2011, will you do me good?

Hello 2011, how do you do? So far, my first day at work has been a bit of a drag. I'm a down right moody bitch and it's annoying myself even. There's something about a new year, like you should start it jolly and fresh and enthusiastic like 2010 did not happen. I guess that just rubs me the wrong way. There are however a few things to look forward to in 2011 and here's three of them.

Kaizers Orchestra
The Norwegian band has completed recording their Violeta Violeta trilogy and will unleash it to the world these two years, its first release is scheduled for this month and in March they'll be playing in Amsterdam which show I will obviously attend, if only it was to meet up with one of my best friends who I met two years ago at the same venue for the same band. As with the first Kaizers Orchestra albums, these albums tell a story. It's a trilogy after all. It tells the story of a family with a small child. The mother gets seriously insane and the father takes the child and runs away, hiding in the world. The mother obviously goes more insane, doesn't leave her house for 7 years, crying buckets filled with tears. During one of her moments of pure insanity, she wears her wedding dress, goes crying through the house and pours gasoline over her dress. She catches fire and gets seriously burned. She survives and her sadness turns into anger and vows to hunt down the father and the child. Expect a grand finale. I can't wait!

Janet Weiss
With Carrie Brownstein, Mary Timony and Rebecca Cole she has formed Wild Flag which will be recording an album and release it as well. If that isn't enough, it's known that the Jicks, as in Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks where she drums as well, have been messing about in some exciting basement in Portland (the one of Jick Joanna Bolme and husband and Crib Gary Jarman) and the band has already recorded and apparently Beck (yes, that Loser guy) is involved as well. Goody! Quasi is also touring in 2011 so Janet Weiss is very busy. Which means good for music. Let's hope she'll find her way to Europe once more.

Photography
I have a Fisheye 2. I have a Diana F+ Edelweiss. Hello??!! When I picked my pictures from the lab (department store HEMA) yesterday, there was one picture that made it all worth while. Do you know these pictures of highways, where you can only see the lights of the cars as a beautiful string of light? That's the kind of picture I made (with the Diana mini) and made me very excited about making more pictures. I want layers! Light effects! Long exposures! No more just snapping the pets (which is a fun thing to do), let's go mess up photos and take pictures of each other in silly settings and poses. 2011, I'll capture you good!

Season spirits

Hello Autumn, how have you been? I quite like this season. I love the colours of the leaves and how they make pretty pictures, but I don't like them wet and slippery on the bicycle lane, not being able to see if there's any branches underneath. I don't like the wind either, or let's call it storms. At night you can hear the wind blow against the building and makes me think of getting up and battle the wind on my bicycle. Don't underestimate the wind. Today I nearly ended up in a ditch with a garbage container when a nasty wind nearly blew me off the road. I was able to get my feet on the ground just in time or else I would have seriously crushed the cookies in my bag. Among other things.

I do love the bakery that's so typical for this season, Sinterklaas bakery. Sinterklaas is a bit like Christmas, but here the kids are getting small gifts and candy in their shoes two weeks prior to the actual day (December 5) and bigger gifts on the day itself. The arrival of Sinterklaas is a big event shown live on national television. Sinterklaas rides his white horse on the rooftops every night and is helped by Zwarte Pieten, Black Petes who are dressed in colourful playsuits. These Black Petes are well, black. Sinterklaas is also known as Friend of the Children and will give children who have been naughty some sticks on a rope so they can be hit with it and children who have been really naughty will be put into a sack and shipped to Spain, where the Turkish Saint lives. Confused? It's about the candy and the anticipation, once December 5 is here I've usually left the country and celebrate my birthday in a country they don't know about Sinterklaas and I can wander over Christmas markets and eat German Bratwurst.

I already wonder and fear whether I have enough films for my cameras (yes, plural) for when we are in Leeds again. My Diana Mini currently has about 19 pictures left on its current film and I have two 36/100ISO films and one 24/200ISO film. You'd think I shouldn't have to worry. Everyday I see so many great shots while on my bicycle but you don't want to constantly shoot the same things over and over again. That traffic sign is not going to look any different tomorrow, no matter how great it looks on a picture. I want a little stuffed bunny, preferally white, which I can take with me wherever I go and take a picture from it in every new place I get. Bunny in Amsterdam. Bunny in Alkmaar. Bunny on the train. Bunny in Rotterdam. Bunny in Vlaardingen. Bunny in Leeds. Bunny on the Arriva Bus. Bunny in Manchester. You get the drill. Just one silly picture. It would make a nice series.

And so I wrote about completely different things I intended to. But listen to Damaged by Erase Eratta. It's good!