Whisky it is. And while Devia was surprised over how easy the Scotch blend was to drink, I considered its palate diluted rather than mellow in tone. But it sure enough served us well while pre-X berserking the city centre of Amsterdam. He had, together with ZZAP69 and myself, spent the night on board a train bound southwest through a sleeping Europe in order to meet up with the Aussies. As means to culturally civilise the fellow nerds a trip to the Rijksmuseum for some lure into national romantic landscape paintings from the Golden Ages was planned in advance. But other than that it was mostly a Bacchusian game in the morally depraved and whore infested areas lit up by hedonistic Red Lights. Later the Scandinavian posse was strengthened with forces from Norway and the berserking would continue until early morning yet another day.

The actual X party was naturally a blast. It was held at a new place, a venue with room for more nerds. Decent gigs, helluva demo show and good clean fun while sharing a brew with the odd guy next to you. Plenty of laughter, perhaps the most cordial one when Hedning, Mahoney, Bepp, Zedrick and myself read the newly dug up demonotes from Sticcan of Tomelilla Cracking Team Sweden. Unearthed after having been beneath the soil since 1988. The humour was so intense that we could have been mistaken for five men crying. The tears however, of which there were plenty, were all out of laughter.

While on the flight back home, me and ZZAP69 had a good chat on the event that had just passed and how peculiar a thing the c64 scene is. Spontaneous but yet with some sort of internal order. People from all over the globe meet up and share moments, some having worked numerous hours on a release, in order to afterwards return back to a real life much different to the one led with a handle on a scene continuous since 25 years. Escapism for grown up men.

This issue I am taking a pause from editing as I have to focus full time on my final exams during three days in January. Those exams should be making me a Medical Doctor if all works out elegantly. After that a Datastorm in Gothenburg is around the corner, and Vandalism News should hopefully be back with a Vengeance, pardon the pun. Enjoy the fine work by my collaborators. Let the blue screen be lit.

Jonatan "Macx" FG.