One of the greatest things I discovered in Norway was Øystein Sunde. His guitar work is very good, the tunes are catchy, and his lyrics are often laugh-out-loud funny.
I could not find an English translation of his song “Jeg sprengte TV’n i går“, so I had to do it myself (with help from bv). I believe the English-speaking world should experience this one. I apologize to Sunde and to readers for any inaccuracies.
From the album: “Du må’kke komme her og komme her” (1994)
My translation of the lyrics:
“I blew up the TV yesterday.
I blew up the TV yesterday.
“Reisesjekken” [a reality program/game] disappeared with an embarrassing sigh into its own reality, while the flapping remains of buying-pressure and the wheel of fortune disintegrated into a cloud of gratitude. And the politicians’ camouflaged strokes paddled against the current amongst the remains of angry debaters and dissolved into fragments of point-divergence at a speed of 625 grimaces a second.
I blew up the TV yesterday.
And blue lightning devoured the last commercial as the speaker diaphragms came out like twisted straw hats in the sunset.
I blew up the TV yesterday.
And the whole [pay-TV channel] world of shooting, blood, gore, slime, and half-pornographic thrillers went backwards into a cable network with no check valve.
I blew up the TV yesterday.
so fragments of images of sponsor-laden Mount Everest tourists, national team idols, and South Pole stompers took a giant step for mankind through the ionosphere and out into outer space.
I blew up the TV yesterday.
I blew up the TV yesterday.
I chopped up the PC yesterday.
And 12Mb RAM sideslipped on the inner ski out the parallel port and took with it a cord of unsolvable but daily problems, while the printer stood there like a cow and chewed TrueType fonts and regurgitated error messages into the LCD display as 80-gram recycled paper and color toner manured its way out of the cooler fins.
I chopped up the PC yesterday.
The PCMCIA slot spit out “svarteper” [similar to The Old Maid card], the deck of cards, and half the kingdom, and let the SCSI-drivers bounce between the walls of the “CD-ROOM”.
I chopped up the PC yesterday.
The config.sys rolled up into the mouse and disappeared, white with fear, up its own autoexec.bat
From DOS you came, to “dass”[the loo] you shall return, and MAC you shall rise again.
I chopped up the PC yesterday.
And the 486 processor came to its senses and fluttered out the serial port and took the local VESA bus to “Modem Bad” [historical Norwegian spa/sanitorium], at quarter past five to eight, as the queue of re-trained vacuum salesmen took their motivational courses, PC-brochures, and sales pitches and followed after.
I chopped up the PC yesterday.
The software packages that had inflated beyond uselessness, and exploded in hype, lay there like bad joke-books, and the biggest bluff of the 20th century took along all the promises of increased productivity and sneaked, blushing, out into the night.
I chopped up the PC yesterday.
I chopped up the PC yesterday.
I have bought a pencil today.
Paper and eraser and pencil today.
Think – To write and read an acoustic PC.
Have written a letter today.
Stuck on a stamp and sent it today.
[To] think – that I wrote an analog letter.
…and got it sent today.
Have gone for a walk in the woods today.
A little walk and looked around the forest today.
Imagine – seeing it all in real 3-D.
…in the forest today.
Will read a good book tonight.”
