Incidents and Accidents

Truckers.

Once upon a couple of years ago, I was on my ex-bike headed for school one morning.
All of a sudden, I see a big ole truck with a trailer and everything. He’s waiting to cross the bicycle-lane and head onto the busy main road.

I noticed there were no cars coming from the one direction, and when I looked over my shoulder I saw no cars coming from the other direction.

He was only waiting for me. 

Knowing what a busy street it is, and seeing the length of his vehicle, I stopped my bike and waved him forward. I was in a good mood, and I had plenty of time for once.
I can wait for a second.

The truck started to move for a little bit but then stopped dead. The door flung open and this big bearded trucker-guy comes climbing out. Without closing the door, and holding his jeans up with one hand, he starts half-running towards me.

I’m puzzled. This is a big guy and he’s moving fast. I’m starting to think maybe he’s pissed cos he thought I flipped him off or something. I still have the bike between my legs, so I can’t really do anything at all.  

It takes him only a couple of seconds to get to where I’m standing.

- “That’s it! I’m screwed!” I think as one of his big powerfull hands takes a firm grip on my arm. My hand is still holding the handle-bar and I’m reluctant to let it go. It’s safe, somehow. He can’t hurt me as much if I just hold on. 

Seemingly without noticing my reluctancy, he pulls my hand free and crushes it in his own.  

I wait for the pain, but there’s none. He’s not crushing it at all. He’s shaking it. And underneath the beard I now see there’s a big smile on his face.  
In a very rough dialect of southern Swedish, he says:

- “God damn shit! You’re the best god damn human being I’ve met in a long god damn time! If there were more people like you, there would be no wars on this planet. Fucking great! God damn brilliant man!” 

With that, he walked back to his truck, climbed in and closed the door. There were now cars passing in both directions. He had missed his chance.
He didn’t seem to mind at all tho. I watched him in his seat, with a huge grin, as he waved me to pass him.

I had started laughing at this point. I got back on the pedals and gave him a wave. As I passed his truck, he nearly scared me to death again by giving his horn a short, but incredibly loud honk.

I often think of this story whenever I debate doing something small for someone else. Like when there’s a long line at the grocery-store, and I have a full basket but this kid behind me only has a bag of chips. I let him pass…  
Such a small effort for a complete stranger. But I feel like at that moment, the world seems just a little bit less harsh.

Jaws

I was walking home from a friend late last night. It was maybe around 3.30 am. In my hand, I held a bag with a DVD of Jaws, a movie I watched with my friend since he had somehow hadn’t seen it before. 

As I was walking past a park I took a shortcut on a bicycle-lane that goes thru some trees and bushes. All of a sudden, I hear a loud roar behind me, the world is flooded with light and something big comes rushing at me on the bicycle-lane. Just when I think I’m about to die it stops dead a few feet away from me. After I finished crapping my pants I realize it’s a cop-car. 
Wait, did I do anything illegal tonight? The doors open and two big police-officers step out of the car. 

- “And where are you headed?” one of them asks me in a very firm voice…
- “H-H-Hooome!” My voice still thinks I died.
- “Where have you been then?”
- “At a friends house.”
- “Mhm… and what did you do there?”
- “We watched a movie… and ate…”

At this point… I think the two officers realize they clearly have the wrong man cos there’s now a sense of humor in the voice.

- “And what’s in the bag then?”
- “A dvd-copy of Jaws.”
- “May I have a look?”

A hint of a smile.
I pull out the blue cover depicting a girl swimming and a giant mouth coming up underneath. 

The police-man takes it and looks at it, then his face opens up in a huge grin.

- “Jesus, I haven’t seen this movie in ages. I used to love this when I was a kid.” The officer says.

The seriousness of the situation is gone and my life and voice is returning.

- “Well, you have to watch it again! It’s pretty much the best damn monster-movie ever made. And it still holds up well despite being made in 1975”  
- “You know… Sounds like a perfect thing for my sunday night tomorrow.”

As he hands it back to me, the other officer opens his mouth for the first time.

- “Look! We’re terribly sorry about the scare! We really thought you were the one we were looking for. But I strongly doubt that our culprit has such an awesome taste in movies. We would drive you home as compensation but were obviously a bit busy looking for someone.”
I tell them it’s OK. It can’t be easy looking for someone in the dark, especially when you don’t exactly know who it is or what he looks like. 

A shot of whisky and a new pair of undies when I get home and I’ll be just fine. They laugh at that and apologize again. I wish them good luck with their manhunt and walk home. 

Wtf-night!?

What’s my age again?

Today, I had to ID myself while buying some Pilsners at the grocery-store. You need to be 18(I think). I’m almost 31. 

My vanity is dangerously satisfied right now. =)

In other news: I almost have 100 followers. Not bad for such an old man. :p 

Man vs Drain

The water has been running down slowly lately. Deep down beneath the bathroom sink, something has been clogging up the pipe.  
Below the trap. 
Below the tubes.
Underneath the floor-tiles… 
I hated the idea of having to call a plumber. Talk about money down the drain(har har).

Therefore: I dismounted the whole thing until only a small hole in the floor remained. I hit it with all the usual remedies. Hot water, plunger and various acidic chemicals. Everything failed. 

I found out the hard way that washing your hands after going to the toilet is a habit that is hard to wash off(har har again). It also gives you very wet feet when there’s no pipe between the sink and the floor. 
Yesterday, after making a mess and getting my feet wet for the 20th time, I got pissed and made the rash decision to force a modified(read: horribly twisted) coat-hanger down into the little hole. 

It worked out well… NOT.
Whatever was obstructing the pipe moved a couple of inches before it stopped dead and wouldn’t budge. Maybe some hot water will do the trick now?
I carefully tried pouring some water into the hole.
Now, before my little coat-hanger abortion attempt, the water had been running down slowly. Now, it wasn’t running down at all. 

I jammed the coat-hanger down there again and again… No luck. I had just made slight nuisance into a big problem.
I stuffed the hole with some well-chosen curse-words and went to bed. 

When I woke up this morning, the water was still there. I poured some more chemicals down but I couldn’t even get the entire dosage down before the hole overflowed. 

Bitter, I accepted defeat, started peace-negotiations with the thought of calling a plumber on monday and retreated to the couch. No other choice really. 

I watched the handball-game between Sweden and Poland. Sweden had to win, and at the end of the first half it looked like we would. But as soon as the commentator said it was impossible to lose with an 11 point lead, I knew we were screwed. 
Sure enough, with 30 seconds left on the clock, Poland brought the score to a draw. Even tho I knew it would happen, I was annoyed…

Muttering, I went to the toilet. The little hole of water was laughing in my face. 
It really pushed me over the edge. 
“Screw the plumber! You’re going down, hole!”  

I went to the attic and found a piece of unused electrical cable. I shoved the cable down into the hole and when it would go no further: I pulled it back and shoved again. Hard! Over and over… harder and harder. 
I must’ve been on the floor for more than 10 minutes, frantically jamming the cable down the little hole when suddenly, the clogged up innards of my bathroom let out a thick bubbly sound. The resistance on the cable disappeared and a gust of heavy, rotten wind came out of the hole. 
My stomach turned and my vision went blurry…
I blacked out. *

I woke up to find that the water is now running just fine. 
So.
Sweden vs Poland = 29-29
Per vs Plumbers = 29 - 0
Sweden will not advance in the European championship of handball.
I will no longer have wet feet when I wash my hands.
Plumbers, fuuuuuuuuu!

 * Lies

Butter…

I had a gf once who would argue with me because I always buy real butter instead of the low-fat options… Then she would go on to stuff her face with sweets any chance she got…

All these bullshit-commercials on tv about how you should buy low-fat stuff to feel better. As if the thin layer of butter on your bread is the problem. 

The butter I buy consists of 3 things. Natural butter(Which is just over-whipped cream), oil and salt.
A low-fat alternative has 10 ingredients, 57% water and a bunch of chemicals to help maintain the illusion that it’s still just butter.
Low-fat essentially means more industrial tampering. Industrial tampering is a bad thing in my world.  
If you wanna lose weight, don’t cut out natural cream and butter. Cut out soda, chips, candy and ready-made food. 

If you still think the low-fat butter is going to make the big difference… 

… look at all the fucks I do not give. 

 

Wives and bikes…

- “Yeah……you ever think about gettin’ remarried?”
- “My wife’s dead.”
- “Hence, the word remarried.”
- “My wife’s dead.”
   
   /Will Hunting

- Per, you need a bike!
- I had a bike once… for a very long time. Then my bike was stolen.
- So? Get a new one!
- My bike was stolen. =(

 

Friday The 13th

No, I’m not talking about last friday. I’m talking about the series of slasher-movies. If you don’t know them, it’s about a big guy called Jason Vorhees. He’s a disfigured man who hides his face behind a hockey-mask while he walks around brutally killing anyone in his path without any motive whatsoever.

I saw one of these movies when I was 11 or 12.  It was the first time I saw anything remotely like it, I couldn’t understand and it scared the living crap out of me.

 I was also completely fascinated by the terror so I watched the movie over and over.
Jason began making appearances in my nightmares. Hacking away at everyone I loved and then turning his attention to me. No matter how far or how fast I ran I could never escape him. He would always be waiting for me whenever I stopped to catch my breath. 

Finally, my dad found the tape and erased it. He did it with the best intentions. But since it was already in my head, Jason remained in my nightmares even tho the source was gone. 

Now kids, I know it’s hard to believe, but once upon a time there was a world where internet wasn’t as evolved as it is now. There was no youtube and you couldn’t go online and just download complete movies. All of that stuff came later.

Hence, my dad had taken away the only way I could confront my fear, and even tho I grew older, Jason remained as terrifying as he had been to the 12 year old kid. Whenever I had a nightmare, Jason was almost always in it. 

When I was seventeen, I decided I had enough and that it was time to confront my fear. I went online and typed FridayThe13th into the search-engine ‘Altavista’(haha). First hit I got was a site called fridaythe13thforum.com. I clicked ‘join’ and instantly started talking to a world of F13th-nerds who knew every movie inside out(9 back then, 12 now).

Second thing, I bought ALL the F13th movies on VHS. All psyched up for scary times I popped the first one in my player. As I watched it and the 8 following sequels, everything completely reversed. How ridiculous it had all been. The movies weren’t scary, they were hilarious and stupid. My nightmares instantly disappeared and I’ve had none or very few nightmares about the big J since that day. 

Even so, I remained extremely on the forum for a bunch of years until the site crashed and the moderators decided they would not run it anymore. However, I made alot of great friends all over the world during that time. I still talk to some of them.

I guess, even tho the films are really crappy, they have really had a profound influence on me and my life.

On Friday, I celebrated the date by watching FridayThe13th part 4: The Final Chapter. This is the one I saw when I was 12. The one that started it all.

It’s by far the goriest and most brutal out all the movies. It also stars Corey Feldman as the “hero”. In my opinion, it’s the best slasher-movie ever made.

This does NOT, however, by any means make it a good movie. 
Slashers will always be stupid, ridiculous and fun… And that’s exactly why I still love them.