high culture

Things went a bit weird after my last blog entry. It’s been tricky for me to settle back into life as “normal” (whatever that means) after such an intense experience. I’ve had this weird sense of emptiness for the last few days, even though things have been brilliant with my friends. I’ve never been particularly good at navigating this lull. But I’m keeping myself distracted through an array of expensive frivolities, including, amongst eating obscene amounts of SuperBrownieCake, seeing my first live band and movie – BORAT - in yonks.

So last night I went with Brad And Chad From Oregon (yes, I know, it’s too cute for words) to Malmo to see the Brian Jonestown Massacre. For the uninitiated, they’re the band that wasn’t The Dandy Warhols in the rock doco DIG! All I knew of them before was from this unflattering portrayal of them – a rollercoaster of drugs, fistfights, egos and temper tantrums, with the lead singer Anton in a downward spiral of hellish proportions. I was pretty convinced that they’d all died off from mutually-assured destruction in the early 2000s sometime. But they were resurfacing in Malmo, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see a brawl (violence!) in Sweden.

The Malmo Kulturbolaget is quite the happening establishment. It’s a cross between The Prince Of Wales bandroom and the Gershwin room of the Espy (for those in the know) but packed full of stunning young indie types swivelling around laconically, buying overpriced beer and eyeing each other off. The band came on and put their foots in their mouths at every possible opportunity…giving a Hitler salute before thanking the fair citizens of Malmo for coming to watch them that night – in GERMAN; made unfavourable comparisons between Norway and Sweden – the WRONG way around! All aside they put on a good performance and when the stage was cleared, the moshpit became a dancefloor and the beautiful indie types + us danced for the next 3 hours to motown. We left when the lights came on and hung out in the felafel shop until they kicked us out, then in exhausted silence back to Lund just in time to see the sun lightening up again.

My body clock is hence all fucked up and I’ll be kicking around till the early hours of the morning, just mooching. We’ve finally finished the essay on same-sex couples in Scandinavia. I have learnt a lot about Scandinavian society (which I guess was the point) but I have also learnt that I hate group assignments. They’re crazy about them here but I don’t see the attraction. It gets done in the end - it’s just in the meantime I end up bitter because I feel like I’m doing all the work, that I’m not being understood and my very last ballpoint that I stole from the Forex in Oslo Centralen breaks into four because I threw it at the wall.

So there's the Victorian state election on that the moment. Well, soonish - 25th of November. I am thinking of boycotting the Victorian Electoral Commission for making the whole overseas voting shebang so damn tricky. Before I went to Russia it said information would be up on the website soon telling us what to do - now that I'm back it apperas that it's too late to register. It's all so confusing. And i'm so unmotivated - state politics is the furtherest thing from my mind, especially since Labor is, of course, going to romp it in again. Regardless, best of luck to them all.