November 2006

Words wanted

November 15, 2006

Yesterday was Dagur íslenskrar tungu, a day held annually to celebrate the Icelandic language and highlight its importance for our nation. To commemorate the day, the Icelandic Centre for Educational Materials has launched a competition to find new Icelandic words for ten English terms that have entered the language. A quick glance at the words [...]

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Thongophobia

November 13, 2006

As long-term readers will know, YT regularly visits a massage parlour to get her knotted shoulders and whiplash-weary neck vertabrae sorted out. And afterwards, unfailingly heads to the Laugardalslaug swimming pool for further treatment, in the form of water massage rigorously applied in one of the outdoor hot pots they have there [the one with [...]

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Liberal immigration

November 12, 2006

I was in the produce section of my local Hagkaup supermarket the other day when I discovered I had a question: YT: Excuse me, are these tangerines or clementines?* FLOOR WORKER IN PRODUCE SECTION: [In English] Yes they’re very nice. YT: [...] YT: [In English] No, I asked if they were tangerines or clementines. FWIPS: [...]

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The answer, my friend, is running in the wind

November 11, 2006

So after State Radio had confirmed that there were no trampolines flying through the air today [as everyone had learned their lesson during the Big Trampoline Storm last weekend], I figured it was safe to go out running. Never mind that we had winds around 25 m/second and hailstorms. The hell I was going to [...]

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MY ICELAND: The hidden people

November 9, 2006

Here in Iceland, there is a long tradition of believing in Huldufólk, or ‘hidden people’. Huldufólk are mystical beings – people – who inhabit the natural world, living in rocks and appearing only to humans when they themselves wish to. According to lore, Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden one day when [...]

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In which I gush about American Apparel*

November 8, 2006

Last summer, while in Canada, I fell hook, line and sinker for the clothes at American Apparel. By which I mean I wandered into a store and didn’t wander out for another two hours. And when I did I was loaded down with stuff and my VISA card was sizzling. At last I’d found clothes [...]

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Stormy

November 6, 2006

So, remember Paul F. Nikolov, a.k.a. ‘jadetree‘, who a couple of months ago posted a message on the website cruel.com urging people to spam The Iceland Weather Report with the comment ‘Aron Pálmi should rot in jail’ – all because he did not share YT’s views on what constitutes a pedophile? He’s running for seats [...]

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Just a couple more thoughts on this and then I’m done

November 5, 2006

* Still more clothing missing: my thermal running tights that I bought at MEC this summer. Goddamn. * On at least two occasions I saw people carrying big-assed toolboxes into our [ex-] neighbour’s flat and wondered: What are those people doing with toolboxes? – Yeh, well, now I know. They use them for prying open [...]

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Sonofabitch!!

November 3, 2006

So, two days ago AAH comes in and announces ‘Someone stole my scarf from downstairs!’* I immediately dismissed the remark with a ‘Yeh yeh,’ thinking that someone in the house must have taken it by mistake and that it would turn up sometime in the next few days. Later that evening I was sitting at [...]

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S’long! S’bin a slice!

November 1, 2006

Well, we watched our neighbours get hauled away a few minutes ago after a serious sting operation involving several big – BIG – police officers who made a lot of noise, as in, OPEN THE DOOR!! OPEN THE DOOR OR WE’LL BUST IT DOWN!!! accompanied by some very loud banging. The sort of operation where [...]

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