siggimus has been going through some of his famous newsletters & has to say he’s mighty impressed!!
there is never a dull moment for siggimus & gvido
*sigh!
siggimus is a godem genius!!
perhaps a snippet or two from them will be recycled for dis blog…
(the following is an excerpt from news of siggimus, ever so slightly modified)
during a recent visit to centralais tirgus, reputedly the largest market in europe, siggimus decided to fill the physical & emotional gap left by the theft of his beloved watch, received along with a subscription to a colourful magazine
after careful consideration & lots of windowshopping, he decides to go for a sharp quartz alarm chronograph, which he has subsequently come to know & love by the traditional latvian name of gvido
gvido looks like a million bucks; big & impressive, with a state of the art digital timepiece underneath an oldfashioned dial one. distinctly modern, yet with firm roots in tradition. gilt all over the place, digits & hands, although the second hand is just red
gvido’s digital bit is what siggimus calls impressive! not only does it tell the time, but if you prod it in the correct manner, you can also get information about a date. & as if this wasn’t quite plenty, there is also a stopwatch & an alarm!!
the golden knobs are extremely sensitive to siggimus’ touch (one-touch, it is usually called in the literature). this adds a lot of thrill & excitement to the relationship, as siggimus never knows what he’s gonna get when he looks at gvido:
-will it be a date?
-or maybe the stopwatch?
-will the stopwatch be stopped at 3:18:06?!? or will it maybe still be going at it, in a fitful race with time itself?
-will the alarm & the hourly peep be on or off? (the artists who created gvido must have decided against seperating these siamese twins at birth; siggimus has yet to get one without the other). siggimus tries to keep it off, as the display will sometimes, or rather usually, go a little bit blank during the alarming peep, & sometimes even the hourly peep fades out into oblivion, but gvido obviously has other plans. when the display returns, the alarm & peep indicator is usually on, & the hi-tech chronograph will show incorrect time. sometimes gvido tries to trick siggimus by displaying the stopwatch saying something that looks like a watch 23 mins late, but then turns out to be the stopwatch trying to trick siggimus
but siggimus isn’t tricked quite that easily, & checks the actual watch, finding it almost 9 hours off. should siggimus at this point try & set the watch to a correct time, gvido gets defensive & the display goes blank, only to return 4 hours later, 7 minutes late, but the date is february 29
at this, siggimus chuckles heartily, & says “oh, that gvido! it’s some prankster watch!”
some might conjecture that paying $10 for gvido is armed robbery, & someone else might call it a steal. siggimus says that it was an enormously prudent investment. the gilt digits & hands & the red second hand constitute a fully functional timepiece (going on three weeks now!), while the hi-tech bit provides for endless joy & entertainment
there is never a dull moment for siggimus & gvido
in october 2000, siggimus travelled to helsinki, fresh from a delightful hospital stay & with a neck brace in his bag. went to helsinki to rendez-vous with jonkurteiz & jodaz, who were there on a café norden conference
of course getting to meet minna (the human one, i.e.) was kinda the main incentive 🙂
an extremely finnish looking girl minna knew lent her an apartment. it was extremely small, but with a high ceiling, and a second ‘floor’ serving as a bedroom. siggimus remembers lying in bed, drinking in everything on tv, as he didn’t have a tv at that time back in riga. two things stand out
news footage from palestine, where a teenage palestinian was shot by israeli soldiers. it was the reemergence of the ‘troubles’ after a well timed stunt by some guy, who later, surprisingly enough became pm of israel. the thing about the footage was that it was old news & had been on the news everywhere for a week or two. siggimus had read a lot about it on the web, seen pics in the papers, read long pieces on the impact it had on the world, but always had to imagine it. strange, to finally see it
on mtv scandinavia siggimus remembers a wet man walking on a bleak beach in the rain, singing a beautiful song siggimus had never heard before (about the most alternative they allowed on the radio in latvia was madonna) & after seeing it a few times, it quite grew on siggimus
when the conference was over, siggimus went straight back to riga (if you can call something that takes 18 hours & involves a bus, a ferry, another bus, a trolleybus & the stupidest elevator in creation straight), straddled with a 25 kg ‘bag of essentials’ he had asked jonkurteiz & jodaz to bring, but turned out not to contain anything siggimus ever used. jonkurteiz & jodaz generously took it upon themselves to bring bjúgu sausages, green ora peas, some malt & a bit of appelsín lemonade which made a whopper of a meal when siggimus finally got through making some uppstúfur sauce without botching it & some delicious harðfiskur that caused great joy on the second floor of paddy whelan’s when siggimus gave it to maiks kungs on his birthday
*sigh
this walk down memory lane sponsored by yellow
again, vicky myrtle has to wait, this time mostly because bjössi got drunk last night & apparently behaved like a something that should be kept on a tight chain at iluks’ in front of jonkurteiz & his malen…
then when they finally gets to stokkseyri, the batteries ran out on the camera.
mind you, there’s not a lot to take pics of in stokkseyri…
having asked for a sweaty & greasy hamburger, bjössi had to make do with the most expensive one in recent history
bjössi can recommend rauða húsið, eyrarbakka
phonepicblogged by siggimus
guess it wouldn’t take one long to figure out one’s chances should one encounter a premium specimen (who is one kidding? one isn’t picky; any specimen still breathing will do…) wearing one of these
& more company
yesterday, instead of a quest to vík í mýrdal (bjössi claims that while it is indeed a crappy place, it’s worth a visit as there are some beautiful things to be found in the vicinity… yeah right!), siggimus is invited to the blue lagoon (or puddle of mud as bjössi calls it) with jonkurteiz, malen & saga. bjössi is dragged along for good measure
had to share the lagoon with an american female football(??) team
what a marvellous idea!!
actually, you can usually find a luscious lady or two in that puddle
while the water is actually a bit too salty for siggimus’ comfort, it was quite refreshing indeed
on the way back, bjössi invites all to munch on some traditional icelandic prince polo
but what on earth is a siggimus to do today!??
finally getting online, dis stupendous minipic of siggimus & da rug
enjoy
phonepicblogged by siggimus
upon arrival home from perilous journey, siggimus puts the knife on the phonogram to study jonkurteiz’ assertion that they are the best thing happening over der. not surprising, really, as they have a definite kinship to cocteau twins, another of his favourites. karin dreijer also uses her voice in a björkish way sometimes
but! oddly enough their site doesn’t have any info at all on the album siggimus prefers…
so, siggimus googles it to try & find the track list jonkurteiz has so typically omitted
surprisingly, nothing turns up, even after several attempts
staring into the incomprehensible lack of results, a lightbulb goes on over head of siggimus
the pox on all your houses, jonkurteiz!!
ny mapp is swedish for new folder
ps: “we’ve got a bad ass name and we want people to think we’re dangerous”
wish siggimus hadn’t read that
buggered off to snæfellsnes for da weekend with jodaz & jonkurteiz to make the most of jonkurteiz’s short visit to iceland
it only took 3 grown men with nothing else to do all day around 72 hours of planning
eventually settle on a fishing trip to núpá river. it’s situated next to haffjarðará, where filthy rich people hand over obscene amounts of money for a bit of excercise in the outdoors with a long stick
upon inspection, núpá ‘river’ appears to be running out of water & the chances of finding any lifeform in it seem remote at best. this might explain why 3 days in núpá cost less than the people fishing in the adjacent river spend on footware weekly
dis does not stop the avid fishermen for more than 2 hours or so & eventually they embark on a drive up to the old dam/power station to see if they couldn’t at least catch a ghost of a fish
after an hour or two of the musbile taking the gang wherever they wished, up & down river to try & catch a little something, driving over rough terrain & crossing rivers as if it was a jeep, dey gives up & returns to the palace to throw a few burgers on the bbq & create art out of’em
den an attempt at finishing all the beer & da whiskey too
jodaz takes great pride in his devotion to the cause of finishing the excellent wiskey with a bit of coffee
da moment dey wakes up, da gang starts talking about fishing some more
in some 6-8 hours, they do
musbile takes them half the way down to the ocean, where dey was actually supposed to find fish
so, next up is about a 2-3 km walk down to where the river is bubbling with fish eager to take any bait & jump up on land. even if all you have for bait is rotten mackerel
with a well timed break, they make it der in about 1,5 hours
at first it was just cool watching the water rise, but suddenly it dawns upon’em! dey was trapped on a wee island :/
deir only chance of survival seems to be calling the coastguard, quite an expensive exercise indeed
jodaz just kept on fishing as if nothing was going on…
den it comes to’em!
(well, comes to jodaz, actually)
dey must swim back to the mainland!! swim for dear life!!
after a wee bit of experimenting, dat soon gets downgraded to wading
well, most if not all survived this ordeal, only to face another!
walking back to the musbile with two sets of cold, wet balls & one pair of legs in warm boots that reach up to the ear. da terrain was rough; dry, soft & boggy
a large number of hours later, dey actually makes it to da musbile & never has a cold-wet-balled & lobster-red-armed & tired man been as happy to see his musmobile
what little remained of the evening was spent sharing memories of lives flashing by, continuously
on way home, dey come to the conclusion dat while the fishing was a miserable failure & the drinking not up to par, dey can at least take pride in de fact dat dey were swift & efficient at the cleaning up…
