More dirt and pain loving wedding planners on BBC, please!

Not having the energy or focus to actually write a decent post now, I will refer to my friend Christina's post on the Inner Man. We discussed it shortly Friday night over some bison vodka and Inuit throat singing, and concluded that inner man is a weird personality trait of (at least) female archaeologists.

Not working in archaeology any more, but having done my share of brick laying and dirt shovelling this weekend, I have too had a recent encounter with the inner man.

Oh, now I made myself thinking of being on excavation. I do miss it sometimes. Staggering around with a fully loaded wheelbarrow in the early morning...it's a certain kind of magic. And pain. And level of dirt under your fingernails. And cuts and bruises. And solitude.

I wonder whether choosing archaeology as your field of work is actually making a living out of your inner man? In HCI research it's not particularly useful. And would it not be difficult to live side by side with your inner man working as a wedding planner or a personal shopper?

Hmm..an idea for a fun future experiment or BBC TV series.

Seriously wasting time online...and then The Dawn of Projector Enhanced Flashing.

I was supposed to spend this week's peace working hard on the thesis. I managed to open Word and look at it...twice.

Seriously disappointing even for me.

To kill time I've surfed all sorts of wacky DIY/arts/tech pages and have been feeling stressed with all things I could do if I had more time and skills.
But then I stumbled over a 'Diaper cake to hide the Champagne' (diaper cake, WTF?), a 'cozy carpet made out of old t-shirts' (decorating with t-shirt patchwork?), and 'bird house made of chopsticks' (...?!?) and suddenly realized how in sane (though no doubt creative) many DIY'ers really are.

Which is why it almost came as no surprise when I found a flasher who apparently has tossed away the cotton coat in favour for projector enhanced flashing (and yes, he is butt naked at the picture...pure naked skin , duct tape, and car battery).
I honestly don't know what to think about it...I hate flashers as much as the next sane person but it looks actually pretty funny. I'm wondering if his incentive is turning a perv hobby into some kind of tech/art performance to avoid trouble with the law?

Exit cucumber Frog, welcome raspberry caipirinha and Pompon Finkelstein

Okay, it was not literally for ever, the cucumber frog. It sort of started smelling after a week in the fridge...
So, now I'm frog-less again and trying to cope with it.

Nothing is really happening - Kaare is away somewhere, it's 8 pm and I'm still fiddling around with the thesis. It's okay really, 'cause I am accompanied by my second raspberry caipirinha and some great old Buddha Bar tracks I dug up.

Kaare is going on holiday next week and I am starting to wonder how my health will cope with that. Seem to remember how I wrote my bachelor's thesis locked up alone in my flat with some bottles of Whiskey, a tiny mountain of cigarettes and some Swedish Knäckebröd.

Well, it went surprisingly okay that last time, so there is no need to freak out or go shopping for real food.

Who says diamonds are forever ? People who never got a frog carved out of a cucumber, that's who!

Things have been quiet here because I finally had a break-through with my thesis writing. It's actually starting to interest me and I no longer have the irresistible urge to take a nap every time I open 'ThesisOfDoom_versionN.doc'

Good for me.

The reason for me neglecting the thesis now is twofold:

First: I wanted to share the wonderful pictures of a present I got from Kaare. What you really want when you are sound asleep at night is your semi-drunk boyfriend to come home from a night out with the girls from work carrying a crowned frog he carved out of vegetables. For you only.

That is so sweet/weird/scary/funny/vegan that it made me speechless (almost).

As you can see from the pictures it has a 'mundane every-day crown' (cucumber), a 'party crown' (carrot) and a very festive 'galla crown' (mushroom). Vegan accessories - I love it!

Second: Thanks to Christina Seehusen I found this great website that bitches over bad archaeology. I must say, I did not realize that there were SO many areas one could bitch about archaeology-wise. It's hours of fun, I tell you.

[Trailer: Bad Archaeology is the brainchild of a couple of archaeologists who are fed up with the distorted view of the past that passes for knowledge in popular culture. We are unhappy that books written by people with no knowledge of real archaeology dominate the shelves at respectable bookshops. We do not appreciate news programmes that talk about ley lines (for example) as if they are real.

In short, we are Angry Archaeologists!]

Why not ban girls in sexist princess outfits

Sunday was crepes day.

When you don't really enjoy 5th league football or have an unhealthy desire to travel to London JUST to see Wembley Stadium you got to find something else to do.

So, well stocked with cider, beer, Polish chocolates and stacks of Malo's gooood crepes we sat out for a classy dinner. However, we ended up youtubing Polish/French/Danish disco horrors until 02 am. I wonder what became of my well-prepared playlist of NuTango and smoothe jazz?

But it was dead educational, I tell you. After watching a certain Polish female singer who can't sing, I have started thinking about whether the Polish EU membership is irreversible.

French Dalida won our disco hearts with her 'Laissez-moi danser'. Not because of her performance but because her Village People-ish dancers made Tomek remark: 'All of them would get killed in Poland'. Not surprisingly, Brødrene Bisp (Pope Brothers) got the same remark. They are a sensitive people, the Poles.

To make all Danes feel proud I shared Tommy Seebach's classic Apache-interpretation, which directly led to a discussion of moustaches and whether they can ever ever EVER be cool.

In France, Poland and Denmark the answer is definitely 'no'.

However, I know for a fact (or rather, I know from a short Reuter's note in some inferior Danish newspaper) that in India policemen with moustaches get paid more than their face hair-less colleagues. This is presumably because a moustache adds to your authority and thus makes you a better policeman. Like tweed suits and elbow patches do for researchers, you understand.

It is fun to think about how one thing or behaviour can be interpreted so differently in different cultures or contexts. Let's take a totally random example: head scarves. I read that back in Denmark we are (still) discussing head scarves, the people who wear them, what they symbolize (if anything), and where (if at all) people should be allowed to wear them.

Everyone who has followed Danish politics knows that when politicians talk about 'head scarves' they actually do not talk about a piece of cloth worn on top of the head. What they really are talking about is fashion.

Seriously a person cannot be 'against scarves' per se (OK, of course you could, but it's like being against people wearing green or people wearing jeans, and that is just stupid).

My interpretation is that the Danish government (or the dark corners hereof) are against certain ways of wearing a scarf (as in certain ways of wearing green...oh, wait, that is also stupid).

You see, worn the right way a headscarf is urban and street fashion. The superpower of fashion, Belfast Telegraph, nails the trend with this razor-sharp observation:
Immortalised by Audrey Hepburn, adopted by Kate Moss - and now the hottest accessory on the catwalk. (see here for full article).

Look at the picture of dead cool woman in yellow here. If you catch yourself thinking 'but that is not what we mean...these women are wearing their scarves differently', I want you to thoroughly think about the consequences of that thought.

I am not sure Dansk Folkeparti will buy into arguments founded on street fashion so just to make a point I include a picture of a well-known headscarf-clad woman, who is neither a Muslim or terrorized by her Muslim husband. It looks dead ugly, that scarf, but it is hardly illegal.

But should it be?

Let's say that we want to legislate about how people dress. Why not - we are ruled by law in any other aspects, and already we are not allowed to wear hats at demonstrations. Then I am just wondering: are we really most concerned with how women wear scarves? Can't we find something more disturbing to ban? I do not have the answers, I'm just wondering, here...

Pianos and trumpets make me want to start smoking

So, last week I had Harry Potter-style lunch at Lorna’s college. To underline that Cambridge is an impressively celebrity-filled spot, Paul Mellar, professor in prehistoric archaeology, popped by during lunch for a chat on how HCI and archaeology are related. (And yes, we are talking the Star Carr man. THE Star Carr! THE STAR CARR!)

After the latest news on water logged wood from the Palaeolithic we talked a bit about the concept of bringing HCI-people and archaeologists together for a workshop. Apparently Lorna has been contemplating this for some time.

I think we managed to convince Paul that it would not be an entirely waste of time. Of course the question remains: what would we do in such a workshop? I’m quite sure that HCI people would find it interesting to listen to how archaeologists interpret prehistoric life based on signs and traces, but will archaeologists have any clou or interest in studies of how people use modern technology?

Or will they simply get lost in the weird wonders/horrors of domestic robots, chicken petting machines and hamster computer games?

Along completely unrelated tracks: Sunday provided a strange concert experience. The strange mix of piano, trumpets, kids on violins and really bad rock’n’roll dancers is best coined by Fabio’s remark ‘It makes me want to start smoking’.

I think it’s his subtle way of saying: Premature death no longer scares me.

To push the limits further we are now contemplating going to a Andrew Lloyd Webber-style LOTR musical in London. If you dare, try Gollum’s song here.

(Yes, I know that the pictures in this post are totally un-related to the subject, but I've been discussing knitwear for two pub nights in a row and have decided to move on. Counting from now),

Today's lesson: Chivalry is an outdated concept, it is a stupid French idea.

This weekend it was St. George's day, and I must say, the re-enactment of the beating of the dragon was more fun that I had dared expect.

To fill you in on the story (as told by the announcer and enacted by volunteers in costumes):

First, poor villagers were terrorised by an evil Saracen who threatened them in his pretty heavy Scottish accent. To quote the cape-clad villain: 'I'm dead evil, man - I'll eat ye all for bloody breakfast ye know'.

Well, the villagers told George who then had a pretty bad clash with the Saracen. And died. Then, we - the audience - had to bring George back form the dead by cheering and yelling. And the evil Saracen was kicked back to Scotland.

The villagers were happy.

Until a tiny Godzilla-clone dropped by to feast on their maidens. And terrify them with the flapping of his wings and the dancing of his Godzilla dance.

Of course they would not stand for it, the villagers, and they called for good old George.

He punched the dragon in the face and it fell over.

And this is where it gets fun...

The villagers piled on top of the dragon, kicking it, biting it and jumping on it. Because, as we had learned during some lame military demonstrations earlier:

'Chivalry is an outdated concept. It is a stupid French idea. We don't use it because we want to win'.

To this quote the volunteer soldiers demonstrated the stabbing of an imaginary enemy (my guess is a frog) that was lying down. They did not show the planting of a knife in someone's back, but I'm sure they know how to.

Anyway, the villagers kicked Godzilla's butt and danced on its grave while the sheep were creating a sheep pyramid and the public went mad.

---Thanks to Malo for providing the pictures. If it wasn't for his stupid French chivalry he would probably have helped the Brits beat up Godzilla with his camera. But, alas....---