Wow, there is nothing quite like a public denunciation of dignity...

...to trigger an outpouring of love and sympathy. Ever since I stopped pretending that everything was okay and started complaining like a little bitch, people have been showering me with care and attention. I've recieved food, visits and offers of accomodation elsewhere. Why is it that we love to hate the strong, but love the weak? I think that little bit of irrationality there has much to do with the explosive proliferation of humans across the globe. Although it is most definitely to my advantage at the moment, I kind of doubt that it is purely a good thing.

My good friend Lars treated me to a rock concert on Saturday. There was this spare ticket for Motorpsycho laying around, and in vein with the latest trend of being nice to Henning, it was given to me free of charge. Not just that, but he and Goffe acted like I was doing them a favour by staying sober and driving (like I could afford to get drunk), and kept buying me soft drinks throughout the evening. Yep, everyone is laying it on thick, but as I have no shame, I am also unable to cringe. Good times.

Motorpsycho were... fucking amazing. I don't think I can put it a lot more eloquently than that. They're one of those bands who don't really do a lot for me when played on the stereo, but who come together to demonstrate their worth in a live concert. Playing a 15/16 beat, mixing it up with a few bars of 17/16, throwing in some asynchronous tempo changes... that doesn't impress so much on a record as when you are witness to how they do it in real time, no second takes and tight as a drum. The crowd was also pretty amazing. Motorpsycho are the type of band who scare away all the hipsters, but retain a hardcore following of people who apreciate them for what they do best. It was by no means a get-up-and-jump type of concert, but with Rockefeller sold out to deeply involved fans there was a strong mood in the room. At the end of it, I was beat up, drained and blissed out.

We went in an hour early, so that we could catch a glimpse of the prize ceremony for the FIS World Championship. Or so we thought. I wouldn't have gone on my own, but I defer to my friends, especially when they bring me to concerts. We started hitting the outskirts of the crowd at the central station, but it was loosely packed enough that we could move around until we followed Karl Johan to Stortinget. From that point, the crowd was dense, unfriendly and outright nasty, most of the way across to the royal castle. There was a lot of active elbow use, as fathers were desperately trying to drag their families to the front. The scene was like something from a movie shipwreck, only with less anguished wailing and more forced cheering. Luckily, nobody has mastered the passive elbow quite like myself, so I got through it all in one piece. We never caught a glimpse of the stage, though.

There has been little boating going on lately, mostly due to my economic predicament. I've been trying to produce some boating related text, but it is not coming so easy. While my piece on the SS Norway has been one of the least popular in my entire blogging history, the positive feedback I've been getting on it has come from some highly rated sources, including people who worked there. Thus, I decided to make a similar piece on the Bourbon Dolphin accident. It should have been easy. The SS Norway thing just dropped out of me in a couple of hours, and the accident report didn't piss me off nearly as much as the one on Bourbon Dolphin. However, once I picked up the report for a quick re-read before I started writing, the process ground to a screeching halt. The report is teeming with troubling issues, and at 132 pages it is not very long, but once you start reading it, you'll realize that it's a high-density brick. That has got to be why it never got the media attention it deserved.