. waiting on hold, being rerouted to india. emailing hostels. emailing the embassy. more waiting. reorganising meetings. etc. but mostly it's not been too difficult. i think our biggest problem, when we finally get over there, is going to be getting hostels at such short notice. we had enough trouble booking over a month in advance. look where that got us.

but you are shitting me that's snow i can see falling outside. unless rain suddenly started falling slower. it actually looks like both snow and rain. snain. maybe it's the ash. it'd be nice to actually see it.

nice weather we're having.

17.04.2010: an extract from a travel journal not yet written:

i'm going to start writing in my stupid book, still cozy at home infront of the non-existent fireplace (call it the fishtank), because i guess this is where the story starts. but not the adventure. we'd be travelling now, on our way to boston somewhere over the atlantic, but volcanoes will do their thing. mother earth will strike back. and we can't really complain. it's not so bad. i'm sure others are far worse off than we are. and those poor people stuck on holiday, at no fault of their own or cost to themselves. but still. here we are. in limbo, unable to really do anything until we get more news. our first flight was cancelled yesterday, and our rebooking might be cancelled tomorrow, in which case we'll put the whole trip back a week and fly into toronto instead, at least leaving that part of our journey intact. new york and boston can wait a couple of weeks i'm sure.

we should all be travelling in zeppellins anyway.

i have to say that both BA and our online booking agent have been very good, especially given the situation. we were able to get through to BA about an hour after our cancellation and they put us on the next available flight. in hindsight maybe we should have put it back a whole week, but julie has meetings and if we can make them it saves us a lot of hassle. and also money, our hotels, buses and trains are all already booked. our agent even phoned us up this morning, that was very nice of them i thought.

anyway. anyone want to cheer us up?

15.04.2010: if there's anything you think i need to see or do whilst in boston or new york you have less than two days to let me know about it. doing so might guarantee you a postcard.

but yes, two days. unless volcanic ash cancels our flight as well. about the last fucking thing i need.

i've never felt quite so defeated during the spring. what the fuck is wrong with me, i don't know. it'll work out i'm sure. i'm just going to be an ass in the meantime.

so i had a nice time on my own at fisk. i like working the shop and cafe by myself. except when there's no milk because the people on the previous two days didn't think to stock up for me. but still, i took 2000% of what the morning shift took yesterday, i'm happy. and then i went the opticians again, because i'm sure my prescription isn't quite right, but she wanted me to wait until i returned from holiday, and if i still wasn't happy and my glasses are wrong for me they'd change them for free. of course. and so i can't argue too much with that. except they could have just retested my eyes and it would have taken ten minutes and problem solved. either they're correct and i can deal with it or it gets fixed. but nevermind. i'm just being sour. and we had band practices and jovialities. tried to 'hack' the computer that plays out into kobemagergade (one of the main shopping streets), but the touchscreen is so shit and the onscreen keyboard keys are so small that it was too frustrating. i figured typing 'atr' into the bing search box would work, but bing is so shit it's hard to find words for. not even clicking on 'video' helped. all we got was some space crap. but then, i guess google isn't any better either. and the boneheads who tried after us didn't even manage to get our video to stop. they were only going to play some porn anyway.

13.04.2010: it was an expensive mistake, to understate for the first time in many months, but i needed new glasses anyway. this is what i keep telling myself. but i know how much lenses cost, i look at getting a new lens for my camera all the time, and they haven't got anything on this pair.

luckily the opticians have one of those schemes where you can pay over a number of months. i would never go for one of those, except with this one you do actually pay the same amount. technically you even pay less, due to inflation. intriguing.

so i now have my trendy scandinavian design glasses. but no new bike. and i really just want to stop thinking about it. but i keep getting paranoid. like, what if they got my prescription wrong? confusions through the language, me wondering why the horizontal bars looked green instead of black, i don't know.

anyway. i wont have it breaking me out in a cold sweat over breakfast every morning. i have more important things to do, don't i? like posting a photo of the aforementioned new glasses on facebook? just because i have new glasses it doesn't necessarily make me an asshole.

there was a concert:

which was a bit like watching your girlfriend/boyfriend have sex with someone else (not featured in photos). if that isn't too clumsy a metaphor or simile. whichever, i can't be bothered to remember right now, because really it doesn't make any difference anyway.

11.04.2010: headbutting thin air. treading on something crunchy. the crappest, and it really doesn't deserve a better word than that, story of breaking your own glasses ever. i mean, i didn't even get blood on them. not even my own. probably just trace amounts of human piss and dog shit. it's so depressing i can't even be bothered to make up a decent story.

he must have teleported just before i delivered the crushing blow.

a bit of bending, some glue and some tape, and i can kind of use them again. the left (or right, if you're me) lens is scratched and they're wonky on my face. but if i can't replace them before saturday they'll just have to do.

and to think my face was actually covered in striking indian (as opposed to cowboy) warpaint at the time. i could have made a mean imprint.

but it had been a really nice couple of days. friday night was helping alex cook for all the undead punks, and earning five beers for the privilege. we also popped into the easter studenterhuset party. stealing falafels from the fridge. and other things i'm sure.

waking up on saturday morning i couldn't move my left arm. like i'd been lying on it badly and my stupid body hadn't actually realised. like pins and needles but hammers and sickles. my right knuckle feels bruised. i didn't actually punch anyone did i?

so we met up with jon & co in christiania, hung out for a few beers and vodkas in the cold spring sun before returning to our courtyard for a barbecue. it was a nice time. really nice. we hit up the localest of the local bodegas for a single drink (plus gammel dansk for the guests) and then j&j's apartment for further pre-going out drinks.

i realised a few things about our old work place. there's a strange dichotomy in my feelings towards most of people who worked there. no, not most, not at all. but there was a percularily large number of people i often disliked and had a lot of respect for. if that makes any sense. anyway, i don't think i need to take this paragraph much further. i'd happily have a few beers with almost all of them.

and so later on saturday was the reason i was covered in warpaint, a cowboy and indian themed houseparty. just to clarify that. blame it on the cheap whiskey bottle. i'm all fucking talk, i was barely even sipping from it.

07.04.2010: so right now i'm making vegetarian kimchi pancakes. they're quite the thing. i'm guessing i guessed just right the amount of kimchi to use and i'm very happy about that. the actual kimchi isn't made by me, i have mina to thank for it. apparently it's about a month old and good for pancakes and stirfry. yes it is.

i should take photos because they're a wicked colour. worth getting a greasy keyboard for anyway.

i hope they're still good cold because i'm taking them to language class. just to show off. of course.

and on my way back home the sky will be dying in pale lilac. i can finally appreciate the clocks going back. home before dark.

i need some cheap vinegar so i can get pickling eggs again. or for the first time.

05.04.2010: i wake up with an unbearabley itchy foot. and it just wont be scratched. 8am says fuck you. i've got this shakira song obsessing around my empty fucking head and we're out of soya milk. if i had any substance i'd be eating my oats with whiskey.

happy easter. all the flags are at half mast. jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.

we catch a full bus and a full train. twice. children screaming "jeg vil ikke" over and over. as a parent you owe a responsibility to society to not feed your children on shit before taking them on public transport. drug them for all i care. but appeasing them with sweets is like setting fire to your car to make it go faster. or rather, setting fire to your children to make them shut the fuck up. all these thoughts bubbling through my head as i'm trying to read my book.

and so we spent the first half of the long weekend in fyn. walking along the creamy pale beach sand, the sea a kaleidoscope of blue and teal. the storebaeltsbroen bridge tracing the horizon. board games and beer.

the second half was shared with guests from norway. eating in spiseloppen, who knew it was so nice up there, all red and golden in the late evening. high quality food. then the next day they drove us through the rain to frederiksborg castle. who ever knew it existed? and it looks very pretty in google streetview. i guess it's not so bad in the rain either.

and now my danish homework is way too difficult. i can't even get past the first question, "diskuter fordele og ulemper ved et socialt sikkerheds". puha.

01.04.2010: conversations with assholes, part x in a real-time real-world never-ending series:

asshole: is it real paint on your nails?
laurence: what, like oil or acrylic? yeah
asshole: hvorfor har du det?
laurence: i was in berlin
asshole: so?
laurence: they know how to have a good time in berlin
asshole: i hope my kid never goes to berlin
laurence: i'm sure he'd have a great time there
asshole: i hope he never goes
laurence: well i hope he goes everywhere and manages to escape the bigotry of his father

except of course i never said that last line.

but when the basement is stacked high with crates of recently out-of-date beer, and the sun is shining like you might actually believe summer is somewhere in the future, there's little option but to sit in that strip of sunlight and start drinking. because the next day it's going to start hailing. of all things.

so it's a good job i saved some videos for a rainy day. malice in wonderland, mark twain's mysterious stranger, and bimbo's initiation. um, not safe for work. or children.

29.03.2010: a very english cafe. very polite. plates on the wall and all frillyness. very much full of babies. maybe that's a monday thing. maybe it's a fredericksgade thing. or an aarhus thing. i don't know. there isn't a baby free cafe in a 200m radius. i know because i checked. not to avoid the babies, but because all these cafes are so hot inside.

doilies. wax is running onto the table cloth. poignant, i'm sure. it's been a morning of minor failures. but the only one worth mentioning is the english bookshop that was inexplicably closed just for today. this is all the fault of the monster that spent its night dying in the bed besides mine. snarling, rasping and gargling into the void. like a drill made of cartilage boring dead space between your ears.

going back twelve hours, my question was - what kind of people stay in a hostel in aarhus? the unfortunate answer is these two men. one sounded indian, but i never saw his face. the other was african, fresh in the country and wearing a sharp suit. they shared a brief and repetitive conversation at 6am, the same english words going back and forth. ten minutes later they were "outside looking for a work", the indian recommending the african try ISS, a cleaning company known for treating its immigrant workers badly. after keeping me awake all night i was full of hate, but now that hate had nowhere to go. it turned into a vague misery and then i poured it all over my museli.

snorers need to take some responsibility. and hostels need to support them with some simple infrastructure. if you snore and don't chose the 'snoring room' then people should be allowed to give you spiteful looks over breakfast. be generally mean to you. other schemes i "dreamed" up during the night included one that requires you carry a 'non-snoring' card, which other guests can sign to confirm you don't snore. once you have enough people vouching for you, signatures or whatever, you are allowed access to the 'quiet' room.

or you could just roll the fuck over. or kill yourself. or kill me. i don't even care anymore. an eternity of nothing would be a fine thing.

otherwise aarhus is a reasonable place. den gamle by has the best hindbaersnitter denmark has to offer, the studenterhuset is way sexier than copenhagen's (and not only because of all the salsa dancing), there's a woman's museum, a nice spread of pedestrian streets (it's a bit like reading but prettier), and dumpster diving is a cinch.

we stood watching netto from a bridge across the river, as the employees filled their dumpster with bread and mushrooms to the point of it being unable to close anymore. food they'd only just taken from the shelves, food they had maybe an hour left to sell before they closed and it became out of date. we stood a while longer, watching people walk past and pause to briefly look at the mass of bread bursting out of the bins, bread begging to be saved. but no one was about to take any. except us of course.

later today we'll have a few hours to kill, playing dice and doing danish homework in the cheapest bar in aarhus. and then on the train no one will want to sit next to us because we'll smell like alcoholics. or for some other reason i'm yet to think of. john fante wouldn't be more polite to you. if only you'd asked me, i'd have been more than happy to play uno with you. but nevermind.

27.03.2010: spent all night listening to the rain. thunder and sirens. the distant slish of tyres on wet tarmac. slashing. rest assured that spring has finally come to denmark. it brings with it constant rain until the end of may. joy.

but i'm now a happy owner of a mirror blocks, the funnest (most fun?) variation of the rubik's cube. inventive and ridiculous without being at all frustrating. and it looks awesome too, of course.

these things always lead to endless youtube data mining. so here's a lego cube solver i quite like. it doesn't have light sensors and it's not crazy fast, but i still fancy its chances in robo-one.

and specter spelunker shrinks is my new favourite casual game. or at least it was until i finished it and realised there was no point playing it ever again.

now i'll go back to my rubik's cubes. some weird grammar that.

23.03.2010: berlin was a hoot. never has so much concrete exuded so much unaesthetic beauty. or did i mean loveable aesthetic ugliness? funny how the world looks after beer, wine, vodka, jagermeister, underberg, club mate and no sleep. all of the above.

it's no coincindence that nabokov included a table tennis paddle in his berlin of soglyadatay.

so thanks to all the lovely berliners and all those potatoes. photos will be distributed and lies will be told. all in good time. when i'm feeling less lost.

15.03.2010: speaking of which, the new drunken butterfly comic is out, and because it's me who runs this shit, you can view it here too:

i told you that night would be better described as a comic.

and maybe it's time for some travel news. apparently i'm going to berlin on thursday, if everything works out. that's the 18th through to the 22nd. then we're going to aarhus the following sunday and monday. after that we're going west. we're flying to boston on april 17th, travelling around a bit, then returning from toronto on may 11th (just days after the toronto comics and art festival, which is a happy coincidence). if you need to know anything else just ask. smiley face.

14.03.2010: the more gigs i play, the more my hatred for the backstage room grows and solidifies. i really can't stand it. it's like a babbling quagmire of ass, thick with smoke and sticky with beer ("covered in honey"?).

backstage should be a safe place to store your equipment. a place to relax before your gig. even sleep if you need to. to eat miniture sandwiches, etc. put on your makeup in peace.

what it's not is a place for you and all your friends (and their friends) to pile in and smoke for the whole fucking night, shouting, vomiting and being generally obnoxious and smelly. coming off stage, i couldn't even squeeze into the room to put my guitars away. couldn't even see into the room for all the pot smoke. you have to worry about your backstage policy when there are more people backstage (drinking their own beers) than out actually watching the bands (and buying yours). maybe it's just the venues we play. i don't know.

but fuck it, our gig was great. totally oi!some. finally. so thanks to everyone who came and enjoyed it, all the people shouting oi! along with us. especially those wearing braces. we're totally going to make this scene work. oi! oi!

and i guess it helps we have a large cardboard "oi!" sign to prompt the crowd.

10.03.2010: getting spun out from eating way too much sugar (meringues) and then going to see alice in wonderland 3D is about the best way the sunday could have ended. but to say what of it? that it felt more disney than burton? that too many scenes are filmed to exploit the (decades old) 3D technology, which you can only see at the cinema? sure it's a nice gimmick to get people back into theatres, but those impressive low tracking shots with massive depth and awesome perspectives, they're going to suck 99% of the time the film is watched. or maybe film producers don't care about the home market anymore, since it all pirated downloads.

on the other side of town, my language class suddenly increased from 6 students to 17. it might not be so good for learning danish, but it's definitely more socially interesting. whilst bringing down the percentage of people i can't stand, thereby making it less likely i have to work with them, it does increase their overall number. luckily the most annoying guy walked out halfway though, probably because he was fed up with being told to stop interrupting the teacher. we were all fed up of hearing him. i hope he doesn't come back.

a visiting friend taught us how to make proper thai food. it's all in the thai basil. who'd have thought?

anyway. i'm in cafe retro, sitting upstairs on the balcany. they have a fire downstairs. it smells incredbile. coffee and wood smoke. all they need know are vines creeping up and around everywhere.

as for the final sense, that's all about me not really feeling this whole blog thing right now. so nevermind.

07.03.2010: it feels like i spent half the night listening to the birds. unlike in other parts of the city, the birds are real here. although i'd much rather be asleep, dreaming of that huge boat, trying to upgrade my student accomodation. all my dreams of being back at university collide, one triggers the rest in a chain reaction that concertinas together in a most untuneful manner. all those halls and corridors that never existed, but still manage to make me nostalgic. strange stairways and rows of doors, shared living rooms and kitchen. but, a boat? i don't know.

i finally got around to rereading and (at long last) finishing y: the last man. it took me three or four days, and now i feel like i've lost something. there's nothing like a story concluding so completely to absolutely kill you. i almost wish i'd stopped a few issues short of the end, whilst it was meandering and losing direction. i didn't need my heart broken like that. it was the time traveller's wife all over again. anyway. i think i can confidently say it's one of the best comic series i've ever read. and i mean that.

now i just need to act on what i've learnt.

um. the american remake of spaced is so much worse than you could possibly imagine.

and i keep getting that song from the army recruitment advert in my head, the one that could actually be an american apparel advert. makes me feel sick.

01.03.2010: weekend special - two for one on sundays. the only catch is you have to get completely wasted on friday night. but that's easy enough when you're tag-teaming a cafe shift and getting free drinks because the beer taps are calibrated wrong.

busiest shift i've ever taken though. people had to jump in and bail us out. running out of beer on taps one, four and six. running out of glasses to put the beer in. "you want four cappuccinos?". the number of times we got "cola" mixed up with "corona" (you drunk danish need to fucking learn how to enunciate). i didn't even have time to drink my coffee.

but i think the night might be better described as a comic. at least then i can use abstract dots and lines to fill in all the gaps. like the part of the night where i had kenneth's keys. i can't remember that. i can deduce it though, so there's no escaping the fact that it was my fault they became locked inside the practice room. which is better than almost all other possibilities. fuck knows, i might have even eaten them for all i know. at 5am that shit could really ruin your night.

why do these nights (originally wrote "things", nice anagram) always end in such a fucking mess? and i'd even stopped drinking at 10pm, excluding swigs from the various bottles of jagermeister being passed around the hjortene crowd, of course. great gig, btw. all three sets. like i remember much of the last, just jolle rolling around the floor.

and i still managed to get up early the next morning. had wrongs to rights and all that. and it was a nice moment, walking around town somewhat still drunk, the success of finding the keys. then walking all the way through vesterbro to an art exhibition.

making 'toad in the hole'. reading comics. playing guitar. nursing my sore neck. sewing an irredeemable pair of trousers whilst watching avril lavigne 'rock out' in montmartre. and now i have a week to deal with? crap.

24.02.2010: was a bit lost yesterday. i don't know why. trying to write in danish, nothing really working. then this morning i have dreams about dreams i used to have of brighton. that city is so beautiful in my dreams. all those market streets, quarters and squares that have never really existed, that i can never go back to. it's a crushing nostalgia, one for something that never existed and can never be reclaimed. i hate dreams sometimes. but i did manage to rescue someone's shoe from the rising tide. and a girl was very pleased about that. the water was warm. you dream like that you wake up panicing you've wet the bed. but what would i know, i can only remember ever vomiting the bed.

what is this, early morning stream of conciousness? no thanks. i should just start posting empty blogs.

what would be nice though, is if you went over to the drunken butterfly website and left us a nice comment in the guestbook. especially if we went to the effort of making and sending you our new CD. even if you evidently didn't like it.

our weekend was a blur of dinner parties. champagne and red wine, forcing people to cook vegan, and me feeling much more sociable than normal. and then the complete opposite, me forcing dairy free on other people, and feeling rather unsociable. i don't know why. but we had music courtesy of dj gallowslut, the four CD compilations i have. they're surprisingly good dinner party music. well, if only you ignore the occasional glitchcore or metal onslaught. there's some good conversation pieces in there. potato clocks and such.

anyway, there's work to be done. and i wish games like doomrl wouldn't keep a total record of the time you've spent playing.

20.02.2010: the problem with my latest (and most epic) project, of completely overhauling the drunken butterfly website with a database and multi-user interface, is that no one can actually see it. and only jolle and kenneth get to appreciate it at all. you'll just have to take my word for how brilliant it is. every line of code is like a beautiful melody cascading into the void.

now i'm just waiting for you to come inject me with your hot SQL junk. come completely ruin my database.

the problem is that my eyebrows have stopped working. like crying tears of sweat at 228 watts. it's not ideal.

so instead i started getting hooked on fractal mazes (a cute example). and then of course i stumbled upon hypermazes, and everything kind of went wrong from there on.

no, the problem is that when it stops snowing it's going to start raining. that's something i really can't be dealing with right now.

17.02.2010: it can keep snowing for all i care. it's pretty enough. if it keeps snowing like this all year round i could be happy. keep layering clean snow over the dirty. and i'll just put on some neil young or johnny cash. we'll be fine through to december.

i've been having dreams in ascii the last few nights. being attacked by yellow A's and V's. all those red dots and hashes, they're a sign i've been over doing something, but i can't quite work out what.

and twenty four hour clocks and twelve note octaves have completely destroyed my concept of the numbers 13 to 19 (inclusive). the 2 in 20+ is strong enough to drag it out of the dozen, but i just can't see 15 without thinking "three".

eight hour band practice without drinking a single beer. that's impressive right?

14.02.2010: what i should have done yesterday was stay in bed all day (what i wish i was doing now), i probably would have achieved more.

die oi!tonome were playing the paramount in roskilde. last time we played there it was almost immediately after a disasterous gig at huset, but it went brilliantly. we were told they'd have us back any time, and even invited us to play at one of their house parties (which never happened). and they actually booked us for the gig last night. our fifth.

but what happened was just a shambles. we were there early, because they told us the sound equipment would be set up by five, but of course it wasn't. they were missing extension cables. microphones. whatever. then the bass amp didn't work. then the keyboard was massively distorting through the DI box and they couldn't fix that either. then everyone had to have their 'activist meeting' and we sat down for dinner (fucking awesome food though, excellent vegan lasagne and salad). we solved the problems, but now we couldn't have keyboard and bass at the same time. soundcheck went ok, sloppy but the sound was good, so we went the pub.

this was the highlight of our night, drinking beers and playing dice in our favourite cheap and smokey bar in roskilde. or warming ourselves around a pan of hot coals conveniently (and dangrerous) placed in the middle of the high street.

back to the venue, trudging through the snow. the toilet downstairs is flooded, water 1cm across the whole floor. there's a sizeable crowd, people in all kinds of crazy fancydress. mario is scaring me a little. but at least they're not playing techno before our gig this time. and so we go on stage. that was our biggest mistake. the sound is just horrible. my monitor isn't working, kenneth's is all bass, so loud it's clipping. the vocals are just a noise when you can hear them at all. something is feeding back terribly, no one can work out what it is. we battle on, happy enough in the knowledge that this is our worst gig ever, but at least it's not our fault this time. one more song, maybe the sound engineer will fix it. but nothing, it gets worse if anything. some songs are just a fucking mush, but some we play blindingly, despite the awful sound.

we cut the set short, cut the last two songs short, not even making it through the first verse of either. someone drops a bottle on the stage and it cuts my pedal board out. i switch to my drunken butterfly patches to compensate. like fighting fire with fire. at least this way it's supposed to sound like cyndi lauper being dragged backwards through hell by yoko ono on a really bad day.

we couldn't stick around after that. it just wasn't worth it. but there was no explanation, no apology, no thanks, no nothing. at least it was obvious it wasn't our monumental fuck up. it's a shame because it's an otherwise nice venue, a place people go no matter who is playing, and we were really up for putting on a good show. hopefully they'll invite us back when they have a sound engineer who knows the difference between a jack lead and a jackass.

"hi, we are die oi!tonome from hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry!"

13.02.2010: going to the dentist school was an interesting experience. entering this huge room, rows upon rows of dentist chairs, all glaring white, the high pitch whine of a drill somewhere across the way. so many young dentists with pretty eyes. my teeth were examined by three people, two students and their teacher, they were all very thorough. more thorough than any check-up i ever had in england.

we'd arrived before 8am, or thereabouts. early enough to get a low ticket number so we didn't have too wait long. at about nine they started calling people in and we waited another half hour. but it's all free. it's a great symbiotic relationship between people studying dentistry and the people who don't want to pay them once they've graduated. because what i realised recently was that people aren't scared of the dentist because of the drills, it's not the potential for excrutiating pain. it's the expense that really hurts.

last time i went to the dentist, about two years ago, it had been after a five year gap. that hurt. but my teeth are fine now. they said if i wanted they could refer me to the orthodontist, since my top teeth are wearing down slightly on my bottom teeth. maybe it could be easily fixed and save any trouble i might have later. i may as well talk to them, so they registered me and will be in contact when they have time, in about three months.

so to restore some balance, i totally binged on sweets during band practice. thick and greasy finish licorice. cheap bolcher. my head was spinning all night. i could only sleep because i was so tired, some kind of catatonic. i could still feel the sugar rush when i tried to get up this morning. so it must be coffee time.

10.02.2010: i'm feeling quite good about myself today, finally nailing SQL and getting a functioning database properly intergrated into the drunken butterfly website. it took me a while, i had a few connection and obscure coding problems, but nothing endlessly trawling forums can't fix. i am now SQL supercharged. why didn't i learn this stuff years ago? once it's installed properly it's loads of fun.

i also finally got myself registered as a donor. not registering in protest that it should be opt out doesn't really cut it (no, that's not what i was doing). the system is ridiculous, a bit like marriage. no not like marriage at all, but nevermind. there should be a tick box on the card to say that your organs can only go to people who are registered donors themselves.

and i wrote a decent two page letter in danish. and did my mid-winter bike clean. i love the smell of wd40. is that bad?

here's some beautiful footage from norway. it kind of scares me to see people walking out on the frozen sea.

tomorrow i might even go to the dentist.

08.02.2010: since i kept my food diary up for the whole week, for absolutely no reason, the least i could do is post it here. it wasn't even a very good week for meals. we had an excess of potatoes from dumspter diving and struggled with a few meals because we forgot to buy food. and i normally don't eat so many fried egg sandwiches. next time i record what i eat i'll definitely make more of an effort to make it look impressive.

day 1

• porridge (generally 1 cup oats, 1 cup soya milk, 1 apple, raisins, blue berries, prunes, dates)
• fried egg sandwich with hummus
• large plate of rice with mixed veg and kidney beans
• toast slice with tartex

• porridge
• smoothie (banana, apple, carrot, soya milk)
• ciabatta roll with nut paste and artichoke paste
• fried egg sandwich
• pancake with jam
• leftover nutroast cubed with bulgar, beans and veg

• porridge
• bread with onion and nut paste
• rye bread with artichoke paste
• bag of sunflower seeds and rasins
• thai curry with spring rolls and rice
• pancake with jam

• porridge
• fried egg sandwich
• pasta with fake meats, tomatoes, olives, pine nuts

• porridge
• hash browns with cannellini bean, cucumber and red pepper salad
• red and yellow lentils in tomato sauce with mixed veg, kidney beans and rice
• falafals with hummus and salad (at 4am)

• porridge
• rice cakes
• roast potatoes, vege fillet, peas and spinach

• porridge
• ciabatta with fried egg
• curry with potato, chickpeas and paneer
• rice cakes
• lots of dates

07.02.2010: the day after a studenterhuset night shift is always the same. all meta deja vu and nothing. i hate getting deja vu about getting deja vu. clearly i'm watching too many time travel films. but there was actually quite a lot to enjoy about triangle, in a kind of post primer, not really about time travel, sisyphus kind of way.

i spend most of the day playing doom rogue-like. if you don't know it, well rogue is probably the best game ever written (and no doubt the reason why i loved spelunky so much), and if it's not then doom is. so what you have here is the perfect combination. and it's got a bastard hard learning curve. it took me a few goes to get through the second level, but after a few more tries i managed all the way to level 15. to illustrate, here are my death levels in order - 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 8, 15. damn that fucking mancubus, if it wasn't for that blubbery bastard i'd have made it to a nice pattern-forming level 16. first time i'd seen one too, i clearly had no chance.

now all we need is rogue doom-like. please.

just let me finish playing this level first.

but it was a nice night at studenterhuset. relatively easy. lots of people ordering two pints and leaving one on the bar. no annoying thumping techno, only mildly annoying guns and roses and linkin park. maybe offspring. if there was any nickelback i blocked it from my mind. and the new guy actually asked this time if i wanted anything specific for post-shift food, so it was easy getting my falafels. except they came without pita or durum. that'll teach me to be over specific. but they were nourishing enough. not to mention tasty.

now i'm off to relearn SQL properly.

03.02.2010: i do love cycling in the snow though. the misleading calm. the volume turned down on the city. as if the snow absorbs all the sound. hardly anyone around. the world reduced down to a snow globe, an ever contracting sphere of influence. it's just you and the twenty meters of white space in every direction.

i only came off my bike once, but it was proper. felt fantastic. but only because no one i know saw. i'm reminded of how good i am at falling off my bike.

much later, looking up into a sky that's lighter during the night than during the day. the dull grey replaced by the pink glow of reflected sodium. like fallout from the future. like being transposed into a completely different universe. it must terrify the birds. should terrify all of us.

even later i'm wondering my it hurts on my hip and the side of my knee. because i'm stupid.

02.02.2010: happy febuary everybody. we finally made it!

so i spent most of yesterday updating my seo cv, excited by the prospect of a temporary inhouse job, only to find out that the position had already been filled. would it have been so much effort to remove the vacancy? but nevermind, the application (actually, i didn't apply, i was merely inquiring) played its role. i'm now geared up to look for a 'proper' job. or at least a spate of cold calling (hey, it worked last time).

last few days i've had a to-do list. they've been going very well. i'm not sure how much i have to show for it, but there's been lots of crossing off. and by not including things like "get dentist" i can even finish a whole list by dinner time. what this means is that some of you might be receiving a package from me shortly. it also means you can go to the drunken butterlfy HQ and download a gorgeous package containing everything you need to make your own copy of our previous CD (you know, the one with songs about fucking your cousin, etc). you can download our new album too, but you have to ask me first. i think that's only fair.

we've also all started doing food diaries. i can't even remember why (maybe it was julie's worm). so there's a lot of lists everywhere. there's probably even a list of the lists somewhere. us unemployed have to do something right?

sitting here waiting for the snow storm to come. apparently we have another twenty five minutes until it arrives. people have been talking about it all morning. it better have been worth it.

28.01.2010: it feels like i've been gone a long time. i'm intermittent on my website. i don't know why. words don't spontaneously form in my head like they used to. haven't for a while. i guess our brains slow down as we get older. that's why time appears to speed up. but this isn't true, we all know that time accelerates as we approach the apocalypse. and if you plot the popularity of disaster films on a graph it is evident that they have exponential growth. this is obviously the forthcoming ultimate disaster rippling back through time and affecting our consciousness, in the same way that dropping a stone into water sends waves in all directions. it transcends everything anthropomorphic, time included. our episodic nature, arguably our greatest ability, is also our greatest weakness.

some cold photos from paris. very cold.

i've been fisking a lot this week. well, three shifts. it's been nice to get back into it. right now i'm just chilling, listening to some old dandy warhols, drinking some coffee, staring out across an open shop. piercing sunlight outside. it's lovely. but my bike looks so sad out there in the dirty snow, chained to the lamppost. yesterday i came out of the gym and couldn't find my bike. i knew it was one of those lumps of snow, but which? halfway home and i'm getting honked at by an impatient driver for cycling in the road. i hadn't even realised. with one eye half open and the other eye shut, the pavement and cycle path covered in snow, how was i to know? i was just following the tracks. all else is pretty much suicide. my scarf was soaked through, rings of ice around my eyes. the two minute cycle took almost ten. massive fun. at fisk people couldn't believe i'd been cycling in this weather. meh, in toronto we had snow storms all the time. i love the isolation of cycling through a whiteout. it's only you and the sloppy tarmac only half a second away, two tonnes of metal sliding out of control just behind the curtain.

at language class i watched a girl boil a full kettle, just to put a few drops of it in her cup of water to warm it up. but i like my new teacher. almost straight away she noticed we'd not focused enough on our mundtlige. that's from changing teacher every few weeks, they don't learn where your pronunciation fails, don't pick you up every time you screw up the difference between u and y. you need that, else you repeat mistakes and they become ingrained. i'll never be able to say the difference between grundbog and groenbog. ymer.

23.01.2010: if only it wasn't so cold i could stop and appreciate all these wonderful views the winter has to offer. people congregating across the frozen lakes, tour boats pushing through the ice on the canal, seagulls swooping down, chipping at whatever they can find. if only water froze at a higher temperature, right? the stupidest thought i've ever had. but warm icecream, tasty. this snow/hail is like a hundred tiny needles stabbing you in the face. rear wheel bike brakes are almost completely useless.

i really needed that hindbaersnitter today. mac-a-roar-noon

so we joined the gym last week. it felt really good to get back on the machines. i was even surprised. i've found myself looking forward to it everytime we go. what is it about running machines i like so much? something about that constant grind, trance-like state, and all that energy put into going nowhere. or that i can actually run quite fast for quite long whilst on one. no more shitty air resistance.

and then we're at band practice, taking a beer break, and the woman who runs the antique shop next to our practice room comes out to give us some beers. except she only had two left, so she gives us a bottle of vodka instead. she's crazy amazing. we had a look round her shop and i counted about five half smoked cigars lying around the place.

fingers hurt from cutting out. like being at pre-school again. except they never let three year olds play with scissors, so it's not like that at all. nevermind.

play leaf instead. it's much more fun than listening to me.

19.01.2010: i feel compelled to drop another quote from the the road, just incase you've seen that depressing movie and need to know why i loved the book so much. the film misses out what's so beautiful about the book, the words:

at evening a dull sulphur light from the fires. the standing water in the roadside ditches black with the runoff. the mountains shrouded away. a river where skeins of ash and slurry move slowly in the current. charred bits of wood. the cold and the silence. the ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. everything uncoupled from its shoring. unsupported in the ashen air. the city moatly burned. no sign of life. cars in the street caked with ash, everything covered with ash and dust. fossil tracks in the dried sludge. a corpse in the doorway dried to leather. grimacing at the day.

i just typo'd "girls" instead of "films". isn't that a weird one.

and since i'm talking about words and pictures, kind of, i really liked these beatles infographics, especially the song keys. they're very interesting and intuitive ways of looking at musical progression.

and while i'm linking you up, i'd also like to recommend this defuse game, which entertained me greatly for 2758 seconds (during which time my attention was variably split between several tasks, and i died 39 times. but this isn't a competition).

and two photos:

the first is of angouleme train station, and is about as satisfying an unoccupied photo i can take these days. the second is taken from my parents new property on the very same morning. they're less used to snow in france than they are in england. the french, not my parents.

17.01.2010: for as long as i can remember there has been talk about growing meat in vats. be it science fiction, science progress, or barbecue banter - "would you eat an animal with no brain? what if they gave a brocolli a nervous system, would you eat that? what about a plant with a cardiovascular system?". i'm sure scientists come up with this stuff all the time. but i like the article for its entertaining quotes.

"NASA gave up and decided it would be better for its astronauts to simply eat vegetarian", funny that. "the technology could potentially increase the world's meat supply and help fight global hunger", or we could simply eat vegetarian, NASA (and the rest of us) worked that one out already.

i'm wondering how easy and energy efficient their process is compared to that of current 'fake meat' products, some of which are actually quite good. no they wont satisfy your bloodlust for steak, but the quality of the tasty protein accompaniment to your veg shouldn't be judged by how similar it is to dead cow. or pig. i think it'll be hilarious if they can't get vat meat tasting as good as the current vegetarian 'fake meat'.

the important question will be what it means to be vegetarian in an ever growing artificial world. is vat meat still meat? or just weird shit? i can't think of a reason why i wouldn't eat it, as it bypasses most of my reasons for being vegetarian. the only problem is that we need to all be heading towards as non-artificial and organic a diet as possible. would you eat mashed potato or eggs grown from vats? you probably would because you neglected to ask or care where it came from. "if you look at the sausages and other things people are willing to eat these days, this should not be a big problem."

it's no coincidence that the best vege meat products are hotdogs and burgers, which probably contain as much real ingredients as the 'real' meaty equivalents. don't forget about the grandiosa pizzameat, which is 60% not meat. and you know where the remaining 40% beef came from, scraped from the slaughterhouse floor i'm sure.

ultimately, what's the point in vat meat? i do look forward to the day that i can try 'real' bacon, but i just don't see the why. is there really a market for it? do you all need to eat meat so bad you have to engineer it?

16.01.2010: it seems that half my dreams these days are about going back to school. visiting prospective new schools or returning to old ones. all those missed opportunities. all that sentimental crap. seeing old school friends who i never liked anyway. and then suddenly there's the fear. panic at realising i've missed all my classes. i've forgetten to start my research project and it's due in i don't even know when. read into if you want, but i don't particularly want to.

slightly related, i was talking to someone in a bar the other night and i started thinking about age and talent. i'm quite convinced that you can be as good as you're ever going to get at something (playing guitar, for instance) at the age of 18. sure you can practice for decades later, learn technical stuff or improve technique, but you're not going to be better. i'm not sure what i mean by that exactly, but it seemed important and profound at the time. i've probably changed my mind by now, but i'm sure there was something in it.

anyway. there's some new photos from my norwegian cabin trip up. some of them are pretty. see:

i also need to mention how good my first paella was. i've never eaten proper vegetarian paella (or any other kind of paella), so i've no idea how authentic it was, but it was damn tasty. and the apartment still smelt delicious when i got back from band practice. maybe you don't like your apartment smelling of food, i don't know.

13.01.2010: wow. google have just announced a significant change in their relationship with china. this could be the biggest news the internet's seen all year (yes, that's a kind of joke, but just pretend it wasn't, this is actually huge).

google may 'only' have 31.8% of the chinese search market, significantly below their share in the rest of the world, but that's 31.8% of 360 million internet users. what do 114 million people do when their primary search engine suddenly disappears, as it is almost certain to do? the chance of china backing down and allowing google to have uncensored results is practically zero.

it'll also be interesting to see how this effects google economically. as a business move it can't be popular, but they continually claim to be built around strong moral values (albeit in rather wishy washily defined terms), and they need to stick to these. by taking a stance against human rights abuse they can only (re)gain the confidence of their users, who, unlike investors, they can't afford to lose.

what i find intersting is the difference between chinese and 'western' opnions of google. we've been very good at criticising google, even going so far as to label them as having the worst privacy practices. whereas in china they appear to be seen as dissident and "a great soldier to freedom". we we're disgusted that google would censor their results to get into the chinese market, but the chinese don't want them to leave. context multiplied by context, i could clearly never be a journalist. but claims of PR stunting on google's behalf are simply immaterial here. there's a much bigger picture.

and here's a question, how did google know these accounts belonged to human rights activists? i find that scary too. although perhaps they just asked them, i don't know. i'm also confused by the claims about it being a "highly sophisticated" attacked. how do they know this? it seems they're only talking about phising or malware, neither of which i'd class as "highly sophisticated". but then maybe it's not safe for them to be 100% transparent on this, by publicising methodology for succesfully hacking email accounts. perhaps it's the organisation of the attack that is sophisticated. they should really elaborate on that, currently it's far too ambiguous.

and i just hope they stick to their guns.

anyway, happy new year. whatever that means. i'm back in copenhagen and drinking a rooibos to you and your health.

27.12.2009: important bit first, as of 10am tomorrow i'll be in france. i think until january 11th. so now you know.

christmas has been a three day ordeal. i don't think i've eaten so much over a three day period. ever. but still, it has been a welcome break from tramping through the freezing streets, the whole time needing to keep a constant eye on police movements. so it's been nice. i've spent most of the time putting final touches to the all new drunken butterfly album. also reading about fairtrade coffee (thesis proofreading, ftw). and finishing up some data entry.

but the christmas presents have been great. i mean, an arm powered espresso machine (now all i need is to work out how to make water boil whilst the sun isn't shining), a feminist tshirt, and a bunch of great books. i'm so happy for them.

yesterday was my ukulele playing debut, at a family party playing 'tom dooley'. lots of schnapps. it will be months before that melody has loosened its grip on this household.

and now i'm looking forward to france and the new years. which is also going to be great.

i do like how FTW is WTF backwards. but nevermind that.

22.12.2009: whilst the climate talks were coming to end, way past the point of possibly achieving what was required of them (and you call these people 'leaders'?), we were having a great time.

on thursday, 140 world leaders were gathering in christiansborg. the whole area was blocked off and emptied. it was an eerie sight, there weren't even any police. these so-called leaders were to eat and talk shite and be disturbed by greenpeace (love). meanwhile, on the other side of the city, a political rally was being held for ALBA, a people's meeting, with performances speeches by none other than hugo chavez and evo moralez themselves. it was quite the spectacle. i mean, did you know that capitalism and imperialism are bad? and that socialism is the only solution to the world's problems? and that hugo chavez is a feminist? he said it himself. the whole thing was fun, in a rock and roll kind of way, but i do wonder how much of it was just button pushing. after two weeks of serious climate talks the speeches seemed somehow superficial. moralez was brilliant though. he was even wearing a jumper.

cycling over and through the snow, my mind almost blanked out the entire journey there. round and round in circles we went. how hard can it be to find a giant hall?

and then the final day of COP15. just fuck it. we went to hang out in the student house with amy goodman instead. amy goodman in studenterhuset. it just doesn't make any sense. but she was awesome, still smiling as she told us how horrible the world is, and of her experiences at COP15. on wednesday, rather than worrying about her computer equipment, the security guards at the bella centre had been interested in her notes instead. when questioned they'd admitted they were looking for anti-COP15 material. she's a journalist. not only are these people morally bankrupt, they're fucking idiots as well. but anyway, we all got our books signed and were totally not starstruck at all. i wish her inspiration stuck to me faster.

it's a great book for reading on the toilet, btw. the articles are just the perfect length.

oh, and then there was the crazy party at the music school that we crashed. i was off exploring the building like i used to when i was six years old. except back then i'd never have carried around the paint bucket of punch i'd found discarded on the top floor. but this is how we 'improve' with age. and alcohol, of course.

i hope you're enjoying the snow.

20.12.2009: the hangover from COP15 is going to be a long one. people wont recover from this planetary sized fuck-up any time soon. and whilst it's been a complete disaster for the whole world, it's been especially embarrassing for the danish. the incompetence of the danish government has been evident for the whole world to see, and policing of the summit has fit us neatly into every definition of "police state" you can care to google.

there's been a lot of noise surrounding the mass arrest that happened saturday afternoon, when almost 1000 demonstrators were detained, with the vast majority of them being completely innocent. i want to add more to the noise, because i think there's been something missing from the 'critical appraisal'.

but firstly, i wasn't there. naomi klein was there and i like what she wrote about it. emily apple (a guardian journalist) was also there, except she was actually arrested (a must read). secondly, please don't mistake this as me defending the police. if anything this is a criticism of what the media decided to call the 'black bloc'. i'm not condemning their actions (or attire), if anything what they didn't wasn't enough. condemning the police operation and behaviour is of primary importance, but when you're doing such actions you need to consider the realities of the situation and act accordingly.

the black bloc tactic is tried and tested. people know what does and doesn't work, and people know what it's capable of, including the police. what works is having a target, being inconspicuous, then moving, attacking and dispersing quickly. what doesn't work is following a peaceful demonstration, all dressed in black, and hurling the occasional stone.

the group on saturday had publicly announced civil disobedience, made no mention of being non-violent (we all know property damage isn't violence, but that's not how the police see it), and some of its participants were obviously willing to cause trouble. whether the 'troublemakers' had left the march or not, by the time they reached amager it was a large group looking very much like a black bloc. given the history of black blocs, and that this group had already thrown rocks at cops and smashed a couple of windows, the police could only assume they were going to continue. yes, that's a wrong assumption. but it's a very predictable one. the police couldn't know how unorganised the group might have been, nor that they didn't have a target further down the road they were planning on attacking with more conviction. futhermore this is an international summit, and the police would have had no idea whether the group was danish or italian or greek (the difference being degrees of hardcore). it's also worth noting that the road gets narrower further down and the police would have had a much harder time stopping an actual riot if it had broken out.

the actions of the police were wrong. that's not debatable. but they did what they thought they had to do to contain the group, based on a threat that i'd argue to be reasonably realistic (or is that just wishful thinking on my part?). i'm sure most danish people agree with how the police handled themselves. not necessarily the conditions the demonstrators were kept in, but the overall plan. that the vast majority of those arrested had broken no law, and weren't about to, just comes down to collateral (apparently). we don't accept that. but the fucking police do. arresting almost 1000 people to stop four is preposterous.

again, i have no answer to what i think the police should have done. but it's not a question i should have to answer either. i'm anti-police and fundamentally disagree with their overall existence, they shouldn't have been there to protect the criminals that people were fighting back against. but it's not a very practical way to analyse the situation we saw on saturday. we need to deal with the reality these wannabe-fascists have supplied us with.

my point is that you can't do these things by half measures. either look as threatening as possible but show zero intent of 'causing trouble', or do it properly. please.

i do have one question though. people further up in the demo could have clearly seen what the police were planning. are we all so unorganised or thoughtless that the message couldn't have been passed to the people at the back of the march?

anyway. in retrospect i'd call the bloc action a success. it received huge global coverage and highlighted the horrors of the danish police state (all depending on the political slant of your media, of course). i'm sure their plan wasn't to cause a mass arrest, but if it was they were very successful. but don't call it a black bloc, because it wasn't.

following from this is another important point. there were two demos the next day, one was a civil disobediance style demo (hit the production) and the other was a peaceful demo organised by la via campesina, which we attended and i've already written about. even though our demo was as large as some of the others, and wasn't police authorized (or controlled for the longest time), it received zero media attention. the other demo was shut down before it even got started, with the familiar long string of arrests and detentions, and the media were all over it. what does this tell you about civil disobedience? what does it tell you about our sensationalist media? the media rewards violence, therefore encourages it. and if you want to get your voice heard you have to cause trouble. i think that's a point i can end this long ramble on, thanks.

19.12.2009: this poll shows the scariest set of data i've seen since i managed to understand the science behind james hansen's 350ppm and CO2 accumulation. please look at those statistics. they make painfully clear the scale of the problem ahead.

on wednesday night we saw chris mooney speak about the unscientific trends in the american population (yes, it was a very busy day, and what a contrast to be all of a sudden sitting in a posh lecture hall with all these smart people, free fruit and beer). it's terrifying. we're on the brink of absolute disaster and none of them know how long it takes the earth to orbit the sun (ignoring the 18% who believe the sun orbits the earth, please note that the english and german stats aren't much better). science huh what?

the last offer from the american delegation at COP15 was to reduce their emissions by a measley 4%. the figure george monbiot calculated, based on the necessity of not exceeding a two degree rise, and also balancing carbon emissions equally across the whole world on a per capita basis, was over twenty times this.

pledging aid to foreign countries is all well and good (how about cancelling their debt at the same time?), if obama can get it through congress. but the problem needs to be tackled at its source. it's like repeatedly punching someone in the face whilst between every blow you offer to pay their dentistry bills. or promising to pay for someone's funeral before starving them to death (and drowning them at same time, why not?).

either way, with the public so far behind the science, what can you do?

18.12.2009: we are witness to the prettiest summit protest of all time. soft flakes of snow forming gentle whisps around police batons, settling on riot helmets, twisting and turning through the chaos, completely oblivious and apathetic to our rage at the debacle being played out infront of the the whole fucking world (sound familiar?). we fill the streets with all colours and passions on the grayest day of the year, the world's darkest. marching up to the gates, nerves racing, this really is the edge of the abyss. the start of the final war. and if you think it looks bad now, just wait for the millions who will die before this is all over. what is teargas and pepperspray in the face compared to the fate of 6.8 billion?

we'd woken up at 6am. eaten porridge and listened to senser ("no more of settling for what they feed the time has come to put the pressure up against the greed"). we walked the 6km down to the meeting point in the dark, passing other activists being thoroughly searched by the police. our bloc assembled at 8am, a group slowly growing with the lightening of the sky. after a cold hour of waiting, the police induced delay was finally over, the truck was released, and in the distance a group of somewhat intimidating looking individuals is heading our way. they're italians and they escaped the teargas and arrests that the second bloc had already been subjected to. they're hardcore, and i love them, all of their italian chants, but i'd rather they didn't assemble directly behind us. before long they all run off and get arrested ahead of us anyway (this is me piecing information together). so it goes.

the march is tight. tighter than any other march i've ever been on. everyone is linked in chains. everyone is beautiful. everyone is shouting. everyone is jumping up and down in unison when we stop. everyone is fucking ready. everyone cares about this more than you can possibly imagine. we are an ocean of integrity. and no matter how crazy the suggestion is that on the count of ten we will all suddenly run en masse towards the barriacades, these people are going to do it. fuckhead police or not. some things you just have to do.

courage, confidence and legitimacy come from the hundreds of delegates mobilizing inside the belle centre. they're organising and coming out to meet us. bullshit to the fences and barricades that seperate us. but these official representatives, people invited by the summit, the police are refusing to let them exit. if they try to leave they'll be arrested. and so they're peppersprayed along with the rest of us.

on the outside the police trucks roll in, seemingly oblivious to the people infront of them. an avalanche of cops. one of our friends is hit on the top of the head from behind by a police baton. people are running out from the crush with their eyes streaming. journalists scrambling everywhere. civilian police everywhere. fucking helicopters buzzing overhead. the cops are scared, and that's never a good sign. a guy climbs on top of a police van and is hit repeatedly until being pushed off. things are on the brink of getting out of hand. constant announcements play over the police PA system, in danish, english and german, telling us this is now an illegal demonstration and we're all going to be arrested if we don't immediately leave. all 3000 of us? we are international civil society. we have nowhere to go. this is the end of the world.

toes numb outside the COP15 summit..

the police push for their final assualt and we take a step back. i have no excuse. i am meek. i need the toilet too bad to get arrested. any excuse. my throat is hoarse from shouting "skam jer". the police line is five cops deep and they push the group further and further down the road, on one side is the fortress of the bella centre, UN soldiers with their guns, on the other side a large watery ditch. more cops approach from the other end of the road. the people are trapped and being slowly pushed away from the eyes of the press, who are too scared to be where they need to be (kudos to the BBC for the video footage directly infront of the police line, unfortunately no longer online, and rene fredensborg for his excellent article). i have so much respect for those amazing protesters it brings genuine tears to my eyes.

did someone shout "this is what democracy looks like"? if you want a picture of the future, just open your eyes. this is the way the world ends. behind me a journalist is applying makeup. in the distance the samba drums still beat. orange smoke fills the air.

and all of a sudden we're out of the game, walking back into town, being searched ourselves. the person ahead of us had a pedal and crank in his bag, now being heavily scrutinised over by five cops. i resist the urge to go over and tell them "it's for a bicycle".

back home, half of the minute-by-minute news sites are constantly going down, hit too hard by people who are too scared to be down there themselves. i drink some hot vegan cocoa. i notice my leg muscles are growing. i almost fall asleep following the demo online. and then i can hear the chants from our apartment (i've gotten too used to helicopters to even notice them anymore). so i'm back on my feet, running to its last known location.

it's still standing outside the radison hotel (ugliest building in the whole of copenhagen, if not denmark). here is your perfect picture of oppresion. your police state. the one photo i wish i'd captured all week. rows of riot police and riot vans. endless twinkling blue shooting through the grey to offend your retina. it's cold and getting dark, and in the middle of all this hate is a group of tired and beaten people, most of whom who have been on their feet for ten hours straight, under extreme conditions (for some the harsh weather, for all the police), and they're still all full of love.

but having been seperated from it for so long, and being greeted by this horrific vision (i'm not even exaggerating), i was hesitant in rejoining it. i didn't know the current situation or where the police were herding them. when they started crossing the bridge towards the town centre the police swapped their helmets for caps, presumably not wanting to terrify all the happy shoppers, so i decided it was safe enough to rejoin. we reached the city hall, where the ugly tentacles of capitalism have erected a green wash so large you can see it from space. i'm surprised any of us have energy left to shout "a anti anticapitalista", but that's rage for you. we all see through the gash that is 'hopenhagen'.

and from there i stumble off through the wet streets of copenhagen. still being surprised by the enormous barricades littering the centre. who the fuck do they think we are? shame on you. all of you. your children will never forgive you.

17.12.2009: so the danish people like the lommelpakke, the new laws giving police massively disproportional power for dealing with riots (although isn't it mostly deterrent based?). apparently the events of the last two weeks have shown two thirds of the (what the world now know are) useless danish people that the laws work well. the only problem is that they haven't been used against riots, in the same way that pepperspray hasn't been used in situations where the police would previously have had to resort to firearms.

using the saturday's demo as an example, the only violent people on the street that day were the police. if you disagree then you need to seriously redefine your understanding of what violence actually is. and under no definition was any moment of that demonstration remotely riotous. i counted three windows that had been damaged (you couldn't say "smashed"), thanks to a very small group of individuals. not a riot. very much a peaceful demonstration. and you don't arrest almost 1000 to stop five.

wednesday's demonstration was also 100% peaceful on behalf of the protesters, even more so than saturdays. what the danish public perceive as images of violent protesters are nothing but peaceful demonstrators protecting themselves in a peaceful manner against continual police brutality. you can't present a single example, be it photograph or video, of protester violence. and if you think you can you're not looking carefully enough. perhaps this is the media filter, witnessing events second or third hand. perhaps if you weren't so scared or obstinate you could go out and see for yourself. go and expose yourself to some doubt.

one of the daily free papers did a survey asking danish people whether they have sympathy with or could understand protesters resorting to violence. predictably 94% of people said no. if we ignore doubts about their sample group, the only real answer to the question, one not summed up by their yes, no or don't know, is "mu". there was no resorting to violence. the question is bullshit. this fucking media spin makes me so angry. all the pre-summit hype, the fear mongering, wanton sensationalism of possible violence, and there was nothing, but you just can't help but write what you wanted to write anyway.

and you weren't even there. ask emily apple or naomi klein and they'll tell you how it was on the streets (at least cops don't differentiate between innocent demonstrators and guardian journalists when they decide to punch someone in the face).

there was only one cop hurt on wednesday, and he was peppersprayed by another cop. i think that says it all.

14.12.2009: there's been too many moments in the last couple of days, i'm losing track. it's impossible to tie them together and tie them down. and i can't believe it's only been two days. so much crazy shit is happening in our city. it's like being at a festival.

so, after everything i wrote on saturday night, i feel the need to say that my experience of the police has been much better since. they know the world is watching, and they're being very careful. the nicest of the cops are smiling and being helpful, joking around with the clown army, taking cigarette breaks. but the worst of them are still just around the corner, decked out in full riot gear, with their malice contorted faces of hate. don't forget that. they're always there, just waiting for the journalists to disappear. then it's all about hassling activists, stealing equipment, making more mass arrests, and torturing prisoners.

we will not be scared away by you fuckers. we will be there on wednesday morning.

and you have the cops wearing santa hats. which is somewhat hilarious. i don't know.

on sunday we played it safe and attented the via campesina demonstration infront of the danish agriculture building. as much as i love fighting the cops, this was much more my kind of thing. international peasants, indigenous and landless people, small farmers, denouncing the industrialisation of food, specifically the pig orientated danish with their massive reliance on GMO soya grown on deforested land in south america.

a drum group began playing and walked off around the block, slowly accumulating more and more people as they went. we joined them and all of a sudden we were a spontaneous march right besides radhuspladsen and tivoli, and with an ever growing police presence. but it stayed friendly, slightly timid, and was led away from town towards the klima forum, where it was happy to disperse. it helped that the police were constantly being asked for reassurance by foreigners that they weren't about to be arrested.

then today was the no borders demo. on arrival i asked one of the cops whether the demonstration had been authorized. he smiled whilst telling me he didn't know, but that it was allowed. it was extremely unprofessional that he didn't know the exact status of the demo, but nevermind.

it was a slow march, with massive caution and mistrust coming from both sides of the line, but with lots of dancing and shouting ("anti-capitalista", it's so refreshing to be in more multinational demos), there was plenty of reggae and dubstep. the whole crowd moshing through the high street. funny looks from shoppers, frowns through their protective reinforced plate glass. we were obviously a group with intent.

the demo ended at the ministry of defense, with more shouting and swearing. the plan was to force entry into the building, but with the enourmous police presence there was zero chance of it happening. instead the demo turned into a giant party outside the parliament. until some genius/idiot managed to untether the giant orange globe that was positioned there. it rampaged around the square before being dragged off down the street towards the national gallery, taking a streetlamp down with it. everyone loved it apart from the police, who were thrown into momentary terror and confusion.

we played it cautious after that, keeping a safe distance, although still needing to move quickly a few times. the police had the whole crowd trapped at one point but everyone was able to push through their lines. what they couldn't see was the number of police vans and trucks (i shit you not, check this bastard out) just down the road. the demo began to wander, bravely crossing the bridge, closely followed by a wall of flashing blue. that was a sight. everyone disappeared into christiania, the best possible end, and we walked home through all the rows of cops. a city of twinkling blue lights.

of course there are burning barricades and molotovs during the night.

i'm almost getting used to the constant sound of helicopter. lulling me to sleep.

meanwhile the G77 walk out of negotiations, accusing the danish presidency of being undemocratic. two thirds of the NGOs aren't even being allowed into the bella centre. see a pattern emerging?

and not to mention all the talks and workshops we've been to, with time's up,marina silva (great but speaking portuguese) a crazy french guy who seemed to be very famous (jose bove), christine milne and elizabeth may.

last night on the live TV climate debate, one of the climate 'skeptics' (like naomi klein said, they're denialists, don't give them the credit of calling them skeptics) had a heartattack. that was horrible. i'd much rather watch berlusconi getting punched in the face again. and again. and again and again. etc.

and how the fuck does bjorn lomborg dare call his economic-centric bullshit project the "copenhagen consensus centre". his banner hanging in the centre of copenhagen reads "trying to cut CO2 now isn't going to work".

sleep is calling my name.

12.12.2009: it's a bit strange sitting here, feeling sunburnt (of all things), whilst people just outside our apartment are being forced to sit hand cuffed on the freezing tarmac for hours on end. take a close look at the people in these photos. do they look like violent hooligans to you?

i wasn't there. i was near the front of the march when the police cut into the back, trapping the last 900+ demonstrators. you can see in other photos that it included a large number of people clearly participating in a black bloc style action (i can only assume they didn't have a substantial plan or target, or else they wouldn't have been so visible, surroundable and arrestable). but most of the protesters clearly weren't. they were your average peaceful demonstrator. and they can now be held in cages custody for 12 hours, even though they've done nothing wrong.

so, question - what should the police have done?. apart from fucking right off, i have no answer. i'm not saying it was an uncomplicated situation. i'm just saying it was wrong.

when we arrived on the scene, a few hours later, the street was completely full of cops. there was at least 30 police vans, probably more, and they were completely blocking the view of the arrestees, from all sides. we stuck around until the newly arrived buses began taking the unlucky people out to the cages. it was only fair that they could see people were still there in solidarity.

i spent a few moments talking with two journalists, one indy and one from the mail on sunday. i was eavesdropping, trying to figure out what happened, but when they started talking about the new laws i had to join in their conversation, explaining how this indiscriminate arrest has nothing to do with those new laws (literally translated as "hooligan package"). this isn't a novel approach to policing, this is business as usual for the danish cops. but this smarmy journalist, from the fucking dailymail, he was trying so hard to link the arrests to violent actions, to christiania, any kind of sensationalism. and now i feel dirty for helping him, telling him to spell christiania ("that's what google's for you know") and such. he asked me if there was anything special about the road they were arrested on, but didn't believe when i told him it was the longest shopping street in denmark. "you're shitting me", is what he said. yep. he didn't even know it's the same area that the bella centre's in. here in copenhagen with zero research.

anyway. not to focus on the bad aspects of the demo, as the media often does (nice one BBC), but there are massive anti-democractic human rights issues that desperately need to be addressed. the second enormous failure at COP15 will be when the policing of the summit is deemed succcesful. if there isn't massive global criticism and condemnation of the new powers that the police have been granted, and the way they've been used, we're going to see this abuse more and more. when a country systematically arrests law-abiding people at legal demonstrations, terrorizing their own citizens away from protesting (which is what's happening here), you have to start questioning their democratic process.

but yes, we had a great day. we started at the klima forum where we saw vandana shiva kicking some serious ass. then to christiansborg to meet up with more people than i've ever seen in one place. and we all marched down to the bella centre (well, some of us). estimations between 30 and 100 thousand of us. 438 organizations from 67 countries. 2km of dense protest. when the front of the demo was halfway to the destination the back still hadn't left the meeting point. and we went right up to the gates, to where we'd taken a late night stroll last sunday night, only now it was buzzing with people. there were some police, but not as many as there had been protecting the fragile glass windows of mcdonalds (that's your danish tax money well spent).

anyway, it's about time amager got some action. go us.

just now we had a quick walk around the block and the police have left such a mess. you may not consider the discarded placards and broken bottles their responsibility, but there are also masses of plastic cuffs littering the pavement.

11.12.2009: i feel like i was a bit drunk last night. that'll be hjortene's fault. or more precisely, the jagermeister. i can still hear the stoner rock in my right ear. truck fighters were blinding. squashing crowdsurfers against the basement ceiling. fucking brilliant.

and we had a small amount of magic at the christiania market (or was that glogg?) it's one of those markets you go back to the next day, but now it's a haybarn and there's no sign that it was ever there. all those chandeliers and wild smells, now just pig shit and hay. except it was still there, and was just as pretty.

it's been a disaster of a day though. the first lecture we went to was awful (we didn't check what it was about, only who was talking) and then we couldn't get into any of the others (fire regulations, because thirty people trying to get into a hall that can easily accomodate them isn't a fire hazard). we fucked off to the stupid house for bad coffee. it really was bad.

then we tried the climate meeting in christiania. in a circus tent, far more apt. but no one knew what was going on and we left, no matter how fun it looked. i just needed to sleep.

and now i need to go play some spirit lifting reggae.

08.12.2009: it's not all about the climate. we've also been playing a lot of bingo. at cafe retro and studenterhuset. although i had to miss last night's bingo session in christiania to attend the opening party of the klimaforum ("the global civil society counterpart of the official UN conference"). it's a great thing they've got going on, the program is massively overwhelming, with two weeks of solid talks, workshops and events. and they're all free for everyone. last night there were some bands (the highlight being when the ice instruments prematurely began falling apart, making great crashing noises as they hit the stage, that was excellent) and a number of speakers including naomi klein, who talked a lot of sense and made me briefly happy.

it's a strange feeling in copenhagen right now. no one knows what the fuck is going to happen in the next two weeks. all this fear mongering, people too scared to even join legal demonstrations. the anti-democratic laws being rushed through that no one is doing anything about. it's like everybody is terrified. especially the cops. and that's what makes it worse.

but anyway, neither me or kenneth have won a single game yet. we totally suck at bingo. it's tragic.

what else? i don't think i've ever worn a yellow tshirt before yesterday.

and i really must mention the lasagne we baked the other day. it was the best lasagne we ever made, and it was vegan. the trick wasn't the extremely tarty tomato sauce with rather strong paprika, but the layer of deep fried and crispy aubergine. bless that beautifully hued vegetable.

the other great meal we had recently was at kate's joint, a north/east african restaurant in norrebro with a good helping of vege options. the dishes tasted so good i wanted to cry. even the piss/shit burn it gave me the next morning made me happy.

07.12.2009: so today will be the first day of COP15. i don't know to what extent this has been discussed around the world, presumably a lot, but here in denmark it's the biggest thing since COP3. and to be honest i think it's going to be about as useless. a lot of people seem to have high hopes (hopenhagen anyone? sponsored by cocacola and that coal plant we tried to shut down? when people lead, leaders actually tend to turn into dictators), getting excited about discussion and dialogue, but the whole thing is as blatant and total a farce as all the preceding summits. they've been fucking around for fifteen years now, should we really let them continue dragging us all straight down to hell? america has already said they're not ready and wont agree to anything, again, completely undermining every country actually willing to make a difference. it's just a joke.

not to mention that the UK's most despised rascist asshole is representing the EU at the summit. which idiot let a facist climate change denier join the EU parliament's environmental commitee?

all the decisions have already been made. sure, we'll have five days of brilliance, but then the ministers and leaders will arrive to backtrack and fuck everything up. there's no reason to presume this summit will differ from the tried and tested route every other summit has taken before it. whether it's the world's richest, the self-designated leaders and protectors, pissing from their lofty heights onto the world's poorest, or representatives from all corners putting up a pretence of being able to save us from them.

they have zero authority and zero legitmacy. none of them are willing to seriously discuss what needs to be done, and that's why people will be taking to the streets in these following days, despite the danish government's best efforts to scare people away. during the last couple of weeks legislation has been rushed through that doubles the time police can hold people under preventative arrest (now twelve hours, even if you've done nothing), and massively increases fines for inhibiting police work and not dispersing. and don't forget that you can be arrested in denmark for simply carrying a scarf if there's a demonstration happening anywhere nearby. and we have it cold.

yep. maybe it's time you put the fist back in 'pacifist'.