December 24th - doing everything old more

Christmas Eve is not the day for doing something new. It's a day of tradition. You don't break tradition, you expand it so this day I'm just going to do everything more.
We'll eat and drink more and we'll sing more. We will expand the celebration with a great aunt from Bergen and a girl from India. We will pull out some quizzes and have mulberry cream. There will be presents and cheer.
We will laugh louder at the ridiculous hat of the evil stepmother in three nuts for Cinderella.
I'll try to be a better and kinder person in general.
Merry Christmas everyone!

December 23rd - Making a wallet

All this Christmas shopping has left my wallet in tatters. It might also have something to do with a that i bought my old one in Guatemala 3 years ago for ten quetzal(and that was probably a ripoff). So I'm making a brand new one.

December 22nd - learning a new coin trick

Coin tricks are great. The reason why I like cointricks as opposed to card tricks. At least when It's done by a punter like me is:
1. To do a card trick you either have to wait for the occasion when you have a deck in front of you or you have to carry a deck with you. Carrying a deck with you makes you look like someone who carries a deck of card around. If you are a magician, that's alright, it's sorta expected of you. Not when you're just some guy of the street.
2. Card tricks are sometimes based on using a trick deck but this cant be done when using ordinary coins.

Well I know a couple of coin tricks already but I thought I'd expand my repertoire. So here's a trick to change this 10kr coin.

Into these two fives:

So here's the trick:

Amazing!
This trick will go down in history as one of the great. ones

December 21st - Making a Christmas single

Some people might say that just because you can't sing or play guitar you shouldn't record a single. I'm not such a pessimist, also I know that if someone argues I can call it a mix between free jazz and punk and I will get of scott free. So I borrowed a recorder at the library and set it up.

At least i cant blame the equipment.

It almost looks like I know what I'm doing

With all this high tech equipment it won't be hard to pick out every tone in tune but just in case I made sure they were far I between.
If you want one you I will make up to 10 but I must warn you, I cant sing

December 20th. - Becoming a gentleman

As everyone knows, there is one thing every gantleman must know: How to tie a bow tie. This is no simple feat I tell you, but when you got it right, every other part of you life become absolutely perfect.
This is what you do. you take a normal looking slob and give him a bow tie*.
 (Important note: Make sure its not a pretied bow ite or the magic will not happen)

Just look at him. He's no gentleman!

You cross one part of the tie over andthe other.

You take the tie-end whis is underneath and scrunch it in a weird manner and hold it there.

Then you take the part you left and just pull it through the not. (This part is a bit like making love to a women. The whole thing can go terribly wrong if you choose the wrong hole.)

Then you make a few small adjustments.

And there you have a perfect bow. But it doesn't stop there. You know only have to wait for three seconds.

And all of a sudden you end up with a shirt and a waist-coat.

And a hat, and now you're smoking a pipe

The perfect gentleman and the perfect man in general.

December 19th. - Making stuff out of paperclips

So after i learned how to open a padlock using paperclips i had a lot of paperclips left so I thought I possibly could make something from this. So I got my paperclips out and my pliers and paperclips.

Ah the tools of my (new) trade!

So what shall I  make with this.
Maybe an X-wing:

By Peterjon Smith

Or maybe a a set of weapons

By Danath Nicholas

Or maybe a functioning carousel

By Gene Burnstein

So what did I make. Howe could i follow these in these great masters footsteps well i made a man

A masterpiece!

and i made this... dog? horse? donkey? I made this animal-thing...

This is the sort artistryyou wont find made by children under the age of two... becayse they aren't alowed to use pliers

December 18th. - Reading the nativity

The nativity. Some people would say it's the most important part of this wintersolstice celebtration. So maybe it's time I read the damn thing. I've never really read the new testament. Well, that's a lie or at least a truth with modifications because I've probably read most part of it at one time or another. However, I have read the entire old testament when I was younger, which is a much more exciting testament  for a growing lad. All those murders and battles, incest, rape and pillage, genital mutilation of prisoners of war etc (and I do seem to remember a talking donkey in there as well), Game of Thrones ain't got nothing on this. The new testament is about a guy doing miracles, annoying priests and telling people about morality which I grant you is all good things. There is nothing I enjoy more than discussing ethics or annoying priests but when you're thirteen it's way more exciting to hear about a guy who kills 1000b philistine soldiers with only the use of an ass' jawbone.
Well here is me reading Gospel according to Luke in Norwegian. not nynorsk unfortunately. Nynorsk is of course the real Norwegian, bokmål is more of a danish mock-up

They are surprisingly short, aren't they? Well Here's the Gospel according to Matthew in English

There is a surprising amount of gore in the Gospel according to Mathew where every child under the age of two is killed. It's surprising that this is never referenced again. I think I would have done so.

December 17th. - I'm dreaming of a cold drink

The barrometer is showing plus degrees again and the snow is melting away. I think the reason why my ancesters moved to Norway is because they like me where people who got uncomfortably warm when the temperature reached hights where snow is melting. Therefor I had a fantastic idea of making a cup from ice. This is what I did. I put a glass in a larger cup of water.

Genius at work!

Then i put that cup in the freezer.

Then i waited over night and took the ice glass out of the cup.

All that waas left was take the inner glass out of the ice cup. I didn't do that however instead I broke the glass and cut my finger.

My thumb with a sticking plaster

So then I stood there with my beard in the mailbox, as the Norwegian saying goes, with a cut finger and a ice glass I couldn't drink froom because it was filled with ice shards. Isn't that simply fantastic!

December 16th - Writing a card to nissen

Writing a card for Nissen has never been a ttradition in my family so this letter is a first for me. Nissen, while often mistaken for Santa Clause is not the same person no matter what people may try to tell you. Nissen, or Julenissen if you want to use his full name is not a sainted human being called St. Nicholas, he is rather a being of the troll-kind most related to the barn-nisse and ship-nisse. They are ususally helpfull but can become mean if mistreated and not given food at important days of the year.

Merry Christmas Nissen!
I Hope you take a moment at this hectic time to rest a bit and don't only get stress.
At the evening I think you should take a break with a small whiskey.
I don't have many wishes this christmas, only a load of great meetings with family and friends, a good book and a pair of warm socks. To be honest I'd be satisfied with one out of three.
Best Regards
Sindre

Then you i put it in an envelope and sent it

December 15th. - Christmas office

Never again. Waking up at and downing 1 1/2 litres of orange juice isn't a good way to start the day. I think it might somehow have to do with the akvavit, whiskey, red and white wine and the beer I drank last night. Or it might have to do with the pinnekjøt and rice pudding I had last night, it was probably the rice pudding.
Well what have I learned, then?
Well, first and foremost not to eat rice pudding. Second there are still parties where I'm uncomfortably young to go to. I wince went out with a girl a couple of years older than me who was shocked to hear I was eleven when the twin towers went down. Third, there are groups of people who dance worse than library-students.

December 14th. - Burnt sugar almonds

This is one of my baby brother, Eiriks, favourite treats. And who can blame him however Eirik you ain't gettin any! Both in the sense of sugar burned almonds and in general.
Burning almonds is quite possibly the best thing to do when you're a manly ma like myself. how on earth can you possibly get that wrong?

Boil sugar and water and put som almonds in and then stur once in a while.

Wait until it's gone hard.

Break it up into single almonds and put them into beautiful containers and voila!

...Instant Christmas!

December 13th. - A lot of pinus jokes.

A wreath can be made from every almost any plant. During the wintermonths the wreath ios mostly made by evergreens. Holly(Ilex aquifolium), Spruce(Picea abies), or the pine(pinus sylvestris). I went into the forrest and kinda just mixed and matched and I must say i got some brilliant twigs of pinus as well as the picae. It is important to remember that when you go to get twigs that you don't choose trees from someones garden. Noone wants strangers coming into your garden to start cutting of pieces of you pinus.  Even though the pinus is great the twigs I had cut  was somewhat drooping (yes, I had a drooping pinus) so I ended up not usiong it for my wreaths even though i thingk the pinus in gengeral would make quite nice wreaths.
I also got some young trees which will be used for the base of the wreath.
Here is all the stuff i used:

I made the wreath with the twigs

I clad it in evergreen (picae)

Decorated it

Isn't that a beauty.The decorations I used was some fake apples and stuff but you could use other stuff for example decorate a pine wreath with a single orchid, then youd get an monorchid pinus. (This is the cleverest pinus joke ever made)
I also made one with a premade ring

That's basically it.
PS Thanks to Tone Eldevik for giving me this idea

December 12th. - Trying to ban snow

Well, it's cold in Bergen. Cold and wet. The snow is falling and the blanket of snow makes the street look like idyllic gingerbreadhouses. Well I want a end to all of it.

The idyllic pictures have to stop, they have to

So i made a fake pettition that said Id like to put a ban on dihydrogen monoxide(H2O if you were wondering) and tried to get people to sign it.

Translation: Stop DHMO

 Because of the many dangers of DHMOdo we demand that:

1. Every merchandise that contain DHMO will be marked with warning on the packaging

2. That the Norwegian state commit to remove all DHMO from Norwegian fauna

3. That the Norwegian State commit to work to fase out all DHMO with a goal to absolutely ban DHMO by 2018

I put the petition in a folder to make it look a bit more official and tried to get signatures

Yeah, Instant authority bitches!

I got some information about DHMO from this site about DHMO.

I stood outside in Bergen city center trying to get people to sign for about twentyfive minutes until I got cold and went in side. In that time i managed to get 5 signatures out of eight people I actually managed to talk to. About a hundred people said they didn't have time. Out of the three people who didn't sign only one recognized it as water. We had a lovely chat. Well done yoy, well done!
You may have noticed that i asked for a e-mail in the petition, well thats because i sent them all an email that said.

Dear Sir or madam. Earlier today you signed a petiotion wanting to ban Dihydrogen Monoxide(DHMO). This sustance is also called H2O or water. All the facts given to you about DHMO are real. Inhaling water will make you drown Injesting large ammounts of water can give you  waterpoisonig which can lead to death.
These facts were put in a way that made it sound scarier than it actually is.
I would like to point out that this was not ment as something done in spite but rather an excercise in how language can trick you. I would like to say that Irecomend your willingness to sign a petition and trust in strangers and I hope you are not angered by this small stunt but rather take learning toward being more critical of what people say.
If you'd like to see my results please check out my website:
http://nowastedday.blogspot.no/
Regards
Sindre