...The Ardent Awaited Land

The I re-read my last post and it wasn't that funny really, so I'll try to make this one better.

On Friday, I forgot to mention, Atli and I were standing on the site, gossiping, when Bjarki stuck his head out of the basement and shouted us over. 'Come and look at this cat!' he said. 'Ooooh' I thought 'I like cats, maybe one has got on to site and it's a friendly little mog that needs some love.' Atli and I hurried over to the basement excitedly to pet the little kitty. Imagine my disappointment when we were confronted with the sight of the Fish Bone Expert (or whatever she's called) cutting up the recently deceased corpse of a cat she'd found somewhere. It wasn't really what I was expecting. In fact I have no idea why a Fish Bone Expert was cutting up a cat, maybe to find fish bones in its stomach. Yesterday Igor told me she was cutting up the bodies of a duck and a swan, she'd procured from the pond. As far as I was aware killing Swans was illegal. At least I think it is in England, unless you're the Queen and you need their necks to wipe your arse on, or whatever it is she does with them.

Iceland has descended into anarchy, with the Government being dissolved, the protesters have won. Instead of going home they were all still out yesterday banging drums in celebration this time! Of course Björgvin was there, banging the lampposts like there was no tomorrow. This time without his scarf disguise, no need for disguises when Big Brother is no longer watching you.

I mentioned that I saw Elephant over the weekend (the film, not the animal, do try to keep up at the back.), it's excellent. I recommend it to everyone. If you don't know it's based on the Colombine Killings and has a largely unknown cast of kids. The direction is amazing especially the final tracking shot that goes on for maybe five minutes.

Duncan is back today so I handed over the reigns of frustration to him. It's now his job to tell people not to walk on cleaned areas, no matter how long ago they were cleaned. I can go back to listening to my MP3 player and trowelling endless layers of shit...

Bowling for Columbine

OK, so I haven't said what the protests were about. Well, here we go. The Icelandic government that were at the centre of the economic crisis have refused culpability for the disaster that has left many people out of work and destroyed peoples savings. In the UK ministers would have been fired or even resigned should such a thing occurred. Here in Iceland it is not so, no one has accepted blame or been made an example of. The main reason for this is, because Iceland is such a small country everyone knows each other and everything is interconnected. The Ministers are related to the bankers and so no one wants to fire each others relatives. It is totally corrupt and the public are just coming round to the idea that demonstration is a good way to show the anger they feel.

In my news, we had a site outing to go bowling on Friday, organised by Lilja and Margret. My first time bowling and I don't really have a clear memory of it, but I guess I won. Afterwards I kept Mark up til two in the morning drinking and talking shit. The poor fucker had to get up at four for his plane...

I spent Saturday in town watching more demonstrations until the evening where I watched three DVDs, Elephant, The Wickerman and Twelve Monkeys. I went out with Angelos and did a pub crawl, so Sunday was spent recovering from that until Roz and Duncan came back from the UK. It was Roz´s birthday so we all went out for a meal at the Geyser Bistro, which was very nice indeed.

I am still computer-less so I have to write this at work which means the posts will be a bit shorter.

Burn the Althingi!

Yesterday things hotted up, Angelos and I went over to the protests after work. There must have been over a thousand people there, banging drums and various noise making objects. Later in the evening, it got violent, people began stoning the Police line and two officers were seriously hurt. Their blood is on the hands of the politicians, as Hranfkell said. The Police reacted with tear gas and pepper spray but the protests carried on until the early hours again. This morning there are maybe thirty or so people gathered in front of the Althingi, with a Police line in full riot gear.

The Prime Minister of Iceland, Geir Haarde, appeared on TV last night and was defending his government's position on the whole crisis. He was of the impression that the people had voted him in, so therefore the people were still behind his party. Take a look out of the fucking window, Geir!!

Reykjavik is Burning!!

as promised here is the latest post from the front line of the Reykjavik protests. It all kicked off yesterday about one o'clock, where we heard chanting outside the Althingi, yesterday was the opening of parliament after the Christ's Mass break. Gathering our hats a few of us made for the parliament building, where the police had cordoned off the front of the place with barrier tape. Just like Iceland, a jogger ran through the Police cordon and in front of all the protesters who had gathered banging various pots and pans. It didn't take long for the barrier tape to be ripped down and the crowd to converge on the building front. The egg throwing and snowballing started pretty soon after that.

Presently a woman jumped up on a bollard and told everyone to go around the back of the building. We all did and found that there were no police at all round there. Everyone was banging on the glass windows and I was caught up in the moment and joined in along with Angelos. It was great to be part of something so big. The Police arrived in riot gear and forced the crowds back with pepper spray and heavy handed brutality. Fucking fascists. But there were still people in the garden throwing snowballs at the building and banging on the windows at the back. Everybody seemed to have an implement for banging on and some guy even brought a drum kit in order to disrupt the parliament session.

It went on all afternoon and into the early morning by all accounts. The whole thing was organised by a new group of protesters, who go around in ski masks or with their faces covered by scarves. They are a lot more 'direct action' than the earlier protesters. I think this is great, the time for peaceful protest is over. The Government haven't listened to the voice of the people, no matter how loud they shout.

I was watching the news report later in the evening and who should pop up in the report, banging on the windows? Yours truly! I've now been on TV in at least four countries; Iceland, the UK, Japan and Canada! Maybe that's my new calling.

Donar's Oak

My computer died on Thursday, I brought it into work so Igor could have a look at it and he took it home for the weekend to test if it was just fucked or really fucked. Turns out it's fucked, so Hrappi took it into his local Computer repair shop Koporvogur, the cheapest one in Iceland, apparently. They didn't seem to understand the concept of the word cheap and told him (who told me) that it would cost approximately one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds to repair. I think my response was somewhere along the lines of 'Fuck that shit...', so now I don't have a computer to while away my evenings with. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Roz and Duncan left for a week so I had the house to myself and I spent Friday evening in the company of General Atli (As he now wants to be known) playing Axis and Allies D-Day and eating Pitsa. I played the Germans and held the American forces at Omaha Beach, just like in real life, but eventually, airstrikes and lack of reinforcements led to an Allied victory with St Lo falling in the last turn to the Yanks. again Atli was the victor and I am beginning to think I am losing my touch. It's like the last days of the Reich all over again.

I drowned my misery with several cans of booze after Atli left and watched the rest of Seinfeld Series Eight. I awoke quite late on Saturday morning and headed into town to pick up some booze for Mark and Sarah's arrival. They were coming to stay for the week and the house was dryer than it was when the Jesus Freak ex-alcoholic lived there. I bought some booze and a Johnny Cash CD and a DVD in the sales at a record shop.

Mark and Sarah appeared Saturday evening and I showed them the local swimming pool; mainly the hot pots. Then we went out for a meal at the Indian place Margret had recommended before. Again, a great meal. A few drinks later we headed back to the house where Mark and I sat up drinking and talking shit about shit.

On Sunday I took the two of them round Reykjavik, I dropped them off at a Vegan Cafe, where we all had Vegan soup with bananas in it. Make your own mind up about this... I didn't really want to spend my Sunday afternoon tramping round Reykjavik, so I headed back home. Sunday evening was spent in the cold comfort of Icelandic TV. Mainly Britain's Next Top Model.

At work on Monday we found a Whale skull, the first I have ever seen, excited? I nearly shit. Today we found another one!! Holy crap. What is weird is that both are in association with dog skulls. I'll leave you to ponder on the meaning of all this....

STOP PRESS!! The opening of the Althingi today was interrupted with protests all round the building. The Icelanders took to the streets and made their voices heard!! It´s been going on since one today and is still showing no signs of stopping! Brilliant I say! get the people out on the streets, everyone is out making noise! I´ll post more on this tomorrow!

Aduatuza

What can be said about this week? What can I tell you? well let's start at the beginning. Monday is a good place to begin I guess. We had a site meeting that lasted for two and a half hours and the main achievement of it was that we sorted out who would be washing up the cups at the end of each day. We then carried on with the work in Area C, i.e. cleaning off more dumping layers. We also had a new addition to the team in the shape of a fish bone expert. I can't remember what the real name for fish bone experts is or be bothered to look it up. Do it yourself if you're that way inclined. It's your life that you're wasting, not mine. Anyhoo, she now wants the entire tent sampling for fish bone. I told Vala I'd do the fish bone report;

'Small Fish: 134678 fragments.
Medium Fish: 467890 Fragments
Big Fish: 123314 Fragments.

Conclusion: People in the old days ate fish in Reykjavik.'

That'll be 50,000 Kroner please. Can I have it in Dollars though, it's a much more stable currency? Thanks.

Atli came over on Monday night for a game or two of Memoir 44, the game I bought a while back. I told him 'It's easy to learn, any idiot will be able to play it, so you should have no problem.' My over confidence was my weakness, he was such an idiot he beat me three times to nothing.

Tuesday passed with no incident to speak of. Actually it was so incidental that I don't remember anything that happened at all. No, a complete blank. Wednesday evening was passed with me cooking a Mexican meal for Roz and Duncan as they had cooked for me on Sunday evening (A lovely vegetable stew. Om nom nom.)

I awoke this morning with my back locked up, I must have slept funny on it as I could hardly move at all. I took the day off work to get the back back in order [sic]. It happened before when I was living in Dublin, it passes soon, but is another symptom of this fucking job that I call a career.

...As Long As Winds Will Blow...

Jo left on Saturday morning for a month. She's gone back to Auld Landan town, innit? We all spent Friday night watching Batman 'Dark Knight'. An excellent film, that I was wanting to watch again. I like Batman more than any of the other Superheroes. He seems more real than, say, Superman. Superman is just up his own arse. 'Oooh look at me, I've got all these powers. I can burn through steel with my eyes. Yeah, that's right my fucking eyes!' Batman seems far more human. It's not just him doing the crime fighting. He has a back up team. OK, so it mainly consists of the old fart Alfred, but at least he has help. I also like the Joker as a character and not just in the film. I used to have this old collection of the greatest Joker stories ever told. Right back from some of the first Batman comics in 1940 he was a crazy fucking murderer. No rhyme or reason to him. This is what Heath Ledger portrays much better than Jack Nicholson did. Obviously in the 1960's when Comics came under the crushing influence of the Comics Code Authority, Joker was stripped of all this menace, as was Batman and he became as ludicrous as the TV show of the same time. It was only after Watchmen that Batman and the Joker by proxy recovered. Arkham Asylum, Year One, The Killing Joke are all worth checking out from this period. Also any of the Legends of the Dark Knight comics series. Mind you, all this was made possible with the brain drain of British talent to the States, mainly from writers of 2000AD.

Enough about comics. I spent Saturday in town buying board games expansion packs and tidying my room and the bathroom. The bathroom needed it. No one had touched it for about two months and I'm sure there were things living in between the tiles. I could feel tentacles reaching out for my whilst shaving, like some Lovecraftian dank horror had bred in the filth. I headed out to TÞM to see Gone Postal play a gig for the release of their new album. There was three bands supporting them, I missed the first two, but managed to see Severed Crotch. I've seen these lads play before and I've a real soft spot for them. Ball crushing Death Metal, their singer is pretty amazing with his vocals. Both bands put on a really good show, but I can't help but laugh at badly translated songs. One of Gone Postal's tracks is called Void of Torment.I mean just think about that for a second. Void of Torment. What the fuck does that even mean? You are not being tormented? Surely that's a good thing? Why is a Death Metal band promoting good things? Or does it mean you're in a void, where you will be tormented? I'm confused, if anyone can help me on this one, I'd love to know...

After the gig, which was what appeared to be a youth club (No bar and full of teenagers... dear God help me...) I met Angelos for drinks in Dillon. I can't remember much else about Saturday night except I know some shots were involved, as was a chicken burger and a taxi ride. I woke up about two in the afternoon, so I'm assuming I had a good time. I spent Sunday recovering and fannying about all day.