Meeting the Great Tit

A Great Tit landed on my hand and began feeding on my lunch…

I hope this makes sense to some of my readers. Or else I will

have to explain (sigh) – The Great Tit is a bird of the Parinae family,

its Latin species name being Parus Major. It is a very common bird in

the garden and everyplace else for that matter. It is black,white,blue

and yellow.. Why am I writing about this? Well, I did expect it at all, I`ve seen birds feeding from peoples hands, but it always appeared to me to be orchestrated and strained. This encounter weren`t like that at all. It appeared to me that the bird was as much sharing my lunch, as investigating this strange fellow sitting on a bench in the park. I have begun to eat my lunch in the outdoors occasionally, having the great fortune to be able to work inside the area of the Botanical Garden in Oslo…something I am beginning to appreciate more and more.

Write Better Emailes, make more moneys

Enterprising Honorable businessmen (from Nigeria) who have somehow gotten their assets tied up in foreign lands due to some totally unforseen (yet predictable) malaise – may now finally get some help in getting their hard-earned (/inherited) moneys back….

At the 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference

…..I think it must be a lonely life being a Honest and Sincere businessman writing emails to the Entire World on a Weekly Basis….

Misery (not to forget Shameless and Degenerate Greed) loves company..

I think it might be a wonderful idea..

…too bad it is satire… brought to us by J-Walk Blog

Staying on…

It looks like I am staying in my job at the Zoological Museum at Toeyen in Oslo. A bit of a downside is that I earn around 5.50 Dollars (49 Nok) an hour due to the indecently low pay the Work and Administration Ministry has decided people rehabilitated from long-term illness needs.. I think they need twice the amount just to “pay” the tax of 35% of our income to secure social securities for the future.On my freetime I suspect sometime in the future I will hang around our Finance Minister and the Director of the Work and Administration Department homes waving menacingly with a steel-capped baseball bat and demand they dish out some breadcrumbs. Americans, Class War is reality in Norway and your brilliant invention “the Free Market” gains more popularity among politicians (spineless things.. in fact, I suggest we look into the possibility they might have been misrepresented as mammals, perhaps they are invertebrae.. I`ll look into the taxonomy, if I have the time) and voters

and employers..we`ll either have another French Revolution on our hands, or Norway, the second most richest nation will have a majority population consisting of mute and beaten slaves, like 19th century Africa and contemporary Bangladesh.

My job consists in registering the data contained on labels fixed to needles with specimens of Coleoptera – that`s “beetles” ..nice little carapached chitin critters with six legs and antennae.

Some of the specimens are over 2 centuries old, they change color, sometimes turning translucent at times due to some weird exposure. Some of them smells of mothballs.. When I began I thought it was some kind of poison ether or formaldehyde..in terms of the first possibility, our Civil worker friend, Hallvard, reported that poisoning the critters were a popular way of killing them, until Entomologists (thats “bug freaks”) began falling over with their legs in the air.. I think he exaggerated, like the rumour he loved spreading about the cleaning maid letting out infamously poisonous Black Widows from their terrariums, forming invisible and lethal lairs around this ancient building… Never trust a kid that cuts off George Bush`s head and places it on Elle MacPherson body and pastes the infamy on his wall..

Anyways… this snippet pleased me somewhat as a Gnostic:

Among the most famous quote about beetles comes from the great population geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, who was asked what might be learned about a Creator by examining the world. His response: “an inordinate fondness for beetles“.. Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld novel The Last Continent lets a creator (not The Creator, but among them) begin Genesis anew on an separate and new island in the great Circle sea..somewhere off the coast of EcksEcksEcks …blooming and sprawling with life, vegetative and animal.. only possessing one rather noticeable and vital flaw.. there are only one of each.. hence the name Mono Island.. anyways, at a significant place in this story about a young creator and his island (sic!) *plot spoiler alert*, the most observant of the Wizards (your academic and traditionalist type of wizard, forget Harry Potter and Gandalf a moment..) who are stranded on this particular island, Ponder Stibbons, decides to stay behind on the Island while the wizards are rescued into a boat and pushed out to brave the sea in a ship grown for that purpouse – gets to discover that the particular creation of this creator appreciates most and above all…. is a Cockroach! Cockroaches and Beetles, incidentally, are not the same species.. a Beetle evolves through several morphic stages and processes.. Cockroaches clutch out their evolved self and only grows bigger.. and nastier… Anyways, Pratchett most probably found that quote of Professor Haldane.. he is quite a multivarious scholar, that Terry..

Beetling along…

And sorry for all the ranting. 😉

Opera 6.02 comes to Mac

Rumour had it that the Norwegian software entrepeneurs behind the most user friendly and efficient Internet browser application Opera were ceasing support and update the product for the Macintosh platform. This is fortunately not the case, Macminute reported today that Opera has released version 6.02 of Opera (sic!).

Im relieved, but notice they want me to upgrade my OS from 9.1 to 9.2.2 .. which is quaint since Apple`s rather user-unfriendly attitude has made Os 9.2.* incompatible with the older generations of G3 computers.. including my “brand new” Powerbook G3 series laptop…so I`ll just have to wait and see..

Butterflies

Ironically, surrounded by these critters everywhere at my job at the Zoological Museum in Oslo.. they still serve as a metaphor for what I am feeling inside. An expert procastignator who have neglected again to check the balances of future employment.. A lot of stuff has happened here since last time I mentioned my job in this blog.. chiefly, a conflict has arisen between the University in Oslo`s Information Technology department and the three big Museums of Natural History.. the ORACLE-based database into which I register the contents of our diverse collections of bugs,ants and other crawlies, is one of the bones of contention.. I have noticed a series of issues with the database which if it were a commercial product or service would have been ironed out during the test phase.. unfortunately, in the institutional culture of the universities – necessary and continued use of the databases in all their incarnations.. constitute the testing phase.. ladies and gentlemen, I am confined to doing my live`s work on Alpha technology and no user support. But not for long…. I guess it is panic speaking, but I no longer care what my employment shall be, only it does not devour me and spit out a dead shell of some kind. Three weeks from now, optimistically speaking, I could report from any kind of employment that does not demand 20 years education and anything higher than a high-school diploma.. 🙂 But hasn`t the Master said “Do not be concerned from morning until evening and from evening until morning about what you will wear.”

The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 36, Lambdin`s translation.

Towards Easter

I have had a busy two weeks, with job and moving. I guess im finished with the worst. Although to my horror I have discovered the new appartment doesnt have any space for my old Powermac. I`ve decided to make a backup of my ridiculously large document archive and port the whole thing to a projected new hardrive for the PowerBook G3 I inherited last spring. The future of the PowerMac8200/110Mhz and its ridiculous 17″ monitor (it looms, I think the depth of the monitor must be twice the screen size or something…a sharp contrast to the modern flat High-Density screens available for the newer Mac`s these days) is undecided, I only know I have no place for it anymore and when I have upgraded the PowerBookG3 (its an pre-USB/Firewire version) to full USB and SCSI compatibility I have no need of a stationary computer.

In the midst of everything the long prophesied crusade into Babylon occurs.. synchronistically to my reading up on the complex subject of Catharism. As far as I can determine the big thrust is done with, we only wait to see the repercussions.

Then there is Easter – last Maundy Thursday (2002) I continued my journey through the Minor Orders of Ecclesia Gnostica to the order of Doorkeeper after almost a years stasis in the function of Cleric by ordination at the hands of Jan Valentin Saether, who has served as Priest for our Parish in Oslo since 1995, which I have participated since its unofficial inception the autumn of that year- come next Thursday I will have been an Exorcist since September 29th last year, which is to say for almost half a year. If my counting is correct we are 2 exorcists, 3 readers and 1 doorkeeper in minor orders in our Church currently, very steady and dedicated all of them. Many of whom I am very proud to be in service of the Altar with. The last year I have been struggling with my priorities with regard to writing, this coming spring and summer I hope to dedicate one afternoon of the week exclusively to studies,writing and a mass of editing which is just waiting for some serious work.

Towards Easter, I wish everyone peace and wellbeing in accord with that peace which resides up on high and from which all harmony and calm emanate towards us in minute particles in time. I also pray for God`s blessing of the entire community of dedicated Christians, whoever they may be – and especially my Gnostic brethren and sistren in the Gnostic Ecclesia as we enter the passage from suffering and death into the glorious resurrection on the third day and the triumphant ascension, and the mystical descent of the Holy Spirit, our holy mother of compassion and the promised comforter of every man who has entered into the world.

Pax Pleromae

Moving In

I have just barely made transition from one appartment to another with my

girlfriend..looking forward to settling in. The place does not look like a home

yet, although we do our best. We have plumbers, electricians and carpenters

wandering in and out of the place – a third of the furniture just stands there looking forlorn and misplaced. The place is full of boxes and I need to be careful in case one of them is full of glass or other breakables. On top of it all I`ve got a cold.. 🙂 ..

nice one

Someone posted a “Get Rich Quick” ad as a comment to my blog…

This Shartell fellow wants me to send him 6 dollars in stamps and he promises I will receive money in the mail.. I don`t know what to think of this…or rather, I do. The article were about subversive individuals who hack ISP and domain name providers and replace their clients contents with *illegal* material.

Read as a response its amazingly frivolous. But I expect its just another program produced by some kind of clever bastard who think its a good idea to hand it over to the kind of “marketing” industry we have on the Net. But the thing is, this stuff isnt real – theres no money in it for me, and no money in it for the perpretators of the scams…only loss of bandwidth and a nanosecond irritation before we remove or delete it. First comment in months, and what does it say – that I should get quick by getting rid of some extra cash I might be handling.. which I don`t. *sigh*