Oslo Down

In our scouring of the newswires for something that might entice us into some funny-bringing, not a whole lot is happening right now in the States. CNN seems pretty excited about our population reaching 300 million, but that does nothing but frighten us. After all, that means there are likely 151 million Yankee fans in this country. That number, exceeded only by the Pinstripes’ payroll, is staggering. Kansas Ciry Royals fancount on the other hand has been at a steady 47 for the last ten years or so. Sometimes you’re just so bad that even the locals must find a new allegiance to the Big Apple. Case in point – isn’t Robbie Thompson a Yanks’ fan?

But turning our YABNews desk to the international page, we also dare not delve into the nuclear ear-punch that is North Korea, nor will we comment on the ongoing American presence in Iraq. While both have more national security issues than say, number of Royals fans, neither global arena scares us more than what went down yesterday in the Norwegian village of Bodoe.

They’re baaaaaack.

According to this AP report, a Norwegian man in his 20s shocked the border guards at the city’s central penitentiary facility by breaking IN to jail after are hard night of vodka-slamming. While inmates and Fox programming executives spend hours coming up with ways to break out of prison, this man knocked a few too many back and broke his way in. Surely, not a single prison guard could 1) explain such and occurrence or 2) anticipate this happening, as most jail-related rounds are designed to keep the people they’ve already got. Now I don’t know what possessed the man (Norway is hardly the vodka capital its Scandinavian neighbors claim to be), as being in the outside world would allow Druunken Olav Schlossedberg to participate in the 2nd richest GDP economy in the world. There’s something more to this story, and the AP is sleeping on it. Our theory, you ask?

Easy. He’s a Viking.

Vikings are far more unpredictable than your everyday Norwegian people. Normal Norwegians (or Normegians, for short), spend their days striving in the name of human rights and speedskating; Vikings prefer to pass the time raiding Dublin and screwing with Wales. Normegians: experts at fishing. Vikings: sending their dead to sea on fire. It’s two very different worlds in the history of Norway. And all of a sudden, the Vikings may be back.

Let’s analyze the actions of our friendly prisonbreaker, shall we? For starters, he was clearly a fan of the mead. And if you’ve ever been forced to read Beowulf, there’s a good 40 pages of sitting in a mead hall listening to other stupid Vikings making up stupid stories – (when in reality all of them are just trying to put off the inevitable circumstance when they go out to feed their horse and turn into Grendelfood.) So he’s a drinker – check. In addition, he probably had a bone to pick with the local authorities. Now we’re not advocating sailing and drinking, but what if his longship got towed? It didn’t really fit in that parking space to begin with (much like Suburbans in our country), and likely goaded the tow truck guy into hauling it away, what with such a menacing hull and all. And aren’t Vikings known to be stonger than the average Normegian? Dude, he just went through a fence.

I’d like to see Edvard Munch do THAT.