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 So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.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 january trip

Have I told you about Gothenburg? Yes I have, but that was last year. This year however, things were a bit different. Not too different mind you but different none the less.

¹ My train was early by fifteen minutes. This has never happened to me before so it was quite an experience. The ride itself was totally uneventful. I remember nothing except that we at times passed some beautiful scenery that kept its distance from outside the windows.

² CD left the computer-related things behind him and is now persuing a geological career. As such, it was a bad bad idea for him to watch the Core. I can see why. He was later thankful that he also had avoided Tommy Lee Jones’ Vulcano.

³ You can fit a person inside one of the safe deposit boxes at the train station, but if you want to lock it it will cost 30 skr. So we didin’t. (But as they say: a blurry picture can tell a 1000 lies — so maybe we did.)

⁴ We didn’t watch Buffy, as the person at whose place we did this the last time wasn’t about. He was travelling around. It felt a bit weird, as he’s been there on every DFS in that town.

⁵ We ate Indian food and scones. Yay.

⁶ I had a cd burnt with all the Frantics episodes. An even greater joy would be if said cd didn’t have the large see-through area that renders it unreadable.

⁷ Johan has recieved an invitation from the Loy.

⁸ I didn’t buy any, but they had lots of nice and bizarre movies at SF-Bokhandeln. But I wanted to really bad.

⁹ CD — the secret identity of the super villain the Badness Man, who’s superpower is that he makes things worse and frighten children with his huge sock-outfit — thought it would be a good idea to have a DFS here, and just rumage through my DVD-collection.

¹⁰ There are pictures.

¹¹ But of course, all this was back in ‘Nam.

During the evening

This is Tommy early in the evening. I don’t think Ola had arrived yet.

Proof that not exactly everything in the next byline is 100% true.

Of course the photo just above and the one below, of the tv screen, were taken by this man who had a lot of fun with the camera. Ola is quite insane, but in a good way. He was alos the sole embodiment of live music entertainment for the evening since he’s a bit better than the Adam West Fanclub Experience. It also gave us the chance to relax and drink beer instead of trying to actually do something ourselves. And hey, free live music.

One of the many photos Ola took on the tv-screen during the end sequence of Fletch. Which reminds me about that Spies Like Us is about to begin.

This is about christmas

My mother (and I think my brother was in on the whole deal as well) gave me these slippers, furry and with silly claws. Sadly not bunnyshaped but those seem to be a real bitch to find nowadays — if they’re to be the real pastywhite variety that is. And I will not say anything about Christmas because if I do, some other being at svartanka.com will inevitably bring up his and the entire week will be spent in laughter and comparisons about who had it worse. (The real reason is that this year I would have lost. I tried to sleep and keep out of the way. It worked too until the discman drained the batteries in the middle of Allison (”keeps a smile / around a while / he took no fright / and jettisoned / we’ll go tonight / to hear him tell / “oh well” / allison / allison”).)

Now, free from everyone but the emediate family, let’s survive until tomorrow. Yeah, let’s just do that. Just.

(If I don’t buy many movies or books this month, I can afford a new camera. I think I’ll do that.)

Nothing to do with Christmas

I know. I know. Lost Pages are turning into some sort of journal for my demented mind, but I’m actually quite comfortable with that since the world-wide computer network called the Internet is quite boring right now. At least in my sky and I don’t feel like powersurfing. And just to continue right off.

I’ve been listening a lot to the Pixies the last few... heck, it’s been a year already? Well. Before a few days ago, I hadn’t heard either the b-sides nor Bossanova. Excellent both of them and they do something to my brain, I evesdropped on my thoughts and they do sound a lot like Frank Black lyrics. Not sure it’s a good thing, but I guess not.

Very nonsenseical with weird rythm and kind of chopped up and they don’t make sense. Which is important enough to repeat twice in the previous sentense.

Oh, and I want a new camera. Everything is Tommy’s fault. Damn him and his free magazines.

Christmas holiday

Feeling wonky. Tomorrow I head down south, to where I’m local. I’ll be there visiting the parental units until early January. This means that... I’ll continue to update because Christmas isn’t such a big deal. It doesn’t force me to stop and sit down and be wholesome with the relatives and sing Christmasy songs infront of a large wooden chip called Christmas tree. It’s just another day of the year, kind of like the first of May except with more snow and less angry socialists.

The next entry here will probably either be the usual gibberish or about the Bad Movie Saturday. Having said that, I suspect that I’ll feel gibberish tomorrow after the train ride.

But right now I’m going to watch Back to the Future (imdb).

what happens down south

I spoke to my family on the phone today. I don’t know what they wanted, but I guess they just wanted to check in that I still remember that I’ll go down there this Wednesday.

They seemed fine, although I suspect my brother will have gone extinct sometime after the phone call. He was in the background, fighting with my father over the right to own and use the remote control like an invading colonist. Not a wise thing to do. It’s on the checklist over things not to do in that house, just between “Throw satsumas on Lind” — because she will strike down with great vengeance and furious anger — and “Touching the Christmas ficus.” I expect there will be grenade holes in the cellar and a guerrilla army hiding under the stairway.

I wonder if I’ll survive this...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Not enough to colour the ground but still

I went out. I needed milk, mushrooms and some tomato el destructo. (I do realize that my Spanish is even below the level of “It eats you, starting with your bottom” but really, I don’t see that as a problem. I don’t even know the language so this is a step up — hard as it might be to believe.) Then, decided that it was rather cold so I went back in and changed the coat to something that’s warmer. It did seem like the right thing to do at the time. Honest.

But when I opened the door out again, I was proven wrong. I felt it was something in the air. No, really. There was something in the air. Snow, to be more precise. No! I almost shouted. No! again. (And incidentally, the soundtrack eradiating from my discman was eerie, “...we were searching for an omen, of the presence of the snowmen...”) Imagine some kid gets a flake in his eye or in his mouth — Sweet Jesus! He might choke there on the spot, with no one to perform the Heimlich gesture. We must do something, we must save the artefact children from this vicious whiteness of a drug metaphor!

Down

A brick of depression hit me in the face earlier tonight for no apparent reason. I can’t flush it out by watching telly, as there is nothing good on any of the three channels available here (I miss Tv and Kanal 5 — who would have though it was possible?) I don’t feel like reading. So, I’ve done all that I can do. I’ve piled up a couple of feel good movies and plan to ride it through. Zoolander, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Small press

This is official since... nowish. The small press will happen, consequences be damned. Stay tuned for more information as the research progresses. There are a few things to sort out. But, and I can’t stress this hard enough, it will happen. We’re tired of being lazy wankers.

Saturday fun

There are different ways to spend a Saturday evening. You can do things that are fun as well as being bored to death. If the later, you’ll try anything to get out of it. Anything. I wasn’t there, but I guess I got pretty close. How else can I explain why I sat down and made the stick figure?

So I've moved.

So, I’ve moved and I promised an update in August. This is it. I’ve also had time to “celebrate” my birthday by attending a sf-con. I also managed to win a quiz by mistake. The blame for this isn’t just mine alone, but the cohort CD Skogsberg has to share some of this. Well, we won a book each, so it wasn’t a complete disaster. The con was fun, I drained my camera batteries twice (since neither quartet seemed to be fully chared in the first place) and there will be pictures. Soonish. Probably now and here.

I found this mirror thing that made me unable to resist something for the Mirror Project. A little bit further inside the building there were these doors. You could push them up and they had timed magnets that kept it open for a little while. After I had carried a few chairs through these into the convention area, I realised that the one responsible for the timer must have been a physisist since it was a far too small time to actually be useful. If I pushed the doors open and the magnets locked, then they would close again just as I returned with three small chairs that I had picked up only 20 metres or so from the doorway.

I still lack a decent Internet connection. I’ll try to minimize the dail-up at home, and since the semester has yet to begin I’m somewhat out of the loop. It will be better soon. I just hope that UU has an easier way of reading lyskom than setting up this on my Algonet account.

Oh, and my house-mates has turned into Buffyholics, more or less. Not my fault. I swear! I, ehm, only supplied the dvds.

You can joke about everything

August 9th my mother called a joke I made about a recent news story “a bit too cold and bad taste.” This means that I’ve ventured pretty far out in the deep black void of cynical humour. Almost too deep.

Left. Soonish anyway.

This Tuesday I move. Yay! Up north, and it is a bit too close to Las Stockholma for my taste. Althought this, I will not complain about lack of posting. Why should I? I’ve contracted a severe case of megalomania and as such I find that you should consider it a privilege to read my words, how few they might be in the beginning.

That thing shouldn't produce smoke

Without any warning — because hey, it wanted to follow the old beaten path of tradition — my network interface card started to spread a smoke-like odour. At first, when I saw the smell I was worried that it could have been the CPU. But it wasn’t, thank God. Everything inside was pretty cool except for the NIC. Which smelled even worse than it did from the outside.

I don’t like when my electronic toys begin to smoke for no reason. It makes me uneasy. They shouldn’t do that.

In other unrelated news, Plank is a very nice man who knows what to offer persons in Buffy-withdrawal. (Eh? Nothing of that sort, it just involved a couple of cds.) Very nice. Send him gifts.

A nice way to spend a Saturday

When I got home, I made food, the radiation oven was just about to beep and then out of nowhere the phone rang. I ran with the plastic plate in my hands, it was hot and contained rice and bits of chicken in some sort of curry souse. No real surprise about the phone call, it could really only be one person (not many people call me, and that’s the way I want it): Tommy. The phone call lasted about 40 minutes or so, and my food was cold. Ran back, in a wonky fashion, and heated it again. Mmmmm. Food.

Now I’m going to relax and read the comic books I borrowed from Boo: the Crow and Arkham Asylum. Perhaps with a big nice cup of tea.

Oh, no headache anymore and no one could be happier than me. Let me rephrase that: a lot of people could be happier than me, but none of them are here so they don’t count. It stopped yesterday evening. I celebrated with a big glass of Pepsi — after all, I had proven my point. If I had my guitar I would have sung a jaunty tune as well, but I don’t so I didn’t.

Early, Too

It’s sick I tell you. I’ve already had a few hours of sleep and here I am — awake at the dawn of mankind at 7:00. Why? There is no reason for it. I should be asleep God damnit, but I’ve tried and I can’t.

Could it be that I didn’t have any dreams tonight? No trapezoidal imagery of duct tape, talking sporks or people run over by huge paint-rollers draped in a grotesquely green bathrobe. This is not how things are supposed to be.

For fuck sake, I haven’t been up at this time an hour since... never. At least that’s what it feels like. What’s going to happen? What do you do at this Godforsaken hour?

White ground

Not only is it colder than a week ago, it has started to snow. Much snow, in fact it is way too much for me. Snow by itself is not the problem. Only when it comes in a stormlike fashion, sweeping in and in a few hours leave a thick layer of white powder on the car. And a good advice: sneakers and snow don’t mesh well. The feet get cold and wet. The wet part is probably the worst. Stay away from that.

I can’t help to wonder, could the Morning News Non-Expert Cold in NYC help even here?

Remember to layer when you dress. Try a short-sleeved T-shirt, a long-sleeved T-shirt, a wool sweater, a hoodie, and then an overcoat, scarf, hat, gloves. Now light the overcoat on fire. [...]

Weather or not

It’s cold. A bit too cold actually, since my fingers get kind off numb. It has been like this for a couple of days now, except that until now the warm air inside had been able to make me blissfully unawares about it. Today was different. My throat was sore, the fingers goes numb at occasions as I said 46 words before this, and oh boy, what a lousy time to shave. No, I didn’t cut myself. It is far simpler than that: a beard tends to keep your face warm. Too bad I had to do something. You see, I was heading to the Harry Knowles territory — and when that happens you shave. Fast and in panic.

I know I said that I like cold better than summer heat, but that’s like saying that I prefer to only be maimed in the leg rather than to be squashed under a 16-ton weight. If I could have a third option, I would choose it in a heartbeat. But with my luck it would probably be a return ticket with the Titanic.

Bob's Story

I was on a train and so was Bob and Bob. It was kind of warm and nice between the stops, but when the train came to a halt the doors went up and lots of cold air filled the box. You see, the whole damn thing was new and as all new transportation devices it must by some cosmic law be flawed in its construction. Anyway, I ate my sandwiches blabbered on a while. Two and half hours or so we reached Gothenburg. It was cold and it didn’t rain. Which was wrong on several levels. It should rain, damnit. That’s what Gothenburg is all about: rain.

Anyway. The tall Bob was there already, and while we took our bags and stashed them away two of the remaining Bobs also arrived. We were now six people, which was as many as we would be. A short ride with the tram and we spent money at the Science Fiction Bookshop. Some spent more than others, and I guess I spent the most. As usual. (See full booklist enclosed at the end.)

Food. I think it was a Greek restaurant, but I’m not sure. They had pasta so I was happy. We tried to get tickets to the Lord of the Rings-thingy but that was pretty much like being a fish in a barrel and a tactical nuke was dropped into it. We could have bought one ticket and then sneaked in the rest of us in a bag or something, but we didn’t. Someone wasn’t too keen on the idea. Instead we went to Bob with the nice new apartment and watched some other movies.

The couch I had slept on wasn’t built for it, but it turned out that it was not as bad as I first had thought. 10cm too short, my feet dangled outside. I slept well though which is what counts. To breakfast, we watched some tv. OR rather downloaded tv. Those two who lived in the town elsewhere showed up almost right after we had started the unaired pilot to Buffy.

(Oh, boy. That pilot was... Unbelievable. Many of the characters had the right actors, except for Willow. Don’t touch my Willow. That casting was wrong and evil. Luckily, they felt the same way and got the right person for the show.)

Once again, we decided to fight the cold weather in a futile pursuit of cinema tickets. Once again, it was an utter defeat and a laugh in the face. Only one thing to do, drown our sorrows in a used bookshop. It works every time. Lots of books were found. We went back to the apartment, made food and watched the first season of Buffy as it is suppoed to be watched. Some of the Bobs hadn’t seen it before, others had just seen an episode here and there. Only Bob and I had seen all of it. The secret of the first season is that it works much better if you have people to banter with. The flaws mostly disappear. This took a while as you might have guessed.

The next day consisted with packing and walking around. Of course, there were a lot more happening. Talk mostly, and I can’t remember a single quote. Several “make the bad images stop” and “all this laughing makes my body hurt” attacks occurred. All in all, it was a good weekend.

The Bobs have other names. They have been changed, not for protection, but just because I wanted to.

Booklist

• Duane, Diane: Sword and the Dragon, the
• Pullman, Philip: Count Karlstein
• Carroll, Lewis: Complete and Illustrated Lewis Carroll, the
• De Lint, Charles: Greenmantle
• Stevermer, Caroline: A College of Magics
• Chabon, Michael: Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, the
• Lindholm, Megan: Wizard of the Pigeons
• Hodgson, William Hope: House on the Borderlands and Other Novels, the
• Trudgill, Peter: Sociolinguistics
• Kay, Guy Gavriel: Lions of Al-Rassan, the
• Davidson, Avram: Avram Davidson Treasury, the
• Smith, Michael Marshall: Straw Men, the
• Vinge, Vernor: Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge, the
• Smith, Michael Marshall: What You Make It
• McKillip, Patricia: Winter Rose
• Collins, Nancy A.: Darkest Heart
• Wrede, Patricia C.: Mairelon the Magician
• Klein, Naomi: Fences and Windows

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?

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.

A new definition on 'moving'

Best sight in all year, no doubt. I was driving along, humming on a Barenaked Labies song at a time which no man was ever constructed to adhere. Then I saw it, travelling in the opposite direction. My eyes tried to leave their hollow caves. A car with an Amish Trailer home. A movable cabin made of wood. Sure, they might not have been real Amish, the car that pulled it was a bit of a giveaway, but that is just splitting hairs. I’m convinced that it’s a prototype for a new more comfortable movable home to be used by rich people in the summers.

Face rearrangement

I’m usually not that troubled by my appearance. Today, it’s a different matter. I happened to see myself in the mirror — bad idea — and I’ve started to grow. My face has added weight in the form of puffy cheeks. This could have been a good thing. In order to have a good beard you need something to build upon. I don’t — as you’ll probably know by now, much to my chagrin — have skill to grow a proper beard. So now my cheeks are in the way. Soon I’ll look like a miniature of Oliver Platt, a miniature only in the vertical sense. Oh, cruel fate.

Week

No classes today. That meant that last night I could do what I like doing best: sit up really late, read and listen to Pixies. Apart from a few brief moments I’ve not listened to other music for a week — perhaps even longer. I’ve lost count. It doesn’t matter anymore. Sometime during the week I drifted away from Doolittle to Surfer Rosa. Doolittle is still the best record they ever recorded, but the earlier work has stared to grow on me.

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground Try this trick and spin it, yeah Your head will collapse But there’s nothing in it And you’ll ask yourself

-- Pixies, “Where is my mind?”

The books I’ve read have been varied. Mostly Christopher Priest though — no Boo, the real one and not the cheap comic book copy. Apart from him, there’s been works from Flann O’Brien, Iain Banks, Wilton Barnhardt, and Mary Gentle.

I dreamt that I was Jesus last night. It was quite disturbing, especially the part where I climbed around in a maze consisting of freeways and alleys. The possibility that the literature and the music have stated to affect me has occurred to me, but somehow I doubt it. Fall is here, finally. The snow is gone. This is going to be a great week all in all. I can feel it.

The art of how to stop

Wide shot. The sun is hovering above the road, everything is bleached so much that everything is almost white. In this vast whiteness, there are things. Things that cannot be seen because they’re quite, quite white. The sun also reflects itself in the asphalt for some reason.

In the distance, you could the noise of engine. The camera do a fade over and suddenly appears a hundred metres ahead. A tractor, old, has just made a turn and gone out in the road. As suddenly as this happened, a queue forms. A long line of cars hardly moves at all. A fade back and a new wide shot. A car comes and it does not stand still. The sun still floats in the atmosphere, all things around the hill are still white.

In this whiteness, when the car is inside it, there is a squeal. The squeal, created by tires skidding over the asphalt, continues and then there is a bump. Actually, there is more than a bump. The car can’t slow down enough, but almost. The towing hook from the car ahead is now in the front and there is a quite big dent. A big round dent.

Nicklas will now propagate for the removal of all tractors, and in the long run, even fellow drivers. This will have the positive effect of him being alone on the road. My yesterday was, as you might have guessed, fun. How was yours?

(No living things were harmed in the making of this message.)

TAWFE gathering

The Adam West Fanclub Experience had a meeting last night. We recorded “music.” When I say “music” I mean that one of us played the wrong chords on the guitar and the other one “sang.” The one that “sang” is the one same one that really can’t sing even if his life depended on it. It’s fun but we’re quite useless.

The latest few weeks

The last two weeks, my brain have consisted of nothing but crushed tomatoes. I’ve just sat there all the time, reading a book, sleepwalking through class or watching the same movies over and over again. It felt as if my social skills were corroding. In retrospect, it seems as if I only could speak — at great length — about the movies I had seen and/or re-watched. Well, there was that time in the phone thought, when the comic sidekick and I tried to see how low we could take our political humour. (Answer: very low indeed.)

So, right now I’m trying to get out of this disruptive pattern. I’m mainly doing so by taking a lot of photos, search for loot in bookshops (both new and used) while listening to Tegan & Sara and Aimee Mann’s new album.

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.

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.

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.

Dry thunder

Thunder, no rain. Something is wrong here. Yes, you guessed it. This is another futile post where I, perhaps wrongly, assume everything would be for the better if it rained just so little.

If the air weren’t this damp I wouldn’t bother to complain. In truth, I would have little nothing to complain about. Further more I would have nothing much to write about except how I sit up late at night and watch Shogun — mainly because there is little else to do.

What do you know? The rain arrived. It’s like gunfire. Loud bangs, flashes, smoke that raises from the ground and a smattering sound when a water-bullet hits an object like a window or a roof. Surprisingly enough, there are no bad transmission dots in Shogun. However, I don’t know for how long the power will stay. The light has blinked, menacingly, twice now.

Anyway, I’m happy. Never mind that Orson Welles speaker voice just disappeared from the tv among green, red and blue static. It’s raining, the air feels a lot cooler already and besides that, I managed to snap a few neat looking photos through the window. There is no way I’m going out now, in the middle of the night. I don’t know how well my camera reacts when soaked in water.

Sleeping disorder

Once again I have problem with insomnia. A special kind of insomnia, I only have trouble sleeping at night. I can sleep when the sun shines, all I need to do is to rest my head somewhere that’s preferably comfortable and — snap! — I’m asleep. But when I want to sleep, I can’t. It’s impossible.

As soon as it’s dusk something happens with me. If I had been a bit sleepy, that feeling will be gone. I’ll be wide-awake in a few seconds and it is as if the drowsiness hadn’t been there in the first place. If I’m awake to start with, I’ll go into hyper-mode — just as I do after five cups of coffee.

Do my glands suffer from a weird case of photosynthesis? So that when they’re hit by nocturnal light they produces natural caffeine?

Met some people #3

Coffee. It’s probably one of the few times I meet people this summer - not counting the two usual suspects. I must hasten to add that they both were present today. We sat down, got our first cup and then watched the others drop in. Some of us talked more, other talked less. I was, as per usual, one of those who talked less - despite knowing all the people somewhat well. (I’m one of those who seem more verbose in text than in person.)

Since I sat closest to the sun I thought it could have been a bit more of the gentle breeze than it was, but still, it was nice. Ola proved to be quite an exceptional human encyclopedia about trivial pop culture facts. I mean, the sad person actually knew the titles of the Police Academy-movies and when dubious artists had their birthday. He also talked quite a lot, so maybe we’re all on the same level if you consider the total number of words uttered by each and one of us.

On the way home I borrowed Almost Famous Bootleg Cut and Donnie Darko from Boo. Tommy dropped by bit later and we watched Beast Cops, which is from Hong Kong and everything you might extrapolate from the title is wrong. Really, I mean that.

Aye, give me a pint of coffee

Today it was meant that I should take it easy and relax. Just sit down, read the newsgroup and then finish of a book or two. This was what I wanted to do. What I did is somewhat related but not exactly in this order.

First of I had to go into town in order to buy a new notepad. I had no other option, as the one I had was now full of gibberish. I also needed a bigger pad to draw things on, but I found none that suited my refined taste in paper. Instead I found this pen, and I like pens a lot so I had to buy it. I paid and went out on a small walkabout in the city, I didn’t feel like going home just yet. There, at the horizon, something came walking towards me. It noticed me as well, waved its mighty paw, sauntered forwards at a steady pace and it was Boo.

He and this other person called Jennie (one of Boo’s amateur theatre friends, I think I got the spelling right) were about to have a coffee and since I had no pressing business I tagged along. Coffee is always nice. Well, most of the time coffee is nice. Bad coffee is not nice. Bad coffee vibrates in the air and sends out these subliminal warnings that only true coffee-drinkers can understand. This coffee was okay. The whole thing was fun, lasted about two to three hours and Boo wants to borrow pretty much everything I own. “Humpf” and such noises, but in that case I want to borrow his Donny Darko-dvd.

I’ve had coffee, so this day has been labelled as a success. No, I have to quit this, Time Team coming up right this instant on The Discovery Channel.

On the back of a rental dvd the extras listed included a trailer for Godzilla. Class.

Nothing to watch and lots of spare time

Usually they, and by they I mean all the tv networks together, show fotball (the kind that the goons on the other side of the pond calls soccer, both are just as crappy if you ask me) on one, maybe two channels and that is it. Usually. This year they’ve gone crazy and when they do that they also drive someone crazy. Someone here being me. So far they’ve left the reruns of West Wing alone — thank God and Jesus and that guy who was in that movie I saw last year.

When they don’t show the fotball live, they show reruns. They show best of the game-synopsis. They show scoreboards. And I, I hate it. But in a way it’s a relief. It means that there are less things to be preoccupied by, less crap I mean. The frequent reader might recall that I have this compulsorary disorder that forces me to watch crappy movies whenever possible. (It made me watch She’s All That. It’s horrible really, but one learns to live with it.)

So I’m going to use this opportunity, because when it is gone, it’s gone and I’ll have to return to my normal self. And I’m going to use all this time, all these hours, to read things I really should have read by now. Faulkner, Waugh, Burroughs, Jeter, Ballard, Coupland, Self, Ford.

Batteries dead

It was hot in the bus. The air could have been replaced with molten lava and I wouldn’t have noticed any change. I tried to do the best of the situation so I cranked up Garbage on the Discman and tried to sleep. This was a folly idea, as always. I wanted some peace and quiet, the world wanted otherwise.

Two seats behind me they sit. A guy and a girl. They don’t know each other — that much is evident — but they still go on and have a booming discussion. I raise the volume and drift into euphoric bliss. Then the batteries died. Twenty minutes left on the trip and I had to sit and listen. The guy didn’t spoke much but the girl did.

Her will to have a conversation was connected to a piston engine on overdrive. She just kept on going without any notion to ever stop. Each silent pause was a treat to this planet and had to be fought ferociously. Silence kills. So she kept on babbling about whatever she could think of.

-- And then we had to stand outside or else her father would have entered the pub in his pyjamas and dragged us out.
-- Really?
--Yeah, he would.

I stared to hum in order to keep my mind occupied. I didn’t want to know. I still don’t. I’ll have nightmares about old men driving around in cars in the middle of the night, dressed in ugly pyjamas and that has nothing else to do but to drag people into their cars. And all this because I didn’t have any spare batteries.

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?)

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...

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.

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.

More lack of updates

I’ll be taking a leave of absense over the weekend, changing to Stockholmian asphalt under my shoes. So, starting tomorrow there won’t be another update until Sunday. And then I promise you that I’ll have a whole bunch of updates instead. M’key?

Fresh air and a camera

Decision time. The weather is beginning to look rather good, my feet itch and I feel like talking a hike with my camera. Of course, I can’t do that right now, but soon I hope, I’ll feel the hot pavement under me feet and document life, objects and perhaps even some humans.

Why don’t I do it right now, the clever ones will ask. Oh, you are indeed clever, but not as much as you like to think. The thing is, around here all that there is to capture is nature. The wrong kind of nature. Green trees, grass and other things that quite frankly don’t interest me at all. I like the city more than this, even though I’m fairly sure that Tommy will call me a liar. (He has this idea that everyone like to live outside the cities, just so that they’ll live in a real house. The house part might be right, but the other? No. I don’t think so.)

Closed due to holidays

Have I ever told you that I hate holidays? Well, I do. They’re an enormous traffic jam, where noting really happens except that the car in front of you suddenly stops, the driver puts it in park and then leave it there. Where is Godzilla when he’s needed?

There is no point in going somewhere either, as the café’s are not open at all and besides that, no one’s home anyway. Holidays make being sick seem like a good idea, at least then you can lay in bed and sleep through the whole thing unaware of what time it is.

That crappy feeling

I feel like shit. Imagine an overse steamer has been dragged up upon your back and then They left it there. The salt water drips down onto the deep scratch marks and make it even worse. This is how I feel, although 20 hours of sleep seem to have helped somewhat.

Sleep takes its due

Damn. Overslept. Oh well, the important class isn’t until the afternoon so it’s not the end of the world.

I feel like shit.

Language studies

David Crystal might not look like it, but this man managed to make a lecture about langauge studies funny. The main focus was language of the Internet and even though I think he’s wrong in some cases, he opened me up a bit and made me more tolerant. It’s ‘masing. One of the best moments I ever had within the four walls of a lecture hall.

He came in, standing rather short and sat down when one of the Swedish professors itroduced him in an overly long speech. When the professor directed som questions to him, Crystal only nodded or gave the thumbs up. That is, until it was his turn to speak properly.

“I want to diagree with [the Swedish professor] about the cell phones. I want you to turn them on! It’s data, input. That way, when someone calls they’ll be a part of this lecture even though they’re not here. Either through text messaging or by voice. But I want a transcript from the call afterwards.”

Beside all this, it rains outside

I had planned to go away today, leave for the Big City and not be back until later this afternoon/evening. But that’s not going to happen. The books for the course where sent by regular mail, something they didn’t do before. (Twitch!) This breaks everything I had considered doing this week apart. So I’ll guess I’ll have to deal with that tomorrow (as it was not only my books in the package and those men want their books).

Instead I’ll lay at home, read William Tenn‘s collected short stories volume one, and are about to watch Yume which starts at 14:00. I guess I could be worse off.

How hard can it be?

This is one of mine “people are stupid and should be shot in the head”-posts. If reading about theses things is not your particular forté, then ignore it and read something else.

Yesterday, I stood there all goofylooking and waited to get inside the bus. The thing is that the door was blocked by two girls — approximately fifteen years old — who just had to be the first to enter. Why they were so keen on that, I can’t quite figure out, because they had to bicker about how to pay as their card turned out to be ineligible in this zone, which they of course was very well aware off. They stood there and held up the line for five minutes, just to make things worse it had begun to rain as well.

I mean how hard can it be to give the conductor some money and say “I want a fare to where zone #? begins, because from there I can use my card.” It shouldn’t need to take a few minutes just to search for said money in the first place. And if you do — and if you do — need to take that kind of time to do something as elementary as that, then have the money already at hand when it’s your turn to pay or align your sorry ass to the back of the queue were the rest of us won’t have to experience your stupidity.

But people, as they are idiots, don’t do this. They have to do stupid things just because they are too stupid to figure out do it right. Getting on a bus and pay shouldn’t need an IQ the size of Stephen Hawking. Even a total fuckwit should be able to do it because it is really simple, but they can’t. People are stupid and should be shot. In the head. Twice.

The snowstorm moves up north

The soft breeze blew the snowdust into my face. Then, without much warning, came the stronger wind and both bit my face as well as tossing sharp snow particles on my cheeks. It hurt. A lot. Right there and then, I thought about turning back, to go inside the building once again. I looked at my watch, and there was little time left. I had to go out there. Into the cold — I hate cold almost as much as warmth.

I wrapped my neck in the scarf — the small one, not the three metre long furrball that resided on the shelf at home — and with a heavy sigh I opened the door once again. The wind bit my face but I pretended that it didn’t bother me. At that time, it wasn’t that much of a problem. My back was against the wind so I was sort-of into hiding. This was great up until one moment when I had to turn.

I felt something cold in my face. That was snow. I also felt something cold going into my left pocket, where I kept my hand tucked. That was also snow. The wind blew the snow right into my face and I had to divert my head downwards just to be able to walk forwards. Navigation was a bit tricky as I could only see two metre in front of me.

I didn’t offer this much thought though. I had other problems. My ears where turning read and if they had been my hands they would have shaken until they shattered. Why did I have to lose my hat now when the horrible weather had returned?

Brain mushy

There is a jellyfish swimming around in there, the head, poking brain cells back and forth at a tremendous slow pace. The fish is about this big — typing with one hand to show you this — and as such it also blocks much of the traffic. This is just as horrible as it sounds. I’m too tired to sacrifice what is left of my wits in order to read fiction and most non-fiction is also way outside my current limits.

However, there are some things I could read despite my state of mental decay. One of them is Blue Note Records by Richard Cook. (Of course it is a sort of biography about the record company, what did you expect? World records held by Richard Simmons?) It’s interesting, as the author seems to be pretty well aware of the record company’s strength and weaknesses.

(I don’t recommend it though, even if I like it. Unwanted recommendations tend to be as inviting as the “Hot! Hot! Hot!”-signs in Las Vegas)

Disturbed by the old folks

Despite the never-ending chatter of seniors in the same room, we sat down and actually accomplished something. Accomplish in the terms of having had an idea and then we’ll do something with that idea later. We in this case was a slightly taller and skinnier chap called Tommy and I. We didn’t bother to ask the seniors about their names. We just wished they could be a bit quieter in their strive for running out of breath by talking past each other.

So, we just agreed that it was interesting and that we should do it. After all, every other way in the project — ingeniously dubbed The Big M for those who isn’t in on it, we of course have another name just to add some confusion — has reached a dead end.

The new idea of the Big M, which is a magazine on real paper and as far away from Internet as possible, was to write all the articles on a 24-hour marathon. Insane? Not quite, but we’re used to that by now. We have our laptops, so all we need is to stock up on high-quality coffee and some even more high-quality whisky and then we’re all set.

After all, one only lives twice and then it’s feeding-time for the little worms.

Three men in a boat (sort-of)

Two and a half minutes.

Ola was sitting straight across from me, fretting and constantly keeping his gaze on the time on his watch. When you wait, five minutes is never really five minutes. They’re more like fifteen or in some rare cases even more. But five? Never. Not unless you’re only supposed to wait for one minute, then one can be like five. Time is not an exact science, no matter what the current theory is. Time have a mind its own, working against everyone at the same time.

Beside me Niklas was trying to study, so was I but he was better on that than I was. It was he who inflicted the “don’t quote Monty Python for five minutes”-penalty on Ola after a quoting killing spree moments earlier. Apart from writing “Dinsdale” on the display of his cell phone, he made it.

Three minutes.

I wrote “Typically, the beginning of a word is joined with the end of another. Ex: smoke + fog = smog” with my new pen. Damn nice pen too, transparent in places and with rubber strategically planted where one holds the fingers.

Four minutes, ten seconds

We who were there to study discussed what kind of word formation processes lay behind the word “car-phone,” or we tried to despite interruptions from the man with his eyes directed downwards to his watch.

“Could you two be quiet? Some of us are trying to get things done.” He looked at us and then continued to study the effects of time. He looked as if he was soon going into withdrawal.

Five minutes

“Wait for it!” The watch beeped.

“Perhaps you should try it with ten minutes now?” I laughed at the remark. Ola shook his head violently.

“I shouldn’t think so.”

In retrospect, it was Three Men in a Boat, except that we didn’t have a dog and we weren’t in a boat at all. I (Harris in the book) didn’t get a lot of people lost in a maze and turned them into a lynch mob with the stakes pointing at me, and Ola (George in the book) didn’t try to open a tin of pineapples with a pair of scissors and almost put his eye out while doing so. So, except both the small and the big details it was spot on.

Remember this

I’ve forgotten to bring along my camera for quite some time now. That it has constantly rained since God knows when doesn’t help either — there have not been much to photo as everything has been gray and dark. I must change this, now and not a moment later. Not sure what I can do about the weather but at least I can change my ways with the camera bit.

Trust no one

Sometimes when dealing with humans something has got to give. This is because humans do not understand concepts such as time unless it is themselves that’s affected negatively. This happened to Boo and me today, while we emerged from the other Niklas building.

A Peter Jackson-clone with about a beer or two (perhaps even three) approached and wanted a lift towards Telleborg centrum. I started out to explain that we didn’t have any time. Of course, he had as I’ve clarified above no notion of “little time.” I kind of sagged, and realised something that Tommy did last time the Mafioso’s of the Tenant Union (or whatever they’re called in English). It is better to agree and be rid of them than to lose even more time trying to get them to understand.

So, I drove him there and dumped the guy. Boo later said that I was to trusting, but truth to be told I trust a very few and select cadre of people. The rest is calculated risks, thing to be considered and added up together with circumstances. Boo probably understands people better than I do, but insane people running around with a machete would chose a lonely victim instead of two blokes built of a slightly larger frame. No matter what Boo was expecting.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Genetics, schmetics

I have nothing in common with most of my relatives except genetics. They don’t have the same interests, even marginally, and their taste in music — let’s not even go into that right now. I might be a bit autistic, because I just realised that I don’t really know how to relate and behave with them at all. I can, mostly, just sit back and listen.

These are the people I’ve meet almost every week for my first sixteen years of existence. Perhaps it started then, when I saw them less often, but I don’t think so. It happened later, I don’t know when and I don’t think you can pinpoint change to a timeframe like that. It happens in small bits, constantly and unmerciful things attach and detach to the core of personality — or if one like to put it that way: soul.

When I threw away the values of my family, those that had persisted in generations, the walls were built and some kind of barbed wire began to grow in the grass. My choices were, and are still a couple of years later, questioned because I simply don’t fall into their party line. I hope I never will, life would become so much more boring if I do.

It is white outside...

...and I feel like crap.

Snow. I snow everywhere as I look out through the windows. Right now, I hate it and wish it could just go away. The main problem isn’t the snow, not really. It is the fact that is must be so damn cold. And soon the rain will come and then one sits here, surrounded by something that looks as if it were pulp straight from a paper mill. You get wet as the boots wont protect the feet any longer and then the cold comes, wipes the colours away while at the same time everything smells damp.

If I hear just one person say thing like “oh, but it’s so nice with snow on Christmas day” I’m going to snap. In other places in the world people have lived without snow their entire lives, and they get on fine. Christmas has nothing to do with snow, it is all about commerce, green trees that rot inside the living room, food en masse and relatives you don’t want to meet.

Why I Don’t "Do" Christmas

Soon, in a few days, it’s Christmas yet again. Trees are dressed up, candles burn and all the relatives gather around a table to have a jolly good time. An entire evening is ruined. Everyone laughs at stupid jokes that never were fun the first time, ten years ago. Everyone talks except me, because I’ve gone away and sits in another room.

I don’t find it fun anymore. There is nothing fun in sitting in a room filled with people whom you don’t have anything in common with, relative ties withstanding. There is no magic in trading worthless gifts and pretending to be happy about it. I feel contempt about it all, from the megalomania that begins in November up until the New Year.

The notion of imposed happiness that the very air conveys in the dining room is against everything I believe in. “Be happy, it’s Christmas!” with plastic smiles and an underlying treat. Mobsters do not act this way; nor does hired assassins, sociologists and socially handicapped über-geeks.

Once the obvious “why”-question is voiced, someone always replies with the standard answer: “It only happens once a year, so behave and be nice.” The twenty-ninth of February only happens once each forth year and no one really bothers about that. There won’t be another date where every digit is uneven for over a thousand year, but no one really cared about Nov 19th 1999. No gifts, no smiles and happy faces.

Nevertheless, I’ll probably end up there anyway, just for an hour or so to scavenge the food. I wonder how I will offend them this year.

It's all Steve's fault

Yesterday I heard something that I never thought I would hear, words that cut through the air like a steamboat and left piles of debris behind. “I think they should have stopped making more Police Academy-movies when Steven Guttenberg left. I mean, how can they replace an actor like that?” and he dared to say it without laughing, in such a deadpan-mode that it should be an example to the encyclopaedia-entry.

But we laughed, hard and long. There was not much else we could do really. This was also when we realised that we would not get much more studying done. I do not feel like having an exam tomorrow. Not at all.

Thrilled and annoyed

In true Brenne Bachmann-fashion (he’s a teacher in English here in Växjö), I have good and bad news, and I’m not happy about this. The good is splendid but the bad is perhaps not totally horrible but still very annoying.

The bad is that for each day, I grow more and more weary about some of the people in my class. I’ve tried to ignore them but after today, it is hard. I hate the whole “I’m not in that predicament so I don’t give a damn”-attitude while at the same time wining about “how can I study when I don’t know what’s on the tests”. I’ve heard this twice now and, well, and I thought that the reason of higher education was to actually learn something, not just be able to memorise dates of when all the Gregorian kings snuffed. But each to his own, I guess. The worst is that this person is in every class I go to.

The good news is that yesterday a box arrived with books, and thus my Amazon-virginity was broken. It arrived really fast too. But anyway, the ones that came with this batch was Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials-trilogy, one of the two new Pratchetts and, as the crown above all, Peter Ackroyds London — The Biography. And the last one was everything I had dreamt about, except that it was a trade paperback instead of the more expensive hardcover.

It is full with maps, illustrations, paintings and photos as well as lots and lots of texts padded to the very last page. Sure, not everything might be blissfully accurate, but that I can live with just for the fact that he sort of jumps in the timeline skilfully and without getting you lost. It even seems preferable to the alternative.

Confession

Time to confess my true colours. I’m going to steal the voice of Christopher Lee and use it for my own sinister purposes. Then we’ll see who’s sorry.

People and how to deal with them

I am not the most social person I know off, quite the opposite. Some of my friends can waltz into a room and start talking to complete strangers without second thought, well, except for one. He slides in; talks to some people and then declare that they’re idiots. I simply declare them idiots from start, and then refuses to meet them. (Almost had a Freudian slip there and wrote “meat”.)

Among unknown people, I feel uncomfortable, out of place. I have in most cases nothing in common with them, and they have no patience for my idiosyncrasies. Last year, for instance, I studied media and communication. The subject was, at least towards the end of the second semester, fun, but the people in class where strangers. I probably knew more about them, than they about me, but that is because there where not much for me to connect to. They where pale ghosts. It is better this year, but the large population of my English-class are ghosts too. It might sound weird but, in an eerie way, it’s comforting.

Today, after watching the regular double-bill of Doctor Who on BBC Prime (great timing I might add, there is no room for another episode on the tape and the Doctor regenerated), I realised that I felt more antisocial than usual. I want to sit in solitude and either watch Sleepy Hollow or read Mervyn Peake without interruptions from silly humans.

Yes, Mervyn Peake, author of Mister Pye, the Titus Groan-books (often miscalled the Gormenghast Trilogy) — one of the true literary geniuses ever born and snatched away from his existence prematurely.

Oh, and you should read the interview with Noah Grey and I wish it could have been colder in the air today.

Who, where and perhaps I got the right answers too

Right now, one hour after the zero hour, the exam felt frightenly easy. It’s almost — almost — so that I feel suspicious of my success. Nevertheless, today, right now in this very moment, I feel free. Free to worry about other things instead. It is in other words back to normal again, but first: fooood since I’m starving here.

This is the thing

I have an exam next week, which require time. Time to study that is. So if I for some reason seems a bit too quiet during the week, you know why. I’ll try to write some things now and then though.

Ramblings from an almost-jaywalker

I was before today blissfully unaware of a few things. That people who drive cars must drive fast, they get annoyed if they actually have to stop because of some schmuck — i.e. me — wants to use the zebra crossing. I just don’t get this “I’m the fastest man in the world!”-mentality that is oh so important with vehicles.

The last couple of days, I’ve counted them and they are precisely two, I’ve hummed, sung and made noises that for people who don’t like my beautiful singing voice would interpret as obscene. The song? Oh. I’m Only Happy When It Rains by the almost-excellent Garbage.

«tangent» Side fact which is totally irrelevant and comes from rec.arts.sf.fandom: Shirley Manson has apparently been seen drinking with really excellent authors such as Andrew Greig, Ken McLeod and Iain “With and Without M.” Banks. Neat. «/tangent»

What’s so important about that Garbage-song? Right, I’m on to that. Has truer word than “I’m only happy when it rains / you wanna hear about my new obsession / I’m riding high upon a deep depression / I’m only happy when it rains” ever been sung? I don’t think so.

I’ve also learnt that buying shoes is a bore, such a bore that I can’t even make up a funny anecdote about it. Other things in the “I can’t believe that I-can’t-believe-it’s-not cheese dip isn’t cheese dip”-category are that no one knows what Mornington Crescent is. They can probably not even spell it. But this raises far too many questions for my liking, although it’s more of the “what kind of world is this?” and “if ignorance really was bliss, you’d be very happy now, right?” kind.

Now, what the hell is a good phenomenon to talk about?

“Pick a phenomenon from England or another English-speaking country,” he said. “You’ll have five minutes to present it for the rest of us the next time we meet.”

God damn. What to do? This is until next Thursday, which means I still have some time. But what should I present? Should I do as Niklas and do Monty Python? Somehow I suspect that some other people already have chosen that.

But what else do I have? The Goon Show? Possible, but I’ve heard them far too little to be able to do a good presentation. Rik Mayal-tv shows? Wait a minute. No, I got it now. The only thing that makes it possible to stand up and speak gibberish in five minutes, and every word will be valid. Mornington Crescent. It’s obvious, why didn’t I think of this before? Mornington Crescent! Brilliant.

If this happens because you sleep, then I don't want too anymore

It was in the dawn of mankind, about 7:35 a.m., a time which was way to early for me to be fully awake. I was only half asleep and riding shotgun towards the big U, this may account for something. I don’t know. If I only had known that I would be a different person later today day, when I realised what had happened this morning.

Was it because I never fully sleep long enough? That during the years I had begun to sleep less and less? I am Jacks identical twin, to steal an expression, but I don’t think its true. The reason is probably not that farfetched after all.

The thing was this that on the radio they played a song by the Corrs, and I actually didn’t think it was bad — I even enjoyed it. Is this a result of me being more and more interested in women playing folkrock or just folk music in general? I think so. It must be that damn fiddle...

The night the rain stopped

Somewhere out there sits a man, some say woman but I’ll get to this later on, who’s not quite clear on the concept. That is, if there is a God, or Gods. I don’t discriminate — I’m just an apathist. Anyway, this person with a huge sombrero on its head comes up with a great idea.

“I know. I want it to rain. A lot,” it says in a perfect Graham Chapman-as-Brian voice — if there is a God it must be Graham Chapman, nothing else makes sense when you think about it. But so far, I’m all for the idea, I like rain, especially when I’m inside and hear the raindrops use the roof as a drum machine. It calms me down.

Now, imagine rain for a few hours, not too much and not too little. I look at the clock, about 1 a.m. I flip off the computer — I wish it could have one of those switches with a crome knob that goes ‘ti-click’ when you pull it down. Still rain, great. I read a bit while in bed, followed by watching Spaceballs on tv and life was good.

Two hours later, 3 a.m. because I like to stay up late, I kill the lights. And then the rain stops. No more fucking rain! Is this the way it should be? No, I don’t think so. All I ask for is a bit more water to fall down, a tiny little bit more so that I could go to sleep to the sound of rain. But no-o-o, that would be too hard. Besides, some water must be saved for future use as that white, icky, cold stuff we call snow. It will come soon, and I hate it.

The essance of my point of view

I do not like the idea of scapegoats, because some parts of me still believe in justice. Finding and blaming scapegoats is never a part of that, no matter what horrible acts they have done in the past.

The irrational fears take control and we’ll end up further away from the real solution than ever before, as those blamed have absolutely nothing to do with it at all. Racism and bigotry spreads like a decease over seas and over land in an alarming rate, the world is turning into a worse place by every minute. People turn into zealots, vowing to destroy other people because of their religion. Why does it feel as is I suddenly live in the 9th century in the middle of the crusades? As Bruce Sterling once said: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does kind of rhyme.” I wish he had been wrong.

See: threats and abuse towards muslims and “potential” muslims.

See: Jerry Falwell.

I do not believe in “using this as an excuse to clean up” as some people does. That would lead to even more devastation. If that road is even touched, will the cities destroyed shortly thereafter be excused in the same manner as Hiroshima?

See: Harry S. Truman.

See: Nagasaki.

As long as one innocent person dies, the price is too damn high and vengeance is simply not worth that.

To whom it may not concern

For some reason, “the three lists”-page, accessable from the lefthand menu, has grown. It is now inofficially the eight lists, but since I’m very lazy, the link will say “three” a while. I really ought to keep these meta-additions to myself, but what the hell. Just this once...

Oh, yes. While I’m at it. Anchor Steam Beer has a nice bottle. The label is even better and don’t get me started on the taste. If I knew any french I would have said lots of things that sound neat, but in translation only comes out as this is pure gold.

Context is everything, especially today

Today I realized something. That good teachers are important, they should know something about their subject and what they are doing. Some of those enrolled in my English class are the future hope, those who will fill the gap that the schools today are suffering from (i.e. too few real teachers). And they have made me realize that where they will work, that will be no place for children. If this is as good as it gets, then we’re in a shitload of trouble later on. There is especially one teacher student who seem to have a hard time gripping the extremely hard idea of context.

You cannot translate something by using the first word in the dictionary. Further more, translation requires that you understand the content and what the text is all about. Is this really that hard to understand?

It was the cheese-shop skit all over again. It was, for at least two of us, a brief episode of hilariousness in the midst of the most boring day in the week.

Similes, metaphors, monsters.

Why does everyone claim that the collapse of the WTC was as something out of the movie Independence Day? Everywhere, the newspapers here is full of these individual articles of personal dread and experience during yesterday and 7 out of 10 mentions ID4. If one more person mentions that movie in relation with this, I’m going to be sick.

I think Godzilla would be a better simile. A monster that destroys building by building, wreaking havoc and chaos in its trail — instead of some silly alien squids that burns cities into ash with an x-ray.

Devastation

To echo the words of some people in rec.arts.sf.fandom: I can’t get that R.E.M.-song out of my head.

Another one rides the bus

Originally I thought about writing about my view regarding design in general, but something got in the way. That something is a bus. Nothing serious, I’m just one of those persons who in order to get to the small U must take the bus. On the early mornings, there is little that can go wrong. It’s quiet and I can sleep. On the way home, that’s an entirely other matter.

Today I feel intellectually drained from listening to I don’t know, four? persons of dubious genetic mix-up. They sat there, behind me and I could not shut out their words. “Did you see Judge Dredd yesterday? Yeah, that was awesome!” and they continued talk about the movie on a level that makes Pauly Shore believable as a card-carrying member of mensa.

-- When he walked into the room and said, “I am the Law”, oh man, that was cool.
-- And the robot.
-- What robot?
-- The big robot. He who just you know...
-- No, not that one, I mean the other one. The one... the... cannibal?
-- Oh, yeah. That was awesome. I think he should have joined Judge Dread and stayed for the rest of the movie.
-- Yeah, that would have been really cool.
-- You know what else is cool? The specialist, where Stallone blows up some shit.

But Judge Dredd? A good movie? What the fuck just happened to reality? I’m a sucker for all bad flicks, so I, per definition, can withstand awful magnitudes of badness but even I must draw the line somewhere. And that’s where I draw it, just in front of Judge Dredd and You Got Mail (Did that one suck or what? For a good romantic comedy, rent Fight Club instead).

But Judge Dredd? I need to take a shower and a brain enema. A big fucking brain enema that will knock me out for at least a month.

And so the English classes have begun...

We’re supposed to write a presentation to next week’s oral presentation in my English class. So, without much ado, I sat up really late last night and wrote the following little piece. Somehow, I think it says more about who I am than the usual “I was born in a large log cabin, two blocks down from the local Coffee Hut where the employees used to have red hats that reassembled a cup upside-down. That was years ago and the workforce have changed more times than Ned Flanders in The Simpsons have said ‘okay-didely-do’, they still have the same hats though.”(And for the record: none of this is true. The true parts or below.)

My name is Nicklas and I’m a biblioholic. I feel the most alive when I’m surrounded by dusty tomes, thick dictionaries, novels about imaginary 19th century poets and stencilled fanzines from the fifties. Among comic books, pseudo-religious fiction and short story collections by Dorothy Parker.

I have other interests though. Such as watching bad science fiction movies in the middle of the night, collect vintage radio shows from Canada and writing short stories that never seem to get finished. I like to listen to music, be it the harmonic noise contrasted by the angelic prozacian voice of Toni Halliday or the violin driven contemporary folk rock from Minneapolis. Jazz, industrial pop, punk rock or singer/songwriter, is fine as long as it’s not quiet.
Once, right now it seems like a long time ago, I watched a lot of tv. Sometimes I would stay home from school just because I wanted to see what I was missing while I was forced to sit in a room with petty classmates and write stupid numbers in an equally stupid notebook. Somewhere I got disillusioned, all I really watches today is The West Wing and Futurama — everything else is pretty much rubbish. So until some channel decides to show Brass Eye, I’d rather sit in a chair on the porch reading a book while raindrops commit kamikaze against the roof.

I hate cell phones, elevators, that I’m constantly nervous and the fear that I might die any minute.

I drink Guinness and I think I’m addicted to cola-based beverages.

Empty mailboxes

The feeling of bad karma-boyness sweeps over me. I don’t know why, but I honestly thought that an very important package would arrive today. It didn’t. No cds at all. No books either. I need those cds, I want to hug them, place them on the rotationdisc and call them George — or Bob, just because I can. But I can’t do that right now.

It’s like I really am bad karma-boy, and to top that, I seem to have forgotten my outfit. Thank God, because I simply don’t think I would look good in spandex. Not good at all...

"I decree a brige between Oakland Point and Goat Island!"

A friend of mine — yes, I have those too, as well as friends of others — recently borrowed my Top 10-album. The trade paperback edition of the everybody in this city is a superhero comic book written by Alan “Sinister Duck” Moore. So, this meant that I couldn’t read that one.

There is a few things one can do, one of these is to pick up another comic book. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I seem to have replaced the Excalibur issue where Chris Claremont has Cat’s Laughing as a plot device. It is supposed to be here somewhere, but alas my comic collection is for the moment sorted after the chaos principle. It was in other words time for backup plan 2b. And that is spelled s-a-n-d-m-a-n. In this case it’s Fables and Reflections, which in turn leads me to Emperor Norton I.

As he in August the 13th 1869 — a Friday by the way — abolished both of the big political parties of United states of America, does this mean that only the presidents who are legitimate are those who isn’t a democrat or republican? As far as my knowledge goes, he never reversed his decree.

24 and for some reason, it is still counting

Birthday today, I think I could fill the time with other things instead so I’ll hold back the small and almost extinct feeling of screaming “Yay!” Birthdays are things from an adolescent past, I don’t know why they keep on coming.

But it’s too damn hot. I want to lay on my back doing yak shit — which roughly translates to reading books and fanzines. Not that I have new issues of the regular zines, the apa is even more late than usual. The book of the moment being Zadie Smith‘s White Teeth; bought because of someone online-person thought it was really good. I think this someone was Patrick Nielsen Hayden, but I’m not sure. The book is quite good actually.

Where is all the water?

Immediately when I saw this picture I got this scene playing in my head.

What if the person next to the yellow bath ring stood up and screamed, “The last person in the water is a rather silly sod!” Who would be silly, really? The people who crowd together and push all the water up from the pools or the other five half who can’t get into the water because there is no more room?

"Slack off," they say and then work like mad

I hate the keyboard. The fingers leaps from vowel to vowel all over the place. There must be a better way. I damn the inventor of the qwerty keyboard to hell.

Now it seems impossible to even relax in the usual unplanned way that mankind have done in the their Free Time since the Early Days of the Species. No, nowadays even that has to be done as a campaign with a stylish and way to expencive clothesline together with specific dates and arrange so that everything else fits the purpose. This organisation sickness of mega-lo-maniac proportions have to end. Soon people won’t know how to relax properly at all, and that day we’ll all mourn the treasure that slipped out of our hands.

Plans for the Big U

I have been busy. Reading a lot, and I have probably run out of money. Bugger. I need to do something against that, or American Gods will not ship when I want it to. Money is the root of all things evil, otherwise the Paul Di Filippo-book — which the bookshop was about to invoice — would be here already. Anything that stands between me and my books is, by default, my enemy.

It has been unbelievable hot the last week, not much has been done at all except reading Hunter S. Thompson and watching Almost Famous. Life could be worse. It could be better too. Besides from a small amount of money I also need a miracle. You see, I didn’t complete enough courses before the summer, and even with the summerexams, I won’t make enough points for the next communication-course. Looks like I’m doing English followed with literary science. Probably some Japanese too just for fun.

Contentwise?

What the hell am I trying to say? I don’t know, but whatever it is I hope it’s good.

Criticism indulgence

As we’ve begun the semiotic part in class today I felt a sudden urge to run, not walk, to the library and borrow a whole bunch of books about literary criticism. This time though, I’m going to read them. Last time other things, evil things, got in the way — I never finished that cultural study about Cyberpunk, much to my dismay.

Tomorrow I will probably also speak in Chasing Amy-quotes. “Intergalactic Civil War?”

Semiotics is, by the way, fun. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Anxiety

Sitting down and reading for the culture studies exam this Saturday. And then, after that I have the literature for the class for the current class as well, Media Culture and Semiotics. It feels as if I have gotten booted to the head.

But then, in the midst of all the sunshine, a ray of, eh, sun? Not only has some of the “real” books I’ve ordered been dispatched, but now. At last. Toni and Dean — may someone pour lots of money over their heads — is done, their new record has been pressed and ready to be ordered. Curve... Cuuuuurrvvveeeee... No, normally I don’t turn into Zombie from Night of the Living Dead-fanboy mode this easy, but damn. Smoke a kipper out of me, I’m done.

Damaged goods

My right hand is being systematically destroyed. Bit by bit, muscle by muscle. It began a few weeks ago when the thumb hurt whenever I picked something up — even a single sheet of paper. That has since then gotten better, but sometimes it comes back without any warning.

Today the index finger began shaking, vibrating is perhaps a better word, it was however quite useless for ten minutes or so. Quite disturbing.

I think my hand is trying to tell me something. I have a few theories about what but only one seems genuine and believable. My hand wants me to play the bas more, to walk over the strings in search of the subsonic groove.

Any other reason? No. Can’t be, it’s impossible I tell you. I’m ignoring you, lalalalala.

Time displacement

This seems to be the “I forgot which day it is”-day. A global phenomenon that spreads with such an ease that Ebola is more like dandruff than a dangerous and contagious disease — leaping from person to person, rapidly and without much consideration to immunity-imposing drugs in the form of wristwatches, tv, or, if one likes to be truly bizarre, a regular clock nailed to the wall.

I chose none. I don’t care which day it is, not anymore. I don’t have to know the day until Monday. Sure, it’s a bit of a Catch-22, but I rely on other people to tell me when this day, this Monday that everybody is talking about, is here.

Time is not that important, not in itself. One always has more time, almost anyway. Sometime it will run out of those tiny grains, or in a worst-case scenario, they will get stuck prematurely and you’ll drop down, dead from a sudden and quite unexpected development of colon cancer.

Today, before lunch, I wasted another 80 minutes doing nothing at all. In a way it was like I was killing myself — not much but just a little bit — although it was self-imposed.