X-Mas report 2006 – Merry Christmas!

Saturday morning I got on the bus to (OSL) Gardermoen international airport, meeting my brother and mother at the airport. My sister’s in Zagreb, Croatia, and wouldn’t be able to make it since she was going by bus from Lyon in France through Rome in Italy.. Don’t ask.

We were going to my aunt, uncle and two cousins to celebrate christmas this year. And their two cats. One is named Nasty (or Nasti, really, meaning Shining star, as opposed to stars that don’t) and the other’s called the midly offensive Silk Pussy (Silkepus). I have nothing but love for creatures of the feline persuasion. They remind me of really nice women somehow.
But they should’ve made them with hair that doesn’t stick. Or hairless altogether. I did nought today except from removing cat hair from my clothing.
..and going home by plane. Which sucks these days. Let me tell you about it.

First you get in line to check in, if there’s anything you need to check in. In my case, there wasn’t, I travel light and back-funded by an economically viable bank account. So I was standing there like a goof among all the other tools going somewhere for christmas, when this kind lady kindly asked me to kindly stop jerking around and get the hell out of the line since I was kind of taking up queue capacity. I didn’t even know that was a word.
I got out of line feeling a lot of angry looks from people who apparently were better human beings than I, and then I proceeded to the security checkpoint. After the last cigarette.

I always have a last cigarette before I board a plane.
For all you know, that plane might go down. In a fiery ball of furious flames. If or when that happens, you’re gonna be thinking; "Phew. Glad I had my last cigarette already. Bring it on, mofo!" It’s the same thing with people in ye olden times who was waiting for the firing squad to shoot ‘im. He was given the choice of a last cigarette. You can try and die of cancer right now, or you can put your money on the chance that all of the ten marksmen fuck up their shots.
And you’re gonna need that cancer when you get to the security checkpoint.

Before you even get there, there’s a guy with something like a waffle iron scanning underneath your shoes, telling you you should take of your shoes. But not here, no. What are you, an idiot? No, you have to walk to the end of the line and then you’ll have to take of your shoes. Don’t axe me why you have to, it has got something to do with your shoes. Dirty, little shoes. I had effin’ mountain shoes too, so I was like G.I Joe standing there with rambo shoes in my hand at the end of the line.

Then I had to open my bag.
A television screen on the wall instructed me that in the summer of 2006 some British terrorists had planned to use liquid explosives to blow up several airplanes going from Heathrow, which is why they needed to put my lip balm (the manly kind, I should add), my deodorant (same thing) and my toothpaste (unisex) into a airtight, sealed little bag for my own protection.
FUCK!
If I knew my devious and evil little lip balm had planned to blow up a plane! Why, I would’ve bought another one instead!
A kind and gentle lip balm, perhaps. One that would sing sweet country songs about elves and horses and running rivers, like in the Irish whiskey commercials. And my deodorant! What a heartless, fundamentalist, odor removing little antiperspirant! I had suspicions about its schemes, but I never knew if they were true, or what they were about. Blowing up planes. Killing innocent people. I don’t even want to talk about the burning, hateful satanism embodied in my toothpaste.

Now I was standing there in line in my knitted socks that grandma made me a long time ago, holding my bag and mountain shoes in one hand and my liquid terrorist toolkit in the other. Then it was finally my turn when they wanted my keys, my wallet and my belt. "Sir," I said, "I can understand why you want my appartment and my money, but what do you want my belt for?" He laid one of those momentarily infinite analyzing looks upon me, and said: "Kid. We don’t want any hang-ins." Which was very human of him. I would’ve hanged myself right there in the metal detector if I could, just out of shame.

After that whole ordeal we learned that our flight had been postponed one hour, which opened up the theoretical possibility of having one more last cigarette before take-off. Theoretically. Because when you’re on the inside, there’s no getting out, if you don’t want to be strip-searched all over again. I looked at my belt. At least the convict sentenced to death had a choice. I had a mint gum, a condom and a lip balm that wanted to kill me.

That was a summary of going there and back again.
The actual staying there was a lot cosier, and just about in sync with previous christmases we’ve celebrated together. On Christmas eve (24th in Norway) we get up, watch the Czech film Drei Hasselnüsse für Aschenbrödel starring the beautiful Libuše Šafránková (picture) who enchants the children and arouses the men. Then we went for a walk in the outskirts of Sandnes, which was more like a walk in Northern England by scene and weather, and we had a little session in church. I’m no christian myself, but it’s always fun watching the growing agony in all the little children who can’t stop thinking about all the presents waiting for them at home. It reminds me of 120 days in Sodom by Marquis de Sade, except it’s barely an hour and all about Jesus.
On the 25th it’s "not allowed" to visit other people at all, so you just hang around the house and eat good food, play games or chase the kitten around with the remote-controlled car. And today we went back home.

I’m at work right now, but I’m going out in five minutes to meet Kornelius, just to hear if he’s got any idea when he think we left the night club Friday morning, and why I’d spent all my money. And on what. And where my hat disappeared. Anyway.