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 So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.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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A Pandora's box
I’ve fallen in love. Well, not with a person but more of a place. Pandora’s Books. They’re the greatest, ranking even far above that Ali guy. The reason is many of course. That they have books I want to buy is one of them. Another reason is that they had some books I wanted, books I ordered and books I now own. Good books.
- James P. Blaylock: Elfin Ship
- James P. Blaylock: Disappearing Dwarf
- James P. Blaylock: Night Relics
- James P. Blaylock: Paper Grail
- Ray Bradbury: Green Shadows, White Whale
- John M. Ford: Growing up Weightless
- John M. Ford: Scholars of Night
- John M. Ford: Web of Angels
- Nick O’Donahoe: Too Too Solid Flesh
- Tim Powers: Dinner at Deviant’s Palace
- Tim Powers: On Stranger Tides
- Christopher Priest: An Infinite Summer
I’m happy. Happy, happy, happy. Even though I’ve only read one of them — the Bradbury one — I’m fairly sure each and every one of the others are equally good.
This is going to feel awkward, as none of them is by a female author. Female postcolonial authors are most important of all, according to the current Eng.Lit-class. Two lectures of authors from Africa, and then two minutes that basically consisted only of namedropping Poe, Hemmingway, Faulkner and their ilk. Sure, the title of the class was American and postcolonial literature, but what about America?
It is as if you’d give a speech about the important literary figures in England and then brushed over Shakespeare, Jane Austen by casually mentioning their names out of context and then continue to talk about the oh so important Jack Greasemonkey, a cockney who wrote poems during the industrial revolution, never to be published until his poor relatives fifty years after his death finds these poems while after his death going through their loot.
She allegedly even used the phrase “she’s important because she was a woman” which doesn’t mesh at all with my high and apparently lofty opinion of important works. (To make a long story short, it’s not about the gender but the way you use the words, the character and the story. Everything else is irrelevant.) I say “allegedly” because I wasn’t there, but it seems very likely to be something she would say.
They Are Everywhere
“We’re being watched,” he said and took a sip of the now cold coffee. “They’re everywhere you know. Recording us this very minute, and then, and then they’ll just transmit it right out in cyberspace.”
“What?!” I ate a lump of stale bread with cucumber on.
“They do that, you know?” He sneezed five times and then looked around, as if the sneezes had disrupted the routine for those who were bugging us.
“You know what? I think you’ve been watching the X-files far too much. Or, perhaps, and this is just a thought, you should stop reading Robert Anton Wilson’s Everything is under control before you go to sleep.” I scratched my head.
“I don’t read it every night...” My friend didn’t sound quite as sure of himself anymore.
“I mean, you honestly believe that there is a giant body of people that belongs to a conspiracy to put everything you say on the Internet? Come on...”
“How do you know? How does anybody know? You don’t, do you?! They guard everyone so that the moment you says something profound and important, the hit squad arrives to drag you away and kick you hard in the balls three times.” He made a pause to drink up his lukewarm coffee. “And then they dress you up in clothes from the seventies and then they begin to work on you.”
“You’re not that important. After monitoring you for this long, they would have given up by now.”
“You think?”
“Yes, you’ve never said a word of importance in your entire life.” I felt kind of sad to drop this bomb on him, but I knew he would get over it. “You just don’t have it in you.”
“You’re absolutely sure about this? It’s not some kind of a joke?” The friend looked kind of distressed, seeking validation for what he just heard.
“No. They’re not after you.” I pointed to an older man with a large white beard who sat two tables away. He had a suit on, a suit that reassembled a rainbow drawn by a colour-blind. “They’re after him. According to the Global Conspiracies Weekly they’re going to pick him up in fifteen minutes.”
“Neat. If we have another cup of coffee we can stay and watch. Coo.” We both left our chairs to fetch more of the black gold.
The scavengers
It was dark. Really dark, and I don’t mean like dark grey or something that a tosser has mixed together with some cyan, magenta and yellow — because that would be brown. I mean dark as in black. This didn’t matter much, as Mr Tim had his flashlight.
“Ow, man. Lookit that.” The pale man who had slugged forwards from behind Mr Tim looked at the ground and wrinkled his nose. “And that smells bad too. Horrendenbly even.” Mr Tim shock his head. Good help was hard to find these days, he longed back to the heyday before Mad Scientist Weekly had folded.
“That, my dear manservant, is flesh for the machine. Energy.” Mr Tim pointed at the dead corpse.
“Uhm, sir? Why’d we come here? I don’ wanna mis my favourite show on the telly — Jack of all Trades — and all we do is to look at a dead... personish being.” The manservant kicked his shoe in the desert sand.
“We’re here to get the rigor mortis,” Mr Tim turned towards his assistant and clenched his fists in impatience, “so take the dead body and put it on the truck.”
“Me? You want me? To pick up this dead Rigor guy? And put it on the truck?” The manservant was repulsed.
“Yes. Yes and yes, unless of course you happen to find another truck out here in the middle of fucking nowhere at this hour. Now. Hurry up, we haven’t got all night.” As Mr Tim went back to the truck he could hear how the manservant had stared to follow him, with the corpse dragging behind.
In a sense this was an improvement. The last servant, Trevor Meeks may he rest in peace, had had the uncanny compulsion to play puppet-theatre with the dead bodies they found. Once was fun, twice was straining the joke and a hundred and fifteen was a bit too much. Still, his flesh had brought power the city for days. The new one would probably waste the energy, or worse, steal what was already collected in the reserve.
Dare to dream
I had this really weird dream the other day.
It all began with a friend of mine — I don’t know who because I’ve never seen the bloke before, but I knew he was a friend — was about to get married on live tv. Damned if I can understand why, except that everything has to be done at tv nowadays. So I had to go there, as I’m far too polite to say no. (The last bit could actually have been true.)
I went there dressed in my normal clothes, pants and a t-shirt — all in dark grey. I sat down at a table as far as possible from the cameras. This table was cluttered with other strange beings, all from Unix-geeks to a guy with an umbrella on his head. After a while I couldn’t take it anymore and so I did what I usually does, I picked up a book and stared reading.
Soon I was to only one still there, as the other guests had left to do bugger all. Suddenly I overheard something. Two people, dressed as if they had stolen their clothes from a Schultz-comic strip, where talking about their plan of world domination and how one of them was an alien possessing the human like a raincoat.
I laughed as I had turned the page and there were a joke of some sort there. They looked at me and the alien jumped forth and put his had to my head in order to read my mind.
“He’s okay,” he said as I looked up at them. I tipped my head to the side, looking a bit as Ralph did in Simpsons when he glued his head to his shoulder (except for the hair cut).
“You know,” I said, “you’re not only bad at this villain deal, this whole plot is a direct rip off from Quicksilver.” They looked at me, and then they looked at each other. They shifted their gaze back at me again.
“Quicksilver? As in Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver? The book is out?” They seemed to be surprised and a little bit bewildered, as if this alone had jeopardised their plan. This was also a soundtrack que: I began hearing a duet between Marvin Gaye and Toni Halliday (I want to own that song, I really do).
“Yes, since yesterday. What do you mean ‘the book is out’? You haven’t read it yet?” As soon as I had said those words, I woke up. The temptation of Quicksilver was too much to bear. On the whole, this was the worst anti-climax I’ve ever been part of.
(This was an actual dream. Why can’t I dream about normal stuff such as sharks large enough to eat Australia? But no, I have to dream about a bloody book that hasn’t been published yet. Oh, God. When will it be here?)
What lurks in the library?
“What lurks in the library?” I ask,
Between the tomes and hills of shelves
Crawling an masse and hides unseen,
Amidst the broken spines of long forgotten lore.
“What lurks in the library?” I cry,
Fabled beasts and fallen prey alike
all they try to escape unseen,
in silence overshadowed by the Goeru’s roar.
“What lurks in the library?” I whisper,
Turning corners in hope of escape
crouching down for fear of life,
the Jabberwock lies dead and I wade in gore.
“What lurks in the library?” I shout,
Standing tall upon the shelf
I feel the gaze burning in my neck,
I forsake safety, I run and my fear I ignore.
“What lurks in the library?” I stutter,
The sound of heavy hooves approaches
the Goeru claw buried in my back,
the fear is gone and I fall dead to the floor.
A day and a half
12:30. Woke up. A thought dawned on me as I lay there under the blanket. I need a bathrobe. And, of course, a pair of white bunny slippers just as everyone else does. But a bathrobe. An ugly one with large pockets and I should be able to throw it recklessly open if the need every come up — yeah, right. I’m thinking about getting something to eat.
13:00. I’m eating. Meat and potatoes. That’s the beauty of waking up late, no need for breakfast. It is possible to jump straight at lunch. Still, even if I had waked up early I wouldn’t have had breakfast; I just doesn’t do them anymore. Kind of sad and pathetic really. I’m still eating by the way.
15:22. On drugs. Not the kind you go “whoooa” after, but the one that prevents you from going “atcchhhiiii” when in body contact with plants outside. Sometimes I which they where the other kind but then I shrug, I’m pretty fucked up anyway. At least this way I have some illusion of self-control.
18:00. Met some people. I didn’t like them, not at all.
-- Hi. We’ve never seen you around here before.
-- I don’t like this neighbourhood, so I usually avoid this place.
-- Okay, I take it someone here has a personality disorder and it isn’t any of us.
-- Bite me.
-- Why so hostile? What you name?
-- I’m Raymond. You’re in my face.
-- Ray. Stop being an ass, okay? We’re just...
-- Mondo. I don’t like to be called Ray by strangers. You’re strangers and should call me Mondo.
-- Mondo? What does that mean?
-- Look it up, there is this thing called books and some of them have definitions of other words in them. Dic-tion-ari-es.
-- You have a serious problem. You know that, don’t you?
-- Yes. You.
-- Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your...
-- Shut the fuck up. I came here to shop pasta okay? Not to be harassed by other customers who tries to “save me” from what they consider great peril and eternal torment.
-- You don’t have to be rude.
-- Rude!? I want bloody pasta. That is all I came here for not some overdose of religious propaganda. And by the way. I don’t need to be saved. I sacrifice goats in my apartment and have huge bonfires in my bathroom where my heathen friends and I have orgies in the ashes. And sometimes, I even nail a small marshmallow Jesus to an equally small wooden cross so that I can play Golgotha in my cat’s kitty litter.
-- ...
-- I’m gonna take my pasta, pay for it and then leave. Bye.
-- Do you want a pamphlet?
22:45. Got abducted by a UFO. They, they here being the pesky aliens, dumped me after fifteen minutes and stole my pasta. Damn the bastards. Have to go back and buy more tomorrow, something that I do not look forward to. I alos have to hitchhike home. This is going to take all night. Right now at a Internet Cafe in Utah, boy do they have comfortable chairs here or what? Need coffee though.
logically it should be much shorter
I’m having serious problems with this. This being the fact that The Ramones did a cover on a Tom Waits-piece entitled I don’t wanna grow up (read lyrics) and somehow — don’t ask me how — managed to make it both longer and less rebellious. Yes, The Ramones, go figure. Perhaps the less rebellious bit is that Joey Ramone never sung with a really raspy voice. Waits can probably grind down solid steel if he just feels like it.
When the song was recorded the Ramones had already lost their ticket to ride the train of the experimental rebels. Had they only made this song in the old days before they became a part of the canon: who can say what would have happened? But then again, this is not a song from the old Tom Waits but from the more recent where he is in tune with his inner child in a frightening way.
But the other thing, the length is wrong on several levels and it gives me this headache thing just by trying to grasp it. The weird part is that they actually played and sung the song faster than Mr Waits did - or perhaps still do at live-shows. You know, the usual three-chords-and-we’re-done type of thing that they always used. So how the fuck could it become longer? They didn’t add words. Longer pauses between the verses perhaps but considering that they did everything faster, where does those extra fifteen seconds come from? Thin air? Stolen from another album?
I want some answers here.
Quote this
Mission statement: fill in and answer with the quotes only. The quotes may be from any source. Then, when done, leave a link in Natalie’s comments. Or not.
It was much harder than it seemed at first. It is much easier to pull up a quote in random than to conjure one to fit a given topic.
Who are you?
-- You’re a heathen!
-- Well, yes but not an unenlightened one I hope.
- Edward Woodward & Christopher Lee in “The Wicker Man”
What’s your secret?
-- Be careful. Sociopaths are dangerous because they don’t function by the same moral code as the rest of us.
-- Welcome to my world.
- Kane & Grissom, C.S.I.
Who do you want to be?
How dies he dream
How does he think
When he can’t even speak
And he can’t even blink
We are all lost in the
Wilderness we’re as
Blind as can be
He came down to teach us
How to really see
- Tom Waits, “Eyeball Kid”
What do you look like?
“The kid on the other side was the most unimpressive human being Eddi had ever seen.he was small and narrow-shouldered, olive-skinned, with haphazardly cut brown hair and heavy straight brows.”
- Description of Hedge in “War for the Oaks” by Emma Bull
What is love?
Your woodland pulse, your gestures, more than lovely
To me; your mirth, the tears you mix with mine
When great swans die, your limbs that with mine lie,
Your voice in the sunk hours, these are become
- Except from “Tides” by Mervyn Peake
“She refuses to believe that an ancient, super-intelligent race of cone-
shaped beings inhabiting pre-Pleistocene times are responsible for the
breakup. I’ve got to convince her; I’ve got to recover her love.”
- Philip to his psychiatrist in “Resume with monsters” by William Browning Spencer
Are you strong?
“Just because a guy loves comics, doesn’t mean that he can’t defend himself.”
- Brodie Bruce in “Mallrats”, played by Jason Lee
What do you want?
“I have a huge fondness for strange and stupid stuff.”
- Neil Gaiman
What’s your problem?
“You’d be surprised how many problems beer can solve.”
- Philip, “Goats” at goats.com
“They have every other flavor but coffee-flavored coffee.”
- Denis Leary
What are you afraid of?
“She draws him close. From the darkness I hear the beating if mighty wings...”
- Sandman, “The Sound of Her Wings”
Do you have anything to add?
-- Dr O’Hanrahan, who was al-Hakim?
-- I’m not here to correct your many ignorances. Go look it up.
-- What’s this?
-- After you look up al-Hakim, you can look up vegetables. It’s under V.
- Lucy and O’Hanrahan in “Gospel” by Wilton Barnhardt
Another one bites the dust
Lines&Splines has closed down. Why is it that the good sites does this and then the bad ones stay up forever and forever?
A dubious phonecall later...
I watched Letterman yesterday for the first time in what feel like eons. And this only because Ola called and told me to, he never said why but I figured that out eventually. Tom Waits was there — you see, we’re one week behind the US schedule. His performance won’t win him much new fans, as it was kind of bland and awkward and just not the right setting. Waits is suppose to play in smoke filled small clubs where one sits and nurse a whisky during the entire show.
As a guest after his performance, however, is a completely different matter. The man is a genius. “They recognise you... at the dumpsite!” but obviously not in the music store.
-- Normally one releases a double album these days, but you chose to release them as two normal albums instead. Why?
-- Well, if it works out I’d like to take credit for it. But if it don’t... if it don’t I find someone else to blame.
They came in a bag.
Hey!
I caved in and took the Pixies Song-test found over at luminescent.org and I agree with Natalie. I’m not cool enough to be a Pixies song either.
It’s hard to get to know you, but once people do, they’re in for a wild ride. You had a rough childhood, and it reflects in your speech and mannerisms- you’re focused on things like whores and crack babies, which fascinates people at first but may ultimately drive them away. Despite your somewhat depraved outward persona, you’re a truly decent person who craves and deserves love and friendships. |
Insanity
I started yesterday, and now I sit here with eleven pages already. Two days went when I did nothing and then I juast had to start typing another fanzine. This time I have no deadline, thank God. But still. Two days. It is like someone had replaced a fuse or something, as I have several ideas in my had for other, more focused ‘zines.
It might be that I have nothing else to do, as the literature for the course still hasn’t arrived (one of the books should be read until tomorrow tuesday.) Reading fanzines is much, much more fun though.
Waiting time
It feels as if I’m in a state in-between. In between what I don’t know, which begins to make me really nervous. I want to know what it is. Sure, it might be nothing — dammit! — but as I see it: why can’t this nothing happen so I could realise what it was and get on with my life.
I don’t see myself as the kind of person who waits in vain. Even though I may be rather lazy, I just don’t wait. I do other things instead, such as reading, writing, toying with the bas or perhaps once in a while even watches a movie. But now all that feels moot, I’m impatient now and I don’t like being impatient when I could bum around and couldn’t care less.
I’m going out to get some answers...
In-joke bonanza
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie with so many in-jokes as Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back. The plot of the movies, well, what plot? I just don’t really care. I had fun while watching it and I really, really want to see more of Mark Hamill. I think it is time to get this movie on DVD soon.
How did this happen?
Since yesterday, I have been writing crap like this for a year. Jesus wept. Sure, in the beginning I wasn’t particulary prolific. But than again, I actually had topics for a while. Gosh.
At least it works
The HD from the slaptop is now firmly mounted inside the stationary. I can access all files again, even though the first part the drive (previous C:) is gone.
This also brough up a new thing that I dislike about windows. If I removed the damaged partition and left it unassigned, then it still shows up in windows, which also want to format the unexisting partition every time I emptied the trashcan. (This was fixed by extending the extended partition to include the whole disk. Obviously, if there where unassigned space infron of an extended partition, windows had to have access to it. Go figure.)
I don’t want to know how the minds in Redmond works or what constitutes as logical over there.
Late night reading
Yesterday night, that is until four this morning, I read China Miéville’s new book, The Scar. It was... I can’t really express it in words but it was ver very very good. Set in the same world as his big-ass-sized Perdido Street Station, only a bit thinner (it is still brick-sized though). Best described as fantasy set in a secondary world, very little magic and they have reached steam industrialisation. The quality of his books still goes upwards, I can’t even begin to imagine how good the next one will be.
Danger!
To a biblioholic like me, ABEBooks is really really dangerous. I mean, I find thing sthere, things I’ve only been able to dream about seeing in real life. This is one of the reasons why I try to stay clear and avoid searchin catalogs from used bookshops online.
If this turns out the way I think it will, I’ll have to Make Room! Make Room! and reorganise the shelves. I had thought about doing that anyway, as I’m trying to find a way to sort the book according to the thematic treatments they deal with instead of the boring the works of this author fits here. There are a few problems, as for instance Terry Pratchett will be all over the place. There is a solution, I’m fairly sure of that, but I can’t figure it out.
I think I have to do it again
The first couple of pages went fast, and they should, as there was nothing on them that was hard to answer. But then the difficulties began. Lots and lots of essay questions, which I usually don’t mind that much but now it was unbearable. All of them were about the Empty Raincoat, and more specifically about the last pages. I didn’t memorise those parts, as they were unbelievable boring.
Now I feel drained, all my thoughts are like a wet puddle on the floor and no sponge nearby. But I won’t complain.
New things are fun. Ola (now and here dubbed to hero of the day) told me that at least some of the record stores probably had Tom Waits new CDs. Uplifted by this --I had started to believe that I wouldn’t pass the exam so I was a bit down at the moment — we went there and sequentially bought them (despite the 7th May date). If I may exclaim a word of rejoicing: hurrah!
Tonight TV4 will show Star Wars Episode I and The Day the Earth Stood Still. I will only watch the later. A real sf-movie from the fifties for once and not one of the many fake ones made for drive-in theatres.
Two gone, eight left
Michael Moorcock is recovering from his surgery. He seems fine and according to Ansible #178, only lost two toes. They will not be sold on e-Bay as planned as the doctors kept them to themselves. Some people are just too greedy for their own good.
But all in all, this is good news considering the death ratio of April. Please stop with this, it is not funny at all.
Hidden menings are not so hidden, really
I sat down and let my thought go out for a walk. Usually they bring back something interesting. This time it was something that had been dormant since I read John Sladek’s The Reproductive System. It is about how a company tries to milk the government on money by creating a useless machine that reproduces itself. They succeed of course and something goes wrong. It is a comedy and this is not the main point of the story.
This reproductive system is a bit like words and opinions (they are of course closely intervened even though it might not seem like it at a casual glance). They spread at an alarming rate and at one time or another something will go wrong. The meaning mutates into something else or someone forgets important parts of the idea behind the words. Logically, this would not happen anymore. Not in a digital forum, where everything is stored and everyone can read the original wordings. The possibilities for misunderstanding should be almost down to zero. This proves that this is not a perfect world, as we?re being even more hypersensitive that before.
“You wrote ?control? on index.html and ?weapon of choice? on music.html! Stop trying to disarm me. I like my guns dipshit!”
We need to reclaim the words and their meanings, may they be actual or metaphorical, from those who abuse them. To make people actually read with their heads instead of their collected bile. Otherwise, the languages will turn against us because despite what most people believe, languages are living beings. They breathe and have an agenda of their own. They demand respect. R-e-s-p-e-c-t (or as they said in a Frantic-sketch “R-E-C-P-T-U. R-Q-C. They?re not bright, but they are enthusiastic: why not hire a student this summer?”) Look up the word in a dictionary.
I?ve said mine, now it?s your turn.
As good as it gets?
How hard can things get? I’ve asked myself that question a couple of times, most of them I’ve responded with a shrug and let things sort themselves out. This time, however, it seems a lot worse. I have, to no surprise of my readers, another exam coming up this Saturday. I have no idea how to study this, the lecturers don’t provide much help either.
When asked about what it is we should know, they shrug and give an answer that raises even more questions. So, this exam will probably be more difficult than to track down songs by Cat’s Laughing. At least now, it seems impossible.
From impossible to possible, I’ll have to rewrite nine more pages for the fanzine. I’ve been notoriously bad at rewriting so to my dismay I found that the new text was much better than the first version. Damnation. This means that I will rewrite more things in the future instead of the usual draft=finished product philosophy.
I wish it could be Saturday afternoon, after the test. I want to read books of my own choice. John Crowley or China Miéville. Perhaps even, dare I say it, Christopher Priest? And on Monday the hell begins again. A new course and this time with lots and lots of books to buy. I’m a poor starving student, limited both financially and by my lack of people skills. Can’t they see that? What the hell is wrong with these people?
Ehm. Sorry for the outburst. Move along, there is nothing to see here.