Last night around 2am when I was typing in my notes from Stallman’s talk on Copyright I was interrupted by some serious banging down the hall. Not the kind of banging I expect you gang-banging hustlers would think of, no, this was the simple repetitive collision of physical objects you’d usually not ascribe to pornography at all. Banging doors maybe. Or shotguns.
The banging did not cease, and it was so loud I felt the vibrations in the table where I was sitting. At the top floor. I stepped away from the laptop and hurried into the bedroom where Lady C was sound asleep. For all I knew, it could be the janitor trying to hack away at the terrible, razor sharp icicles we have hanging under the roof. A lady was killed in this city a couple of years back. If the pure force of 10 kilos of ice doesn’t kill you, the spike through your neck will. Late winter is the time of impalement-hysteria. Anyway, hysteria aside it was still a little weird to be doing this at 2am in the morning.
This is just outside our kitchen window, 5th floor.
There’s also a kindergarten 20 feet from the door. Great combination. Kid on a stick?
– C, hey wake up!
She barely managed to not open her eyes.
– Uhhh?
– Haven’t you heard the noise? What is that? Is it normal?
– No, she said. Thumper.. someone’s summoning a maker..
Not much help there, I reckoned, and went to the door. I always feel like something of a pervert when I stand there looking through the judas hole. Judas must have been a pervert for getting a peeping hole in the door named after him. I think of construction sites in cartoons or public bathrooms for women in Japan..
I couldn’t see anything, reached for the door handle, but changed my mind. The pounding was really violent, it sounded as if someone was trying to kick down a door. For real. Or firing a shotgun, my overactive imagination suggested. Thanks. I went back to the bedroom and by this time even sleeping beauty had heard the ruckus.
Not long after a police van arrived. And another one. Four officers got out of the car, with see-through crowd control shields and weapons drawn. Fucking someone firing a shotgun! I heard something sounding like pistol shots, and then everything went more or less silent. The second van left the scene of the crime. Twenty minutes later the other car followed, and they hadn’t apprehended anyone.
Someone some floors below us had probably just had a little too much to drink, and was dealing with his frustration by confronting the furniture with it. That’s IKEA for you. And another night in the outskirts of Oslo. You may laugh about my thoughts regarding the shotgun and all, but please check out the national papers a few years back when two people were massacred with Uzis just across the street from here, in one of the flats you can probably find on the picture above. Just after Christmas we saw a row in a flat facing ours, and an old television set was thrown out the window. Goes to show that in Torshov, TVs and icicles will kill ya. Good luck!
Thou shalt not summon a Maker while thy brothers are asleep. This is the first rule of the Fremen.
No. The first rule of the Fremen is that you don’t talk about the Fremen.
No, that’s the second rule! The first one is: OMG WATER TASTES LIKE CHOCLIT!
No, that’s the third. The first and the second are the same. ALWAYS!
DOH!