Seasoning...

Early this morning a woke up fully awake and clear headed. For a while I lay there pulling the sheet above my chin remembering a strange episode in my child hood. An episode not thought of for a very long time. I believe that the very last time I thought of this I had the preposterous notion that it was true.... very strange.... I had to been very young even then.

What I'm talking about is the memory of me standing in the bedroom of my old childhood terraced/row houselooking out on the playground behind our back yard seeing all of the seasons pass. I saw the summer pass into autumn with the leaves turning red and yellow to gradually fall and get covered by snow. The white snow would eventually reveal the brown mesh that once were the colourful leaves. The very light green that would evolve from the buds that made the leaves fall brought some colour to the palette once again. The spring which made your legs full of spring (to quoute dear old Astrid Lindgren). Summer and the vision ends.

This is of course not what I saw, I couldn't have seen it except in a dream. It is however a very illustriuos and a pretty advanced dream for a five to six year old. The vision above is however the vision dressed in my words of today.

The applicant

Jeez, I really have to get a grip, not a single post since tuesday. I really have no excuse, except I really have not had anything to write about. The muse, whatever it is, did not speak to me during the week. To be honest, I have had something to write about, I just haven't felt like writing at all, period.

I mentioned earlier that I feared the step into the unknown I thought I had to take. What I didn't realize, what I didn't see, is that before you have to take that step you have to open the door that leads to the unknown. The door I'm talking about has a very difficult lock and I don't know if I, the key, fit.

The story is as follows: Several months ago, at my fathers request, I sent a mail to a former work collegue of his who now works for an internet poker service (betting, poker, casino and such). My fathers former collegue asked me if I was willing to move abroad, as they were setting up an office where they had their gambling licence. I said naturally and sent him my CV and stuff. He then, several weeks ago, sent me four job discriptions. I let him know that I was intrested in two of them. After another few weeks of silence I sent him a mail wishing him good luck in his work to set up the office abroad. I also asked him to give my CV a glance when a job opportunity opened it self. He immidiatly sent me a mail telling me that many of the places had been given away, but he would like to meet me about the ones that were still open.

Wednesday morning, 9 am. Apparently I was there on a job intervue for the place as a Campaign Manager, a place to which I had not applied. Even though I feel I could do the job I was not prepared at all for the questions about my competence related to this specific place. Needless to say, I did not perform very well.

I can't really talk about this beeing unfair or not. I don't know if I got the intervue because my contact knew my father or because he thought that I was competent enough for the place. I'm leaning towards the latter explaination. As an intervuer you would have all the aces on the hand if the applicant doesn't know what place he is there for, so he doesn't have anything to loose to be tough in the intervue.

I'm a lesson learned richer.

Fear...

Oh! It's been a couple of days now since I last posted something. It's been hectic.

Saturday: Work
Sunday: Went to Uppsala and the bandy final between Bajen and Edsbyn, got drunk and tired.
Monday: Tried to get prepared for the upcoming job intervue on Wednesday.

This job intervue brings me to the topic for the day: Fear.

What do I fear? Dying naturally. Death? Not really. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, I believe, I fear anything that would damage or sicken, with no possibilty of recovery, my fragile body. I fear even more that something similar would happen to anyone close to me, especially my family and my wonderful girlfriend. An instant death doesn't scare me as much, except if it would happen to me before it happened to my girlfriend. Hypothetically speaking, I would rather see my girlfriend die before me in our old age, just to spare her the grief and the pain of her experiencing my death. Is that weird, is that wrong of me? Does that make any sense? I'm very confused about this feeling.

Another thing that scares the living crap out if me is the step into the unknown. Everything about it makes me break out into a cold sweat. I can only calculate, predict or guess so much. I have no idea what the pros and cons will be if I get this job. I of course know some of the benifits and I understand something about what I have to give up. But the possibility of major negative consequences are huge, as is the possiblity of the positive ones..... GAH

I have no idea what will come.... I just know it's a step I have to take.

I love you Tessa, for not having to take the step alone.

Dilemma

Yes that's what I have. My neighbour who is a sweet old man, who should be admired for his persistence and fighting spirit. For example, the old man's back is so bent that I don't know when he saw the sky last...hmm I do know when i saw the sky last. Last summer as I went out onto my balcony i heard the music from a radio playing from the balcony next to mine, I saw that the door was open, but I couldn't see anyone. I guessed he was inside. I sat down, opened my book and let the sun warm up my cold morning body. Before I had to go in and cool down, It was a really hot day, I caught a glimpse of a pair of feet, upside down. bouncing up and down behind the fence of the balcony. Then I heard this rumbling and deep fart... I threw myself on the floor and crawled into my appartment again, giggling like a little boy.

I can only guess that he was doing his morning gymnastics and that that helped his stomach in the morning. I really admire someone who without respect can do something like that, I mean it's his balcony after all, and at that age!

So you see, it's a sweet old man, and he doesn't disturb me at all, except when he some weeks ago rang my door bell. I opened, he stood there with his crumb back looking down at the floor. He said: A fuse has gone out, could you please help me insert a new one? How can I refuse an old man with such a request? But, I did think about refusing. You see, I've always suspected that his appartment would be a seriously filthy place. Sometimes when I get to my door I sense an awful smell which origin is the old mans appartment. Further more, the first time I checked out my new appartment, I saw a swarm of fruit flies situated around the old man's door post. I mentioned this to my land lord, who was with me, and the next day I came there the flies were gone.

The sight and smell of the old mans appartment hit me like something really big, hard and heavy would have hit me if it had hit me. Dust lay inch thick everywhere, every door post had dust hanging from them half a meter down. The stove was so black from grease and soot that I didn't see a white spot on it, it actually look more like the landscape of the trenches of WWI. On the rack beside the front door, hats and stuff lay not touched in probably 20 years. Paintings, alot of them stood against all the walls, cans and garbage lay all over the floor, some of them probably from the last millenia. The smell was hidious, brutaly awful.

I quickly as I could changed the fuse and got the hell out of there.

The question that I'm struggling with is if I should report him to either the social service or the land lord? Could I do that to an old man? Should I do that? The place is hazardous to both his health and to the health of everyone in the building. At the same time, I know the figures about how long an elder lasts after they've been removed from their home. And he does manage. He does his own shopping, he cooks, he dresses and he does his excersises. He should be a role model for people at that age. But he lives in filth.

What should I do?

Bar rattle and brain rattle

I don't care for nor respect islamic rules or laws, I'm not a muslim. I don't care for nor respect the christian ones either. I only care about the ones that can put really hard metallic bars between me and the things I want to do. I know that the laws we have in sweden derive from christian morality, and that's ok for me, they have to derive from somewhere. If I would like to draw pictures of the prophet mohammad, I would, I just can't draw that well. I don't respect any religion I only respect individuals and their culture. As I hope anybody would do me and mine. I know that culture often derive from religion, and that's ok. It have to derive from somewhere.

I don't know what has happened. A minute ago I felt fine, now I really feel crooked somehow.

Sometimes you just have to lash out, tell people they are morons and that they really should try and smarten up. I wish people would do that to me more often, I mean people who isn't related to me. People who are related to me should just shut up. Their critisism hurts, and their praise is untrustworthy.

How did I become so angry all of a sudden?

I guess It is becuase of this...hmm...blog.... but it's funny isn't? I have no objections whatsoever about the contents of this blog... so perhaps it's beacuse I really would like to, in a very childish and naive way, heal the world from all this ignorance... I have no idea what I'm talking about.

I will try and make Jac Tracbac and his nephew Benbé from the book Jac the Clown by Hjalmar Bergman heal my discomfort about the world.

hehe wouldn't that be a good name for a blog. Jac tracbac...trackback from tracbac... tihi.

Illigal or not...

I wrote some week ago about this program called Pandora.com, where you entered your favourite song or band and the program starts playing songs which sound like the band you entered, including the actual entered band's songs.

I thought that this program streamed the songs for your pleasure, but it seems like you actually download the songs in a temp folder. So if you want to keep the songs played on your pandora, you can just past and copy the file stored in the temp folder, and then rename it to .mp3 and you can play it with your winamp at any time.

Is this the end of Pandora? While me and other spread this news perhaps the music industries decide to close Pandora down. I hope not, not just beacuse I now know how to save the great music I hear through Pandora, I hope that I can still explore the awsome music variation the Pandora program hands me. I still buy some of the music I hear, but I also paste and copy some of it now.

Read more about it here... and see my stations in the sidebar. I removed it... it was too ugly.

mirror, mirror on the wall

Where in the bible or the Koran does it say that people have the right to do anything in the name of God? I have not read the bible Nor the Koran (Not the whole of it, and not in a while). But it seems unlikely that God would have said: Even though it's a deadly sin to kill, you can do it in my name as much as you want. You can also torture, molest and pillage in my name. There is a passage in this article, written by Slavoj Zizek that has reached my eyes through the grace of..... Sesquapedalien. heh.

"Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God's will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God's favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition its own reward. David Hume, a believer, made this point in a very poignant way, when he wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God's existence."

Something that has always bothered me when it comes to these danish cartoons is the muslim reaction to it. I have always understood how they can offend muslims in Denmark or witrhin the EU. But I have not been able to understand why this affair have blown in to the proportion is has. Until yesterday.

Apperantly it's forbidden for ANYONE to depict the prophet Mohammad. It doesn not matter wether you're muslim or not, you are forbidden. I can't understand this. It's like a judge in soccer running onto the ice of a hockey match and showing the red card. It doesn't make sense. The rules of one game, culture or religion should not automatically apply to any other culture, or religion.

Why should a religious person care at all about anyone else doing sinful things? It's not their problem, all they have to care about is be able to look themselves in the mirror in the evening...

religious woe

The time has come, it was rather ineviteble, to talk about religion. In Sweden we don't talk about religion that much. It's not tabu, it's just very very infected. There are many religious groups in sweden as it is in every "western" country. So the chance of pissing someone off is pretty high.

Why is that? Why do we have such diversity in beliefs? Why isn't there a single truth? My answer: Because such a truth does not exist.

If I were to believe, I would say that God is a cruel son of a bitch, or an incompetent fool. 5000 years ago he had long ago abandoned all the people of the planet Tellus (perhaps he had other projects on other planets, I don't know) except a small minority scattered across the middle east. They were the only ones who had his love. 3000 years later he disbanded (if you are a christian) these beloved people of his to promote a new group of people called christians, after a guy who they believed was his son (perhaps he thought this was kind of cute). But, 600 years later he changed his mind once more. Just a bit south of Jerusalem a new prophet had gained some followers. Now these guys were fascinating. They had it going. With a before unseen speed and fiercity they laid the whole southern part of the world He cared about under their feet. This was it he thought, these guys would quench all rivalries and diversity. But once again he was wrong. During the time from 300 to 1000 the christians had laid the whole of the northern part of the world he cared about under their feet. And from this point I think he gave up. Both sides fought in his name and made their own rules. They even, to his horror, reinvented him and everything about him and his history and purpose. He didn't have anything to work with anymore.

I do not however believe in any diety except perhaps nature. Nature doesn't have a mythology, which is nice becasue I don't believe in any such thing.

The reason for this post is the very infected discussion going on the questional but very funny blog, Mohammad and me. That blog will certainly be a muse for further talks, from my side, about topics related to religion.

The reason why I'm ill

I can't sleep, I've slept all day trying to become well...

One thing that has always puzzled me is that there seem to be a reason, for existance, for every little biological thing on this earth, except for man and viruses. I can understand why we humans fail to have a purpose since we are on top of the food chain and by beeing that, you can not be anything but a parasite. (I have not gotten this idea from the movie Matrix, even though the idea sippers through that movie in a very illustrious way)

Viruses on the other hand can not also be on top of the food chain, for one; They are not a living thing, even though they are biological, they are mix of nucleids and proteins bunched together. Secondly; They are not a part of some ecological system (I don't believe they are, any way), they don't produce anything (like oxygen, nitrogen, methan gas and so on), they are not food for any other bug or thing.

They simply attacks us. We often fend them off without us even noticing them (I, however, do notice them right now, and by acknowledging them I hope they will go away), but sometime they wreck such havoc we simply die. They then die them self. So what was the point of entering the body in the first place, if you die with your host.

The host infect others.... is it simply a queston of - reproduce or extinguish -? Perhaps, but that doesn't in any way answer the question.

My hypotheses could be "religious" by saying that viruses are "gods" or Natures
way of controling the population of living things on earth. But I don't really believe that, or perhaps I do, I don't know.

My scientifical hypotheses is on the other hand that viruses gives the evolution a push forward. By mutating cells and DNA/RNA they erradicate "stuff" (I love beeing scientifical) that isn't suitable anymore, and promotes the "stuff" that is.

Could I be right? Could a virolog please stand up...

Ill as a...

I could really become better when it comes to sayings in english. I'm currently very ill and I wanted to start this short post with a english saying describing how ill I am, I'm very ill. But, I can't come up with any suitable phrase. Hell, I can't even come up with a swedish one, but that's the fever talking, or rather not talking. The only one that pops into my head is "sick as a bat", but why would a bat be sicker than any other creature. hmmm... or is it blind as a bat.....hmm more logical.

So anyway I'm quite glad in my utter rambling and feverish way that I am ill. The pain in my chest is gone and proved only to be a prologue to the sore throat and the fever.

Hehe It's quite amazing how your language is receptive to influences. I've just finished watching Master and Commander, and I have the past few weeks read many of the works of Patrick O'Brian. I think my language as a result has become more british, even victorian pehaps.

Well I shall ramble no further... lol

Hypochondria

These last three days I've felt a piercing pain in my left side chest. Everytime I take a deep breath, I feel a sssssssqueezzzzzing pain, which will subdue if I hold my breath, but it returns with my next.

When it comes to the biological aspect of human life I hate everything above my waist and between my two arms. That's where all the machinery is and that's where everything can go wrong. It makes me so pissed off sometime (read: always) that we are so fucking fragile. GAAH!

Ohh well, Last night I couldn't sleep beacuase of the uneasiness of what this could be. The pain is situated just above the heart, so perhaps it could be the heart. Was there something wrong with my heart? Was I just about to get a heart attack? Could I have a heart failure? Was it cancer?

Was it my lungs? Was there something wrong with my lungs? Did I have cancer? Would I make it through the night to get to a doctor? Well the anxiety grew with each minute and the turnign and twisting in bed only made the pain worse. My girlfriend, at 04.00 last night finaly told me to phone a on-duty nurse. And I did.

No need for the sirens, she said to my great relief. It's the lungs, she continued.
Ok, I said. So what should I do?
Call the district health care central tomorrow morning and book a time, she said with a tone that could only be described as a very bored tone.

I was glad, and I could sleep. For one I was glad that the nurse had been bored, because it meant that the situation wasn't serious. Another reason I was glad was that it was the lungs. I have no control of the heart, and it beats whether I like it or not (I do want it to), but the lungs I can in some sense control, and you can live with just one of them. I could sleep, forcing the hypochondric diagnosis of cancer aside.

I called, this morning. I went there, this afternoon. I returned home, this evening.

An ECG and a temperature check proved me healthy, except I had an inflammated muscle in my chest (not my heart) that is caused by a cold.

Nothing to it then, but damn it if I still can't shake of this sense of beeing fragile.

Talk about a revolution

This is my situation when it comes to music

I don't own a car...I don't even have a driverslicence (shocking I know, but that's the modern commuter in an European city for you), so my radio listening is limited to my awakening or not to the clock radio (If I wake up to it I hear it, if I don't....well..).

I'm a student so a radio in the office is something that lies ahead (perhaps the car and the licence lies a head too).

I do have a rather good widescreen TV, the problem is that I don't have cable and can only tune three channels in, none of them are very specialized in music.

I don't go clubbing much anymore, so I can't get any music influences from that direction either.

Looking at my CD-collection I am horrified over the fact that I don't seem to have a single album released in the last 2-3 years. I have bought new albums, but they're albums I always wanted to have in my grunge rock collection.

The core problem is that I only listen to the same old, same old.

I'm, because of this reason, very much depended on friends who have these advantages over me. I need them to recommend music to me. Not any more however, because I have found the solution to my old, old music collection

One day (read: yesterday) a fantastic thing landed on my lap(top)(which I don't have, I use a stationary). It was the Music Genome Project and its site/program Pandora. With this application you make your own radio channels as easy as tuning your own analog radio in that office that lies somewhere in the future. All you have to do is type in an artist, band or a song you like and the program finds other bands and songs which sound like the band/artist you typed. The result is a radio channel which runs your favorite type of music 24/7.

An hour ago I typed: Bob Marley, so I'm currently listening to some good and old ska and reggae I otherwise wouldn't have found or listen to. You also get to listen to stuff you totaly had forgotten about. The nostalgic trip, however, is always the most enjoyful.... hehe.... Which band do you think was the first one I entered?..... Alice in Chains (a classic grunge band).

I'm happy

Siblings shouldn't be siblings

Just as Sesquipedalien, I also found an open door of thought after reading this article linked to from Sesq's (I hope you don't mind me calling you that) post

Why we fight, why we fight. Why do you fight? And I guess; Why do they fight?

These questions, asked by me, my brother, mom and dad, went unanswered during our whole childhood. They still are unanswered, but since me and my brother have stopped fighting, the question and therefore the answer is irrelevent, or at least unnecessary. I still can't figure it out and I'm not sure I want to go there because my brother and I have a pretty good relationship now, at least compared to what we had before. I've always respected my brother for what he is, my older brother and he has always stood me by, except when I stood in his way. When the going got tough, he was the tough who got going. And the going was almost always fierce. I have been rushed to hospital on more than one occassion after have been in a fight with him.

He threw a rock on my head (stiches)
He threw a fit and launched a fist right on top of my skull (stiches, or glue, can't remember)
Once I tried to stab my brother with a pen, luckily I failed and the consequence was that the pen ran through my hand instead. Which by it self was pretty funny since I could't feel anything and I wondered where the hell the pen went.

But, perhaps it would have been better if I had stabbed him, just a little, like 5 mm into his thigh or something, so I could get the blame. When I stood there with the pen through my hand, it went as it always went. My brother got the blame, since I was the one, as always, who was injured or crying. I was just as often to blame as he was for the fighting, actually me more often than he. I recognised the consequences my brother had to deal with after each fight, and I used it to my advantage. That was the only weapon I had against him. I could start a fight and see that I was about to loose it and start crying and my brother got the blame.

My brother had everything I wanted, he was strong, tall, he could fight, he had lots of friends, he listened to great music (albums he owned), he had the coolest clothes and he told me the coolest stories of his exploits. I on the other hand had everything he wanted. I had our fathers devotion.
And since I used that to my advantage, it became an evil spriral, which ended only when we separated, when he went into his military service.

There I've said it. That was the reason for the fighting. Now hush! On sunday I'm off to see another fotball game with my brother, as we've done every week the last 4 or 5 years. Perhaps there will be room for a beer after the game.

Forums vs Blogs

I did write this before but didn't save it as a draft. Silly me. So now I have to type it all over again. perhaps it will, and it should, be better now.

While I was reading about blogs and what they were for, I came across the slogan that blogs are a fantastic tool for discussion over the web, while being so much more. Since I hadn't explored blogs or blogging at all before, I couldn't see the falsehood in that statement. And it is false. False, false, flase, fasle. I haven't yet come across a single disussion between blogs where they link to each other in a two way conversation. They do link, but that's only because they share a topic but they do not relate to each other. The sender is never the reciever at the same time.

Forums on the other hand, is the way to go if you want to ask a question, or answer a question or follow a discussion that will lead to recognisible solution. Forums are, well forums! There are forums for every topic you can think of and you will probably get an instant answer to your question if the forum is well populated.

Forums can however be very retricting. Forums are often tight communities whose members, for example, generaly hate answering the same question over and over again, forcing them to act obnoxious and directing newly joined members of the community to the forums search engine.

But despite this the forum still hold their ground as the primary platform for discussion over the internet. So could we please drop the slogan that blogs would be this platform and see blogs for what they are, namely a platform for pseudo-writers, poets, scholars, journalists, photographers, flowerists and so on (professional blogs by professional [insert previous mentioned professions] excluded).

Stupid Parents

Today me and a friend of mine went into a toy store, trying to reconnaissance some future toys for his nerwly born cousin. To my horror I heard this from a mother:

Mother: You get a new toy every day, and you still point at stuff you want.

Daughter: But, mom ..... .(incomprehensible child muttering)

I wanted to scream at that woman

me (Or me as I would have liked to have done): GAAAAHHH! But of course your daughter want's everything she points at, when you give her everything she points at. You stupid stupid mother. And why the hell are you in a toy store with her every god damn day???

I don't have children yet, and I understand it's the most difficult matter in the world, raising a child. So why isn't there a child licence? A licence each of the parents have to take to be able legaly to have a child. I have an other example of a stupid mother (sorry I have actually not heard a father say something stupid to his child as of yet, so therefore I only have these two mother examples, don't read anythign into it).

Example:
I was raised in a suburb three European miles South of Stockholm, a suburb that's on the border to farm country. In this suburb we often sense the distinct smell of manure from the local farm (Alfa Laval).
Child: What's that smell, mom?
mother: It's all these turks who take a dump everywhere they stand.
Me (again as I wish I would have done): GAAAAH!!! [lifts mother in air and throw her of the bridge (we were standing on a bridge at the time)].

I was so fucking (I get really aggitated even as I think about it, so the f word is applicible) pissed of during that whole day, hell make it the week. How can a mother so spitefully teach her child such lies??
1. She know's the truth about the smell, as well as I do.
2. She delibratly tell the child a lie, when she doesn't have to.
3. She thoughtfully transfer her hate to her child.

Why oh why didn't I just stop and tell the child the truth and say that his mother was a god damn lier.

I really, really think we ought to have a sort of licence for parents. If they don't have this licence they don't get child support from the state.

(It's an unrealistic stance, I know, but sometimes the people of this planet makes you doubt the point of it all.)