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 So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.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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Confession

Time to confess my true colours. I’m going to steal the voice of Christopher Lee and use it for my own sinister purposes. Then we’ll see who’s sorry.

Tin-foil I tell you, tin-foil

I figured out what’s wrong with the new Garbage record. Well, appart that Androgyny makes me feel as if I was chewing on tin-foil — really, I’m not kidding here although I wish I were. It has no unity, and tries to be everything at once. Most songs are okay, but they just don’t fit together. Which is sad, sad, sad.

On other musical notes, R.E.M.s early records are great. The dark tones on Reconstruction of the Fables are haunting me. It’s eerie and I have a little theory about that record. It is the same record as Automatic for the People, only made earlier in their career. It has the same atmosphere and kind of crawls under the skin. Which is good, good, good.

Finally!

Right now, this very minute, a new season of Simpsons starts.

It's somewhat negative

So, I took the personality disorder test found at David Gagnes sidebar. IT was... well... not too good I suppose. The result I mean, look at all those high’s.

Disorder | Rating
Paranoid: Moderate
Schizoid: Low
Schizotypal: Very High
Antisocial: Low
Borderline: Moderate
Histrionic: Low
Narcissistic: Moderate
Avoidant: High
Dependent: High
Obsessive-Compulsive: Moderate
[what the disorders mean]

Missing pieces

You know that you’re out of touch with the important things in life — which as we all know by now consists of comics, movies, books, and music — when you let gems such as this slip you by.

– Confidence.
– Women dig confidence like Robert Downey Jr digs the crack pipe. They can’t get enough of it. Confidence is very sexy.
– So I get confidence by... um... giving crack to Robert Downey Jr.
– That’s not the most efficent metod, no.
-- Diablo and Toothgnip in Goats

The promised scans

An opening (600x403 popup) from the book Pleasure of Ruins. Unfortunately the book was a bit too big for my scanner. In times such as these, I wish I had a digital camera.

No, wait. I always wish that. Sorry.

It's all in ruins

If you have the chance of buying the pictorial book of Pleasure of Ruins, do so or you’ll regret it later. Text from the regular book with the same title written by Rose MacAulay accompanied with stunning photos taken by Roloff Beny. Broken cities in their later prime displayed in a way that leaves no one untouched.

The only problem is the size. It’s huge, about the same dimensions as the Ugly Red Book That Won’t Fit on a Shelf, but apart from that, every thing is great. Expect a shrunk sample-scan where some details won’t show up tomorrow.

Just go with the noise

I had a slippage yesterday, back to older times and danced around in the room to punk rock. Which is a bit weird, as the song was new and I have this sort of aversion against most new, so called punk-music. But the fact remains The International Noise Conspiracy has a good beat, in a certain kind of way. Today, I’ve got a headache and wish I could say as Satan in Edward Savio’s brilliant Idiots in the Machine: “I was hit in the head by Jimmy Hoffa.” And what happens next is exactly how I want to experience my next Christmas.

“I don’t understand why I can’t disseminate this information. I happen to think this is an incredible story. I might even sell it to the National Enquire.” He glanced at Kelsey. “Listen... Ion didn’t make us late. I was at the hospital this morning--”

Ion took the meatless forkful and smaked him in the head with it.

Barris looked up. “Who’s in the hospital?”

“Hospital? What happened?” Kelsey asked, waving Barris off.

Satan explained every excruciating detail — including the Indian guy, the bloated nurse, the vagrant, and the midgets... until he realized midgets was last year’s Christmas debacle.

People and how to deal with them

I am not the most social person I know off, quite the opposite. Some of my friends can waltz into a room and start talking to complete strangers without second thought, well, except for one. He slides in; talks to some people and then declare that they’re idiots. I simply declare them idiots from start, and then refuses to meet them. (Almost had a Freudian slip there and wrote “meat”.)

Among unknown people, I feel uncomfortable, out of place. I have in most cases nothing in common with them, and they have no patience for my idiosyncrasies. Last year, for instance, I studied media and communication. The subject was, at least towards the end of the second semester, fun, but the people in class where strangers. I probably knew more about them, than they about me, but that is because there where not much for me to connect to. They where pale ghosts. It is better this year, but the large population of my English-class are ghosts too. It might sound weird but, in an eerie way, it’s comforting.

Today, after watching the regular double-bill of Doctor Who on BBC Prime (great timing I might add, there is no room for another episode on the tape and the Doctor regenerated), I realised that I felt more antisocial than usual. I want to sit in solitude and either watch Sleepy Hollow or read Mervyn Peake without interruptions from silly humans.

Yes, Mervyn Peake, author of Mister Pye, the Titus Groan-books (often miscalled the Gormenghast Trilogy) — one of the true literary geniuses ever born and snatched away from his existence prematurely.

Oh, and you should read the interview with Noah Grey and I wish it could have been colder in the air today.

Who, where and perhaps I got the right answers too

Right now, one hour after the zero hour, the exam felt frightenly easy. It’s almost — almost — so that I feel suspicious of my success. Nevertheless, today, right now in this very moment, I feel free. Free to worry about other things instead. It is in other words back to normal again, but first: fooood since I’m starving here.

This is the thing

I have an exam next week, which require time. Time to study that is. So if I for some reason seems a bit too quiet during the week, you know why. I’ll try to write some things now and then though.

In the future I predict that I'll see a lot of movies. A lot.

The next-to-local cinema opened yesterday. More screens, bigger screens, better sound and all that is good and proper. One person who where there at the grand opening recieved a free year of watching movies there, movies of his choice. It was a he that won, and he was twelve. I’m happy and all that for him, but I just can’t loose the feeling, you know?

The feeling that it was rigged. A twelve year old has not the same choice of movies to see, there is in fact a lot that he simply can’t see, and those movies are those that they show there on the largest screens. I hope I’m wrong. Really, I do.

Oh, and a new biography of moi is up. It’s fun so you should read it.

Typical, now they stock it...

There is no excuse anymore. While I can understand that some people don’t like paying extra for a cheque like I did, the option of not order it no longer stands. Amazon.com now has both the Flash Girls cds, so what are you waiting for? Run there as fast as those packets can take you and order both Play Each Morning Wild Queen and Maurice and I. Tomorrow they might be sold out for christ sake.

On the telly early in the afternoon

Certain things that become clear when laying in bed sick are:

Monty Python is fun. I’ve watched their 30th anniversary, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Brian in one sweep and all I can say is that Graham Chapman was a genius.

Steve Irvin is insane. I want him to be bitten by a poisonous snake just once for laugh. It might not be nice to wish this but that way, he would probably not say things such as “It’s gorgeous” or “Oh boy, it’s cranky now!”

Ricki Lake makes your brain rot. Nuff said. Why did I even watch this? Five minutes of my life I’ll never see again, and those where supposed to be spent on being the best time in my life.

In vain I beat my fists upon the wall

To mourn the fact that my host don’t let me use Movable Type — but you should — because of BD_file or whatever, I’ve started up another blog that is mainly focused on longer pieces of text without links. Even though it may look like it, fait accompli as its name is, isn’t really a rip-off from Hoopla500. Really.

And the types fall down

Earlier, about 15:25 or so, I walked through the doors to Växjö’s now only used bookshop. The air had that certain tension that occurs sometimes, the one that tell you that today is your lucky day. As usual, it was correct, because down there, in the lower floor it was: Grafiska Yrken vol. 1 from 1956, a huge hardback edition, they didn’t have the other two volumes, but my wallet couldn’t handle more than this anyway so it was for the better.

I silently flipped through the pages four times before I actually decided to buy it. When I got home I sat down and just forgot everything about time. The pictures! Amazing how old things just looks cool. That they often lack proper chassis, and you actually see every spring and gear might be a cause. Take the linotype-machine for instance. Can it get more arcane than this?

Probably, but it’s quite hard. And this was only the beginning, there where about sixty pages that only were on the subject of the different type machines and their ilk. Great stuff.

Too little time, too many books

All though I can and will read long books at anytime, anywhere I can still have fun for hours with the Book-a-minute. There is something special with a site that can summary Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens with: “Five billion people almost DIE, and it is FUNNY.” Marvellous.

I call them industrial pop

Just to really prove that they’re not dead and buried, Curve has three new interviews up. One at Cosmik Debris, which is cool. Another at Apple, because they use their s/h-ware when doing the sounds — good design so head over there as well. Lastly, the Virginmega.com interview that is too short and they can’t spell simple words such as fuck. Read the first two.

Ban everything?

As if protecting the children from dubious “harmful matter” wasn’t enough, even in this day, books are banned. Or at least tried to get banned. And here I thought that freedom of speech must be equal to all, no matter how awful the message is, or else it wouldn’t be freedom at all. Silly me.

Anyway. From the list of banned books — the words fill my mouth with a bad taste and I’ve only typed them so far — the following piece was found. It’s hilarious.

»Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings. D.T. Suzuki. Doubleday. Challenged at the Plymouth-Canton school system in Canton, Mich. (1987) because “this book details the teachings of the religion of Buddhism in such a way that the reader could very likely embrace its teachings and choose this as his religion.” The last thing we need are a bunch of peaceful Buddhists running around. The horror.«

Further more, the Narnia-books was on the list, which is bizarre to the tenth degree. The same goes for Ibsen where the goons of hazard motivated it by being offended by the feminist propaganda. And how anyone even could consider to add Ray Bradburys anti-censorship novel Fahrenheit 451 is beyond every ounce of sanity. It’s so far off and into the land of ironic stupidity that they would have to eat the map in order to not starve to death.

The Superbeast's Playhouse

Imagine my face and how my jaw cracked the floor tiles when I saw Rob Zombies IMDB-entry. Imagine how my eyes popped out, the hair on my neck rising in sheer horror and my ears are filled with the soundtrack from Friday the 13th part III.

Some doors should remain closed, to protect the innocent and make sure that the information doesn’t end up in the wrong hands. Production assistant on Pee-Wee Herman’s Playhouse? Sure, it was a long time ago, in the darkest pits of the eighties even, but still... It’s just so wrong on so many levels that I just can’t speculate or even muster the strength to leave it alone. This is a change-over, and I have no idea what’s going on.

About the future of the book

In Den Sista Boken [trans. the Last Book] by Johan Svedjedal, the author have some minor radical and interesting ideas about what a book is and its future — for the convenience of others I’ll translate the quote into English, m’key?

»The pessimists say that the computerisation might kill of the book made on paper. But right now, the biggest threat is over-publishing to the degree that the books will hide each other. They don’t risk extinction because of a hunting game where they get shot down. No, instead the computers might do something that’s akin to an environment catastrophe — too much nutrition which leads to a violent invasion of algae that kills everything else.« (p 32).

In the next chapter he continues to talk about how the books will evolve into digital form, but unlike most other he maintains that the book will continue to exist, as it’s only a new medium that has been introduced. In my opinion he puts way to much trust in hypertext and its possibilities. It has so far done nothing to the state of being of book other than changing the way we buy them.

He ignores the faults of the system in order to prove that compact and liberty to choose the level of depth in the writings are superior to that we have now; he never thinks much about the how this might be negative. Ignorance might grow as no one wants to learn about disturbing things. Or the fact that what he calls the last book probably won’t last longer than microfiche, quite the opposite. We already have things from old computers rendered unusable thanks to an absence of means to actually read old file formats. He has forgotten the main rules about technology and progress: just because it’s new, it doesn’t have to be good. Just because it’s good, it doesn’t have to survive.

Not the usual snack

I forgot one thing about the con that I really must write about. I don’t even know how I could have forgotten it in the first place.

Janne Wallenius had a huge sausage from Germany — I don’t really know why it’s important where it was from, but somehow it just feels right to mention it — wrapped inside paper which he kept in his pocket during all three days. He didn’t always hid it though, so when he walked around there, he ate from it from time to time and asked other people in a very polite way if they too wanted some. No one did. He even brought it with him into the bar in the Park Aveny Hotel.

“This bar is probably not the best place to eat from that sausage, at least not like that,” John-Henri told him in the calm way only he can manage.

“Bah! I have behaved myself much worse before, in much fine company than this.” He took another bite while the rest of us laughed.

Later, someone speculated that he had the sausage because the con was “dry” — all thanks to paranoia-suffering owners that hadn’t been clear on this until it was too late, so there where no usable bar in the house — so he couldn’t have his usual bottle of Vodka. This time he laughed.

“I had Vodka, but it’s almost empty now.”

Sneaking past the trust

Anti-trust, which I saw yesterday, had some uncanny resemblance to Sneakers. Both focus on some sort of conspiracy, a conspiracy that leads to the death of those that are no longer of any use for the Evil Empire.

The Black Cryptocracker Box — lots of free toys inside! — and Synapse have the same purpose: to provide backdoors into everything. The henchmen who are not whom they appear to be. They/he even have to enter the building to steal the box/cd while at the same time avoiding the guards by hiding in cramp spaces.

In some scenes Ryan Phillippe looked like River Phoenix, with the difference off less hair, glasses and being alive. I will not mention that in some other scenes I expected Tim Robbins to pick up a paper with a circle on it from his table and say, “You know, for kids.” But he never did, not even once. But the questions remain: who is Whisper in Anti-Trust? Who gets the Winnebago, will there be peace towards man, and in which Internet-store near you can one buy the lego servers?

Do I need to mention that I, unlike most people, actually like both flicks? Even though they have faults? And that I need to buy the dvd-discs as soon as I can?

Papyrus library cards anyone?

So, after a few years of downtime the Library of Alexandria will finally be reopened again. It’s about time too. They have a better fire alarm this time, but in order to inspect it, you’ll have to wait until the official opening day on April 23th next year. I really hope their library cards will be made of oldfashioned papyrus. (Davezilla)

New things here and there

The world is not as it used to be. Dave Eggers tour de force A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius has been translated into Swedish, with a weaker title but that was obvious from the start. But I shouldn’t complain, a good — wow, I just made the understatement of the year — book deserves to be spread as far and as much as possible. I will not recommend it, because if I did, no one would ever read it.

The “new” X-Files with Robert Patrick has just begun over here, five minutes ago. I hope they’re better than the last few seasons, which imo has been rather pale and, to be painfully frank, unwatchable. So far, so good though. I’m positively surprised.

And it didn't rain

Despite some of the unfortunate circumstances I’ve had a fun weekend. But where to begin? The weird notion I got as I realised that it was easy to find the places and that I never got lost? Or, should I tell the stories as I remember them, one by one, fractured and in broken pieces that I myself have trouble mending together? I think I’ll do the last.

Sten (Thaning, Upsala-fan) had another fanzine, which is weirder than Tori Amos on acid in a lounge suite partying with Hunter S Thompson. Sten, a new fanzine? It cannot be! But it was, and as usual it was great. For you who don’t know him, most of you then, he says things — often from a bizarre point of view that few other people can master. “I wonder what the Dinosaurs thought when they realized that they where on fire?” is a typical example. He’s a goldmine, and should write a book. He won’t, but he should.

Oh, I almost forgot. During the weekend I was at an sf-convention (no, not one with pjs, actors and signings of expensive photos; the other kind with books and beers and authors and talks about books, jazz and other things in life) in Gothenburg, where I don’t live and had to stay at a bed & breakfast. Sharing room with seven complete strangers I never met — as they where asleep when I dropped in at half past two in the night. The con was fun, as I wrote before, but it lacked a proper bar. We had to go out to find beer in order to be able to talk at the same time.

Some of us took our things and went out to a pub, and what a pub it was. It was a part of a hotel not far from the con, and their only fault was that they didn’t have Guinness on tap. With us, a semi-drunk and in my opinion egocentric person clung to our huddle despite that we really didn’t have much in common. Did I say he was egocentric? Well, I meant it too, but that is a far to weak phrase in this case. He couldn’t keep quiet and had to talk to everyone. His biggest fear was — from what little I could decipher and before I moved to another table to discuss small press and things like that — that anyone would think of him as an idiot. But that was probably the alcohol. For some reason he liked the word “shallow” a whole lot. Obviously, according to his logic, if you thought a book was good, but that you couldn’t stand up and do an essay type of speech about what feelings you felt when reading it, you where shallow. I where moved to tears by the romantic comedy Fight Club, but I can’t say why: I am a shallow man indeed.

In that hotel bar, Bellis explained why he won’t read a word of Ulf Lundell (swedish singer/songwriter/author) in his life: when Lundells generation novel Jack was published, a young Bellis worked in a bookstore. The book was a huge bestseller and this meant much work. For two weeks, he carried crates of the book, he sorted them in the shelves and put them in envelopes for mail-order. This meant war, a war which could only be won with a die hard dedication, such as vowing never to have anything too do with the damn author again. It seems to have worked so far.

Earlier that day, Saturday 29th, there had been an auction for a good cause: raise money for Åka to get to a con in Dublin. I like that part, because never has so much junk been sold for so much money (outside e-Bay of course). Some jokes where fun, but very tasteless. Bellis was the auctioneer, and he was brilliant as usual. I bought some books, being there with a highly constrained budget and all. (Michael Moorcock, Christopher Priest, Mary Stewart, M John Harrison and Ray Bradbury if anyone is interested.)

I laughed and the other people in the train looked at me as if I where nuts. Well, if they had read Edward Savio’s Idiots in the Machine, especially the both scenes in the beginning at the post office and in the convenience store, they too would have laughed.

Much to my dismay, I see that this is very confusing and not at all in any order at all. It’s still to close to the actual event for me to sort anything out. Clarifications and additions will probably happen later. I think I need to sleep.