Lunar landscape

A couple of weeks ago I saw my first glacier. Kind of majestic the way it seemed to be rolling down the mountainside. It was Icelands second largest glacier - Langjökull and we were driving through the highlands on a dirt road about 750 meters above see level. When we stepped out of the car the wind almost knocked me over and even though the moon has no atmosphere and therefor no wind, I'm rather certain that a lunar landscape wouldn't be very different. Anyway, if you ever get the chance, take a trip to Iceland and do it before the glaciers melts away completely.

Last Chance for the Wild Tiger?

This is the year of the tiger. I was born in another year of the tiger. All my life I have been completely fascinated by them. Today there are only about 3200 tigers left in the wild. I donate to contribute to the efforts to save them. You should too!

Nemesis

Did I mention I think David Gray is a genious. His music is somehow subtly profound and the lyrics like a punch to the gut. Like Nemesis:

'Neath an avalanche - soft as moss
I am a creeping and intangible sense of loss
I'm the memory you can't get out your head
If I leave you now
You'll wish you were somewhere else instead

I'm the manta ray - I'm the louse
I am a photograph they found in your burned out house
I'm the sound of money washing down the drain
I am the pack of lies baby that keeps you sane

Gates of Heaven are open wide
God help me baby I'm trapped inside
Feel like I'm buried alive

I'm the bottom line - of the joke
I am an ecstasy - spilling like bright egg yolk
I'm the thoughts you're too ashamed to ever share
And I am the smell of it - you're trying to wash out of you hair

Gates of Heaven are open wide
God help me baby I'm lost inside
Feel like I'm buried alive

Possibilities limitless
Just give me something that's more than this
One shot and I'll never miss
I'm the babe that sleeps through the blitz
I am a sudden and quite unexpected twist
I am your one true love who sleeps with someone else
I am your nemesis
Baby I'm life sweet life itself

At the moment

John Mayer's Perfectly Lonely and Edge of Desire and You Take My Troubles Away with Dan Wilson and Rachel Yamagata is my choice on Spotify at the moment. And of course Paperweight with Joshua Radin and Schuyler Fisk. David Gray's new album Foundling is next in line. Am I going to like it as much as the last album Draw the line?

Dear John is worth seeing, if not for anything else then at least for the story of John and his father. Southland is getting a third season and soon Stargate Universe is back with season two. While I'm waiting I'm going to give The Wire a chance. See if I can figure out why people (and critics) think it is so well written and so well made.

Reading

On the "to read" list for this fall:

One Bullet Away by Nate Fick - I've already read 2/3 of this book. Nate Fick is an ex Marine Corps officer who have done tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. If you've seen Generation Kill you know who he is. It's a very well written book that gives the reader a good idea of what Nate Fick experienced during the war but also a look inside the Marine Corps. To me it's a book about a person who joined the armed forces because he wanted to make a difference in the world and found himself in the middle of a war nobody really thought would happen and that he didn't sign up for. It's about leadership and teamwork. And like Nate himself was told: "There are only two kinds of people in the world - those who piss in their wetsuits and those who lie about it" (I love that metaphor).

Which are you?

Continuing on the same theme:
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer - about a millionaire sports star who joined the U.S Army after 9/11 only to be killed in Afghanistan. The U.S Army tried to conceal the truth about his death: that he in fact was killed by friendly fire.

I guess war history has always interested me, history lessons about WWII got my attention while Swedish kings were immensely boring. Afghanistan and Iraq haven't quite made history yet but I think we all need to learn as much as we can about what's going on, so that we hopefully never do it again. It's is also interesting to learn more about what goes on behind the obvious and what we are shown by the press or on the news. Maby all things are not what they appear to be and we need to educate ourselves so that we can form own opinions.

I also saw a really good movie on this theme a couple of weeks ago. I stumbled upon it, due to the fact that I'm having a little bit of a Channing Tatum obssesion at the moment. Stop-Loss is about soldiers returning home from Iraq thinking they have done their duty only to be arbitrarily forced to go back by the army. Apperently this happens a lot.

I'm also going to read Richard Dawkins, both The God Delusion and The Greatest Show On Earth mainly because intelligent design and creationism kind of p-ss me of. Read more about Dawkins here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

Finally, I'm also going to read more about something that I'm also very interested in - genocide history. Waiting in my bookshelf is the brick Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur by Ben Kiernan. In the review of the book on the webbpage for Yale University Press you can read: "Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides."

So that's my plan for this fall.

Courage

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't do what you want to do!