Weblog | I don't like the word blog, it's ugly. Anyway, new content happens here. (Swedish dito)

About me and the site | Twenty-something male who likes text. Obsessed with things such as books, reality, communication, and one or two tv-shows.

Archives | Things written here since... well, 2001. Some of it is good, some is utter shait.

Books | Books read, not books written. So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.

Photo | I like my camera and it likes me.

Links | Outwards, away, flee.

e-mail | J. Nicklas Andersson

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Benderisms

I was going to write something really long, but that have to wait. Right now, I’m almost speechless, and all because of a few hats.

As Bender Unit 22 in Futurama would have said: “I’m taking the next pimpmobile out of here!”

Ramblings from an almost-jaywalker

I was before today blissfully unaware of a few things. That people who drive cars must drive fast, they get annoyed if they actually have to stop because of some schmuck — i.e. me — wants to use the zebra crossing. I just don’t get this “I’m the fastest man in the world!”-mentality that is oh so important with vehicles.

The last couple of days, I’ve counted them and they are precisely two, I’ve hummed, sung and made noises that for people who don’t like my beautiful singing voice would interpret as obscene. The song? Oh. I’m Only Happy When It Rains by the almost-excellent Garbage.

«tangent» Side fact which is totally irrelevant and comes from rec.arts.sf.fandom: Shirley Manson has apparently been seen drinking with really excellent authors such as Andrew Greig, Ken McLeod and Iain “With and Without M.” Banks. Neat. «/tangent»

What’s so important about that Garbage-song? Right, I’m on to that. Has truer word than “I’m only happy when it rains / you wanna hear about my new obsession / I’m riding high upon a deep depression / I’m only happy when it rains” ever been sung? I don’t think so.

I’ve also learnt that buying shoes is a bore, such a bore that I can’t even make up a funny anecdote about it. Other things in the “I can’t believe that I-can’t-believe-it’s-not cheese dip isn’t cheese dip”-category are that no one knows what Mornington Crescent is. They can probably not even spell it. But this raises far too many questions for my liking, although it’s more of the “what kind of world is this?” and “if ignorance really was bliss, you’d be very happy now, right?” kind.

Clause and effect

The minutes from the Westercon 51 business meeting in -98 is in every possible way a masterpiece.

This committee is the descendant of a committee formed at Westercon 47 (Los Angles, 1994) to study a bylaws amendment to strike out all occurrences of “obligatory” and insert “mandatory.” This amendment has been referred annually since then to a series of committees with different names (”MOO”, “Squeal”, and “Oink”) for further consideration and recommendations. Seth Breidbart, the only member of the current incarnation of this committee, moved that the Committee be continued and that it continue to investigate the matters referred to it.

Ruth Sachter moved to amend the motion to continue the committee by changing the name of the Committee from “Oink Committee” to “Neep Committee.” This passed by a substantial majority.

Pay extra attention to the clause where the possible locations for the con is discussed:

Provided that, upon the annexation of Australia by the United States of America or the annexation of the United States of America by Australia, Section 3.1 shall be amended to read: “Any site in Australia, or on the North American continent west of the 104th west meridian, or in the state of Hawaii, shall be eligible to be the site of a Westercon, except as restricted by the provisions of these bylaws.”

And I support point 4.4 wholeheartedly. When things like this happens, who can not love fandom?

Soon into withdrawal

The pictures from the unaired Buffy-pilot reminded me that I need a new Buffy-fix soon — which will happen as soon as they release the third season on dvd. See. The symptoms have begun already. (Prolific)

Now, what the hell is a good phenomenon to talk about?

“Pick a phenomenon from England or another English-speaking country,” he said. “You’ll have five minutes to present it for the rest of us the next time we meet.”

God damn. What to do? This is until next Thursday, which means I still have some time. But what should I present? Should I do as Niklas and do Monty Python? Somehow I suspect that some other people already have chosen that.

But what else do I have? The Goon Show? Possible, but I’ve heard them far too little to be able to do a good presentation. Rik Mayal-tv shows? Wait a minute. No, I got it now. The only thing that makes it possible to stand up and speak gibberish in five minutes, and every word will be valid. Mornington Crescent. It’s obvious, why didn’t I think of this before? Mornington Crescent! Brilliant.

Search among the cassettes

The BBC Archive Treasure Hunt is, in my opinion, a very important project. Support and help them if you can.

This is a bad movie #537

The movie Lake Placid is dumb, stupid, annoying, crap, and every other synonymous word that I can’t think of. And they, the characters, party to a rather famous song by Tom Jones, in the middle of the forest with a giant crocodile roaming the neighbourhood. This means that nothing can forgive its existence. Why, Oliver Platt? Why, Bill Pullman?

In similar vein, Mars Attacks! is also dumb, stupid, annoying, crap, and feature the same Tom Jones song. Not to forget Tom Jones himself, something I can’t no matter how much I try. But at least it’s entertaining.

Lake Placid just is, for some reason. I wonder where the hell is Steve “Oh boy, is this crocodile cranky now!” Irvin when you really need him, because he could have hunted this damn movie down and locked it up before I got to see it.

Additionally, David E. Kelley who wrote the bloody thing probably had written it for an episode of Ally McBeal, but due to the problem of getting a huge crocodile into the courtroom plotwise, he had no choice but to expand it into a movie. There are some “evidence” for this. Bridget Fonda obviously, from her behaviour and lines, is the part which should have been Ally. And then we have other persons who do characters from The Practice, Chicago Hope and Picket Fences.

If this happens because you sleep, then I don't want too anymore

It was in the dawn of mankind, about 7:35 a.m., a time which was way to early for me to be fully awake. I was only half asleep and riding shotgun towards the big U, this may account for something. I don’t know. If I only had known that I would be a different person later today day, when I realised what had happened this morning.

Was it because I never fully sleep long enough? That during the years I had begun to sleep less and less? I am Jacks identical twin, to steal an expression, but I don’t think its true. The reason is probably not that farfetched after all.

The thing was this that on the radio they played a song by the Corrs, and I actually didn’t think it was bad — I even enjoyed it. Is this a result of me being more and more interested in women playing folkrock or just folk music in general? I think so. It must be that damn fiddle...

Bad movie bonanza

For some reason, call it self-preservation or whatever you like, I had completely missed the Stomp Tokyo movie-site. And now that I have seen it, I also want to see the Bollywood Superman-version.

Sammo Hong

New episodes of Martial Law with the unimitable Sammo Hong right this minute. I must watch.

The cats won't even eat it

They just aired a commercial for a cat-food, which, according to my logic must be pretty horrible. They couldn’t get a normal “cat-actor” as all the rest of their compeditors. Oh, no. That seemed to be too hard. So instead the animated it. Yes, they actually did a rendered cat. It didn’t look too bad, like something out of Shrek I guess. Yes, this means that it did look a bit like plastic, but it was still better rendered than the abomination known as Phantom Menace (See? No link). But if the cat has to be made in a computer, how does the wretched food actually taste?

Moronic scheduling

For fuck sake! You don’t schedule All the President’s Men to 13:45 on a Wednesday! What if, and I don’t think I’m pushing this to its limits, somebody wanted to see it?

The night the rain stopped

Somewhere out there sits a man, some say woman but I’ll get to this later on, who’s not quite clear on the concept. That is, if there is a God, or Gods. I don’t discriminate — I’m just an apathist. Anyway, this person with a huge sombrero on its head comes up with a great idea.

“I know. I want it to rain. A lot,” it says in a perfect Graham Chapman-as-Brian voice — if there is a God it must be Graham Chapman, nothing else makes sense when you think about it. But so far, I’m all for the idea, I like rain, especially when I’m inside and hear the raindrops use the roof as a drum machine. It calms me down.

Now, imagine rain for a few hours, not too much and not too little. I look at the clock, about 1 a.m. I flip off the computer — I wish it could have one of those switches with a crome knob that goes ‘ti-click’ when you pull it down. Still rain, great. I read a bit while in bed, followed by watching Spaceballs on tv and life was good.

Two hours later, 3 a.m. because I like to stay up late, I kill the lights. And then the rain stops. No more fucking rain! Is this the way it should be? No, I don’t think so. All I ask for is a bit more water to fall down, a tiny little bit more so that I could go to sleep to the sound of rain. But no-o-o, that would be too hard. Besides, some water must be saved for future use as that white, icky, cold stuff we call snow. It will come soon, and I hate it.

Under the New Roman Dictatorship

What is the matter with all these crappy guidelines — wrong word to use since you’re required to follow it to the letter — for essays? Sure, it’s good that they exist and all, but some of these things they say is just plain wrong. Take this one for example: “Everything should be set in Times New Roman.” (Except, perhaps, for the Macies. But I didn’t ask as I do my work under Windows. Yes, I know. Bad me.)

The thing is this that I don’t like Times New Roman. I can’t leave aside my pet peeves with the typeface, such that in wide columns it lumps together, it isn’t clear enough for good readability. Aside from this, it has its uses. In multi-column newspaper-like environment it’s rather good. But I just don’t like it anyway. Stanley Morison had some good thoughts behind it, but I think he failed with what he set out to do.

I feel that it is inferior to other, much clearer typefaces that actually look good no matter where it is used. But never mind that. As always, the lowest common denominator rules and the minorities are punished for the faults of the masses. To use a metaphor: instead of closing a shotgun wound properly, they hand out bandaid — preferably with Donald Duck-images. Or in these days, the Power Rangers, but that is not important.

I realise that educating the masses about typographic importance might be dead on arrival. Still, that doesn’t explain why we who actually care and know the whys-and-whynots shouldn’t chose for ourselves. Not all people believe that MS Comic Sans is a good font.

A standard with no choices to be made is not good at all, it leaves no place for personal thoughts, growth and expression. Give the masses some fonts to choose from, and the rest of us to our own devices.

(Oh boy, do I come off as an elitist bastard or what?)

It is here

I am poor and the cd Gift has been released today. Yes, it is by Curve and yes, I’m a fan. For those of you who by any chance don’t know of them at all — poor, sad, misguided people — well, you’re in luck. For a short while, they have a non-album track for download. It’s not a typical Curve-song but anyway you should run, don’t walk, there with your browser and download. Listen. Enjoy. Embrace the music.

Speak up and listen

If I some time in the near future manage to get rid of my hatred for my own voice, I might do something like Jish does in his voxlog. But anyway, go there and listen. It’s good, especially the Voiceblog vs. textblog vs. videoblog. I don’t think I’ll sing though, not unless someone gets me really, really drunk.

In the good old days...

They showed a small program on BBC Prime entitled Gizmos — or something like that — just recently. Marvellous. Old, archive shows about the wonders of technology. Old, dated technology. Just the way it should be and just as I like it.

The Laundromat was bizarre; with well-designed booths and big boxes where the clothes came out, draped in transparent plastic on coat hangers. It was big and looked impressive. It had huge overtones of automation, even though in reality, almost everything behind was done with the skilful hands of the employees. The future looked more stylish and impressive in the past I think, instead of everything just have to be smaller.

The only problem was that the show was soaked in a happy-fifties filter. I can’t stand the never-so-happy housewives and all the smiling faces. It strikes a cord somewhere inside, which probably makes me the ideal viewer for Pleasantville.

The essance of my point of view

I do not like the idea of scapegoats, because some parts of me still believe in justice. Finding and blaming scapegoats is never a part of that, no matter what horrible acts they have done in the past.

The irrational fears take control and we’ll end up further away from the real solution than ever before, as those blamed have absolutely nothing to do with it at all. Racism and bigotry spreads like a decease over seas and over land in an alarming rate, the world is turning into a worse place by every minute. People turn into zealots, vowing to destroy other people because of their religion. Why does it feel as is I suddenly live in the 9th century in the middle of the crusades? As Bruce Sterling once said: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does kind of rhyme.” I wish he had been wrong.

See: threats and abuse towards muslims and “potential” muslims.

See: Jerry Falwell.

I do not believe in “using this as an excuse to clean up” as some people does. That would lead to even more devastation. If that road is even touched, will the cities destroyed shortly thereafter be excused in the same manner as Hiroshima?

See: Harry S. Truman.

See: Nagasaki.

As long as one innocent person dies, the price is too damn high and vengeance is simply not worth that.

To whom it may not concern

For some reason, “the three lists”-page, accessable from the lefthand menu, has grown. It is now inofficially the eight lists, but since I’m very lazy, the link will say “three” a while. I really ought to keep these meta-additions to myself, but what the hell. Just this once...

Oh, yes. While I’m at it. Anchor Steam Beer has a nice bottle. The label is even better and don’t get me started on the taste. If I knew any french I would have said lots of things that sound neat, but in translation only comes out as this is pure gold.

Context is everything, especially today

Today I realized something. That good teachers are important, they should know something about their subject and what they are doing. Some of those enrolled in my English class are the future hope, those who will fill the gap that the schools today are suffering from (i.e. too few real teachers). And they have made me realize that where they will work, that will be no place for children. If this is as good as it gets, then we’re in a shitload of trouble later on. There is especially one teacher student who seem to have a hard time gripping the extremely hard idea of context.

You cannot translate something by using the first word in the dictionary. Further more, translation requires that you understand the content and what the text is all about. Is this really that hard to understand?

It was the cheese-shop skit all over again. It was, for at least two of us, a brief episode of hilariousness in the midst of the most boring day in the week.

Paranoia, freedom

Go and read Jon Carrolls latest column. You’ll probably not feel much better afterwards, but it addresses some things that needs to be said.

“There will be pressure to suspend our freedoms, to allow the government to invade our privacy and control our speech as part of the glossy new war. If terrorists force America to give up its freedoms, then they will have won. If we are stampeded into imprudent action out of fear, then it will once again be true that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. If we use our rage instead of our wisdom, we’ll be just another dictatorship, and Sept. 11 will become the day we destroyed ourselves.”

{Via the broken link at Windowseat, the quote is the exact same as Laurel used because that is the most important bit}

Now to something completely different...

A friend of mine saw that the character map-viewer found in Windows was, to be blunt, crap — as you know, Bob — and wrote his own, improved TommyFontViewer. It might not be as pretty, but it works better than the default alternative.

Similes, metaphors, monsters.

Why does everyone claim that the collapse of the WTC was as something out of the movie Independence Day? Everywhere, the newspapers here is full of these individual articles of personal dread and experience during yesterday and 7 out of 10 mentions ID4. If one more person mentions that movie in relation with this, I’m going to be sick.

I think Godzilla would be a better simile. A monster that destroys building by building, wreaking havoc and chaos in its trail — instead of some silly alien squids that burns cities into ash with an x-ray.

Devastation

To echo the words of some people in rec.arts.sf.fandom: I can’t get that R.E.M.-song out of my head.

Bad things happen

I’ll never finish a book again in my life.

This weekend I read Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks, it was pretty good actually. Shortly after I was finished, on the other side of the globe, she fell during a performance at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. And broke her arms — badly.

I’m usually not this self-centred, but just in case it really is my fault that bad things happen in life: I’ll never finish a book. Well, perhaps not. But just in case, I’ll try it out on this God awful literature we had to read last semester in media and communication-class.

A log-engine that runs on steam!

No, it should be perl instead of steam. But nevertheless, Movable Type looks very interesting. Especially the categorisation bit, which is something I really miss in Greymatter.

• Extensible, library-driven code.
• Multiple output templates to enable one-click publishing to multiple destinations.
• Entry categorization and grouping.
• Built-in support for RSS syndication.
• Custom variable and template inclusion, for encapsulation of commonly used HTML.
• Support for multiple weblogs/journals.
• Multiple archiving options: daily/weekly/monthly/categorical, or each entry on its own individual page.
• Comment system, either inline or in popup windows; ability to exclude commenting on certain posts.
• Notification on new entries: maintain lists of users to whom notification messages can be sent when you post a new or specific entry.
• Date stamp override allows you to pre-date or post-date your entries.

Ang Lee, awards and japanese cartoons

From the 170th issue of David Langford’s Ansible, the following things where learnt:

1) That Ang Lee is even cooler than previously known. “Ang Lee had sent a witty note of thanks and apology for not being present[...]”, as he couldn’t be present to accept his Hugo for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Which is more than winner for best novel did — it use to be the other way around. Usually directors and their associates ignore awards from the stf-field.

2) Even though I don’t like Anime, this is kind of neat. The Japanese animation studio responsible for Princess Mononoke are working on an adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle. Diana Wynne Jones. Wow. I mean, it can’t be worse than the anime version of E.E. Doc Smith’s Lensman.

3) Jhonen Vasquez won a horror award for his comic I Feel Sick. Which I think is more than fine. He should win something every week.

-- Oh God!
-- Shut up! You’re here for a reason! Serve your purpose!
-- But I didn’t do anyth...
-- SHUT UP! I’ve got some questions for you. You will answer truthfully! You lie... and I CUT YOUR FILTHY THROAT. Is this milk still good?!
-- Huh? [sip, sip] Uh, yeah.
-- This lettuce! How crisp is it? HOW CRISP GODDAMMIT?!
-- It’s fine!
-- These fudge-pops! Freezer burn?! FREEZER BURN?!
-- Umm...
-- Eat the fuckin´ weenie!!!
-- Mmph... It tastes okay.
-- Whew! Thanks. I haven’t cleaned my fridge out in awhile. And, well... You know.
-- Jhonen Vasquez, Johnny the Homicidal
Maniac: Director’s Cut

This is how they should look

It arrived a couple of days ago. No, not the Flash Girls cds, but thanks for pushing me back into the gutter. What arrived is related to one of the duos members though. The Orb-imprint edition of Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks.

To put it like this: it is gorgeous. No it’s better than that, it’s perfect. I don’t know what they are doing at Tor that other don’t, but I can’t really complain. They’re the best at trade paperbacks, bar none.

For instance, if I saw it in the store instead of mail order, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Now, this is not that uncommon, I buy books like other people recycle air. But I dare say that even some of my friends would buy it. Especially if they opened it and saw with their own eyes how it looked inside the covers.

I wish every book would be like this, but as usual we — in general terms — have to live with the drawbacks of reality.

If compared to other new-bought books, it is clear that Tor is at the top of the field. Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke (Jonathan Cape-edition) is nicely designed while Edward Savio’s Idiots In the Machine is less so. Idiots is too compactly designed, the line height is far to small and the outer margin is remarkably uneven.

(I will not comment upon Homunculus by James P Blaylock. Ah, hell. The print is not top of the line quality, but it is a small press and it brings back works that has gone out of print, so I will not complain. Much. They’ll bring back more of Blaylock’s books so look for them in the future.)

This is not my cardboard city

My money is on Mothra. Mothra is cool and goofy-looking, not to mention having fought (and lost, but of course) against the real rubber man version of Godzilla. If that doesn’t bring respect, nothing will.

Ben Brown, you know what you must do. The world needs you to fight Godzilla and lose. If you can create ‘Words! Words! Words!’ a cheap monster movie should be a peice of cake.

I might just as well admit it. Up until fairly recent I wanted to be Godzilla. Not the lizard, but the man inside eating a cardboard Tokyo while jumping up and down looking silly. Running around in a tacky plastic suit. Imagine jumping, screaming and crushing miniature models of famous cities in the subway. How nifty wouldn’t that have been? Now, I don’t want to be Godzilla anymore. No, I want to be an author — in a Godzilla-suit.

(Yes, that must be my word of the week: goofy-looking.)

Can you say "phonemics"?

For some reason I needed time to go through what I did today. While other people did whatever they normaly do in the morning, such as per chance surfing around or listening to music, I was not so lucky.

Instead I sat in a bizarre booth doing pronouncing-exercises. Transparent glass in front of me and at both sides two red and not at all funky Maplewood “walls”. On my head I had these goofy-looking headphones with a mic which where connected to the equally goofy-looking tape recorder that was in front of me on the table. If a button had been pressed down, a red light flashed until you pressed stop. But then, the light next to the stop-button started to flash and well... You get my point.

The whole thing radiated seventies. The wood and plastic felt seventies. It probably, dare I say it, was built some time during the seventies. I wished I’d had a camera to immortalize the moment, but sadly I don’t own one.

My God, I want to own one of those booths and hook it up to the phone.

Another one rides the bus

Originally I thought about writing about my view regarding design in general, but something got in the way. That something is a bus. Nothing serious, I’m just one of those persons who in order to get to the small U must take the bus. On the early mornings, there is little that can go wrong. It’s quiet and I can sleep. On the way home, that’s an entirely other matter.

Today I feel intellectually drained from listening to I don’t know, four? persons of dubious genetic mix-up. They sat there, behind me and I could not shut out their words. “Did you see Judge Dredd yesterday? Yeah, that was awesome!” and they continued talk about the movie on a level that makes Pauly Shore believable as a card-carrying member of mensa.

-- When he walked into the room and said, “I am the Law”, oh man, that was cool.
-- And the robot.
-- What robot?
-- The big robot. He who just you know...
-- No, not that one, I mean the other one. The one... the... cannibal?
-- Oh, yeah. That was awesome. I think he should have joined Judge Dread and stayed for the rest of the movie.
-- Yeah, that would have been really cool.
-- You know what else is cool? The specialist, where Stallone blows up some shit.

But Judge Dredd? A good movie? What the fuck just happened to reality? I’m a sucker for all bad flicks, so I, per definition, can withstand awful magnitudes of badness but even I must draw the line somewhere. And that’s where I draw it, just in front of Judge Dredd and You Got Mail (Did that one suck or what? For a good romantic comedy, rent Fight Club instead).

But Judge Dredd? I need to take a shower and a brain enema. A big fucking brain enema that will knock me out for at least a month.

Pens, paper and cutmarks

Oj. At I like paper and pens, there is this really terrific and utter fabulous design. And I can’t help feeling a bit bummed out about it because I’ve thought about doing a similar site, before I gave up and did this I use right now. (I think the heavy graphic load was the reason for me turning my back on it, but that’s because I like my stuff to load really fast.)

And who don’t like paper, pens and symbols used in printing? I love paper, dig pens and am a sucker for everything that is connected with printing. (I missed the CMYK-boxes though, but no big deal.)