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 So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.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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The booklet thing

As much as I love Curve, the booklet to Gift (European version) was a huge letdown compared to the one that accompanied Come Clean. Tres boring. I’m not even fond of the colours. What was wrong with the white background that the US apparently had? [Image]

However, the booklet to Tegan and Sara‘s If it was you (yes, they’re that good, but I’ll shut up and stop bringing them up in everyday conversation for a little while anyway) is just as tremendously wonderful as the contents of the cd. The paper. Dear God, the paper... And the handwritten lyrics — I’m a bit jealous, because I too want to be able to write that straight in freehand). Gosh. No pictures, just the words in their simplicity and I can’t find a fault anywhere. [Image]

My point with this being: why don’t they spend more time with the booklet instead of claptrap such as copyprotections? Lyrics, small anecdotes, photos, small essays, it’s really simple to add value to a normal music cd. Hell, I can even write stuff for the majority of them myself...

020828

C-level English

The English faculty is insane and I have proof. Since there had been a few people who hadn’t finished their C essay in time the last couple of years, they assumed it was because the students had too much spare time. So this year, instead of having two five point blocks and then a ten point essay the normal way (one point equals one week), we have to have classes at the same time as we’re supposed to write the essay.

I don’t know, writing the essay takes time, and now that time has diminished. Out of those ten original weeks, we now have five that are properly dedicated to the writing process. For the first time, I have use for my sleeping disorder. It also requires that I start to write as soon as possible just to be able to hand it in at all. I still don’t know what I want to write about. I have a few ideas but nothing fixed. Should I choose the literature or the linguistic branch? Time is getting short here and I can’t make up my mind.

No kid got stuck in the escalator

I took my phonetics test today. I hope that I made it. I’m not sure yet so I’ll wait a little bit before I return the books to Watty.

Before the test, I ate some pasta (yum) and then just wandered around aimlessly with my camera. I’m still horrible at street photography, as I just can’t pick up the camera and aim it at some stranger. It’s some kind of mental block. I could sit quite far away and use the zoom, but there are few places where I can sit comfortable doing that.

As reported in the fragments to the left, the Tegan and Sara (thanks Rannie for pointing in the right direction) record arrived. I’m still amazed over the short time it took for it to get here. The record, by the way, rocks. The lyric sheet was printed on a very nice paper to boot.

Those Fisher Brothers

After watching the last nine episodes of Six Feet Under I realised something. For a long time I tried to ignore it or I tried to tell myself that it was only a mirage. But it wasn’t. Six Feet Under is better than the West Wing.

It is just better executed. The characters evolve and surprise in a different way. It is hard to predict what they will do and how they would react. It dares to be cute, serious and fun in a dark way at the same time.

Unlike the West Wing, it doesn’t get a ticket for overly pretentiousness. Small things are just small things and not the end of the world. The people don’t get whiny when something goes wrong, they get royally pissed. They do stupid things, they mess up big-time.

That it has one of the most beautiful title-sequences I’ve ever seen helps a bit too of course.

Automaton

I’m starting to think that I’m a robotic replacement of my former self, unaware that a switch has been made. My mind went south thanks to the recurring heat and my vision suddenly acted as if everything had been heavily comprimited. I saw huge pixels everywhere.

It could of course have had something to do with the fact that I had just been waked up from my pleasant slumber by a loud gunshot. However, that seems to be a bit too easy to assume. Here’s a photo of a lamp:

Johan got his picture

I ended up having coffee with them today, despite that this was not the plan. The plan, such as it existed, was to go into town and rent a movie or two. The first bit, going into town I followed through as if it were scripted, but suddenly I saw Boo standing there all goofy looking as I passed him by. I parked, walked the short distance and somehow sat there a few hours doing bugger all. Johan arrived short thereafter and Niklas a bit later as well.

Niklas has certain opinions. Some of these opinions make Fundamentalist Catholics seem as a progressive bunch. I try not to hold that against him — even though it is hard at times.

Flooded rooftops

There was rain yesterday. Lots of rain. The air was once again breathable and you could move without feeling sticky. With the rain came the thunder, a phenomenon that I’m not so keen on. This ridiculous idea to have electricity strike down at the ground irregularly as well as at random is rather stupid.

The rain flooded the roof at the constructionsite across the road. I for one wouldn’t want to be standing under one of those drains, it looks as if the water hitting the head would be quite, quite painful.

020817

The B R Act

Michele over at A Small Victory wrote about Battle Royale and I was intrigued. I jumped into the car and drove over to Boo‘s place as he had it on dvd. (He had tried to get my to borrow it before, but failed. Sorry Boo, but “they take a lot of students to an island and they fight” doesn’t sound as good and interesting to watch as “in which a 42 students are whisked away to a deserted island where they must kill each other off until one is left standing.”)

The movie was wonderful. Disturbing, violent and more of the same. At some places, I even laughed but then again my sense of humour is a bit askew. When someone died, they did it with blood. Not too much, but you could see it spurt out. This made it even more disturbing as the graphical violence was very realistic (except in one or two scenes). Very much recommended to those who don’t mind this type of films. I really need to see more Japanese movies.

Twenty-five

Right now, give or take a few minutes/hours, I’m twenty-five. Funny, it doesn’t feel different. I still feel as if I was twenty, I thought something would happen like I suddenly had the ability the be serious longer than eight minutes at a time... But no.

So, I’m going to tell you about something that happened five years ago on this day, the most fun birthday I’ve ever had. (Yes Tommy, that green thick stuff that oozes from your monitor is sarcasm.)

My brother Henrik, Tommy and I had been sitting in front of the tv as we usually do from time to time — the agenda was to ignore most of my relatives. I think I had drunk about two bottles of beer when, in unison, we went out to replace all the Pepsi bottles with even more beer, because beer is sort of needed when you’re twenty. Me, being the one closest to the fridge, opened it and took out the first two bottles.

I heard a loud bang. I looked around and Tommy was by the door, instantly teleported five metres away while my brother was hovering fifteen centimetres above the sink. Me, whose reflexes are shot to the ground by just smelling on alcohol, stood still. In addition to the mild intoxication I was probably in shock or something because there shouldn’t have been a bang.

I looked down on the floor and saw something red. Funny, I thought, it reassembled blood. It was blood. My blood. Now, there are few things I really hate in the world, but on the top of the list is my blood on the floor. I’m emotionally attached to my blood. I want to keep it, holding on to the substance as long as I can in case I’ll need it later on.

Next to my foot was the bottom of one of the bottles. A piece from said bottle was in one of my toes. This cut was where the blood came from. “It doesn’t hurt. I should hurt.” So, with much ado from various relatives who thought it wasn’t that bad, the time came where I had to leave and go away for a brief trip to the emergency room — since it didn’t stop bleeding.

Only, I soon found out, it wasn’t brief. It took time before I even came out of the waiting room and even saw a doctor. A half an hour or so I had to spend laying on my back all goofy-looking with my foot up in the air. I got my revenge though: I left drops of blood on one of their chairs.

Then after a while I was inside another room on a bed. I had worked myself up towards panic so they had to let me in. Panic because I hate seeing my own blood. I really dislike it and normally it freaks me out. They stitched the toe up and while they where doing that I started to feel the pain. This together with the anxiety attack led me to believe that I was sobering up far too much earlier than I had planed.

I limped out to the car and went home. I sat down and in a almost too short time I catched up on the beer as the other two goons had continued to drink recklessly while I was away. Not many though, I think I drank two very rapidly, which matched their three thanks to the speed.

It ended rather well considering the circumstances. The alcohol softened the irksome feeling in my foot and the hangover the next day wasn’t that bad. Just a foggy head, no headache at all.

Two things done

I’ve been thinking today while I wandered around in Ljungby doing bugger all. Thinking both on small as on large things, I’ve come up with two things. One of them is what I’ll write about in my C-essay and one the second thing is something I would like to call my Doors theory.

I seriously consider writing about Mervyn Peake’s use of language in Titus Groan. I need something to write about, and this way I get both literature and language study into the same basket. I haven’t read any other book that seems more suitable for this thing than Peake’s. Besides, the class is about to begin and I have little or less ideas otherwise.

The Doors theory goes like this: Jim Morrison on drugs = genius while Jim Morrison on booze = fat. I don’t really know what to do with this theory, but I’ll figure it out eventually.

Alcohol was involved

Believe it or not, we had drunk a few beers, we had watched Henry Rollins spoken word and we somewhere along the line our self-critical mindset stopped working. These are just a few of all the crappy things we recorded. (Warning! These mp3s contain low humour and are sung with crappy voices!)

Five mp3s
1) Hello
2) We hope Mexico can forgive us
3) James Brown sings Bobby Brown
4) A story about a Kung Fu-wannabe
5) the closest we ever came to a love song

The House of Sleep

The first stone has been thrown. I have read the first book on the great 100 project.

Every person in Jonathan Coe’s The House of Sleep has a problem--more or less. It has four main characters. We have Sarah, who apart from falling asleep now and then also can’t tell dream from reality. Robert is in love with Sarah, head over heals, and is very insecure. Robert’s friend Terry doesn’t sleep at all, he watches movies instead. Gregory Dudden is obsessed with sleep, that is, he doesn’t want to suffer from this “disease” any longer. The supporting cast has their problems as well. I had trouble not laughing when Terry goes on and on about movies, the scene where he talks to a producer is sheer genius.

The pacing was a bit slow at first; some of the characters where hard to get a grip on but once I was past that everything just flowed on. At first, I thought it would be annoying with the changes of timelines, odd chapters 1983 while even was 1996. This assumption turned out to be faulty, much thanks to Coe’s writing style and well thought out chapter changes.

Recommended.

“Well, for one thing, I dream of having a ten-minute conversation with Terry where he doesn’t mention Ingmar Bergman. But that’s just my little fantasy.”
(Penguin 1998, p.85)

Nothing at all

Not done squat the last few days. Just read books and watched movies.

The Wicker Man: it’s still brilliant. Utterly brilliant. It is also quite unlike everything else I’ve seen. Christopher Lee and the rest of the cast is good, even those who live in the village and jumped in as extras. A very good film, just as Dave Lally said.

Fellowship of the Ring: decent. Better on dvd, as you can pause and do other things instead for an hour or two, and then get back and admire the scenery. The plot however, is still missing just as well as large parts of the characterisations.

M*A*S*H season one: dear God. A bit uneven, but even if you count that into the calculations, it is great. Damn you TV4 for ruining it.

Sneakers: yay. A good solid fun for two hours. It’s vastly underrated by almost everyone in my opinion, I can’t figure out why though.

Running Time: black and white Bruce Campbell movie, a crime story in real-time created without visible cuts.

Later today: the Frighteners on tv.

Massive reading list

I’m considering to embark on a small quest: I really consider, after reading about the same idea at Bookslut, all the books at a best 100 books-list. Not all in one go of course, as that would force me to push back such authors as — can you guess? — Flann O’Brien for indefinite time. I wouldn’t like that, not one bit.

At first I too looked at the list at Modern Library I concluded that I won’t touch the readers’ list even if someone paid me. Just looking at the top ten makes me want to turn my head away in disgust. That list makes me scared shitless, I tell you. I’m allergic to Ayn Rand, I hate El-Ron and To Kill a Mockingbird was dreadful. James Joyce at eleventh place? Eleventh?

Basically, it is the Bookslut list with a lot of changes. That allows me to fix some errors: Dune for instance is not Great Art. It may be fun to read once or twice, but apart from that, no. Despite better judgement, I will leave Lord of the Flies alone, and keep it in the list. So far, ten books have been replaced.

I’m not even entirely sure I will read them in any particular order. Since I already own some of the books, why shouldn’t I start with them?

Update 3/8: I’ve finished a list of 100 books that I’ll read. The compilation comes from Bookslut, Modern Library and Radcliffe Publishing Course’s list. I’ve also read through mailinglists, Mornington Crescent Good Books-discussion (yes, all of it. The people there have good taste, you know?) as well as used common sense. Please comment if something seems wrong, because I would be surprised if everything on it were perfect. (I tried to keep as many authors as possible that I hadn’t heard of. Anyway, the selection process was hard.)