Askeladden og Smørbukk

Goodness, I can't believe the semester is halfway over. I love, love, love my classes. My favorite one, believe it or not, is my Norwegian Literature class. It is combined with the Danish Lit. class because the languages are so similar, and Denmark controlled Norway for ages. (norway is better...grumble, grumble...) anyways, so for a large majority of the class we have been reading Danish stuff, which, you know, is cool, but ah yes, we just started "nasjionalromatikken" which is the Romantic period in Norway. And there are these two men, Asbjornsen and Moe, they are the equivalent of the Grimms Brother in Germany, well they went to the backcountry of Norway and collected all of these fantastic folk and fairy tales. I love this. I love fairy tales. And fairy tales in foreign languages are even better. Askeladden translates roughly into "the ash lad" which is like Cinderella. He is slightly different though, as he has many adventures, but there are plenty of similarities, trust me. We watched an old school stop-motion animation movie about Askeladden yesterday and I was in heaven. Ah Norge! Dette er det best sted i hele

verden!

Smørbukk is another character, translated into butterball, but he is this adorable kid who has adventures too. He just likes to eat...

Anyways.

That is my geek out moment for the week.

:) Cheers and Happy Halloween!

One snowflake, two...three snowflake, four...

...now you'll see 'The Snow Queen', if you count a million more...

This is the Snow Queen, a story by Hans Christian Andersen and it was made into several different versions. This one I have showcased for you today is a 1957 Soviet Union version that my childhood is based on. I love this story. I couldn't tell you exactly why, but I do, I do, I do. So if you ever get the chance to see it, don't judge it too harshly. It is amazing in its own special way...

and winter is coming...BTW

Pandora and Bob

This is a music box. It is not mine. I have lots of boxes, some musical, some otherwise but I wanted to picture a box that kinda represents Pandora's box. The greek myth is kinda of sad, as she unleashes all the world's aliments when she opens her secret box and it gave Greek men a reason to hate women, but it has a hopeful ending. She doesn't let hope escape and that is why we still have it. Anyways, that isn't really where I was wanting to go with this post...
Another connection to Pandora. I am sure ya'll know the website, Pandora the internet radio station. I freakin LOVE it. I made a radio station for Tchaikovsky and Journey and most importantly, BOB SEGER.
He is the man.
And he should be more appreciated than he currently is.
I love him.
Bob Seger, ladies and gentlemen, check it out.
that's all...
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6 Degrees of Separation

I'm pretty sure ya'll have heard of this. I had too, but I learned about it today. Sociology (my last GE thank goodness!) made us get into groups and normally I hate group work. Not that I don't like the people but, gosh dang it! Sometimes, i just need to do the work my way, you know? Surprisingly though, this group is pretty awesome. Especially considering it's just three of us. Anyways sociology was teaching us about weak connections i.e. acquaintances and how it's better for you to find a good job through a large network of weak connections rather than a network based on close friends. And the assignment mentioned how not everyone is connected to everyone else, rather, we are connected to a few who seem to know everyone else. Anyways, they had us do this little experiment, try the 6 degrees of separation with Kevin Bacon. Pick a name of any actor or actress and try to get them to connect with each other. We picked Cary Grant. Not any connection you say? Well, you'd be wrong...it took like twenty degrees of separation, but we got it! It was so much fun! We kept bring up all of these fantastic old movies and actors and I had a blast. Connections rock. Try it sometime. The world is a lot smaller than we think. :)