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 So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.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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Holidays

I know I’m being selfish and all, but all these one-day holidays are killing me. They serve no purpose except to slow things down and destroy the day-to-day necessarities in life. And in late December---early Januari, there are tons of them. About one every week, which is silly up to the point that I’ve could just as well start giving my facialhairs names.

I want mail to be delivered. I want, and I might be asking for too much, the small joys of life such as dvds and books to be delivered to my door without much hassle. There are weekends for Christ sake. Isn’t that enough?

Books of 2002

I honestly believe M. John Harrison’s Light was one of the best things I read this year. I say believe because it’s compeating with works such as At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien. (Read more about Light in the booklog.)

Among the top layer of books I’ve read this year, these are the ones I liked best beside the two mentioned above:

Philip Reeve: Mortal Engines
Michael Marshall Smith: One of Us
Clive Barker: Weaveworld (first time read in English, read in Swedish translation around 1992)
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day
Tim Powers: Dinner at Deviant’s Palace
Tim Powers: On Stranger Tides
Peter Ackroyd: Milton in America
Terry Pratchett: Night Watch
Chris Wooding: The Haunting of Alaizabel Clay
Haruki Murakami: Sputnik Sweetheart
Richard Garfinkle: Celestial Matters

Best foreword and afterword in a book must go to On Pirates by William Ashbless.

Worst thing I read was The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch. It was... almost as bad as last year’s To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Not quite, but almost, and that’s bad.

What’s your best/worst read during the year?

Yesterday

Christmas has passed. Again. And it was like any other Christmas. I got restless, bored, and then depressed. It never fails and I don’t know why. I think I’m allergic to the date or something, because I can’t find any other cause. Christmas is the most boring date of the year. There is nothing to do and everything seems totally pointless.

I must have watched Once More With Feeling ten times or so. Perhaps even more. The soundtrack has been spinning in the cd-player as well. It helped a great deal.

Next week: train, Gothenburg, people, books.

A prediction of Christmas

I’ll open my eyes. It will be cold and I’ll try to lie in bed as long as I can. It will not succeed so I will rise, get the bathrobe on and then make tea in a huge cup. I walk into the living room, put the cup down and watch some dvd ? probably Battle Royale or something similar to get the right vibe of the holiday. (I might even surprise myself and choose a light-hearted thing such as Amelie. Hey, everything is possible.) I’ll go and get dressed and then the guests start popping up. When they arrive, my brother has been awake for precisely four minutes.

All of us will eat the Christmas-food. Guests will disappear car by car and then I’ll turn on the telly, and by accident end up with Channel Three. They show “Honey I Shrunk the Kids.” I turn to my brother and say something stupid such as: “Stuart Gordon penned the idea to this with Brian Yuzna, perhaps they?ll show a special cut with zombies.” My brother answers “No, they will not. Is this the best there is?” and unfortunately it is. I’ll pick up my guitar and continue trying to learn how to play “Walk Through the Fire” from Buffy: Once More with a Feeling. (Which I saw for the first time last night. Enjoyed it immensely. If I only could see season 4, 5, 6, 7 as well without having to wait several months between each season.)

Quick Recap

It’s a matter of priorities. Right now, until a slight change will occur around the 24th or so, there will probably not be much updates here. I’m writing like five hundred mad monkeys with typewriters being bullwhipped into frenzy, looking for a place to stay next semester, learning how to play First We Take Manhattan by Leonard Cohen, and reading books. So you see, updating this thing-ama-bob just doesn’t fit into the timetable.

The books include: Chasm City and Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds, Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, Light by M. John Harrison, The Cassini Division by Ken MacLeod, and Fear and Loathing in the Campaign Trail 72 by Hunter S. Thompson.

Books next in the cache is: Falling Out of Cars by Jeff Noon, The Alchemist’s Apprentice by Jeremy Dronfield and The Separation by Christopher Priest. Expect lots of additions in the booklog soon, as well as a few other bits here and there around Christmas.

This could be better

In the mp3-folder right now: bad rendations of Irish folk music. Well, no all Irish folk music, that would require more free time and free discspace than I have available. It is just one song, but oh boy, my voice is even worse than I thought. And the idea to both sing and play at the same time is... Let me put it this way: it worked in theory.

Feel free to suggest other genres to destroy.

XEROX'D

This song will probably need a lot of fine tuning.
---------
[A,D,A,E,D,E,A ]

Hey!

[G,D,C,D]

[D] hiding our souls
[E] lunarian dreams
[D] mytacistic howls
[E] lost in schemes

[A] All I see, merely [Asus] introjections
[A] nothing new, [E] always broken
[A] All I feel, only [Asus] desparations
[A] nothing new, [E] always stolen

[A,G,C,G,C]

[D] speak in digraphs
[E] henotic chants
[D] stifled laughs
[E] idiosyncratic rants

[A] All I see, merely [Asus] introjections
[A] nothing new, [E] always broken
[A] All I feel, only [Asus] desparations
[A] nothing new, [E] always stolen

[D,E,A,D]

[D] hiding our souls
[E] lunarian dreams
[D] mytacistic howls
[E] lost in schemes

[D,E,A,D]

(words and music by me, and no, I can’t play it very well either.)