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 So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.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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Why Dave Lally deserve respect

He have a Wicker Man original poster. Christopher Lee saw it and wanted it. Dave said “no, but you can sign it for me.” Mr Lee signed the poster. Lally now have a signed Wicker Man original poster that Christopher Lee couldn’t have.

This is just a small fotnote. Lally also likes Slottskällans beer and for that alone we here at the Lost Pages salute him.

It's just a bunch of guys, no more

This is what the epilog comments about the recent war has driven my to practically scream. In type nonetheless.

Stop this right now. I can’t take it anymore. All this damned talk about good guys and bad guys. It is an imaginary division that we make in order to justify certain actions. There are not bad guys and good guys. The idea that there are persons that’s paragons of virtue is a fairy tale. The actual existences of such persons are rare unless they have the mental age of a three-year old child. After that humanity kicks in and we learn how the world works. I try not to be cynical here, but the world is a shit-hole. It really is. And the proper way to fix the problems is not to divide everything into a black-and-white spectrum and settle for short-term solutions.

Another thing is that while there might be people who are nice, friendly and boy scout material 24-hours a day, seven days a week — I give them exceptions for the Easter, when they’re allowed to wallow around doing immoral acts of drinking hard liquor — none of them can be politicians or high government officials. You know why? They’re the scum of the earth. They suck the blood out of living mammals and settle their differences with duels where they hit each other with crying babies. No matter what they use for excuses, their actions are tainted with the deep dark tar of greed and covered in the ash of crumbling decease. Objectively speaking.

Countries are even worse. Nirvana doesn’t exist and the closest we can get to Shangri-la is when we might get a glimpse of the computerised special effect version on Kung Fu - the sequel. It contains a lot of smoke and sucks even more than the rest of the series.

Thank you. I’ll leave politics alone now, until the next time that is.

Knitted caps

In Japan, they have these statues of the guardian of children and travellers everywhere. And when it’s cold, people give them knitted caps to wear. Humanity at its best if you ask me.

Clone one and I buy it

And while we’re at it, why don’t we clone some Dodos instead of cows and horses and humans? In the meantime, when the scientists look for Dodo DNA, lets just sit here nice and quite and wait for the third instalment of Nowhere Girl even though it is a wait until April (earliest). Which means April is going to be a killer month. Mark my words.

Older might be better

More in the fun toys department. Use a typewriter as a keyboard instead of the plastic claptrap used today. Complete with a how-to guide. The problem with the special keys still remain since there are no real things to connect the function to, but apart from that it works.

(photo from the site mentioned above)

Fun with lamps

Gyrolights are kind of neat, but I doubt that I’d be able to have on standing in a corner without losing my mind. For one thing, it would take up valuble shelfspace as well as driving me nuts with all that spinning and flashing. Initially though, it would look neat. (Found at MCiOS:Hyperlink Game)

The Nixie tube digital clocks however is much more than neat. A big plus is that it wouldn’t be annoying after two minutes. Small and cute with wires and circuits, is it a wonder that I like it so much? One problem is that I can’t build one. Well, I could but I wouldn’t want to be present. Me and homemade electronics don’t go well together — at all. In fact, if I try I’ll probably soon be standing there all goofylooking with a court-order telling me to stay away from lightswitches in my hand. (Found at Charlie Stross)

Fantasy tie-in products

Gormenghast lego. I wish it was my own idea but it isn’t. Some unknown person searched for it and ended up here. But think about it for a minute or two. It is brilliant. It will, I suppose, not be cheap since the castle is quite huge. Lots of small parts and hinges so that one can open it up and get inside. See Swelter in his kitchen. Flay asleep in the hallway. The cats all swarming over the room of the Countess. The now secret rooms where Fuchsia dwells when she wants to escape. All the birds in the Tower of Flints.

My only wish is that they make it out of real lego and not the newer three-pieces-and-it’s-done crap. The perfect gift to people like... well, me I guess. Wicker Man Lego wouldn’t be a bad idea either. A huge yellow wicker man. Huge.

Have you seen a portal?

Had a Donnie Darko experience. The tree-tops against a thunderstorm backdrop and a spot that grew darker and darker like a portal just about to be shaped. It didn’t, obviously. But it was beautiful and I didn’t have my camera — as these things work I notice things much better when the camera isn’t there for some reason. But it was just one of the neatest things I’ve seen.

If it could only grow a tiny bit more

This is me, dressed in my bathrobe. Some people don’t like it, they think it looks hideous. Of course they’ve wrong. The book is Gospel by Wilton Barnhardt, one of the best books ever written. On top of my head is my hair, which I’ve started to dislike a bit. I’ll tell you why.

You see, I’m a firm believer in bed head hair. I don’t like to comb it; I don’t use gel or hairspray. I think they’re pretty useless inventions. My problem is that it’s started to act weird. Weird in the sense of standing straight up at the front. It looks ridiculous, like a leftover from the eighties. I hate it.

How to find things

At many searchers request (I’m not making this up) this is a guide how to find Stuff(tm) that are, through mismanagement or just plain bad luck, lost. We’ve all lost things at one time or another.

1) Declare [the thing, animal, emotion, whatever] lost. You can do this by searching the area around your feet. If it isn’t there it must be gone. But gone where?

2) When I lose things, sooner or later they usually end up on the desk. Try to search your desk for a few minutes. If you’re lucky it’s there, buried under a copy of Terry Carr’s Fandom Harvest, Boo’s Moulin Rouge dvd, twelve records from different genres, a battery charger and lots of print-outs from the latest fanzine. As you can see, everything ends up on the desk. You just have to have patience.

3) If that failed there are a few more things to do, so don’t despair just yet. Have you tried looking under the desk? I thought so. Do that and since you’re already crawling around on the ground, you can go on to search under your bed as well.

4a) Obviously, you’ve had no luck. Take a break. Have a cup of tea. While you wait, you can always search the kitchen as well. Who knows? Maybe you lost it when you where preparing a meal or two.

4b) If it is a living thing that disappeared, then you might have to search your surroundings as well. Go out through the front door and yell a bit. Wait a couple of minutes and yell some more. Who knows? It might hear you and come running into your arms, except if it is a turtle because then you might have to yell and wait a week or two instead. But normally this produces a quick result.

5) The search in the house/apartment came up empty? You clearly have lost something properly and must go out there in the real world. Visit your friends and search their living habitats. They might have borrowed it. Don’t bother asking if they’ve got it first, they might lie or simply forgot that they have it. Just show up and search.

6) Still nothing? You need to buy a new one; it’s as simple as that. There is no point in looking for it anymore. After all, you’ve wasted much time as it is already.

I want rain

This weather is starting to irritate me. I am, invariably, a cold-person. I like it when it’s cold, best is at 15 degrees C, but I can cope with pretty much any degree below that. The key thing is that if it’s too cold, you can always put on more, or better, clothes. This doesn’t work with the weather we have right now. It has gone so far that I even wish for snow.

If I remove any more I’d be butt naked. I’m far to shy for that. My options are few. I could go into hibernation, but then I would miss out when it rains. The rain period between the summer and fall is the best time of the year. I want rain, badly.

Because then I can go out, sit under the roof and read a book or two while I hear the water drops commit kamikaze above. No other sounds are necessary, indeed they’re everything but welcome. Other noises would tear away the peace the rain gives me as well as distract.

• encyclopaedia/kardia: Judas
  

Ant hunter extra ordinare

An ant had gone astray and crawled around on my monitor. Don’t ask me how it got there, but there it was. I picked it up and wondered what to do with it. Should I crush it and prove my strength, or should I simply throw it away? There are many ways to discard ants and it’s not easy to make the right choice. It turned out that I didn’t have to choose.

I dropped it. It fell down and disappeared between the keys of my keyboard. Being who I am, I couldn’t let it be. What if it steals the keys? (Please, do not question my rationale. I know it’s flaky at best.) So, I did what I had to do: clean the keyboard. I started out by shaking it violently. Things fell out. Dust and stuff. And then even more stuff and dust. I opened it up and saw very much of this dust, collected in clouds too big to be shaken out. I don’t know exactly how much dirt a keyboard can contain, but I believe I had even more than that.

Oh, the ant, damned if I know where it went. I probably vacuumed it up because I never saw it again.

• encyclopaedia/kardia: Ant Hunter
  

Quote this

Mission statement: fill in and answer with the quotes only. The quotes may be from any source. Then, when done, leave a link in Natalie’s comments. Or not.

It was much harder than it seemed at first. It is much easier to pull up a quote in random than to conjure one to fit a given topic.

Who are you?
-- You’re a heathen!
-- Well, yes but not an unenlightened one I hope.
- Edward Woodward & Christopher Lee in “The Wicker Man”

What’s your secret?
-- Be careful. Sociopaths are dangerous because they don’t function by the same moral code as the rest of us.
-- Welcome to my world.
- Kane & Grissom, C.S.I.

Who do you want to be?
How dies he dream
How does he think
When he can’t even speak
And he can’t even blink
We are all lost in the
Wilderness we’re as
Blind as can be
He came down to teach us
How to really see
- Tom Waits, “Eyeball Kid”

What do you look like?
“The kid on the other side was the most unimpressive human being Eddi had ever seen.he was small and narrow-shouldered, olive-skinned, with haphazardly cut brown hair and heavy straight brows.”
- Description of Hedge in “War for the Oaks” by Emma Bull

What is love?
Your woodland pulse, your gestures, more than lovely
To me; your mirth, the tears you mix with mine
When great swans die, your limbs that with mine lie,
Your voice in the sunk hours, these are become
- Except from “Tides” by Mervyn Peake

“She refuses to believe that an ancient, super-intelligent race of cone-
shaped beings inhabiting pre-Pleistocene times are responsible for the
breakup. I’ve got to convince her; I’ve got to recover her love.”
- Philip to his psychiatrist in “Resume with monsters” by William Browning Spencer

Are you strong?
“Just because a guy loves comics, doesn’t mean that he can’t defend himself.”
- Brodie Bruce in “Mallrats”, played by Jason Lee

What do you want?
“I have a huge fondness for strange and stupid stuff.”
- Neil Gaiman

What’s your problem?
“You’d be surprised how many problems beer can solve.”
- Philip, “Goats” at goats.com

“They have every other flavor but coffee-flavored coffee.”
- Denis Leary

What are you afraid of?
“She draws him close. From the darkness I hear the beating if mighty wings...”
- Sandman, “The Sound of Her Wings”

Do you have anything to add?
-- Dr O’Hanrahan, who was al-Hakim?
-- I’m not here to correct your many ignorances. Go look it up.
-- What’s this?
-- After you look up al-Hakim, you can look up vegetables. It’s under V.
- Lucy and O’Hanrahan in “Gospel” by Wilton Barnhardt

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One word

I’ve been thinking about this now for a day or two. What word defines me as a person? I don’t have a definite answer, but this is as close that I’ve gotten so far.

Subderisorious adj. mildly ridiculing.

Things I'd like to do but never will #294

The last year or so I’ve had this romantic imagery of hitchhiking through Asia and where it would be impossible to catch a lift, I would walk. I recon, that by doing this I would learn the languages and the nuisances of everyday speech without much difficulty.

I would go up to a farmer who lives far away from civilised villages and say things like: “Howdy! How do you do?” and he would say “Fine thank you, but I’ve got an itch here by my bottom, could you scratch it for me?” and I would say “No, but I got this semi-out-of-order-can’t-reach-the-network cell phone so I could call to a radio station and say hi to your relatives in Hong Kong when it can connect.” And then he would say, “Oh could you, that would be lovely! Here, have my magic lucky potato!” and to that I say “Only if you accept this self-made ice bear-hat that I made from the head of an authentic ice bear last spring.” Then we’ll part with our gifts and I would call the moment I got the phone working and drain the batteries.

I told you it was highly romanticised and with no contact to the real world — conveyed by the cell phone’s lack of connection to the phone-network or so the post-modern deconstructionist would like to claim. I on the other hand think that they, and in times such as this even I, just say a lot of bullshit.

Plastic Moses

Now kids can play drench the wicked with these new Biblical Action Figures. Or they can play fornication of Adam and Eve, with lots and lots of leaves. But don’t let Job into the play; with his skin disease, one does not know where he’s been. (Weapon-pack sold separately)

The fact that they made two versions of Jesus made me curl up in a laughing heap on the floor. One dark and one whiter than your average fridge. They don’t seem so sure about where he was from, he obviously couldn’t be from the Middle East as the rest of the bibleians so he must have come from Africa or Finland. Why not throw in a hispanic, an asian and an alien as well as a genuin arabic version?

Lego should be bigger

If this is in natural size I’m buying one faster than you can say “sqeluuukel”, but somehow I doubt it is. It’s probably just as small as the rest. The bastards. (Found via brand platicbag.org)

A case of overload

A thought dawned upon me this afternoon. Finally my skills in tv-deconstruction will be put to use, that that for a good cause too. I really need those points. The class was fun, as we studied an episode of Fawlty Towers and then some old newscast. The first of those where most fun of course, you can never go wrong with John Cleese.

I sat and read two things yesterday. First was the new Pratchett, because Pratchett is Pratchett and will jump ahead in line — except if there’s a new book by Tim Powers or Neal Stephenson. The Prestige was disturbing on two accounts, first it was impossible to put down which wasn’t too good for my sleep which had to be shortened. And then it was just creepy. Really creepy, not as the end of...

Argh! Can somebody destroy that commercial, please? I hate it with such a passion that it is impossible to describe — if they continue to show it this often I might just as well take a job at the post office. And all because of the Japanese pop.

...end of. Shit. I’ve forgotten what I meant. The book is just creepy then. Then today I just had to read Don’t Panic.