Gjallar

This weekend consisted of drinking heavily, which is what most weekends consist of in Reykjavik. It may sound cool and exotic to live in Reykjavik, but there ain't that much else to do. I headed over to Jo, Duncan and Roz's place after a disastrous attempt to get on the Internet at Tomas Fraendi. We were going to order pizza from the best Pizza Place in town (There is a lot of these here: the Best Pizza Place, the Best Ice Cream Bar, the Best Hotdog Stand, the Best Half-a-Sheep's Head Shop, the Best Buried-in-it's-own-piss-for-six-months Rotten Shark Stand). Bjarki and Hrappi had recommended it to us. They were having a ten year anniversary sale (The Pizza place, not Bjarki and Hrappi), with prices as they were ten years ago. We were told that there would be a two hour wait due to demand and the belt tightening economic crisis that meant everyone in Reykjavik was clamouring for ten year old prices. I later learnt that Bjarki and Hrappi waited for three hours for cold pizza and rock hard garlic bread that felt like it had been made ten years ago. I'd hate to know what the worst Pizza place in town was like... We deliberated for two minutes about the waiting time and called Dominoes Pizza. We had warm soft pizza within twenty minutes.

The Best Pizza in Town, om nom nom...

After feasting ourselves stupid we all headed down to Sodoma, the new bar that was opening that night. A live venue that Reykjavik desperately needs. Sudoku are also going to play there as well in couple of weeks, so I wanted to check the place out. To be perfectly honest I don't actually remember much about the evening, except seeing a Natalie Portman look alike and bitterly regretting not having talked to her and getting some guys number who was chatting Jo up. Why I ended up with his number and why I ended up putting it in as 'Cow Bell Ninja' on my phone is beyond my recollection. I think it may have had something to do with the bottle of rum we polished off before leaving the house, maybe the free beer at Sodoma, or maybe the bottle of nail polish remover that Jo dropped in the house before we left.

I should have talked to her...

I crashed on the futon in their front room and made my way slowly back to my own place the next day. I was out again on Saturday, it was the annual university dinner/dance and as most of the people from site were going I decided to head along myself. It was a good laugh in the end, the meal was good and plentiful, the dancing lively and the students chatty. There was an overall 'Hollywood' theme, I had been telling everyone that I was going to go as Marylin Monroe. In the event I couldn't find a dress that matched my eyes, so I just dusted off Becky's Wedding shirt. Not the shirt Becky wore at her wedding, but the shirt I wore at Becky's wedding, if you know what I mean?

Here is a link to the Google video of the full second show by Sudoku:

Sudoku Live!!

Finally, Jo was working on a song about archaeology, here it is, sung to the tune of Que Sera Sera:

When I was just a teenager
I asked myself what shall I be
Shall I be pretty
Shall I be clean
Here’s what I chose to be…

Archaeology…
How fucking insane of me
Its so very shit to be…
Archaeology

Later on I found out just
What the profession could offer me
Pretty much nothing
Nadda and nil
A life of lethargy

Archaeology…
my mediocrity
An eternal travesty…
Archaeology

After ten years of miserable hell
I finally realised what was the fee
Of all the minutes
Hours and days
Spent down on bended knee

Archaeology…
Will be the death of me
For it’s the psychology…
Archaeology

Skirnir

There is an Asian girl who works in the local supermarket, and it has thrown open a whole can of worms to do with communication. When I buy my produce and ask for a plastic bag I do it in English and she replies in English. Now, I am trying to integrate myself as much as possible into Icelandic culture, but far from being able to speak Icelandic I at least manage to say Hello and Thank You to shop assistants. It's not much but it's better than assuming everyone else speaks English (Which they do, by the way, but one must never assume). Turning back to this girl do I say Thank You in English, Icelandic or Chinese? Now again I'm only assuming she's Chinese, for all I know she could be Korean or Japanese although the Japanese are not generally known for being economic migrates. I would hate her to be Korean because I don't know what Thank You is in Korean. I learnt how to say Thank You in Chinese whilst in Singapore, but I don't want to come across as a patronising bastard who is assuming she's Chinese when she could, in fact, be Korean or Japanese. I know Thank You in Japanese, again learnt whilst in the country, but this really is hedging my bets with her background. I really could end up with egg on my face over that one. I also am not keen on saying Thank You in Icelandic, this is again an assumption, but I'm fairly sure she wasn't born in Iceland. She has an accent that isn't Icelandic, before you start calling me a racist. What do I do? This is a political nightmare!

China, Yesterday

Holy Shit, what a week. We have an impending 'enforced fun day' coming up. You know what I mean, everybody gets together to do some team building activities for the day then retires for a meal and gets drunk and it ends up with everybody telling everybody else what they actually think of them. I was OK with this idea if it was only happening on one day. Yesterday Bjarki unleashed a shit storm by telling us that they (The Fun Day Committee) had decided that we would all be going to a Summer House and staying over the weekend. I immediately refused. One day is fine, but an overnight stay means I have lost a weekend. We then got into a very bad tempered argument where I had to end defending my personal reasons for not wanting to spend a weekend with the people I have just spent the preceding and following five days (a total of twelve days straight) working with in an 8m by 15m tent (We measured it today). I like everyone on site with the exception of one person, (having said that I can tolerate them as long as we don't spend too much time in each others company) but the idea of spending my weekend in the middle of nowhere with the same people is my idea of Hell. I have been working in this career for the better part of ten years. Between ten and about six years ago I would have been the first to be up for this kind of activity. Now I am tired of the this hobo lifestyle that I lead, I am not happy with my particular situation but I have to put up with it. This is like an away job where I am not allowed to go home at weekends. Everyone else on site (With the exception of the foreign workers) can go back to their homes and other friends each and every night. I go home to someone else's house where my only possessions are what I can carry in a suitcase. My friends are ones I work with everyday and as good and nice as all these people are it is bliss when the weekend rolls around and I am allowed my own personal space. I am continually surrounded by and reminded of work so to slightly escape it for even two days is heaven. Maybe I'm a grumpy old man, I don't care, I know what I like and I don't like being forced to have 'fun' in the middle of nowhere with no escape routes. It turned out in the end that the committee had decided no such thing but had simply put the idea of a summer house on the table. Bjarki and I made our peace, so it was OK in the end.

Where I would prefer to be rather than at Fun Day

Thingtak played on Thursday night, they were playing with about four other bands of which the best was a group of fifteen year old lads, who played old bluesy rock covers but finished by playing the Dwarves 'I Wanna Be Your Pimp'. I ran into Ragnar from Skorpulifur who Sudoku supported the other week. He had a copy of the Icelandic glossy Celebrity gossip magazine 'Séđ Og Heyrt' (I have no idea what this means, any Icelandics reading, please let me know). There had been a photographer from the magazine at the gig and they had run an article on Skorpulifur in which Hannes, the singer, mentioned Sudoku. It went along the lines of; we played a few times with Sudoku a Ninja Metal band from Britain who wear Ninja outfits on stage.. Brilliant, thanks lads.

Skorpulifur Yesterday (Photo copyright Jo Taylor 2009)

One final thing before I finish and this gets too long. We moved offices this week, we are now underneath the Green Party's headquarters in a basement. We have to use their toilets, upstairs from our HQ, but because they are clean and we are not we have to practically strip out of our site gear and get hosed down in the yard. Not only that but you have to sneak past reception and through their coffee room looking for the toilet. What was once a three minute trip to the toilet has turned into an Odyssey for a piss. It's like Jason and the Argonaut's quest, except it's not a Golden Fleece waiting at the end but a Golden Stream.

Walkiesjar

I'll tell you about my Friday night shall I? I called over to Jo's and spent three solid hours attempting to push the right bits in the right place, frustratingly changing positions, sweating, swearing and bending over. Bouts of anger, when even strenuous shoving couldn't get it right and the elation when a bit slipped into the correct hole. Yes, 1500 piece Jigsaws can be tough puzzles to crack.

Jo and I were supposed to go to a Tantric Sex lesson on Wednesday. We had met for lunch the previous Sunday in a fucking Vegan cafe and found a leaflet for it. Jo was taunting me with it, then changed her mind and said she'd go. The course was for singles as well as couples, so it was fine for us to go and it seemed like something to do on a Wednesday night rather than watching the new episodes of 90210 and Britain's Next Top Model. The leaflet said there would be no physical contact or nudity, which as Lauren pointed out, was just yoga. I told Jo was going to run into the room where the course was being held and shout 'Which one is mine?' It was about this time Jo was having second thoughts about going with me and made me promise I wasn't allowed to embarrass her. The course was run by Magdelena and 'Seraphim'. What kind of name is that? This one reason fucking hippies and new-agers annoy the shit out of me. I can't even begin to imagine coming up with such a presumptuous name for myself; 'What's the most conceited name I can think of, ooh, I know, I'm name myself after some angels. That will make people think I'm really heavenly and beautiful.' I bet his real name is Clive.

Tantric Sex without the Nudity and Physical Contact

Anyway, in the event the place the course was being held at was way out of town and we had no way of getting there, so we didn't go and I never got to meet 'Seraphim' or Clive or whatever he calls himself this week. I was slightly relieved that we didn't go, after already having dined at a Vegan restaurant, a visit to a yoga workshop would have been the beginnings of the slippery slope into hippydom for me. And nobody wants that. We have no car and it would have been a three day trek just to reach the course centre. Since 99% of Icelanders have cars everything is spread out all over the Reykjavik peninsular. An example of this is there are no shops in the centre of town that are of any use the the layman. There's shops selling ridiculously expensive fleeces and hats to dumb tourists (66 Degree North and Cintimani) that were made for nothing in Chinese sweatshops. There are shops selling more affordable tourist tat, like statues of trolls wearing 'Viking' helmets and t-shirts with humorous logos on such as 'Cod War Survivor'. There are endless clothes shops selling the latest in Icelandic fashion, i.e. Black. But nothing useful like a telephone shop or an electrical store. Anything useful is at out of town complexes or the shopping maul that is Kringlan, where Angelos and I had to go to set up the internet in the house.

Typical Icelander goes to the shops

Poor old Duncan attracts a certain amount of interest from certain 'parties', like for instance that strange Greenlander in the English Pub just before Christ's Mass. The strangest though has to be the weird guy who comes and looks over the fence at the site and chats to Bjarki. This guy has been keeping an eye on our work for while now. He seems to know an awful lot about us. He told Bjarki that he doesn't go anywhere without his gun, when Bjarki challenged him on this and asked to see the weapon in question the guy told him he'd left it home that particular day. The last time he was at the site, again, involved in a conversation with Bjarki, he let it slip that Duncan was not actually English at all but was a Serbian. Not only that, he was a Serbian War Criminal, on the run from international justice. I guess working as an archaeologist on a high profile government funded excavation in the centre of a small capital city where people notice new residents pretty easily is the best place to hide out if you are wanted for war crimes in your own country. The guy knew it because he had been compiling a dossier on Duncan that is as thick as your arm.

Duncan


A Serbian War Criminal. Spot the Difference.

Heralder

I forgot to mention that a week ago I went to see the new film The Wrestler, it is the movies that is supposed to put Mickey Rourke back on top of his Game. I'll give you brief review of it here, but I must tell you that the next paragraph will contain spoilers, so if you want to watch the film and don't want to know how it ends, don't read the next bit. Alternatively, you could read it, but don't come crying to me when you find out what happens at the end before you've seen the film. Your choice.

The film follows Randy The Ram, a faded ex-big time wrestler on the downwards slope of his life. When I say 'follows' I mean it in the most literal sense. The camera seems to be endlessly filming Rourke's back as he wanders through his crappy life. I know why they've done it, to give the film a realistic and documentary feel, but it's pretty annoying: Will he, won't he, will he turn around! I hear the Oscars have included a few new categories this year; Best Male Back, Best Female Back, Best Supporting Back and Best Foreign Language Back. It's a watchable and enjoyable film in as much as watching someone continually fuck their lives up can be enjoyable. There are also a few too many cliches for my liking, his estranged daughter he never told he loved, his stripper girlfriend whom he never gets together with, his trailer park home that he is locked out of due to none payment of rent, etc. But one thing it does avoid is the obvious Hollywood happy ending. After a heart attack leaves the Ram reassessing his life and his lot, he tries to get out of the Wrestling circuit only to find that the thing he lives for is the roar of the crowd. The sudden end leaves you wondering if he survives the final fight against the 'Ayatollah'. It is also an interesting view of the smaller part of American Wrestling that you don't see on WWE.

Spoilers over. I used to watch the WWE Wrestling, it was great. People would slag me off for it; it's not real they'd say, the fights are faked they'd moan, it's all done to a script they'd whine. These were the same people watching Eastenders every week.

Sudoku played another gig this week, we were supporting Skorpulifur again, this time in a youth club in Hafnarfjörður. It went well although the sound coming through the monitors was very low and we fucked up a couple of times on some of the songs. Skorpulifur, however, were amazing again. The singer was wearing a dress and dancing like a Romanian Bear on a hot plate. I think we also doubled our crowd size as well, from eight to about fifteen...

Other upheavals this week was me moving in with Angelos. The lease on the original place had run out and the Alcoholic Jesus Freak was coming back from Denmark to spread the Good Word to the Heathen Icelanders, or something. Jo, Duncan and Roz all moved into a nice pad closer to town and I have moved about two minutes down the road to Kaplaskjolsvegur 89, Reykjavik 107, Iceland. You can send your emergency packages of tea here. This is the most difficult road name for a none Icelander to pronounce and was the reason why when I first arrived I would usually walk home from town after drinking, rather than try to tell a taxi driver where I lived.

I moved in on Friday and found that Angelos, being the feckless Greek that he is, preferred to sit in the dark than change the blown lightbulbs. A quick search of the premises rewarded me with a cache of lightbulbs so I set about changing all the blown ones. I was changing the one in my bedroom when there was a blue spark and the entire house was plunged into darkness. I'd been in the house for ten minutes and destroyed the place. A quick check of the fuse box revealed it was something bigger. I woke Angelos up and he called Sigur, the wife of Haldur the contractor, and she came over with her brother, who luck would have it was an electrician and was visiting her for the first time in weeks. He found the main house fuse box and there was light! Glory To Him On High! Angelos and I had both failed in our Alpha Male roles.

After this drama I went to Björgvin's birthday party which turned into an Arts and Crafts/Wrestling evening which was broken up by the arrival of five police officers. I headed into town after for lashings of more BOOZE. I have taken to using my Visa swipe card for most purchases, which is a very dangerous thing to do when out on the lash as you never know how much you're spending. When you make a purchase with the said card, you are given a receipt to sign. No one checks them and Angelos and I have taken to signing anything on the receipt when we are drunk. On Friday night, Bar 11 was visited by Mickey Mouse and Ronald Reagan.

Roman Land

I was sitting in the computer room on Monday during Lunch Break shooting the shit with Atli and Bjarki, when Hrafnkell came in and asked me if Sudoku wanted to play again this week. Stefan's arm is still fucked from his operation so Thingtak can't play the gig with Skorpulifur that they were going to play this Thursday. Ragnar from Skorpulifur asked if we could play instead, so I said, yes, why not? Two gigs in one week... Madness.

The weekend passed with no great shakes, I was going to go on a road trip with Duncan and Roz. Jo didn't want to go as she had been running around like a blue arsed fly in London for the last month and wanted a quiet weekend. We borrowed Vala's car on Friday and I was all set to go the morning after the Sudoku gig. Then Jo reminded me that it was Valentine's weekend and maybe D and R didn't want a gooseberry tagging along. I'd completely forgotten about it and, well why should I remember something like that? As it happens Duncan and Roz didn't mind having someone along (Duncan had also forgotten anyway...) but I still felt weird about it. I didn't go in the end and basically sat on my arse all weekend, trying not to spend any money.

I was working inside today and Albina (Fish Bone Expert) asked if she could use the computer to download some files. As we were chatting she let it slip that she was rushing because she had a car full of dead pigs and they were stinking the place up. She offered me a slice of the meat, they had only been dead a couple of days she said. I declined this tempting proposition.

Sudoku Photos and Videos

The world's premier Ninja Metal band play live in Reykjavik in front a of a packed house!!

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Here are the photos:

Here

Havamal

Sudoku played live on Friday night for the first time ever! Ninja metal was unleashed upon an unsuspecting Icelandic Public in the Dillon Sports Bar at Hafnarfjörður. Hrafnkell told me about the opening as Steppi from Thingtak was still fucked from hi shoulder operation and they couldn't play, so Sudoku stepped up to the challenge. Quickly recruiting the bassist Sayonara Hiroshi and the button presser/dancer Saru Shokushu Goukan, we had a few rehearsals. Well when I say we had a few rehearsals, I mean on Thursday evening after work I showed Hrappi how to play the songs, then we went to his house and amped up, and did a few run throughs of the set list. He kept me awake til the early morning putting Linux on the computer and showing me family photo albums...

On Friday evening we (Jo, Hrappi and I) went down to Hokus Pokus to pick up three Ninja Costumes. Jo had mentioned the day before that I aught to maybe think about buying them then. Friday night was definitely a case 'told you so'. The store had sold out completely, there must have been a fucking rush on Ninja parties in Reykjavik, we asked the toothless simpleton behind the counter if he knew of anywhere else that would sell Ninja Costumes. He said he had no idea and only knew what went on in his shop. What kind of attitude is that? I would have thought that if you worked in a shop with such a narrow sales line (i.e. Fancy Dress Costumes) you would have done your research and found out what competition you had in the surrounding area. Especially in a place as small as Reykjavik. All you have to do is open the fucking telephone directory and they are all there. Needless to say, we didn't have a telephone directory and the twat behind the counter probably couldn't even use a telephone anyway. It's not something I generally have about my person, a telephone directory.

I digress, it threw us into a bit of a panic. Jo suggested getting some material and making our own costumes so we bombed over to a haberdashery and I bought several meters of black material at a fucking astronomical cost. Who would have thought the economic crisis would strike at the heart of haberdashers as well as the layman. Or maybe they put their prices up in order to milk as much out of other peoples misery as possible. Fucking haberdashers. They are worse than Paedophiles.

Duncan, Roz, Jo and I called over to Hrappi's place, much to the consternation of Iris and we managed to squeeze another rehearsal and get dressed ready for the big event. The costumes looke much better than the shitty ones I was going to buy at Hokus Pokus, so for one thing I was happy that the toothless idiot behind the counter wouldn't be able to feed his children tonight with my money.

We hit Dillon Sports Bar and walked in dressed as Ninjas. There was no one there to see us. The bar was heaving with about six people in it. Most of them formed the other three bands that played. We were told that we would be on after Skorpulifur, who were meant to be headlining, but had decided since we were from 'England' we should go on as headliners instead. My first live experience and I would be headlining... Anyway Skorpulifur were excellent, even if their singer was smashed out of his head and fell over several times during their set. Rock and Roll. Then it was our turn. By this point the other supporting bands and their attendees left thinning the crowd down to my friends and Skorpulifur.

We played 'Ninja Porks a Babe' as the intro and launched in 'Ninja is for Life', well when I say launched, we hobbled into it as Duncan had set up the track but had failed to press play. I hit the play button and we completely fucked it up. Hrappi had forgot to turn his bass amp on, so there was just me thrashing on the guitar. It went from bad to worse. I pressed play on what I thought was the drum track for 'Do You Wanna Get Pumped' and began hammering away at it. It turns out that it was the drum track to 'Ninja is for Life'. It didn't seem to affect the song though...

It was only during 'A Furious Aural Beating at the Hands of a Ninja' that we started to pick up our mojo and we played this one excellently if I say so myself. Duncan again ruined it all with the segue between 'Ninja Plays and Awesome Fucking Solo' and 'Ninja!', but Hrappi's and my professionalism managed to keep it on track. I fucked up during 'Seppuku' but managed to pull it back together for 'Ninja Hammer' during which the bar was bing closed and chairs put on tables. We finished the show with the Sudoku version of 2unlimited's 'No Limits' playing whilst we all danced like we were being electrocuted. It may have been a fuck up but Sorkpulifur still wanted us to play with them again, maybe to make them look better I don't know. I can now tick the 'played live with a band' box. I spent the rest of the night driving around in Hrappi's car in a vain attempt to go drinking.

In other news I beat Atli at Memoir 44 twice on Wednesday, this also includes another beating last Wednesday at Axis and Allies. But being a gentleman who doesn't like to gloat, I only have this to say:

In your face, in your face, in your face, in your stupid fucking face, Atli you retard!!!