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 So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.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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Write the books already

Néa, now you’ve done it. I’m going to go on about this “autobiography” of your’s until you’ve written it. Because I want to read it, especially after that opening line. Same thing with Sten and his book, Tommy’s fanzine, and come to think of it, my own book Yet In The Works.

That I need to nag myself to write a book is a good indication that my so-called “nagging” isn’t really up to scratch.

The fist

     --They hate me!
My left shoe flies across the room as I kick my feet and tries to go back to my room.
     --No they don’t. Whatever gave you that idea?
I can’t get any further as a towering parental unit blocks my way. Deadlocked into a corner I try to figure out a way to escape.
     --They hate me, I just know it!
I scream despite the fact that I don’t need to. My voice is shrill and squeaky. I can’t stand it but I have little choice.
     --You’ll go to school no matter how hard you cry. So stop it and wipe those tears away.
The parental unit push me out through the doorway and slams it shut behind me. This was not the way I planned it.
     --They hate me. I wish they would die.
I whisper, afraid that someone might hear. I look about and I see no one at the schoolyard. Perhaps I’ll make it today without being beaten to a pulp, the hopeful thoughts withstanding, deep down I doubt it will happen.
     I walk across the road, I fly over the ditch and lands softly in the grass. Five metres and I feel the schoolyard under me, electrifying my feet. The air is thick and there are vibrations in that make me feel as if I should watch my back, that I should turn around. As always I don’t have that option so I cut the corner of the first building to my right. I feel a fist in my stomach. It hits me hard and I fold to the ground.
     --Hit him again! Harder!
The voice doesn’t belong to the fist, I know this because it never does. Never. Someone, a third person, picks me up and hold me up from behind while the fist hits me again. I wish I could take their heads and smash them into the concrete. To make the road turn scarlet. To strike back and bury my own fist in their faces, shatter teeth, crushing the nose, make them pay with fear and strip them from their pride. But I don’t — it wouldn’t be proper. Not just yet. I’ll turn their lives into a living hell.

They Are Everywhere

“We’re being watched,” he said and took a sip of the now cold coffee. “They’re everywhere you know. Recording us this very minute, and then, and then they’ll just transmit it right out in cyberspace.”

“What?!” I ate a lump of stale bread with cucumber on.

“They do that, you know?” He sneezed five times and then looked around, as if the sneezes had disrupted the routine for those who were bugging us.

“You know what? I think you’ve been watching the X-files far too much. Or, perhaps, and this is just a thought, you should stop reading Robert Anton Wilson’s Everything is under control before you go to sleep.” I scratched my head.

“I don’t read it every night...” My friend didn’t sound quite as sure of himself anymore.

“I mean, you honestly believe that there is a giant body of people that belongs to a conspiracy to put everything you say on the Internet? Come on...”

“How do you know? How does anybody know? You don’t, do you?! They guard everyone so that the moment you says something profound and important, the hit squad arrives to drag you away and kick you hard in the balls three times.” He made a pause to drink up his lukewarm coffee. “And then they dress you up in clothes from the seventies and then they begin to work on you.”

“You’re not that important. After monitoring you for this long, they would have given up by now.”

“You think?”

“Yes, you’ve never said a word of importance in your entire life.” I felt kind of sad to drop this bomb on him, but I knew he would get over it. “You just don’t have it in you.”

“You’re absolutely sure about this? It’s not some kind of a joke?” The friend looked kind of distressed, seeking validation for what he just heard.

“No. They’re not after you.” I pointed to an older man with a large white beard who sat two tables away. He had a suit on, a suit that reassembled a rainbow drawn by a colour-blind. “They’re after him. According to the Global Conspiracies Weekly they’re going to pick him up in fifteen minutes.”

“Neat. If we have another cup of coffee we can stay and watch. Coo.” We both left our chairs to fetch more of the black gold.

The scavengers

It was dark. Really dark, and I don’t mean like dark grey or something that a tosser has mixed together with some cyan, magenta and yellow — because that would be brown. I mean dark as in black. This didn’t matter much, as Mr Tim had his flashlight.

“Ow, man. Lookit that.” The pale man who had slugged forwards from behind Mr Tim looked at the ground and wrinkled his nose. “And that smells bad too. Horrendenbly even.” Mr Tim shock his head. Good help was hard to find these days, he longed back to the heyday before Mad Scientist Weekly had folded.

“That, my dear manservant, is flesh for the machine. Energy.” Mr Tim pointed at the dead corpse.

“Uhm, sir? Why’d we come here? I don’ wanna mis my favourite show on the telly — Jack of all Trades — and all we do is to look at a dead... personish being.” The manservant kicked his shoe in the desert sand.

“We’re here to get the rigor mortis,” Mr Tim turned towards his assistant and clenched his fists in impatience, “so take the dead body and put it on the truck.”

“Me? You want me? To pick up this dead Rigor guy? And put it on the truck?” The manservant was repulsed.

“Yes. Yes and yes, unless of course you happen to find another truck out here in the middle of fucking nowhere at this hour. Now. Hurry up, we haven’t got all night.” As Mr Tim went back to the truck he could hear how the manservant had stared to follow him, with the corpse dragging behind.

In a sense this was an improvement. The last servant, Trevor Meeks may he rest in peace, had had the uncanny compulsion to play puppet-theatre with the dead bodies they found. Once was fun, twice was straining the joke and a hundred and fifteen was a bit too much. Still, his flesh had brought power the city for days. The new one would probably waste the energy, or worse, steal what was already collected in the reserve.

What lurks in the library?

“What lurks in the library?” I ask,
Between the tomes and hills of shelves
Crawling an masse and hides unseen,
Amidst the broken spines of long forgotten lore.

“What lurks in the library?” I cry,
Fabled beasts and fallen prey alike
all they try to escape unseen,
in silence overshadowed by the Goeru’s roar.

“What lurks in the library?” I whisper,
Turning corners in hope of escape
crouching down for fear of life,
the Jabberwock lies dead and I wade in gore.

“What lurks in the library?” I shout,
Standing tall upon the shelf
I feel the gaze burning in my neck,
I forsake safety, I run and my fear I ignore.

“What lurks in the library?” I stutter,
The sound of heavy hooves approaches
the Goeru claw buried in my back,
the fear is gone and I fall dead to the floor.

A day and a half

12:30. Woke up. A thought dawned on me as I lay there under the blanket. I need a bathrobe. And, of course, a pair of white bunny slippers just as everyone else does. But a bathrobe. An ugly one with large pockets and I should be able to throw it recklessly open if the need every come up — yeah, right. I’m thinking about getting something to eat.

13:00. I’m eating. Meat and potatoes. That’s the beauty of waking up late, no need for breakfast. It is possible to jump straight at lunch. Still, even if I had waked up early I wouldn’t have had breakfast; I just doesn’t do them anymore. Kind of sad and pathetic really. I’m still eating by the way.

15:22. On drugs. Not the kind you go “whoooa” after, but the one that prevents you from going “atcchhhiiii” when in body contact with plants outside. Sometimes I which they where the other kind but then I shrug, I’m pretty fucked up anyway. At least this way I have some illusion of self-control.

18:00. Met some people. I didn’t like them, not at all.

-- Hi. We’ve never seen you around here before.
-- I don’t like this neighbourhood, so I usually avoid this place.
-- Okay, I take it someone here has a personality disorder and it isn’t any of us.
-- Bite me.
-- Why so hostile? What you name?
-- I’m Raymond. You’re in my face.
-- Ray. Stop being an ass, okay? We’re just...
-- Mondo. I don’t like to be called Ray by strangers. You’re strangers and should call me Mondo.
-- Mondo? What does that mean?
-- Look it up, there is this thing called books and some of them have definitions of other words in them. Dic-tion-ari-es.
-- You have a serious problem. You know that, don’t you?
-- Yes. You.
-- Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your...
-- Shut the fuck up. I came here to shop pasta okay? Not to be harassed by other customers who tries to “save me” from what they consider great peril and eternal torment.
-- You don’t have to be rude.
-- Rude!? I want bloody pasta. That is all I came here for not some overdose of religious propaganda. And by the way. I don’t need to be saved. I sacrifice goats in my apartment and have huge bonfires in my bathroom where my heathen friends and I have orgies in the ashes. And sometimes, I even nail a small marshmallow Jesus to an equally small wooden cross so that I can play Golgotha in my cat’s kitty litter.
-- ...
-- I’m gonna take my pasta, pay for it and then leave. Bye.
-- Do you want a pamphlet?

22:45. Got abducted by a UFO. They, they here being the pesky aliens, dumped me after fifteen minutes and stole my pasta. Damn the bastards. Have to go back and buy more tomorrow, something that I do not look forward to. I alos have to hitchhike home. This is going to take all night. Right now at a Internet Cafe in Utah, boy do they have comfortable chairs here or what? Need coffee though.

It is all about words

Tomato. I don’t know why, but the word blazed through and its red-hot tail etched it into my brain. It is stuck there, much to my chagrin. At first I thought it burned, but now I’ve gotten used to it. I know where it is, and I can, albeit with some difficulties, bring it forth whenever I need to. I have however become aware of some drawbacks; the word tends to creep up when I least expect it. This is not good, this is not proper, and most important of all, and it forces itself on my tongue at the worst possible times. Have you tried to order a cup of tomato at a café?

Truth to be told, I haven’t either. But it was close, really close. I was just about to order a coffee, when the word failed me. The Word tried to get free from its prison, but it didn’t succeed. Thank God. I did not want to drink pressed tomatoes, no matter how fresh they might have been. I stuttered forth a “coffee please”, I took the cup and seated myself to slowly drink the black substance of my choice.

If you notice that you can’t use the word tomorrow, then you’ll know where to point the blame. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience but I hope you’ll understand my predicament. Please, use the word “papaya” instead.

I never learn

I’ve begun to structure up the Great Swedish Novel from dozens of notebooks and I’ve encountered a problem. A huge problem that blocks up everything. It is not one that is impossible to fix, quite the contrary. I need to do some research for part one. (Three parts in one book, each part is about different stages in the main characters life.)

Research. I’m too lazy for this. I could go the easy way and just read up about the subject, but I think that way it would end up being more of a Hollywood stereotype than the Hollywood stereotypes themselves.

Part two and three present no such problems what so ever. Especially the third act where absolutely everything is make believe.