From Oslo or some such place, here are the Raveonettes doing Ghost Rider...Because, well...Sometimes, irony is just ironic. Thus the proclamation of days...
The Raveonettes - Attack Of The Ghost Riders
MooPix | MySpace Videos
We missed Leif Erickson Day. Well, since they got the proclamation wrong --it calls him a grandson of Norway and a son of Iceland when Norway's puff piece indicates he was probably a son of Greenland, a grandson of Iceland, and a great-grandson of Norway, at best. Or, not. Accuracy in proclamations of days is probably a bit of a stretch, anyway.
Now, from all the sagas and tales I've read, Leif's dad was a total asshole. Appears that most of the Norse in early Iceland were, shall we say, overly pugnacious. He was exiled from Iceland and took the family west to Greenland. Which is a fuckova (note the Norse-tribute spelling!) lot nastier than Greenland; the Vikings were spinmeisters, I'm sure. They called the old boy Eric the Red-assed since he was one of those guys who had to be right, particularly if he had a keg or two of that moonshine Everclear-Aquavit in him. Leif was a trader, bringing fish and furs and I assume Ice and rocks to places they were needed like...Iceland and Norway. (I think that when they were looking at mercantilism, the Vikings had a socialist approach even then. "Oh Sigurd, look. A boulder from Greenland; and look at the Ice sculpture! It'll look lovely on the mantle back home in Oslo!)He either was looking for something or the winds blew him and his band of entrepreneurs off course. And, he ended up in Labrador? Seriously? Or Nova Scotia? Maybe Maine? Of course, this was before the great climate change of 1333, so the climate in all these places was sub-tropical. (One could, in a pinch, argue that since sub-tropical means both lower than and less than tropical, you could say that they are subtropical still!) Thus, the great Viking cities of the eastern United States and Canada were established...or, not.
So in honor of a day that nobody knew about and that probably means nothing, here we go with a touching piece of Viking rock and roll done by those Norse heroes...err, Interpol. Here is "Leif Erikson" ...
The Raveonettes - Attack Of The Ghost Riders
MooPix | MySpace Videos
Presidents, of course, spend no time composing or thinking about
these proclamations. They leave it to some Boswell in the White House
press, correspondence or speech-writing offices to reflect on, say,
Fire Prevention Week and pen documents that begin with topic sentences
like this: “As powerful as any force in the natural world, fire
deserves our utmost attention.”Indeed, fire does, just as
Nordic-Americans deserve our utmost attention, too — or at least the
attention of some low-level White House staff member. Who is
charged with this duty in the Obama White House? An administration
spokesman declined to say. “I see this going nowhere but mocking,” said
the spokesman, Tommy Vietor.
We missed Leif Erickson Day. Well, since they got the proclamation wrong --it calls him a grandson of Norway and a son of Iceland when Norway's puff piece indicates he was probably a son of Greenland, a grandson of Iceland, and a great-grandson of Norway, at best. Or, not. Accuracy in proclamations of days is probably a bit of a stretch, anyway.
Now, from all the sagas and tales I've read, Leif's dad was a total asshole. Appears that most of the Norse in early Iceland were, shall we say, overly pugnacious. He was exiled from Iceland and took the family west to Greenland. Which is a fuckova (note the Norse-tribute spelling!) lot nastier than Greenland; the Vikings were spinmeisters, I'm sure. They called the old boy Eric the Red-assed since he was one of those guys who had to be right, particularly if he had a keg or two of that moonshine Everclear-Aquavit in him. Leif was a trader, bringing fish and furs and I assume Ice and rocks to places they were needed like...Iceland and Norway. (I think that when they were looking at mercantilism, the Vikings had a socialist approach even then. "Oh Sigurd, look. A boulder from Greenland; and look at the Ice sculpture! It'll look lovely on the mantle back home in Oslo!)He either was looking for something or the winds blew him and his band of entrepreneurs off course. And, he ended up in Labrador? Seriously? Or Nova Scotia? Maybe Maine? Of course, this was before the great climate change of 1333, so the climate in all these places was sub-tropical. (One could, in a pinch, argue that since sub-tropical means both lower than and less than tropical, you could say that they are subtropical still!) Thus, the great Viking cities of the eastern United States and Canada were established...or, not.
So in honor of a day that nobody knew about and that probably means nothing, here we go with a touching piece of Viking rock and roll done by those Norse heroes...err, Interpol. Here is "Leif Erikson" ...
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