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An illustrated regular |
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Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Lazy? Hmm?
I'm procrastinating. This is not a good time to be procrastinating. It's half past 11 pm and I still have 3 1/2 books left to read of Paradise Lost. I gave up on Aeropagitica. This is for tomorrow's BritLit II lecture, which starts at 10 am. I am so tempted to just read till I fall asleep and then finish it for the final exam... the teacher is gonna tell us all about it tomorrow anyway, I only need to recognise the text and know some intellectual stuff to write a short essay about it, should it come up on the final exam.
This is the excuse of the Lazy Student, which I am becoming. No, actually, that's not true. I haven't finished the reading for this course because I've been TOTALLY busy reading 50 pages of Philip Sidney's Old Arcadia (which kinda reads like something he wrote on an acid trip... a young man falls in love with a woman so he becomes a transvestite? WTF?) for Renaissance Prose, which is also tomorrow, right after the BritLit II lecture.
So there. Not so lazy after all... I just needed my internet dose for the day!
Monday, October 20, 2008
Iceland Airwaves '08 - Highlights
Young Knives
Jeff who?
Munich
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Sunday, October 19, 2008
People that I hate
Now, I know a lot of smokers personally who are all very nice people (I pretend not to know people who aren't very nice...), but the ones I've just been writing about? HATE them.
+Tall people who just HAVE to stand in front of me at concerts
+Teenagers and high school/college students in general. Get away from me!
I have also found out which is THE rudest nation. I have met many people of many different nationalities, and, having compared them all, I've concluded that MY people, the ICELANDIC people, are the rudest in the world. If I weren't Icelandic myself, I'd hate us.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
My famous family
I didn't think it could get any bigger - I mean, the entire village of Þingeyri knows my grandparents, and every true Icelandic bookworm has heard of/read something by my mother.
But now it has been topped. My uncle and grandfather have been interviewed for the Wall Street Journal (online)! Obviously it is related to the so-called credit crunch crisis (I personally think it's much simpler to say the Depression, but the alliteration is just too good for the press NOT to use it). Read it for yourself. And there are pictures too!
p.s. I only want to criticize one thing about this article. My inner copy-editor thinks that this sentence: "At 17, he began fishing. "There were a lot of guys my age from the farms who went out to sea," Mr. Kristjansson said" would sound and look much better if the word "guys" were replaced with "boys." And I'm not just saying this because it would SOUND better, but also because I know my grandad and the word he must have used would definitely be better translated into "boys." Besides, what 78-year-old would ever use the word "guys" in a sentence? |
Friday, October 10, 2008
I bet the bankers of Iceland wouldn't find that funny...
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Rock. On.
And next week:
Rock. Even More. On.
These are hard times in Iceland, so let's deal with it with some rock! |
Monday, October 06, 2008
Gjörningaveður
Nú er allt í flippi á Íslandi. Fjármálakreppa og hvaðeina - ég ætla ekkert að fara nánar út í það; ef þú skilur tungumálið sem ég er að skrifa á, þá veistu nákvæmlega hvað ég er að tala um.
Það hefur þá eflaust ekki heldur farið framhjá þér að forsætisráðherra okkar, Geir H. Haarde (sem fór í sama gaggó og ég og lítur ennþá út eins og hann gerði á bekkjarmyndinni sinni í 9. bekk) ávarpaði þjóðina í beinni á RÚV, mbl.is, visir.is o.s.frv. klukkan 16 í dag. Svona "don't panic"-skilaboð; það var að minnsta kosti það eina sem ég skildi af þessu. Stjórnmálamenn eru snillingar í því að tala óljóst, þó að framsögnin sé vel í lagi (örugglega með svona "teleprompter" fyrir framan sig).
Það vill þannig til að klukkan 16 á mánudögum þá er ég í miðjum Beat-skálda tíma uppi í skóla, en kennararnir eru svo voðalega líbó (með öðrum orðum, óskipulagðir) að þeir buðust til að leyfa okkur að horfa á ávarpið á skjávarpanum. Enginn afþakkaði, enda er íslenska þjóðin gjörsamlega að fara á taugum útaf þessari fjármálakreppu, og fátækir námsmenn eru engin undantekning.
Þar sem ég var í tíma var ég með glósubókina opna fyrir framan mig og þegar forsætisráðherra kom með nokkrar góðar línur stóðst ég ekki mátið að skrifa þær niður.
,,... sem standast þau gjörningaveður sem nú eru að hefjast."
Þetta þótti mér sérstaklega viðeigandi þegar ég leit út um gluggann af 3. hæð Árnagarðs og sá rigninguna lemja rúðurnar og trén fyrir framan bílastæði Háskólabíós öll hallandi til vinstri.
,,Við munum standast storminn."
Þetta minnti mig á að í gærkvöldi/morgun var einmitt gefin út stormviðvörun fyrir suður- og vesturland. Velti því fyrir mér hvort sú viðvörun hefði haft eitthvað með kreppuna að gera, en mundi svo að ég var nánast fokin út í Tjörnina á leiðinni í skólann í morgun, þannig að veðrið er væntanlega bara að passa uppá að allt passi saman og hægt verði að bókmenntagreina þetta allt í framtíðinni. Að veðrið endurspegli ástandið í landinu - ekki ósvipað óveðrinu í King Lear, sem var raunar til þess að kóngurinn sjálfur missti vitið. Við skulum þó ekki hafa áhyggjur af því að Geir klikkist, hann virtist sallarólegur í ávarpinu!
Svo aðeins til að snúa útúr, þá vil ég benda listafólki á að nú er einmitt veðrið til að vera með gjörninga! |
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Happy things
Two happy things happened to the family at Hallveigarstígur today (mine, that is). My mother has already told the world about the first, and more important/happy actually, thing, so I'll take care of announcing the other one.
Today Mummy Dearest got fan mail. From France! And her books haven't even been translated into French (yet...)! But the guy wrote that he used to live in Iceland so he understands Icelandic. Yes, it was a guy... ;) Obviously he didn't know the address, so he just wrote her name, c/o Mál & menning (the publishing house, and its address).
She's too modest to tell anyone herself, but yay for her! |
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Nigella who?
Wednesdays are special days. You see, Wednesdays are my cooking days - when I get to be the one who is praised for the good food, and my family thanks me for dinner.
Today I made a dish that I personally love making - it's called Creole Chicken. It is actually so... the only word I can think of... elaborate, that it really is a Saturday dinner party dish, as opposed to Wednesday-whatever-food. But since it's time for me to learn to cook something other than omelettes, cauliflower soup and tortillas (my specialties), Wednesday-whatever-food sometimes has to make way for something cookbook-requiring. I have actually made Creole Chicken before, but the last time I made it was when we were living in Edinburgh. So it's been a while.
Creole Chicken is, as the name indicates, a chicken dish. You cut a whole chicken up into 8 pieces, roll them in wheat, fry them in a mixture of melted butter and olive oil (though it was so much that I actually had to pour some of it out, so it wouldn't be too fat! Those Creoles...), and then you fry bits of ham, onion, garlic and tomatoes with them. Spice it with timian, which makes it look kinda cool and restaurant-y, and salt and pepper of course. Then you put the whole thing on a plate, but leave a few bits of ham and onion (which tend to stick to the frying pan anyway) and pour 150 ml of white wine (mmm) on the pan, and then let it boil till all the alcohol has evaporated and only the taste is left. Then pour it over the chicken on the plate, garnish with parsley, and voila, you've got yourself a modern Creole dish, which tastes increeeedibly good. I think I made my best Creole Chicken so far. This is definitely a dish that I will be putting on my permanent menu.
That's my Nigella-entry for the day, I recommend you try that dish - just let me know if you want the whole recipe!
p.s. The recipe I use only has 3 sliced tomatoes - the one on the photo looks a bit heavy on those. But it looks delicious anyway. |
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