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 So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.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 Annoated Donnie

More Barbelith underground. The Donnie Darko Annotation Wiki is a really good idea, since there are references in almost every scene and most of them have some sort of meaning. I’m glad they didn’t do a thorough analysis, as I imagine there would have been a lot of noise about whose explanation and interpretation should be considered as the right one.

Other Donnie stuff includes that Richard Kelley will appearantly do a theatrical Director’s Cut. I’m ambivalent to the whole idea, I thought the first one was a director’s cut in that no-one told him what he could and couldn’t include. I might have been wrong about that, but still. Does it need a new cut? No. I don’t think so. It is fine the way it is.

Morrison speaks

This is really more something for Boo’s Swedish comiclog, but since I’m on a Morrison-binge I might as well continue. There is an interview with him where he talks about what he wants to do next and the comic industry in a rather cocky way — which of course is why we like him. (And of course he’s wrong about some of the things.)

But why is it that Comicon.com has everything — news, articles and interviews like these — an a messageboard? They’re not the only one either, as some other comic-sites does the same thing. It’s ugly and rather pointless.

(Interview found at Barbelith Underground)

Cor-nel-i-us

Lots of Jerry Cornelius things right now. After the latest book in the book group’s reading list, Åka became inspired to do a fanzine in with the same sort of structure and then I saw that Grant Morrison had created an excellent rip-off in the Invisibles: Entrophy in the UK with the character Gideon Stargrave. Everything is there, almost anyway. The party bit is missing. Morrison succeeds in making the comic more fun than the original books. And I can’t help to wonder about the truth about the lawsuit.

– I didn’t want you to miss all the fun. It’s the dawn of a new age, Gideon.
– Christ, I hope not. We only just got rid of the old one. Still, how about a toast, sis. To chaos.
— Grant Morrison, Entropy in the UK, trpd, page 79

black books three

Finally, after years of waiting there will — according to Bilbo Baily, and he should know --be a series three of Black Books. Series two will be out on dvd just before series three begins its showcase on the telly. This is good news. Better news would have to include series three of Spaced, but you can’t have everything.

Will The Comic

For once, I want to see a Christmas movie and for one reason and that reason only: the main character is played by Will Ferrell. The movie in question is Elf (imdb), where in the elves find a human child who grows up to believing that his is just a normal but exceptionally tall elf. I don’t care if it is cursed to suck. Ferrell will not let me down. (Although, he has decided to be in a Woody Allen movie as well... What the fuck happened? And what’s next? Bilbo Bailey and Dylan Moran in ET 2: Extra Terrestrial Again? (That one, however, I would actually pay to see several times. The little critter is doomed from start to be crushed by a furious Moran during a rant against children.)) I have faith in his genius. He will make it worthwhile. He must. He must.

Because otherwise I’ll have to wait until the Anchorman is released in order to experience comedic excellence. (That one is about a news anchor that looks a lot like Will Ferrell in a ‘70-ies wig. While it might not be a stroke the off genius, it does look very promising nonetheless.)

Memo to self: watch the deleted scenes on the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back-dvd again. I need a Ferrell-fix.

Confessionalism

“I ate Winalot (dog biscuits) when I was a teenager. My father said I’d contract Anthrax. I’m still waiting.”
-- confession 454137134

I suspect not everything on grouphug.us is true, but the prospect that some of the confessions are sincere is enough. It is impossible not to click the random and reload and reload and reload and laugh and laugh and laugh.

(Link found at lmg)

Learn to be invisble

After he’d seen the ghost of John Lennon (later Godhead) down by the river and been saved from the Harmony House, Dane askes “Where the fuck are we?” to the crazy Tom. Later the old man he asked says “When you dream, what makes you think it’s not real?” and even later “If you want to make it work you’ll have to tell me about Jack Frost...” and then they jump of a building and Dane meets the others and Tom’s gone. When the Myrmidons come, the room is empty and the handgranade with the newspaper cutout-letters S-M-I-L-E glued onto it explodes and I says “this is really good.”

I’ve become addicted to the Invisibles. Next stop is trpd no. 3: Entropy in the UK and Morrisons Doom Patrol: Crawling from the Wreckage.

album covers

At Splinters this surfaced: Worst Album Covers and Worster Album Covers. And yeah, they’re bad. Painfully bad. I want to poke my eyes out and clean them with soap and water. Perhaps even in turpentine. I want to burn my brain so that it won’t remember any of them anymore. The empty eyes... they haunt me.

"Real" Action Figures

These Talking Action Figures are scary. Almost so scary that I’ll stand up and scream “we have to protect the children.” But only almost. Because children are smart enough to see through the temptations of the dark side because hey, where are the weapons and war-stuff?

(Found at Warren Ellis Die Puny Humans.)

Fire bad?

Amazing. I woke up happy, and considering the fragments I remember of the dreams I had this is a miracle. They can’t have been nice. It is impossbile. It would be stupid. I’m neither. Now, when I’m awake and reflect over it, I must quote Andrew in the basement with his board over the First: “It was awful — awful.”

It’s a good thing I like cold, because I suck at getting logs (and other things) to catch fire and produce heat. The flame just goes old and dies — I bet it would work a lot better if it went all the way and became an alcoholic as well, just as a real person. Then at least it would go BAMF when the match comes near.

Belly

For all your foodly needs, consult (and send in recipes to) Belly. Everything organised in neatly categories such as Family recipes, Reader Submissions, Savoury - cold, Savoury - hot, Sweet - cold, and Sweet - hot. “Good food for and by idiots, if you will,’” brought by the Orbyn cult. Not much meat though, but one can always add that oneself if needed.

Two peaks

Watched Twin Peaks (imdb) (or at least large chunks of it, about two thirds) this weekend as Björn had the dvds. I saw it first around -92 when they showed it on SVT. At that time, after I saw the first episode, I labelled it as a cop show — albeit a wonky one — and ignored it. Later I saw handful episodes here and there, and I still didn’t get it.

Now, after I’ve seen the pilot for the first time ever as well as most of the episodes it’s much clearer. Should I admit this? Sure, why not. I was wrong. It is a good show, although in hindsight I realise why it was impossible to just dip into it here and there. Everything is dependent upon previous actions and information.

It’s also very funny, which I hadn’t expected. When Pete turned to his presumed dead wife in disguise as a Japanese businessman (it was obvious who it was after one minute of screen time — I know, I’m annoying that way), he said “You’re not from around here, are you?” and I laughed out loud. Previously, when agent Cooper arrived I uttered the words “are you local?” There must be a small shop on the hill outside Twin Peaks. A shop where there will be no trouble. There just has to be.

snowdrops keep falling on my roof...

Real snow outside. Real snow. White and powdery that keeps on filling up the holes in the ground. Layer after layer. Not that it bother me right now. There’s firewood inside, so I plan to just sit here infront of the computer and do bugger all. Perhaps I should even do something about that late fanzine of mine. Or, I could play Nethack or Lionheart or even watch the odd movie. There are no limits to what I can do. I can even cook food if I want too, and worries me. Something tells me I’m going to do that soon enough, because there’s nothing so depraved as a hungry human being.

No nowhere girl this year

No! Chapter three of Nowhere Girl has been postponed, again. Boo doesn’t didn’t previously join my raves about the series, but what does he know about comics anyway? that was just a matter of time since he know stuff about comics. Justine Shaw has too little time — obligatory South Park ref: she needs more time, we have to to transplant some — and is therefore unable to work on it right now. The release date is somewhat uncertain, but it’ll hopefully be next year. Late next year. In happier news, she has two other comic projects in the go.

Well, have you?

Have you ever felt as if you’re in a Hulk Hogan movie and everything is cheesy, bad and oddly colourful at the same time?

photofriday: gathering

As I’m still not comfortable enough to photograph any people, I had to go through my files and see if I could find something that had to do with a gathering. Sure, there where some to choose from. Most of them had pretty boring background though, not to the fault of the people in the pictures.

books and their shape and form

Åka sent in the link of a book survey made at Fantastic Metropolis to the Fanac-list. It’s a few months old by now, but I hadn’t seen it before. Some of the answers the authors gave was a bit of a surprise. On question the first, “What do you most like about the book as a physical object?”:

Cory Doctorow, who seems like a nice chap in other respects, hates the books physical form and prefers ASCII. ASCII. If this gets out, millions of Boing Boing-groupies will do the same. It must be stopped or else the book as we know it is an endangered species.

But Neil Gaiman answered that “The smell of paper, the way the book feels, the look of it, the heft.” See, I’m not crazy. Neil likes the smells of the paper in books too — albeit appearantly not as much as Peter Crowther of PS Publishing.

Velocity of an Unladen Swallow

A tip of the hat to DrQu+xum at MCiOS:Hyperlink Game for this link. Finally we can rest. We can sleep without waking up in the middle of the night, shouting “But how fast?! How fast do they travel?! Tell me!” Because now Jonathan Corum has estimated the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.

Certified genius

John M. Ford, certified genius. While his proxy-entires at Making Light are fine and all, can’t someone convince him to start one of these of his own? (But if that means his already slow output of books will get even more slower, then forget what I just said.)

Not really dark

I’ve been up here in Uppsala since August now, and I miss the darkness of Winter. Never during this time have the evening been pitch black. There’s been a dark blue hue there and some beige horizon, but never so black you can’t see where you’ll step. Some might argue that this is a feature, not a bug but... No! It’s close to the end of November and it should be dark. It doesn’t work otherwise.

crap in the meat

Allegedly, some people have poisoned meat in a store (link in Swedish) here in Uppsala. They’re not sure yet though, so the possibility of it being a hoax still exists.

But as a meat-eater, I’m offended by the mere thought. Leave my meat alone. I don’t cover your carrots with arsenic just because I don’t like how they taste or how the farmer grows them. I too would like my pre-meat to be healthy and live a good life, they’ll taste much better that way when they arrive on my kitchen table.

Since this is probably zealots we’re dealing with here, I’ve seen no other alternative than to speak a language they understand: those animals were destined to die. Both the Pope and Mau Tse Tung say so in a joint press conference. Oh, and when you eat vegetables, you steal food from the animals and force them to starve. You animal murdering lunatic — unlike us, you don’t even have a reason to kill them.

Trailers on DVD is a silly idea

I thought we wouldn’t have to put up with this anymore. Trailers before the feature I mean. But no, someone must be difficult. I was a bit naive when I sat down to watch my copy of X2 (imdb). I expected the menu to pop up almost immediately. Well, it didn’t.

First we had the speaker reading the text on the screen, stating that this disc is not for rental. No shit? I thought and pushed the skip button. Deactivated. The thirty seconds of screen time felt as a lifetime and afterwards I was greeted by a block off trailers. This isn’t a VHS. Thankfully, here one could press the menu button on the remote. Praise the lord. (The trailers were for Master and Commander (imdb) (Peter Weir adapt Patrick O’Brian, it looks good. Yay.) and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (imdb) — and they were not local.)

This is the second DVD I have that does this. The first, Animal House (imdb), doesn’t allow anything during the trailers save for the fast-forward. There, you have to watch them. It is idiotic and not just a little a bit insane to force people to watch trailers more than once.

This means war. They’ve declared it and I’ve picked up the steel glove they threw in my face. I’ll boycott something. Like apples. Yeah, no more apples for me. Anyone with me? Anyone? Hello?

(Boycott Fox and Universal?! What are you, stoned? They have good movies and tv-shows on DVD for fuck sake. No way I’m letting a few trailers get in the way for those...)

• Sore Eyes: DVD clutter
  

What language?

Please forgive me, but this enty is about this blog.I hate these just as much as you do, but I just need to get my thoughts down. Read something else.

I’ve been pondering back and forth about what to do, if I’m going to continue this in English or in Swedish. There are pros and cons in both cases. I write much better in Swedish, I have a lot more words to choose from. But alas, if one thinks for a second about the readers — this has nothing to do with the content of the entries, they would remain the smae no matter what — it will be read by my friends, family and a lot of boring wankers. If I continue to write in English, the same readbase will be able to follow, but so will a lot more people. Some of them will be boring wankers but I know that some of them will be rather neat people.

Not as I planned it

I planned to walk the city properly today, with the camera. Two major set-backs occured. The first is that I’m still not particulary comfortable enough to just whip it out — didn’t that phrase come out all wrong and horrific? — in public. The second was even more severe as the batteries said click and shut it down after just one lousy picture. And I mean lousy, no focus to speak off and shaky. Damnit, really. At times such as these — and others — I wish I had a Canon EOS300D. It would probably run out of battery power as well, but at least I would have a Canon EOS300D.

Rundown

Should I write something about movies? I think I should. Or at least tv-shows. (I’ve heard good things about Jane Espenson’s the O.C., but alas, I’ve yet to see a single clip.)

The Dead Zone (imdb). I think I’ll begin with that. So far, season one that is, it has very little to do with the book or the movie. (One time, the studio considered the option to cintinue where the movie left off. Thankfully, the producers said “no.”) Some things they decided to keep, the cane and the coat, but other than that the Johnny Smith portraied by Anthony Michael Hall is a whole different beast compared to the Cronenberg/Walken-character. Which is a good thing, because trying to mimic Christopher Walken would be kind of stupid. The first two episodes and number thirteen have things that appear in the movie, and even that parts are different.

Very little action, lots of drama and a good deal of humour and some creepiness.

The Last Wave (imdb), how to describe it other than the best movie I’ve seen by Peter Weir? Surreal story about a lawyer-person who looks a whole lot like Richard Chamberlain who gets drawn into a murky Aboriginal prophecy by the way of a murder of a member of a tribe. Lots and lots of rain and water. Probably even more so than in Seven. It didn’t explain a lot, just like Weirs previous films, but here it felt appropiate and not once did it feel forced that way it did a couple of times in Picnic at Hanging Rock.

And then we have the League. No, not the movie which I still haven’t seen. I mean the british comedy series the League of Gentemen (imdb). I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before a few times. Now I’ve seen season one as well, and boy, was that weird. Not as dark as season two though. Still, some images will haunt me. Like then one where Tubbs... No. I can’t type it here. You would scream out of shock and horror. (”You lied to me Edward! You lied to me! There is a Swansea!.. and other places.”) I did however like Mr Chimmeys dispatchment of his animals better. When he’ll try to save that turtle is a hoot.

Set This House in Order

Unless you hound rec.arts.sf.written, chances are that you’ve never heard of Matt Ruff. He’s not exactly famous. Yet anyway. Well, let’s be painfully honest here: the fault is yours. Totally. This is the person who recommended Wilton Barnhardt — something I’m very grateful for, as he’s written one of my all-time favourite books. (If you must pry into my private life, the title of Barnhardt’s book is Gospel)

I bought his latest novel today: Set This House in Order⊗. Not in the American hardcover version though, but if I had seen it in the shop, I would have. Just for the cover. Just look at it. Doesn’t it... pop? And his site contains lots of fun thing. Such as deleted scenes to the book and a soundtrack-listing that he listened to when he wrote it. And the worst part is that it came out way back in March, although I guess the trade paperback is rather new.

Oh, and he watched Buffy.

Drowned but not forgotten

One of my bookmarks from Uppsala English Bookshop died today at the Första-Tisdagen-I-Månaden-Pubmötet. It drowned in Antes beer when it flooded the table. Luckily my copy of Iain Banks Raw Spirit survived. Largely thanks to the coating on the cover. All damage that occurred was that a small bit of the right edge got wet. A rather small bit. If I cut of a millimetre no one can tell what happened to it. But right now it has a faint smell of beer. Somehow I can’t help to think that it would be far more appropriate if it had been whisky instead.

Scarlet's Walk and Other Musical Interludes

If you’re going to buy at least one record album that can be sorted under female-with-piano, you can do a whole lot worse than choosing Tori Amos’ Scarlet’s Walk. You could for instance by mistake pick up Norah “your body will perform euthanasia out of boredom” Jones. You could, but I hope it’s unlikely. If you do, I guess you listen to the Strokes as well and then my friend, it’s time to quote that song by the Doors. But anyway. Scarlet’s Walk. Better music.

The song A Sorta Fairytale is the best thing I’ve heard since I bought Curve’s Come Clean. And that says a lot I think. Well, Tommy does. It is a complete different genre, but just as the Curve record, it gives me these images in my head. Like a showcase by Dave McKean. Curve gives dark visions, blood and metal soaked in fire, and bizarre things from nightmares. Tori Amos is much lighter in tone, warm colours, and more organic all around I guess, but still as bizarre. Both is haunting though. They refuse to let go.

Interesting things happen to my mind when both artists are played back to back, but I won’t give away what. Not yet.