A Blog for the sake of Blogging

Back, back on track and bare back on truck track

2009-11-19T23:25:00.004+01:00

Please disregard the header in this post.

What I wanted to say that I'm happy that I finaly did it. I took it upon myself to revive this blog of mine. A blog that has been dormant for three years now.

I still don't really know what I should talk about here. The difference now, however, is that I don't care. I don't even know if I'm going to write in English eller på Svenska. Vilket känns nice. Det works either...uhh kanske inte.

As a newsflash about me. Istill work at that historic place called The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. You know that place I ended up in after a dreadful week of unemployment.

So in other words, I'm alive and kicking. And trying to get press to cover Dramatens productions and actors.

wish list...

2006-12-04T13:56:00.000+01:00

Every christmas I have the same problem. It's not a big problem, it's not a problem at all for most people on this planet. It's, if anything, a rich man's problem.

There isn't really anything I want for christmas.

If I want something during the year, I'll buy it. So at christmas I have to think about all these things I have thought of buying, but never did, because I prioritized some other thing. The result is that I always, for christmas, get the "junk" I've pretty much already discarded.

I understand my family's reaction every christmas when I tell them that I don't know what I want, or I don't want anything. They, then, have to go store to store searching for something suitable to give me. Which is a real pain at christmas with seventy eleven customers in each store.

This christmas I've made a list of "junk" that I really don't need, but would be happy to get.

- Books about ancient Rome
- A backgammon board
- A Trivial Persuit board
- A thin cotton sweater
- A FM dial transmitter for my MP3 player or computer
- Some black socks.

This is actually the first "wish list" since I was a kid. Fun. Silly. Fun.

The Struggle...

2006-10-28T15:37:00.000+02:00

I've been silent for some weeks now, and what an eventful couple of weeks it has been. In my last post, I cherished the fact that I was an idler no more. I had a job, with descent pay and a descent work to go to every day. I wrote that post on the 9:th and on the 11:th I was fired.

I was fired under the pretext that I was uninterested and passionless about the job. Which I wasn’t, I really wasn’t. The true reasons were of a nature which could not be expressed directly to me, hence the cowardly phone call an hour after work on the 11^th telling me that I’m not welcome back.

I was struck down by the lies certain persons at work told my supervisor at the employment agency, which had provided me with the job. I haven’t been feeling well since, not quite any way.

I have had the means to become an idler again, but I didn’t take it. I took instead a crash course in anxiety management. I was angry for one day, sad for another, panic struck for a third, had extremely low self-esteem during the fourth. On the fifth day I resurrected and applied for a bunch of new jobs. On the sixth day I stood firm and held my own during a job interview. On the morning of the seventh day I stood inside the doors of my new work place. A work place with a history worth fighting for, a work place with nicer people, better pay and a much better contract than I had before.

To all of you who used to see me at my old job (Emma, Micke and Anne): I’m fine and happy… so damn happy to finally be out of school…

I’m happy again…

Has this experience left any mark? During the two weeks that has passed since I got my new job I have struggled with a paranoid feeling of not being able to trust my co-workers. A struggle I’ve seem to have surpassed brilliantly.

I’m strong again…

surfing the mind...

2006-10-09T14:07:00.000+02:00

Last night as I lay in bed I thought of the most wonderful topic to write about. I structured beautiful sentences and lovely punch lines. The problem is, I can’t remember any of it. I’m totally blank. And I praise the fact that the problem is it self a topic worthy writing about, the wonderful sentences excluded.

I have always thought of myself as something of a daydreamer. But daydreaming seems to be the luxury of an idler. Daydreaming is very important to me since it’s through daydreaming I raise questions about society, form my opinions and ideals. It’s through daydreaming I blog.

Now, I can’t find the time, not during the day at least. After the lights are out, however, I have all the time I need to ponder and turn and spin thoughts. The result is dubious though. The most immediate consequence is that I lack sleep; secondly I can’t record what I have thought.

I can’t record what I have thought because I can’t turn the light on, pick up a notepad and start typing, even less use a recorder, without awakening my girlfriend. Furthermore, I always seem to push my luck. I greedily try to hang on to a seed of thought to see what might become of it. The seed is all I need though; I can water and fertilize it perfectly well during the following day. But no luck, most often I fall a sleep and wake up… blank.

I’m an idler no more…

What should I do?

Crackling...

2006-09-27T10:41:00.000+02:00

My intention was to post a post about space, something about the human urge to explore and spread. I meant for you to understand my fantasies about the universe and how I would like to see humans colonize it. It would be a beautiful text describing travel through nebulas, and between solar systems and planets. How trade and struggle would allow us to live in a time that quite accurately could be compared with the sea faring during 16th through 19th century.

But I buried that idea somewhere easy accessible for future use.

I really don’t want to write about football to the same extent as I have these last posts, but I have to because it has left such an ugly and heavy mark upon my soul. The club responsible for the heavy chains, lifted some, if not all of the stones linked to the chains up yesterday. A liberating 0 – 2 victory over the arch rivals AIK could perhaps be the leverage needed to carry the stones to the blacksmith for removal.

And I wasn’t even supposed to have gone to the game…

A gentle soul found and returned a lost ticket yesterday to work and since no one claimed it I wouldn’t let it go to waste, and today it would be waste. So, after work I went and sold the ticket for about half its price and bought another one, one that would place me among friends. I also bought a very nice scarf…

The ticket let me see the most beautiful display of football I’ve ever seen Hammarby produce. “Bajen” totally annihilated AIK during the first half. Discipline secured the victory during the second. I’m so glad I witnessed it.
Perhaps the next game will provide sufficient strength and energy to have the blacksmith remove the last shackles of my soul.

Digitus impudicus...

2006-09-20T14:47:00.000+02:00

A gesture I actually would like to be able to use more often is “the finger”. I would love to be in a situation where I could "flip the bird" once more. I can't recollect when I last used it; I mean really used it. I imagine I use it quite often at football games, but the judge who often is the intended target hasn't as of yet, and for obvious reasons, seen me giving it. I also, even more pathetically, use it when I feel aggravated in front of the TV.

I would however much more like to give it up front to a person. I think I would like that very much, to recapture the times when we as kids walked around giving it to all and everybody. I imagine it would feel liberating, in an obnoxious and rebellious kind of way. I guess, actually, that what it really comes down to is that you, from time to time, feel the want to be a kid again.

I started thinking about "the finger" when I saw one of the top politicians in Sweden, Lars Ohly, giving it to a political adversary on a morning show a few days ago. Watch the clip here. Even though I’m no big fan of Lars Ohly (he’s a damn communist what ever he nowadays says) I felt that it was quite funny of him, in a very immature and stupid way, to give the finger on live TV.

The thing about giving the finger is that it’s somewhere between a minor and major insult. It’s somewhere between getting neglected and receiving a fist to the jaw. It’s severe, but not severe enough to cause you harm. And it can be done silently.
I do it like the kid almost exclusively at football games; just as the little kid a two posts ago.

Hmm...ok?

2006-09-07T11:40:00.000+02:00

I'm still at school...

One step outside its doors provided me with an invitation right back inside again. At least its full time and the pay is somewhat descent. I'm still clinging on to the hopes and dreams I barely see at the horizon.

But it felt strange the day I left my previous job, a job I have had for a very long time and one always justified by the notion that it's only extra, a good job while I was studying. I can't say that now. Somehow I have to justify this new job in some other way.

I usually just use fact that it's a harch time for academics in Sweden right now, and that you have to take the work offered to you. But I'm sick of all the excuses.

I've recovered from the blow to my identity and pride last week, even though it will take a very long time for Bajen to prove its worth again. A win on Sunday would help a bunch though.

This became another very short post, but I'm getting there.

From under my bed....

2006-08-30T00:48:00.000+02:00

I should not write this at a time like this... not without sounding too low, too depressed.

I have a bitter taste in my mouth, a tremendously ugly feeling in my stomach and a very painful lump in my throat. I've been let down and something have somewhat died within. I can't let go of the feeling, I can't shake it of like a usually can. I just can't. The hate is too strong.

I hate them so much, my hate turns on me and I hate myself for caring. Why should I care, your side always let you down, except once during the strange autumn of 2001. Should I stand fast, or should I turn my back on it?

I'm devastated and it's a shame.

Shame on you Bajen

Sommar, sommar sommaaaar

2006-07-02T18:55:00.000+02:00

The posting will be sporadical at best during the summer. I will pick it up as the horrid Autumn draws nearer.

Have a nice summer.

Sigh

2006-06-23T14:24:00.000+02:00

Midsummer Eve....

Yay!

A World Cup weather...

2006-06-13T01:58:00.000+02:00

I must say that I really think I should start vary between English and Swedish in my blog from now on. I've felt an urge to write in Swedish again, and for now this is the only spot where I do sincere writing. But, don't worry. I will try and keep this post purely in English....Trasdocka...

Damn I failed.

The sincere writing of mine in this post will use the weather as a starting block. Not very original, I know, but very sincere indeed. You can not be anything but sincere when talking about the weather.

...So what about the weather?

I want to get drunk. I want to sit, with friends, and drink beer, cocktails and what not. I want to do stupid things like go swimming under the influence during the warm nights. I want to feel all mediterranean and free. I want to party my brains out and wake up to feel it's ok to get drunk again.

Is that my sense of freedom, of vacation and relaxation? And what about the weather?

It's 2 am, and my palms are damp, I would press them against a window just to cool them down, If it just wouldn't leave a mark. But they do leave a mark, I've already tried.

It’s the World Cup! Sweden played a tie (read: lost) against Trinidad & Tobago. I don’t care, I predicted it. I’ve seen so much football these last couple of days (I haven’t actually, as of yet, missed a single game) But do I feel free because of it? Not really.

It’s the world cup, damn it! I’m being held captive by it's a shame to miss a game that perhaps could be the most important game for a nation in a decade if not more. BHut if I would choose to disregard a game, which one should I choose? They're all good!

There is only one game that I’m not entirely happy to watch, and it’s the game between Iran and Angola. These two nations don’t stand a chance against the other two in their group so their game is pointless.

I should be outside in the beautiful nameless, but I’m not, at least not enough to rid the feeling of missing out something equally fantastic as the world cup. My brother, however, is doing the Mediterranean thing. He is there! He is in Germany. He is drunk and he is free, and (!) above all… he’s watching football and he is drunk, yet again.

The curse of the World Cup is that it brings with it the most excuisite and beautiful weather.

Damn!

Oh yeah? Did you now?...

2006-06-05T19:45:00.001+02:00

I don’t know if it’s just the skepticism of everything American, that almost every European with dignity and enough English skills holds, but the answer in the following two sentences really bugs me.

“I’ve just cooked a fantastic dinner for me and my girlfriend”
“Oh really?”

I just hate that! If you don't know what I'm talking about, it may be because you are American, or because I haven’t managed to give you an example that clearly illustrates my point. It's probably because of the latter. Here, therefor, is another example:

“I took this picture at Ground Zero three weeks after it happened.”
“You took that picture three weeks after? Oh!”

Can you see it? Can you hear the nauseatingly false interest? It makes me feel sick, uncertain and generally nervous when someone I talk to drops a line like that when I’m talking. Instead of being encouraged to keep on talking, I get uninterested in continuing or even ending them damn sentence I’ve just started.

In Sweden, we encourage the speaker with a humming, mmm, or by saying something like, ok! Cool! Oh damn! Oh my! You see the exclamation marks at the end of every line? That’s the difference as I see it.

To further the mouth diarrhea of mine, I can pose couple of questions.

Is this something that has been noticed in the states (because as I see it, it’s solely a phenomenon within the borders of the US)?

If it hasn’t been noticed, how come every European, suspicious about anything American and who enough skill in English, do notice it? How come every Martha Stewart Show (or what it’s called) watching American do not notice the insincerity, the false kindness of the listener towards the speaker?

Are we, Swedes, also insincere when we say Oh (exclamation mark) , Cool (exclamation mark) mmm (exclamation mark)?

We probably are, I am at least. I’m too egocentric to listen to anyone for any length of time, really. But that’s me. And, I’m probably the only one who have really noticed this flaw in character who a lot of Americans seem to share.

Now I got pissed! Aaargh!

Ahh soon it’s time for the world cup, a world event that every citoyenne du monde cares and talk about, except the yanks. And I feel somewhat happy and free because of that.

Ambivalent...

2006-06-03T00:09:00.000+02:00

I’m going to tell you one of my fears. I’m 27 years old right now, and I feel that I’ve missed my peak. I mean I haven’t even started working yet, for real. I am working, but not with what I want. I feel like I’m, like Kurt Vonnegut would say, unstuck in time. Where I am now, I should have been perhaps a decade ago, and I believe that goes for a lot of people. Just look at our grandparents and their lives, hell, just look at our own parents. When did they start a family? When did they step onto the career ladder?

Our biological clock isn’t in sync with the clock of the society. We live longer lives today; True. We live until we are roughly eighty, and by 64 we are retired. Furthermore, if we all start to work when we are 25-30, the society, or the state will only gain from our labor during 35 to 40 years. Only during 50% of our lives we help the world spin. During the other 50 we slow it down. It’s a no win situation. How should we be able to justify our own generation when we have done nothing to prosper the society, to grow a better place for our children or simply put; To evolve the world?

We can’t justify our wars like our grandparents could! We can’t justify the way we are living while we have all the facts about what our lifestyle does to the planet. We can’t justify anything really.

We are unstuck in time, unstuck in history.

The people of our generation are the pee poles of the future.

The divine question and the diabolic answer...

2006-05-25T22:33:00.001+02:00

As the tip of my tongue carefully placed the fresh bag of snus at the right spot under my lip, I felt ready to go…

Can I actually start a new post in such a disgusting way? I can and I will. I'm pretty much ok with me using snus ever since Shannon Hoon mentioned it in a sort of romantic way in the Blind Melon song Vernie.

I'm not going to talk about tobacco, and I won't. I'm going to talk about taboos, at least until I feel that I've reached the edge of dire straits; just before the point of no return.

Here I go…

I find homosexuality very, very interesting, as a phenomenon. It is a phenomenon (in swedish: företeelse), at least according to the criteria established by the Swedish National Encyclopedia.

… I really fell as if I’m in dire straits already…

It’s a phenomenon which I’m pleased to say is quite accepted here in Sweden, or at least in Stockholm, I can’t speak for the rest of the nation (I can’t speak for Stockholm either, but that’s something I have to do in order to proceed).

No! I can’t proceed. I don’t have the guts to do so. It’s like trying to cross a big meadow at night, just after the cows has been brought in. I just know I can’t reach the other side without stepping in dung, in pure shit. The shit in this case is the uncertainty of how people will look upon me. Will I accidentally portray myself as a… well I don’t know… something awful?

I have always thought it was something divine about thinking and asking. Divine to ask; What makes the world tick? But attempting to answer isn’t always, apparently as divine.

This is a divine question: Why do homosexuals feel a sexual attraction to their own sex?

Try answering it, and feel divine! You can’t, you can only feel like shit!

I'm off hiding...

Reading people...

2006-05-14T00:37:00.000+02:00

When I enter an apartment I've never been to before I often, quickly, find my self looking at the books, if they have any, in their bookshelves, god forbid if they don't have any. It's pretty obvious that you can tell pretty much what a person is interested in by merely reading the back of their books. However, you can also read a lot from how long it take a visitor to start reading the back of the books in your own shelves.

Once more, I will start a scene where someone is either exiting or entering the stage.

I welcomed him, and offered him entrance. He stepped inside and took a quick nervous glance around the room

The guy was normally built, but taller than most and in his late 20:s or early 30:s. Below his, partially by long hair and big designer made sunglasses, covered head he wore a light blue jeans jacket over a trendy thin striped t-shirt. His jeans were old and worn, not pre worn from the stores, but traditionally worn.

Refering to his black sneakers, I said:

"Keep them on if you want"

"Oh, well... Ok", he said cautiously.

His carefully planted steps, you know the ones you take when you are not comfortable with wearing shoes while walking on parquet, took him around the apartment for the primary tour. I guess his first objective was to get an understanding of the condition and standards of the apartment. On his second tour, he start to complement the basic decorations of the apartment, such as the colours of the paint on the walls, the clinkers in the hallway and kitchen and the parquet in the living room and the bedroom.

It’s not until during his third tour he stops and starts to examine what was in the shelves. It didn’t take long until he, with some effort, extracted an old videotape containing Alice in Chains MTV unplugged session. With this, we had found a shared interest, and we talked about the tragic death of Layne Staley and the strange and perhaps pathetic reappearance of the band during the summer festivals around Europe.

After he had left I remembered that during his first glimpse of his surroundings his eyes fell on my two guitars that stood leaned towards one of the corners in the room. He looked at them for just a couple of seconds, registering the types, brands and the pamphlet that stuck out from the side pocket of the case that contains my electric guitar. It reads: Beginners Tablature for the Guitar Case

Who is he? What does he do for a living?

Priority...

2006-05-10T14:56:00.000+02:00

I had promised myself not to talk about the weather... but, well, hey what the heck.

I will try to write this on the whim so to speak. I'm off to the beer in the sun which always should precede a football game on a day like this. We've had some 20 degrees Celsius for over a week now in Stockholm and a wheather streak like that is hard to come by even at the peak of the summer. Just enjoy and make as much of it as you possibly can. I can't however, except for the, hopefully cold, beer later today. I can't because I'm too damn busy.

Writing on my essay: top priority
Studying for my essay: top priority
Writing up some job applications: top priority
Meticulously cleaning the apartments for the people who are to come and look at them: top priority
Finishing the damn model my girlfriend bought me this Christmas: high priority
blogging: low priority

What am I doing right now? And what do you think I did last night?

I'm making progress though; I am.

Now I'm off to the one thing that isn't even on my to do list... go figure.

Being someone else...

2006-05-09T00:01:00.000+02:00

I opened the front door and stepped outside, I looked around. I looked around to see if anyone looked at me, in envy. I couldn't see any envy in the eyes of those that strolled past the charming old alley way. They were all tourists, I imagined, and they had no reason to envy me, since they probably were not even Swedish. Nevertheless I felt pleased, pleased to be part of the tourist attraction.

I had this ridiculous feeling the other day when me and my girlfriend went to look at an apartment in the Old Town of Stockholm. To live in the Old Town is every Stockholmers dream. On such a wonderful little Island, containing not only the royal castle but also a labyrinthial amount of winding narrow streets and alleys (some as narrow as 90 cm or 35 inches), you get overwhelmed by history. And, I love when that happens.

Another time I had a similar ridiculous feeling was at Huddinge University Hospital. I was there as a trainee through the military. Any time I went for lunch after a surgery I had participated in; I would put on my white coat over my green surgery clothes. At one time, I even borrowed a stethoscope and hung it over my neck. I loved the looks I got from everyone, especially the women who I imagined thought something like this: "Wow, what a young and handsome doctor!”

I'm not sure if I would ever take a situation like that to my advantage, I probably wouldn't.

But then again...

Learn and learn...

2006-05-02T02:45:00.000+02:00

I took a dive yesterday, into a deep daydream. Like with all daydreams it was a dream where you were in control and you never, in any circumstance, let it turn ugly. It's was an exploration into the subconscious and I had both feet on the pedals.

Break or speed ahead.

I speeded through some wind torn clouds stocked at the top of a mountain range, down the valley, I followed the river to the sea. I used the break pedal over the masts of an 18th century frigate and I lingered in this, among many other things, time of exploration and adolescent science.

For an inquisitive man or woman (well not perhaps for a woman, they're better off today) it must have been a wonderful age to live in. The knowledge of the ancients have just been or are in the process of being unraveled, and with that firm ocean floor as an anchorage point the ship could safely plot a coarse on the seas never sailed.

Enough with the poetic drivel... What I want to say is that today our knowledge of the natural universe are immense, though barely a drop in the sea probably... there I go again...

Nowadays with every Jim and Tim being highly educated or at least literate and enlightened, it is much harder to hold a conversation concerning the little and big things that puzzles you about the world. You are too afraid to sound unintelligent, uninformed or ill schooled. All we really have to talk about is gossip in all its forms and variations. We gossip about football, the famous people or the stupid people on TV (who are the same as the famous people). We gossip about the people close to friends, our co-workers and us. We gossip about politics and the stupid people that conduct it. What we don’t do, what we never have is philosophical discussions. We never discuss religion; we never discuss moral or the deeper aspects of human behavior. We are too afraid to do so; we are not allowed to do so because we don't have the sufficient tools to win those discussions. So we shut up, and talk about the stupid King and Queen. And, we stay stupid.

We shouldn't be so afraid to let our guard down, our pride. Pride is only useful when you've done something good, and then only in moderate proportions.

Don't be timid because of lack of knowledge... ask, think and analyze. When you stand corrected, you have learned something new. Be proud of that…

Cup of Gathering...

2006-04-26T00:43:00.000+02:00

There is a very important but also a very misdirected debate going on in

Sweden

, where our Ombudsman of Equal Opportunities (I don’t like that Swedish word in English) is perhaps one of the strongest voices. He want the, along with several other organizations, Swedish national team to boycott the single greatest sport event in the world, just because the German law is very welcoming for prostitutes in general. They claim and fear that hordes of east European prostitutes will sell sex to the immoral western men that are there to watch football. They are afraid that many women will get horribly hurt in the slavery and trafficking that will follow this huge global event.

I am too worried about it even though I don't agree to the actual severity of the problem during the World Cup. I'm worried about it because it's a accelerating problem, world wide. It's a growing child of the global situation. Stupid Germanic laws do not help, nor does the World Cup. Their aim is, however, very much off when they target the World Cup. The World Cup is, like any other sport event, about peace and friendship. It will become a topic of conversation for every man, woman and child around the world for a whole month. I will easily be able to start a conversation with almost anyone, from any country during that month. This is much harder during any of the other 47 months the Cup isn't played.

We should instead boycott German products, like we did when France decided to nuke that poor atoll in the Pacific. But I don't think the Swedish government is very keen to that idea since Germany is one of the most vital countries of trade for Sweden. So, it would probably be a political suicide for the Ombudsman for Equal Opportunities (damn I really hate the sound of that word in English) to suggest something like that.

(In fantasy fiction, items can often be enchanted and can thereby have silly names like the sword of Storms and such; Hence the title.)

Me? I'm putting on the Robe of getting a Job.

Steady as she goes...

2006-04-24T21:15:00.000+02:00

"Steady as she goes" is not only the title of a brilliant song by The Reconteurs (a new project band including the honourble Jack White), its also an order often given by sea captains when they want the boat or ship to keep a course. Steady as she goes is, further more, the term I would like to use when it comes to the monarchy in Sweden.

Yes! The King can, at times, be very silly or perhaps princess Madeleine is the royal slut the paporazzo want her to be (she probably is), but they are our own lasting royal tale to talk, gossip or complain about. Is it unjust that they do last? Is the pain too severe for the ordinary self righteous swede to know that there will always be one family, despite everything that could happen, that will live on easy street? Hey! They would live comfortably even if we refused them the crown, a crown not used since 1873 by Oscar II. Very few of the thousands of kronor the state send their way can found in their pockets at the end of the year.

Many people complain that we support a deprived culture of excess by upholding the monarchy. That may be so. Money deprives, there's no question about it, especially new money. The Royal Family, however, is made out of old money, as old as money possibly can get. If there is one family that every degenerate von, af, or other semi-germanic surname look up to, it's the royal family. And we control the royal family, we do! We ruthlessly judge and rule on the behaviour of the one family that in their turn set the rule of etiquette for how to behave in the Swedish high society... at least I hope so, but it could be wishful thinking on my behalf.

The strongest personal argument of mine is history and tradition though. I just love history. And when I look upon a ruin of something I can't help to think how it was back then. And I can't bare the thought of a future where my children will look upon the Royal Castle and barely see a fragment of something that has, like no other thing, marked the history of Europe as the monarchies have. Imagine the horror of a Royal Castle turned into a hotel for the elite. A castle where the history within have been gutted out for all to see (or not, since many of the items would surely be stored away) at some dust collecting museum.

Let's keep the history alive with a living history.

A trivial matter...

2006-04-21T00:59:00.000+02:00

Hmm no comments on my last post... I guess everyone else are cat kickers.

I was about to write something about poker, since I'm sitting here loosing, in ordinary order, at the poker table. But I'm saving it all in case I would need it later, at a completly different forum...

I instead intend to write something about the lack of motivaton I was so dreadfully concerned about. I use past tense because it seems to have vanished... to be honest, it hasn't, but that's irrelevant to my point. Earlier today I reread some of my more juvenile and unripe posts on this blog, the ones that dealt with all the things I apperantly still wanted to talk about. Well, I don't. They're no fun and there is nothing personal or unique about them at all (I do not claim that there should be something unique or astonishing about the later posts). This is my point. The reason I felt such a frustration about having such trouble writing something on this blog, was because I had gotten use to the pace I posted post, posts containing nothing but pixel enlightened letters, nothing else. So, I'm sorry to have to say that you, my few but dear readers, have to get accustomed, as I have, to the future amount of posts posted on this blog. The goal is three posts a week.

On the topic of future. A futuristic vision: A massive fleet of alien motherships hover the atmosphere of Earth. The aliens send a delegation to the, if they've watched the movies, White House, or, if they've done some real research, the UN HQ in New York. The delegation arrives and the General Secretary asks who they are. The aliens answer; Death.
... And the world, after a couple of hiding american soldiers have sniped the alien delegation and the US president sent every available nuclear rocket the US have intended to scrap for some 20 years or so towards the motherships, ends due to missunderstanding. "Death" in this case simply meant hello.

The vision isn't that far fetched as it may seem, maybe it is, but that's irrelevant to my point. When the Spaniards first arrived to the Yukatan they asked the indians what the land was called. The natives said; Yukatan.
Yukatan actually meant; What the hell do you want? (It really means "What do you want?", but that's not as funny). I guess the natives found it all very funny at first when the Spaniards then thrusted a flag into the sand of the beach and said that they now preclaimed "What the hell do you want?" as their land. No wonder the natives didn't take them seriously at first. I wouldn't.

I'm sorry about the minor assault on the USA, but if you are Rome, then you are Rome.

GAH... Like this post would be that much better than my earlier!?... But that's irrelevant.

Cat lover and dog kicker...

2006-04-19T16:22:00.000+02:00

I've got the flu again... How about that? It's not as bad as the one I got a month ago, but still...
I've always thought that there would be some sort of correlation between the desease (that's a word valued too high, perhaps ailment is better) and the time you are healthy. I believed that I would be well for at least a year or so... Oh well.

On the way home from another job intervue (which went very well, much better than the last) I accidently overheard a conversation between two woman talking about dogs. I can especially recollect one phrase outspoken by one of the two.

She said: Oh they are so nice and faithfull, they never let you down.

From this point I was a hairs breadth from intervening and saying something like: What the hell are you talking about? Are you seriously comparing a dog with a human beeing? Of course the dog is faithfull to the hand that feed her. Naturally I didn't say any of this, I never do.

I honestly believe that the human race, no, lets narrow it down to people from the western hemisphere, can be devided into two groups; the one that loves cats and the one that loves its literary arch-nemesis, the dog. I for one am a cat lover and a dog kicker.

When I get my cat, that is for certain even though the time frame is not, I will get it for my amusement. With a graceful cat I can study nature at a comfortable distance, this I can not do with a dog since it requires so much from me. It requires me to feed her to walk her and to play with her. What do I get in return? A really, really expensive friend. I've got friends and while there's always room for more, I don't need a stupid one.

I don't get a friend when I buy a cat, I get a hint of nature. The cat couldn't care less about me but always shows compassion when it wants something from me, like food. But if the cat don't get the food from me, he'll run away and hunt the food on his own. That's what I like about cats..

Don't buy a dog, get a talking friend instead.

... or a cat

At least I think...

2006-04-14T22:48:00.000+02:00

Perhaps you should, but what about writing?

Is it possible to write about anything? Anything that pops into your head? I'm often afraid to sound stupid when I write, or when I speak for that matter. But, that's because I won't let my ignorance stop me from thinking, pondering and trying to understand something, even though I know I don't know much about it.

I'm willing to be corrected and informed about something I've written. I am not however willing to be insulted for formulating a thought where I perhaps haven't had time nor the interest to check if the facts are correct or not. This hasn't happened in a long time, but I very much afraid of it.

In a previous post I wrote about an idea of letting the unions predict the demands for seats of specific professions in schools of higher education. I felt the thin ice, I heard the crackling sound of bad wood uphoalding the roof I stood on (what?). I didn't and in some sense don't know what unions does today (I know and fully understand the importance of unions in the 19th and 20th century), except negotionating your salary, and every one elses.

I still however don't regret posting posts like that, how stupid they may sound. They could be a seed from wich something more constructive may grow, but they could also be pathetically stupid and perhaps even insulting.

I can live with that.... And I can perhaps live with the stupidity of this post

Perhaps....

A touch of the dark side

2006-04-10T22:48:00.000+02:00

If I bit my nails, I wouldn't have any fingers left. Oh how I love football.

And oh, how I hate Djurgarden. Hate is a powerful, destructive and simply put a bad feeling, I know, but that's how I feel. I hate the team, I hate the colours I hate everything they stand for, what ever they stand for. I do not, however hate the fans, I just utterly and completly despise them. Thankfully I don't feel hate that very often. If I felt it more often something would be wrong and I would tumble further and further down the spiral because it's such a sweet and seductive feeling, especially around alot of people you know feel the same. It is the dark side and more than once I have wanted to plant my fist into the face of, and turn his face into the same colours as his shirt. I have never done it though. And it's ok...

Derby is the name of the game. Battle is how it's fought. Mental death is how you loose it. North of Stockholm versus the South of Stockholm. Djurgarden versus Hammarby. 0 - 0.

This will become a short post, the tidal emotions that rises and fall before, during and after a game has taken its toll. I'm tired.

The highly educated beggar

2006-04-08T16:41:00.000+02:00

I can't have the title "Hey I'm drunk" on top of the blogg for too long.

It seems as if many of the people I meet within my own age group, who has a university or college education in humanities are unemployed. While every other person I talk to who didn't proceed to higher education do have one, and makes a hell of a lot more money, after taxes, than I will ever make. If I could get a job, I still would be pretty much be impoveriched because of all the loans I have taken in order to recieve my, to this date, worthless education. I've been robbed of almost a decade of my life together with loads of money. I've been conned to believe that once I have an college or university education I would be more than welcome on the job market. Well that's not the case in Sweden.

I sense in a prophetic way that the highly educated wi be the unemplyed of the future. We are far too shy and well adjusted in Sweden to do something about it. Sometimes I'm sad that Sweden has been such a peaceful nation, politically, for over 200 years and militarily just below that figure. How would we react to the idiotic policies of today if we had a culture of rebellious uproar like they have in France for example? Which number in order is the current French republic? Is it the sixth, seventh or eighth republic? Someone once said that every nation needs a revolution every 20 years, and I'm starting to believe it to be true.

A feeble minded solution perhaps: The police, the firemen and the doctors, together with many other professions all have vocational oriented educatons, where the number of graduated in a sense are related to the number of job opportunities on the market. Why should not other schools have the same? I say, let all the differant unions take control of schools, let them predict the future and its need for differant types of professions, and let the state supervise the unions. It's not as if the unions have that much on their plate anyway.

How is the situation in the states?

hey I'm drunk!

2006-04-04T22:48:00.000+02:00

Never post when drunk, a voice inside my head suspiciously says. Well sorry, I can't help it.

Even though I previously written that I lack motivation to write, don't think I've just gotten drunk to gain some. I haven't. I am drunk, but not for that reason, I'm only seizing the moment. (therefore please excuse any mispellings). I have, however, come up with at least three possible topics to write about during the evening. I've written them down analogously...

I am drunk because it was the opening night for the league in which the team of my heart plays in (see link to the right), we won, 4-2, and I'm happy. There you go... it's a perfectly legal reason.

I don't know how you all are as drunk (please tell me) but I'm pretty much sane through out. Sane in the sense that I don't act out like a total idiot. the simple effect of alcohol on me is that the sledge hammer it produces, without pardon, crumbles the defensive walls I've built fifteen meters high around myself. All of a sudden I have options I've never thought of and the answers to all sort of problems seem clearly enough to taste, or kick.

The question I asked my self is which part of me is what can I learn from a Niklas under the influence and can I perhaps find the walls that the alcohol with such efficiency broke down. If I could find them sober, what would I be able to do then?

It's tomorrow morning now and I want to erase the whole post...

perception

2006-04-03T16:35:00.000+02:00

It's hard thing sometimes, inspiration. When I started this blog I was full of topics and items I wanted to write about. Now I feel drained.

I guess I ain't perceptive enough. I mean you have to have ground to stand on, some soil in which you can plant your seeds of thought. My land is barren and I need to reach high ground to see where the clouds gather.

And here I stand, the wind is cold, the sun is pale and nothing can be seen on the horizon. I do however see a vague path leading southward and a sign pointing in the same direction at the foot of the hill. I climb down.

The sign reads: Your future, tread it eagerly.

The path doesn't seem to lead anywhere and as I walk, and as I walk I realize that I really need that high ground to distinctly see the path. I don't even now if I'm still following it. Disoriented and disillusioned I lay down on the scorched ground and watch the few scattered clouds that I do see. They don't seem to blow in the same direction.

And I start to dream...

Seasoning...

2006-03-28T14:58:00.000+02:00

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

2006-03-26T21:30:00.000+02:00

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...

2006-03-21T00:43:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-17T21:19:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-15T02:57:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-03-14T14:24:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-13T13:20:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-11T00:25:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-09T02:10:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-03-07T16:18:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-05T18:54:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-04T22:05:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-03T11:36:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-02T15:52:00.000+01:00

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

2006-03-02T01:48:00.000+01:00

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.)

Weird and great Olympics

2006-02-28T20:32:00.000+01:00

The olympic games are over and I'm truly sad. The olympics brought me a fyzzy and cozy feeling when I was at home. For the first time since, well, since the summer olympics I could have the TV on without getting annoyed by the sound of it. I rarely watch the TV, but the commentators of the olympics brought me in their own fasion a head up with their raised voices when something worth watching happened. Now two weeks after the games have begun and ended, I miss them.

These olympics was the best olympics ever, for me, for the swedish athletes and for sweden. We took a total number of 14 medals, 7 gold, 2 silver and 5 bronze and ended 6th in the medal race, and we topped it off with a gold medal in Hockey. GOLD in hockey!!!

Even though I know that Sweden is a major country when it comes to hockey I can't undertand why Canada and the US so often fail to perform, especially the US. Canada and the US share the NHL, a leauge that draws all the great players of the world to it. The major part of players in the league are however North-Americans. If we lined those players together, I feel I could almost blind folded pick and choose a team that would out perform the US team of the 2006 winter olympics... Strange isn't?

sailing with english?

2006-02-27T22:13:00.000+01:00

I'm having a hard time with a thought that's growing, growing by each cloud of hope. Hope, that I will one day be a sailor, be a part of a crew of a frigate, brig or any other sailing ship of the 17th, 18th or 19th century. While I can't be a part of the crew of the Götheborg East Indiaman going to Canton as we speak (actually she is in Cape Town right now), I possibly can some day be a a part of the brig Stockholm which should be ready to sail late august this year. I've signed up as a member...

Ohh well

And now over to something completely different

I think I write better in English than I do in swedish, but I can't figure out why. It has something to do with the way I have to think... or the way... hmm
Perhaps it's the fact that I have to be creative on several layers at once. I know that when reading scientific papers or books I prefer reading in english. I instantly get really bored when reading such books in swedish. Reading in English is just more fun.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothign against swedish. It's me, it's my nationality, it's home. Reading fiction is more enjoyable to be in swedish for instance.

I've always been fascinated with english and the vastness of its vocabulary. When looking in Synonymer.se I find that there almost always is 4 to 5 more synonyms per word than there is in swedish. I understand that English is the second or third largest language in the world and it there for should have more words (hmm I thought that there would be some logic in there, but I can't find it now). I will hovever never learn as much english as I would like to, nor be as fluent as I would like to. I will always make those silly errors as the one I just did with hovever. What I really can't figure out is why I find English more fascinating than swedish? It's not just the amount of words, nor the simplicity of the grammar (believe me, it's simple compared with other languages)

Perhaps it's just the fact that it's a key that works in every corner of the world.
Perhaps it's the fact that the language is the result of the british empire having been and later the US beeing the melting pot of the world for centuaries.
Perhaps it's just the simple fact that it's one of those few thing I'm pretty good at... I guess that's it.

Now I'm hoping for some recognition ; )

The love for the sea

2006-02-25T17:53:00.000+01:00

Aubrey/Maturin flash movie

I was yet again supposed to write about blogging or rather blogger. I can't really decide which theme this blog should have, but since blogger does not support chategories I really don't have much choice than to make several blogs and link to them from this blog (perhaps that's their buissness plan; To make their customers produce more and more blogs which reflect their position in the blogosphere) . But I don't want to do that because I can't maintain them all with a post per day (I can't even do that on this blog), and that's what you have to do to keep the precious few that returns to this blogs and reads what I have to say. So what should I do? I could move... hmm

What's this got to do with the flash movie above? Nothing. But since I managed to talk some about blogging I am free now to talk about something else.

I have always been absurdly fascinated by 16th, 17th and 18th century maritime life and above all ships. It have something to do with my love for the sea, and the eternity it reveals to me. You are totaly at the mercy of nature when you are rocking away on a sailboat. Motorboats defiles that feeling because you, in such a boat, in some way subdues nature.

But, even though I on my mother side sort of have the sea in my blood, I haven't done much to take me out to sea. I did my military service in the swedish marine on an gunship, but that's pretty much it. It's through movies, books and perhaps most importantly videogames I have fueled this love. I remember the first game that, in an awesome way, made me dream about the Spanish Main and the life of a seaman. Sid Meier's Pirates! totaly swept me away. It's the best game that's ever been made in my opinion. The graphic was awsome. Believe me it was. The gameplay fantastic with so many differant levels and aspects. Roleplaying, action, history, excitment and sailing. The remake last year is tarred with the same brush, with the exception that the brush is finer and the tar thicker. Hopefully the MMORPG Pirates of the Burning Sea will quench some of this love.

I still haven't told you about the flash movie above.... well the book and the series it's based upon has everything to do about what I've talked about....

PS... the titel for the movie is hilarious. The romantic dream I thought would be the titel for this post is the dream of the sea. : )

Realisation

2006-02-24T01:44:00.000+01:00

Realisation, that what we call something that is on sale in sweden, or rea for short. And, that's what we have right now, forget about the big "rea" between christmas and New Years, the "rea" we have now is the one which counts. I'm of course talking about the national booksale. You're like a child in a candy or a toystore when you enter a bookstore in these days. But, even though you could (read: hope you could) and would like to buy everything on the shelves and on on the tables, you can't. For two reasons. One; Even though it's cheap as cheap can get (I really tried to use a more illustrative phrase, but couldn't think of one) it still burns a big hole in your pocket (I don't use a wallet) after five or six books. And that's the amount I bought. Second, buying several books at the same time really makes you think if it was worth it on the way home (my point: it's heavy). Nothing, however, nothing makes you as glad as finaly getting home and placing those books in the bookshelf.

Note to my self: I've found out that I have long ago disbanded my principle to only have books I've actually read in my bookshelfs. Don't worry I read them eventually.

So what did I get?

Jac the Clown by Hjalmar Bergman
Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary (I had no idea that a Saturday night Special was a small cheap gun bought illigaly and used by criminals)
Gentlemen by Klas Östergren (coudn't find a decent link, but found out that it may be translated into english soon)
The Highway men of the Sea by Robert Hermansson
Hell - Death and the eternal penances in western worlds christian tradition - by Bengt Ankarloo

(they're all in swedish accept of course the dictionary)

I also bought a photography book of native-american chiefs and soldiers during the "wild-west" era and gave it to a friend as a birthday present.

I can also add that when I got home I found a letter from school telling me that I had to pay the school library 1070:- for a book I had long ago forgotten. (that's aprox: 100$) yikes! However, I did find the book after a long search and can now return it, which will remarkably lower my fine to 200:-, phew.

I'll think that this fine tells me to head out another day this week and buy more books so that I won't have to go to the library anymore.

This post wasn't supposed to be about the booksale, damn it. It was supposed to be about blogging. Next time it will.

Other blogs about bokrean:

Mitt liv som Anna

Brygubben

Alexandra en gång till

When looking if anybody was writing about the booksale in english I, to my horror, found out that the booksale in sweden wasn't that exclusive to sweden. Damn, it was one of those things that made me proud. Hmm I have to do some research about this.

The joy of the olympics

2006-02-23T01:51:00.000+01:00

On februari the 13th I was thrilled about the olympics and loved every moment about it and I still do. I haven't had these weird and silly smiles together with these small and silly tears in the corner of my eyes, lying on the sofa, for... I don't know how long. I saw the Canadian girl, Chandra Crawford, who won the women's cross country sprint final, and the joy and utter happiness she displayed on the podium. Her smile I couldn't beat, but I wasn't far from it. I also, in my earlier post, hoped for some medals. And, they've come. They have almost rained upon me and my fellow swedes. And, what's even more rewarding is that we are ahead (to this date) of Norway (counting the number of gold medals, as they do in the olympics and not the total amount of medals). I've just hated the fact that Norway always wins more... hrrrm ... gold medals than sweden does (in the winter olympics). Now we have two more gold medals than Norway does.

I only have one dissapoinment... The swedish women curling team intentionally played badly to keep them from playing the Canadian team in the semi-final. They played the norweigan team instead and won yesterday with 5 to 4. I hate that sort of "tactics", and don't really believe the speculation that Team Sweden Hockey (men) did the same against slovakia the day before yesterday to be able to play Switzerland instead of some other much more skilled nation. However, if they did loose that game intentionally, it's just as bad.

This was my the-winter-olympics-2006-in-turin-is-almost-at-its-end sum up. I will make a proper one when it has actually ended.

Abstract

2006-02-20T14:55:00.000+01:00

So I've finished with my essay about the power of blogging, but since I've written it in swedish it wouldn't be that much of use if you weren't can't understand swedish. I will however link to it as soon as one of the two server options I have work so that I can upload it. The abstract to the essay is however in english as it should be and that part is cut and pasted below.

Abstract
While the blog phenomenon has generated such a huge following it has also been attributed great importance and significance as a powerful voice in the society separate from traditional media. Traditional media have, however, very much taken this new phenomenon into their arms and made it their own. The most powerful and influential blogs are often blogs by recognized journalists, scholars or otherwise expert people who already have a voice. These blogs has pretty much sealed their position in the blogosphere since minor blogs almost always have to go through them to get a readership. The minor blogs, however, do have a place in the sphere of good importance. The role of the minor blogs is to ventilate, elaborate and contribute to the ongoing discussion about a topic. Minor blogs can also publish fresh news, scoops, but for that to happen the blogger most often have to have some know-how about the subject. Blogs are therefore not a democratic revolution in the media sphere as often credited, but it’s a revolution nonetheless. The revolution lies in the, through links, easy access of detailed and elaborated comments on news.

Women's hockey rules

2006-02-17T22:06:00.000+01:00

What a game, what a great fight! I'm talking of course about the semi-final between Sweden and USA this evening in the olympic games in Turin. The game had it all. Tension, great goals, over time, penelty shoot out and spirit... ohh the spirit. It was the spirit that won the game for Sweden. They wanted the victory more than Team USA did.

But, it's not this fenomenal success of the swedish team that makes me write this post, even though it sure deserves all the words in the world. I'm actually writing this because I'm upset. I can't understand why the rules in women's hockey are what they are. Have they been written by men or women? Why shouldn't women's hockey be as hard and tough as men's hockey? In women's hockey NO body check is allowed. I can't understand that. Are women that more frail than men? It's not men they meet in the rink, it's other women. This rule damages the game more than it helps it. It lessens it's attractiveness and it's flow. You can see that the women really wants to follow through with their checking, and when they do they're instantly shown to the penelty box, no matter how puny the body-check was. The need for visors is obvious in hockey and it's the men who are stupid enough not to wear them.

There is only one reason I can find why the rules in woman's hockey are what they are. What I'm getting at is that maybe there isn't enough women players in a town or country, except in Canada and perhaps the US, to get a full team with strong and big players. Therefore there is a great difference between the players when it comes to sizes. If a big (1.80 m) and strong player body checks a small (1.60 m) and not so strong player the result could be very ugly.

But on the other hand, those differences could also apply to men's hockey. So what is the reason behind this gentler version of hockey?

Other blogs on the game and on the rules:

gunnerswebblog.blogspot.com
gina1978
mirtle.blogspot.com

The falling soldier is real!

2006-02-16T18:26:00.000+01:00

Robert Capa is one of my favourite photographers of all time. And since I wrote a small poem once (published here) about a photo he'd taken of a captured german soldier, although it's not the one displayed in my other blog.

I've just read an article that debunks all the rumours about the most famous photo of the spanish Civil War, The Falling Soldier, beeing fake. Under the assumption that since arranging photoshoots is or at least has been very common among war correspondants, war photographers and illustrators, this photo had to be fake. Richard Whelan, who also has written a biography about Robert Capa, has proved them all wrong.

In his article, Proving that Robert Capa's "falling Soldier" is genuine: A detective story, he investigates, checks and debunks the accounts of thos who have said that Capa couldn't have been at the spot at that time, or even those who said that Capa himself have said that the photo was arranged. The accounts had often confused Capa with either someone else or placed the situation seperatly on differant occasions.

I must say that I didn't know what to think about the photo before. I think it's a great photo and it looks so real. There is just something about the photo... hmm perhaps I should show it... that
makes me believe it. But I guessed it could have been a fake. What's the odds of anyone taking such a snapshot, at that time at that single moment the object of the photo get's shot. It's even more incredible when you know that this person, who Richard Whelan has identified as one Fredrico Borrell Garciá, was the only one who fell during this battle. However, with the identification of the fallen, Whelan proved that this person actually did fell during the civilwar, at that time and at that place.

Robert Capa is not without guilt or blame though, the shoot was in some way arranged. Apperently Capa met this patrol of soldier during a quiet moment in that sector during the battle of Cerro Muriano, and they were willing to pose for him. They ran needlessly into cover and shot into the thin air. This shooting did however attract the enemy who shot back using a machinegun. The result was one man dead and Capa took the picture.

I believe that Capa who died during battle in Korea wished he'd never taken that photo, if only it would mean that Borrell would live.

ahh the good old pillowfight

2006-02-15T18:43:00.000+01:00

Wow, what an event! I sure would like to have been there. Pillowfighting was the main fighting me and my brother did when we were young. Not that we fight any differantly now, eeh we don't fight any more, enough said......... we fight verbaly.

The event I'm talking about is a huge yearly pillowfight in San Francisco yesterday, valentine's day. Isn't that fun?

But wouldn't this be an option for the huligans arounf the globe? What if they who would like, after every match, fight a big pillowfight either on the pitch, in the central sqare of the town or just outside the stadium? I would join, hell I would have two pillows.

But it's not all that safe. During my fights with my brother I got smacked arounf pretty hard. After a while the down and the feathers would slosh together and make the pillow really really hard. And what about the feathers? Those pointy little buggers can stick through the pillow and probably scratch pretty damn much. But in the end, it would just be good fun and those small bruises you could get would be nothing compared to injuries well worth a trip to bandageland.

Thanks once again to My Markup.net for the news

Pen and Paper

2006-02-15T03:15:00.000+01:00

So, I've decided to make another blog. Why? Isn't that just extra work? I guess it is. But, I can't see me commenting blogs, blogging, news, funny stuff on the web, soccer, modelmaking, sailing, skating, sail skating, a model of a sail skater, and then post a poem in the middle of it. It just doesn't make any sense. So I decided to make a more "high" culture blog, even though I hate everything about "high culture", or in any case just the idea of the same. In this blog I will post poems, in both swedish and translated into english..... gah!

My index finger is situated just 5 mm above the backslash and my brain is in turmoil. Should I actually tell people I regulary meet that I on occasion write poems? Of course I should, you've been through this before. You've showed people your stuff before. Allright It will bear or break as we say in swedish.

Now, where was I?

!Hag.....hsilgne onti detalsnart translated into english, and other kind of writings I have done and, of course, will do. All this writing in blogs have really fueled my urge to write again. And in this sense the blogs are a true powerful tool, for me at least. But, it's also a bit of an experiment. Which of my two blogs will become most linked to? Alas, I have no expectation of beeing ever linked to.

If you would like to bet on this, please do. Don't just expect to get a fast return. I however believe that my cultural blog (Rally Here) will be the one getting the most backlinks (blogger doesn't support backtracks) in the end. The first backlink I'll get will be on this blog, I hope. That's the plan anyway.

I just remembered that I could link to myself... but that wouldn't, in these olympic times, be a sport. Would it?

Damn! damn, I really am a dimwhit sometimes. I didn't realise that I've actually already made links to Rally Here, and look I did it again. OR did I? Is a link to an entire blog and not just a post count as a backtrack/backlink?

Is there a way to tell how many link to your blog (not linking to a specific post)?

Perhaps I can answer my question...

2006-02-14T03:48:00.000+01:00

Thanks to this post at the swedish blog My Markup.net I perhaps have found a way to answer my original question if blogs could be a powerfull medium (see related post). The New York magazine New York has published a rather long article about blogging and the few blogs that actually make money off it.

Apperantly there is a curve that is applicible to the phenomenon. It's called the "power-law distribution". The curve is used in several other occasions, like for example describing the distribution of wealth in the world. The essence in the curve is that very few has all the wealth while the enormously huge majority has very little, and this also applies to the blogsphere.

The reason for all this (and I'm not really trying to explain why the world spins like it does) is that, as the writer of the article in the magazine so conspicuously points out, for example, movie producers pick actors that other movie producers already picked (there is just a few actors/actresses who show up in movie after movie, while there is a huge number getting hired from time to time, mostly never). The blogosphere is apperently devided into a A, B and C list, where the A-class is those blogs that have a huge following, the B-class have a good amount of daily readers and finaly the C-class who floats like bottle posts in the Pacific. The break a C-class blog needs is to have is to be linked to by an A-class or even a B-class blog. And that is a far fetched hope to cling to.

For me this article has possibly provided me with some research material to add to my essay.

The olympics gives me the goosebumps...

2006-02-13T23:59:00.000+01:00

Oh my! I just love the olympics. Even though I in general only stand one sport (soccer) I find myself mesmerized by it. Any sport presented at the TV is exciting, even though there are no Swedish participants. Like tonight, I started watching the Pair figure skating final, and it was awsome. I normaly argue that figure skating isn't a sport, that it's more a performance. It didn't matter how hard or how well what they do is, it's an act.

But, tonight I saw the sportmanship in it. The Chinese couple Zhang Hao and Zhang Dan proved to me that you really have to be an athlete to figure skate. The first throw jump this couple tried to do, had never been done before. A quadruple Salchow. The girl fell though, and she fell really hard. Everyone in the audience, both on the stands and behind the TV, surely thought that their routine was over, and that the girl was off to the hospital. But after a couple of minutes she went back on the ice, tried a few simple moves and a small jump and they continued from where they ended. And what a continueance it was! They finished a very very technical routine at such a class they came in second place. They won the silver medal.

Astonishing...

Now, if we could only get some medals...

And here is a pretty funny blog

Can't answer my question!

2006-02-12T14:18:00.000+01:00

I've finaly figured out something about my question about blogging. My question is if blogs could be a powerful media, a media that has impact on the political, cultural or commercial sphere of society. What I figured out is that I actually can't answer the question. The only thing I can make clear is that certain blogs have or have in past made an impact or a difference. And I can show you how and why these blogs was or is powerful. However, I can't tell or show you that blogs are a powerful medium without making a statistical study over the amount of powerful blogs and compare it with the not so powerful amount. It's calculated that there is about 10 million blogs out there, How many make an impact? A couple of hundreds or thousands? Isn't this comparison signifacnt? Does one powerful blog make blogging powerful?

Trackmania Nations

2006-02-11T00:36:00.000+01:00

A very fun little racegame which is free to download. Ehh perhaps it isn't that small, it's actually rather big, but very fun. I my self have played it since it came out, since I use to play Trackmania Sunrise. This is Trackmania Nations.

You can download custom tracks from the game's main source for tracks to download, http://nations.tm-exchange.com. The game is not as fun as Sunrise, but is a very light game to play for a brief pause in your daily struggle... uhh.

Race away.

ROTFLMAO!!!!

2006-02-10T00:17:00.000+01:00

I'm laughing my ass off reading or what should I say... viewing this blog. It's the most funny thing I've ever seen...well since I started reading blogs and blogging myself. Should this blog be an example that blogs are truly powerful or is it proof that it isn't?

I don't really care.... I do, but this blog made laugh so hard that it doesn't matter. Read and enjoy...or what you now do at this blog.

Forget the scenery in MMORPGs...

2006-02-09T17:17:00.000+01:00

Take a look at these photos taken in China. They are absolutly breathtaking. Wanna go now!

Tonight it's time...

2006-02-09T15:19:00.000+01:00

Hammarby is to meat FC Midtjylland tonight at SAS Arena. I wonder how Bajen will hold up after the long camp they've been to in the States. I've very sorry that Marteinsson isn't available for play. I'm pretty damn nervous.

And it didn't go that well. The danes beat Bajen with 4 to 1. The last two goals were apparently mistakes made by Bajen's goalie Ante Covic but I could be mistaken since I can only go by the live report posted at Hammarby Fotbolls hemsida as a source. I guess and I hope that the failure tonight was caused by the long training camp in Los Angeles the past two weeks. I'm eagerly waiting on a more thorough report tomorrow.

I'm sad tonight

The mistakes made were the teams mistakes. The rebounds made by Ante was not his fault. Well on sunday it's time for another game. Start IK is up. The game is played in Sodertalje due to the horrible condition of the pitch at Soderstadion.

Gah!

2006-02-09T12:53:00.000+01:00

Last night I was to publish my report on my schools server. The late hour however resulted in me publishing my CV, to the the big amusement of my friends in class.

About Jill Walker end her lecture at Sodertorns University College and her definition of blogging

2006-02-08T19:34:00.000+01:00

About Jill Walker end her lecture at Sodertorns University College and her definition of blogging

A blog is a personal website which through informal and personal posts updates the blog on a frequent basis. The blog should also include links to other blogs and websites of interest to the owner of the blog. The blog should also be user friendly allowing readers to follow conversations between blogs through links.

The generalisation of the fenomenon blogging in Walkers definition makes me ask if there isn't a single aspect of blogging which differentiate it from a frequently updated personal website with links to other personal websites? Shouldn't be a mentioning of the technologies made visible and available through blogging?

2006-02-07T16:10:00.000+01:00

The football club of my heart hasn't yet signed any new players of weight, and I'm starting to get tired of it. We need an established and seasoned multirole midfielder, a signing we could be proud of and one who could take the place of Micke Andersson. I don't know what the problem is. We have the money and the club is one of the most attractive in the league. Arrgh. I wonder what the problem is?

Tilt-shift is the shit

2006-02-07T02:47:00.000+01:00

Very cool photos of places and people in tokyo made to look like miniture models. These photos are real photos of real places and real people. Can't stop viewing them.

Tilt-shift

2006-02-06T20:32:00.000+01:00

You might find it very strange that I critise blogging within a blog. I am a hypocrite in that sense, I agree. I'm very much open to a change from loathing everything about blogging to accepting (I think I'm there now) and perhaps later loving blogging. I'm just trying to understand... what's the ruckus?

For my part, perhaps in the future I will let my self get swallowed by it. If it would let me.

Read another article about the wonder of blogging

2006-02-06T12:56:00.000+01:00

The article:The blogging revolution is written by a Andrew Sullivan. Andrew Sullivan is a well known journalist (The New Republic, and New York Times) who had an audience even before he started blogging. With that audience he allready had a network to operate within, an network that spread the word about his blogg from the time go. As he says in the article: "And I worked hard at the blog for months for free. But the upshot is that I'm now reaching almost a quarter of a million readers a month a making a profit".

Sullivan critises newspapers and magazines and suggests that with blogging there won't be any use of newspapers or magazines. Well known bloggers (because you have to have a decent amount of readers to make a profit) don't need the middle hand that they feel newspapers and such are.

Well I ask, what is the essence of newspapers? Why did newspapers evolve? Could it be perhaps to collect news? Collect thoughts and ideas and present them to the public? Blogs often just deals with one topic or more often only one authors view about one topic (or more). How are we as readers to be able to get a decent coverage of local, national and international events by searching the many blogs out there? There will always be a need for newspapers and such.

Perhaps I as a new blogger (yuk...perhaps it's just the word i despise) haven't yet understood the power of the medium or the technologies that make it powerfull. But I can't see how anyone should ever abandon the traditional media (with it's power to collect and present news) to instead search and read bloggers reports and views of events or topics.

2006-02-02T15:56:00.000+01:00

There is this abandoned old factory/industrial house in an industrial area north of Stockholm called Albano. Me and three of my friend went there to film it before it either got demolished or turned into something else. We did some research on the facility and found out that an organisation had bought the property who plan to restore it and turn it into a wagon and coach museum.

Watch the Video

rss feed

2006-02-02T15:08:00.000+01:00

Found a great and funny thingie for all those RSS freaks

This is as futuristic as it comes

2006-02-02T14:22:00.000+01:00

I've just published a short clip showing me throwing some rocks at a really old rural shack. I felt somewhat ashamed doing so, but what the hell don't you do for the camera.

Arrrgh

2006-02-02T13:46:00.000+01:00

Watch the Video

Bloggen en maktfaktor?

2006-01-27T22:34:00.000+01:00

bloggen maktfaktor?

Är bloggen en maktfaktor? Ja, naturligtvis är den det, men på vilket sätt? Vad i bloggen är det som har en sådan makt? Jag ska försöka visa att bloggen egentligen helt enkelt endast är en utveckling på alla de personliga sidor som alla skulle ha vid internets begynnelse. Och genom att bloggen är ett verktyg för alla av alla, kommer den i lika mycket grad vara en maktfaktor som den kommer icke vara det.

Det kommer dyka upp strategier för att manipulera bloggandet och de personer bakom en blogg som redan har makt kommer också vara de som kan utöva denna makt, via sin blogg.

Är bloggen en maktfaktor?

2006-01-26T19:01:00.000+01:00

Min första blogg! Fast, egentligen min andra, då den första försvann på något...hmm... onaturligt sätt.