My mum came back from the breakfast buffet a little confused. I do not recall her exact witty words but they must have included "bread in", "toaster", "contraption", "lost forever", "life of its own" "possibly automatically delivered to the table".

It was one of those Reith Hall-esque contraptions - indeed, not so much a toaster as a Bertha-inspired flame thrower. A brief description: A wire conveyor belt transports any unfortunate inputted items through a dark and mysterious toasting chamber, hopefully to be outputted abruptdely through some unknown orafice well out of sight of your hungry eyes. Ah, memories of bleary eyed students looking on nonplussed as their only meal of the working day disintegrates in cruels wisps of smoke, their only crimehaving been being a little too thickly sliced to make it out of said orafice.

I digress. The toaster in question was similar but different. For one thing it was even slower than Reith's.

"You'll be able to control the speed of it though" I said confidently, recalling Reith's toaster's three controls: conveyor speed, top hotness, and bottom hotness (some people like variety i guess. Note that there was no science to mastering the equilibrium of these three controls, indeed, I don't think there was even an art to it..)

My ma looked apologetic. "Umm.. No. There was one dial and that was set to 'toast' or something."
"What was the something?"
"...um... 'Shoes'."

So here you have it folks:

The bizarre love child of a toaster, an electronic shoes dispenser and one designer's sick mind. And perhaps my mother's tenuous grasp of Norwegian..

"But the tree huggers were trying to save trees, Roy, they weren't just hugging them for the sake of it."

This disappointed me slightly. A lot in fact, as I had the previous day surmounted my towering but irrational fear of high voltage to hug an electricity pylon.

Look: In the 70s the hippies hugged trees, in the noughties we hug pylons. Its a beautiful symmetry, a postmodern OK computerish comment on the state of our lives, and particularly the state of the Trondheim suburbs whose secure, homely estates and cul-de-sacs are ruthlessly scythed, divided by the power grid techinician's pen. I told him this.

He pointed out subtly that this was rubbish. He didn't say as much, but I realise now that I do spout a lot of crap. Please tell me, I need to know.

As soon as I think of a reason to save electricity pylons I'll show him..

Sentinels

Although theSlog does not condone the hugging of electricity pylons, it points out that if you get close enough to a pylon to seriously consider doing this, the structure is probably not live so it is probably safe. Probably. No liability accepted.

Too much to do, too little time. All is quiet on the web at the mo, seemingly simultaneous calls to work for all, bean, dawg, socks. Time for some weblogging however.

Radiohead. New site. tales from the cryptic...

a couple of new pics at theSound but nothing too special, other than my lovely sister in law and brother. Expect more photos over the coming days/weeks if anyone cares.

Claim to fame: Franz Ferdinand rehearsed in the same warehouse where I did with dBass last year. I sense their growing popularity from here without knowing that much about them. Not dBass, Franz Ferdinand. dBass are going strong apparently with a gig in QM planned and one in the soundhaus i think. Imiss it. I'm in line to be playing again come August. Anyway, Franz Ferdinand. They recently edited a n edition of G2 with some vaguely interesting commentary on blogging, though I'm not sure if I concur fully with the views expressed in the article.

Back to work. I miss eyes of a blue dog.

Tony has written some kind of pledge to arms in the Observer. Quite well written I think. Composed but scathing in his accusations, overwhelmingly towards the media, particularly the "appallingly one-sided ... Western reporting" and "al-Jazeera, the radical Arab TV station". tut tut tut. We woudn't want that now would we, vicar?

But really, "There is a battle we have to fight, a struggle we have to win and it is happening now in Iraq."? Which movie do you think you're the hero in Tony?

I guess I'm humbled that Mr. Blair has made the effort to come down to our level honouring us with his opinion in the likes of the Observer. Yes thats what I am, humbled.


Vaclav has returned from his Moroccan escapades (czech out his Trondheim pics too).
Particularly typical Vaschek moments: 1 2 and 3 . Sorry I'm not allowed to link to the pics. Anyone fancy a trip to Morocco, the coolest looking place, some time?

I'm back from the enormous trip. It was good. driving, cruises ships, eating, lazing, eating, oohing, aahing, you get the picture. Hence no pictures here.

Snow once again yesterday. We built a snow castle with integrated mini bar for enjoying the Glenfiddich. Thank you Daddy and Mummy and Ayla. Happy Easter Monday one and all.

I'm about to go to Bergen to meet my parents and my sister for a week's Easter touring of, it would seem, all of Norway. I leave you with a link to some of my friend Greg's pictures of our lives here in Trondheim. He also provides explanations if you have time..

God Påske!

R