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 So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.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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There should be no such thing as too much coffee
I drank too many things with caffeine today. Around five in the afternoon, I had been continuously drinking since around ten, ten twenty. I was in a state that pretty much could be summarised with the word “high.” I knew I couldn’t drink any more, and that’s when I began to feel tired.
Remember this, memorise it as if life depended on it: if you ever manage to get sleepy and at the same time riding a high caffeine-kick, don’t rest your head. I did and I fell asleep. That was not so bad as when I woke up. I still feel as if I’ve been dragged through a street with those wobbly stones while I was tied to the back of a dragster in full speed. That is just the physical me.
The mental me am still sort of missing in action. This should be written in a survival book or thought to the kids in school. I have a class in linguistics tomorrow morning at ten, I haven’t read the chapter I should have done yet but I still consider watching season three of Red Dwarf instead of getting more sleep. It seems as a good idea right now anyway.
Reshaped history
I did major changes in fait accompli, and I guess it could even be called a complete redesign. If looks much better, although I was really happy with the old look as well.
The new design is based on the root design of carbonatedink.com, which in turn is sort of inspired by Popscratch, The Hoopla 500, whygodwhy, SerialText and lots of magazines and books — some of these are more obvious than others.
(About Popscratch: for a neat and different design you should check out the Idiosyncratic section. It is nothing I would do, but chaos is nice.)
Paranoia
Who is the most paranoid: the one who hides everything including his own name or the one who doesn’t keep anything secret because they already know everything worth knowing?
I didn't wear this the last time around
Some of them are dowmright ugly but other are kind of neat. Lots of t-shirts you’ve missed are now back in print. I think I can point at a few that I think should be in my closet.
In search of something better
There is nothing good on the telly until 21:15 when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead begins. Up until that moment, they show the worst crap ever spawned by human minds: the Swedish try-outs for the European Song Contest. And this is only part two of far too many; the other channels are equally bad. I need either more beer and even perhaps a whisky or one of those Brain Slugs from Futurama.
No. No. No. Please god stop! They are apparently up to song four and boy, I feel violated. This has got to be the worst thing since some bright young person came up with the idea of self-mutilation. Why do I watch this? Am I insane? Video might save me... Yes… Salvation.
Damn. The tape didin’t rewind fast enough, I saw song number five. I will not find peace in this lifetime.
Snow pouder
You know the old song that starts with: “It’s cold outside / There’s no kind of atmosphere / I’m all alone, more or less.” Well, it is cold, so cold that some poor sod decided to dump snow on the ground again. It’s not much, but it is enough, in fact it is too much snow as it is. If someone wants some, I’ll mail it to you free of charge.
And across the street some other goons are busy restoring a school. Lots of noise.
Salute for the lemon within you
After I’ve sat down and gazed through Robert Anton Wilson’s Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults and Cover-ups I realised that I too wanted to believe a real nutcase conspiracy theory.
I could join The Holy Order of the Lemon, but that one seems mostly open for Irish persons with hats. They do have a nice pledge though:
“Razorryn orderruin, XTCitronny rocket, Leminotaurquellemon, John Lemon, lemon soda pop, lemoon, Billemon Laswellemon, Lemon Flash, Irish Spermanent lemonadelic, AC/DCitron, Vincent Van Gogh: Teller und citronen, The Lemonheadfucks, Babellemon, Prince:Lemon Crush, Better Lemonde, Citroniclonic (lemon Epilepsy), Yourquellemonde, Ellemon/luimon, Paul Citroen, Foolsgarden: Lemon Tree, Lemondo bizarrothustra, Make Lemon not Orange, Mellemon (the Garden of) Rappers Dee-Lite, The Yellow River, The Lemon Sea, Urrain, the Yellemon, lemoonwalk, Lemonde d’Hier, Psycho Lemon (Schizoid Orange), Parlament Lemondelic, Laswellemondelight, CCitron (Chocolate City), lemonic Bombing, La Bellemon et la Bíte Orange, Lemorangel Falls, Lemontravolta river, Lemon DADA, you’re name should be Lemony cos your personality is so Lemonic, Bootsybillemona Lisa,Lemon Toilet Dickaprickabullemontrash, Lemon savonnegans (lemonnegans), spermicidal lemonology (Jif, Lif & Love lemons), Atomic Lemon, The Wilson Planet, The Lemon Order P-Funk Ul-sters...“
Plastic Moses
Now kids can play drench the wicked with these new Biblical Action Figures. Or they can play fornication of Adam and Eve, with lots and lots of leaves. But don’t let Job into the play; with his skin disease, one does not know where he’s been. (Weapon-pack sold separately)
The fact that they made two versions of Jesus made me curl up in a laughing heap on the floor. One dark and one whiter than your average fridge. They don’t seem so sure about where he was from, he obviously couldn’t be from the Middle East as the rest of the bibleians so he must have come from Africa or Finland. Why not throw in a hispanic, an asian and an alien as well as a genuin arabic version?
Eleven people in the ocean
I saw Ocean’s Eleven yesterday and I liked it, I liked it a lot. Stylishly filmed and with a neat soundtrack (one person who I’ll refrain telling his name called it “psychedelic”, which proves what he knows about music). If it wasn’t for that Elvis song, I’d probably buy the cd right away. Beautiful movie and not a by-the-numders remake, I think I must have this on dvd.
Uno momento
Everybody should see Memento. Tomorrow might be too late, so you’d better do it now as fast as you can. But don’t fastforward through it, that was not what I meant at all.
Bookish things
It might not be updated every hour, day, week of the year but that doesn’t matter. Steven Brust — one of the two authors of Freedom & Necessity, the best book ever — has one of these journalish things. And, oh great joy, the book with the title The Viscount of Adrilankha is getting along nicely. Paarfi is back with the first part of three in the last part of the trilogy. (Sounds confusing? Read up on Dumas.)
Self-promotion #5567
This week in the Stories written in carbonated ink: Excerpts from the diary of Sir Christopher Wren. Everything is true except the bits that are obvious lies.
The real president
My god! Boo seems be be right about the West Wing hitting the DVD shelves here in Europe (i.e. the whole shebang is encoded for region two). the twentyfifth of March this year, the first half of season one is released. Eleven shows, three dvds — look how my hand shake, I’m ecstatic already.
A question of taste
In the lightest possible way I questioned the appearance of two cds in Fredrik’s (not Boo, another guy with that name who is kind of… dry and Boos complete opposite in every way) collection. Of course, there was a lot of other crappy music to find there as well but those two in particular where bad. Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. I laughed, which was probably the worst possible response to the find.
“What do you know about music?” ha asked sternly. I shook my head in disbelief, I didn’t realise that this was a serious issue, not for someone obsessed with way too many weird metalbands. Besides, there was little else I could do without going off on rant that would insult his tastes even further. Music must have a feeling throughout the production, a true passion lurking below the surface — if they can carry more notes devised by the laws of the universe is not important in this regard. Such technicality is more of a gift supplied from birth, not the kind of talent one have to struggle to come into turns with. Without the passion for music, it is just a lifeless shell filled with entropy trying to subterfuge people into believing it’s the real McCoy.
Later I managed to get him even more annoyed, probably because we talked past each other. People don’t know the difference between enjoying a movie and a well-made movie; they assume incorrectly that just because they like a movie it is a good movie period. Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut is well made quality-wise but I don’t like it. This doesn’t make it horrible without anything redeeming at all. If I say I don’t like it, I don’t automatically insult all those who do.
I’m starting to believe that Fredrik is developing some sort if dislike for people named Nicklas (different spelling may occur).
Look at the pretty light
Point number eight is proof number one that Apple was way ahead of their time. Philip K. Dick must have owned one of those Pixar/iMac hybrids and he died 1982. This means that a prototype has been in the works for well over twenty years now. Wow. Gosh. Now I’m impressed.
Disturbance at the Heron House
I have not been able to digest it until now. You see, I’ve previously called Tuesdays for West-Wing-day because of a particular reason. It’s quite simple: on Tuesdays, they show the eminent programme — sole reason to pay tv-licence, even though the Sopranos also come close — called West Wing. This Tuesday something awful happened.
I was sitting there, laid back in the couch with a cold cola and watching Donna get upset because of falling satellites when the phone rang. The phone rang during West Wing. The first thought that entered my mind was “No, I’m not going to answer.” But in the end, I did, mainly to stop the damn thing from disturbing the peace.
“No,” I answered, but unfortunately sounds “no” in Swedish a lot like “hello.” So my point lingered in the air but fell flat to the ground.
“Hello,” the being from the pit of ultimate darkness answered in a feminine voice, totally bypassing my rather irritated tone. “I’m calling and wonder if you are interested in our low-taxed cards for a cellphone.” A telemarketer! I stared at the receiver. There is a real, live telemarketer on the other end of my phone.
“I’m not interested,” I said and threw the phone down as fast as I could. With “threw” I of course mean that I pressed the button on the phone and it said “click” and on the other side it probably also said “click” but in the ear on the telemarketer. No, the old phones were much better for these moments of anguish.
Sixty seconds of West Wing I couldn’t see. Those precious sixty seconds are gone, out through the window and never to return again, unless of course there is a rerun in the future. To disturb people during West Wing should be punished by law with severe beatings in public conducted by Basque Separatist Mice.
Coffee as food = bad idea
I’m going to have a headache. I just know it. It has already started, the frontal lobes throb a bit. And I know why too, it’s pretty good to eat something during the day besides coffee, and sleep a bit during the night wouldn’t hurt either.
After we’ve got the schedule for the new course – linguistics start on Monday — and old corrected exams some of us went downtown the get said coffee. Ola, obviously damaged from borrowing my South Park-tapes, obsessed about his usual movies and went into a pretty good Cartman-impersonation (when he clutches his fists an go “Myaa-ae-e-e-e-e-e”).
Niklas accused me of elitism when I complained about that anyone could vote on IMDB. But I stand by my point, people have No Taste(tm) and as long it’s like that, they should not be able to vote about art. (Stupid people might give Snow day — link withheld for ethical reasons — with Chevy Chase and Iggy Pop a ten for Christ sake!)
Our prime minister danced on the telly with a cow in a children’s programme the other day. Yes, it’s election year this year. I think I’m going to run for office. I have no plan, no big ideas, no political skills whatsoever and I’m a management disaster waiting to happen. I can quote Monty Python at great length. Vote for me.
Lego should be bigger
If this is in natural size I’m buying one faster than you can say “sqeluuukel”, but somehow I doubt it is. It’s probably just as small as the rest. The bastards. (Found via brand platicbag.org)
This sure seems as a good year
When I’m out of the loop, I’m really out of the loop. In may the next installment in Lois McMaster Bujolds series about Miles the hyperactive little git is out. For those of us that can’t wait there is the first chapter of Diplomatic Immunity on Baens website. (But don’t bother anything else, Bujold is one of the few good things that is published by Baen. I’m not too fond of militaristic science fiction.)
Stories written in carbonated ink
Just in case someone have missed it completely. Go to the “root”, or whatever one should call it, of this very domain. This has been a message from the Managment.
Boxed life
Why does cd-boxes cost so much? The simple answer is of course that there are a lot of work behind them, with designers, compilers and whonots that actually write in the booklets. But still. A good box can be cheap, as long as they can back it up in sales. Look at Motown, who can sell your grandmother to an encylcopedia-salesman. But how many of the lowlifes scumbuckets have even heard of Blue Note or Prestige Records?
It’s a conspiracy I tell you. But if it is, why am I telling you and not Oliver “I killed JFK” Stone? I don’t know. I don’t think he would care really. Even less than you.
The Kevin Smith Connection
You have a genius intellect and an awesome sense of humor. You can sarcastically put someone in their place without batting an eye. Your only problems seem to be that you have trouble acknowledging your true feelings and you may use your humor as a defense to hide what you are really feeling. But, your godliness overpowers any insignificant flaws you may have. Even if you tend to pass gas during very inconvenient moments.
Killingspree
Harsh times are ahead. The company with a de facto monopoly in publishing comicbooks in Sweden are canceling several titles. This is serious. This is horrible, and it is one of the resons why I’m against monopolies in any form. Without competition, it is far easier to cancel quality and keep the cheap crap, as no one else have the possibility to pick up the thrown away gems.
This explains why no one nolonger translates and publish DC/Vertigo-stuff or why no one even bothered looking at the production from Slave Labor Graphics. No, instead we only got stuff for smaller children (which is fine by me as I started out as one myself) but nothing for those over twelve (which is not fine by me).
In the end, the only comic book that will remain is probably Donald Duck, and lets face it: Carl Barks and his high standards are deader than ever before.
The hermit, the voice and the telly
I’ve drifted back into my own footsteps. I hardly meet anyone face to face anymore. I am, as much as I can be, an hermit. Staying awake all night just to read books, watch bad-to-horribly-bad movies and drink a lot of orange juice. I want to be somewhere else, but I don’t know where. I don’t feel “at home” anywhere.
But that is as it may, I’ll not linger on depressive thoughts anymore than I need to and there are things worthy of rejoices throughout the globe. If anyone have missed it, Jish has more of his jish/vox. On a completely different subject, thanks to Lines & Splines, I’ve found out that some books by Holbrook Jackson is back in print and when I was in Gothenburg I found and original story by K.W. Jeter — that means that the book was not one of his Star Wars/Bladerunner books that he writes in order to get some food on the table. No, this was a real Jeter. Oh yeah, and season one of M*A*S*H is out on DVD too. What more does a human being need?
Note to self: write on the god damn fanzine allready.
The Geek Hierarchy
Oh my god! I’m almost at the top! I don’t know if this really is a good thing, but I’ve decided to act as if it is.
I was gone for a moment and nothing really happened at all
The weekend in Gothenburg was much needed. I sadly didn’t take much pictures, because those things I deemed photogenic and interesting was speeding past as I either sat on the tram or went by the regular train. In the periphery of the city they had some truly amazing buildings. Some shouldn’t be beautiful at all, considering how they were built, but damn. Some architect even manages to get a box look neat.
The copier
Once upon in time, things really were what they were called. One such thing was the photocopier. A small box that actually photoed the paper and then developed the paper in the box. The amazing part is this:
From the promotional literature, it’s clear that the principal practical advantage of the machine is its portability (”Fits in briefcase!”) and convenience (”less than 7 lbs!”) and literal flexibility — the plastic cushion allows the photographic paper to “match the *contour* of the material being copied” (emphasis original), hence, presumably, the name “Contoura”. This, coupled with the error-free nature of photocopying, makes quite a sales pitch.
Xerox-makers; learn. Just because it works doesn’t mean it have to cost thousands.
Beer of the month club
I had totally missed out on this service. Although I like beer quite alot, the idea of a Beer of the Month Club. As I was over and read Goats — the best, if you ask me, morally dysfunctional comic-strip of all time — where Real Beer had banner for their Michael Jackson’s Beer Tour. Obviously it’s a beer of the month club. The banner had the following words: “Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but guys want beer in the mail.”
Now I ask you, who trusts the postal service to the degree that they send beer by mail? I don’t. I remember how the goons at the postal office manage the packages and let me tell you, it’s not a pretty sight.
To pull a quote from South Parks first season that actually is both relevant and true: “Hey, look out son, that’s dangerous! You’re gonna spill your beer!” Just the though of wasted beer makes me cringe and I have to fight the urge of running out in the snow naked and scream “Why God? Why?!”
What I try to say is don’t waste your beer. Save it, hug it, and if it gets really horrible, you might even have to call it George.
One photolog is up
The title says it all. It is far from ready, there are lots and lots of small things to do and correct but in essance it is there: Glimpses. It should work anyway, all small nitpicking things withstanding.