Its that kind of day.......and it also seems to have made me go ginger. 

At last the rain clouds seem to have gone and the constant drizzle, mist and occaisonal deluge has been replaced by blue skies and sunshine. Lovely.

The Coen Brothers version of the Lady Killers has been released over here, so I think thats next on the list to see. K can't be convinced to go and see Dawn of the Dead, which is fair enough and has the plus that she does not witness me wetting myself in fear and trying to climb under the seat. Be interesting to see what the coen brothers have done with this movie - can Tom Hanks et al replace Sellers and Guiness - according to my recently found cast notes the original movie starred a young Frankie Howerd (oooer, missus).

Music: Apocalytica. Strangely my winamp player seems select the Andrews Sisters and the Beastie Boys an awful lot out of some 300 odd tracks when on a supposedly random setting - odd, well, its good to have varied taste.
State of mind: pressured, it needs to thunder.
Interesting: For though of you who are metallica fans (you know who you are) this may be of some interest Metallica - the Movie

Just back from the cutter. Spent the last hour with an oral hygienist which, under any other circumstances would be opportunity for some low brow smutty humour. However, given that I can use the words gore, blood and pain to adequately describe the eternity of cleaning, picking and general abrasive tooth action I've just experienced I'm in no mood to descend to such frivolity. Yeah, and the really good news is that I'm going back at 1300 to finish off the top set - well done that man for the cancelation. I was hoping for a few weeks to let my bleeding gums recover. The moral is, of course, don't wait 5 years before you go back to the dentist and don't brush your teeth like a murderer scrubs blood out of the carpet. Thankfully I still appear to have no cavities but the build up of titanium reinforced cement was extreme, to say the least. The pain was not actually too bad, but the amount of water, blood and pieces of 3 year old burger caused me, at one point, to spectaclarly choke leading to a coughing fit and random arm flailing - humilating? You bet.

Assuming I don't need a blood transfusion after the next bout, and that my mouth enables me to me to interact normally I'll be working again as from tommorow. Which is nice, two days in the apartment is about as much as I can take these days.


Weather: Grey, overcast and 12 degrees.
Music: none.
Latest desire: Rollerblades.
Inconsequential observation: Swedish midsommer, which we celebrated on friday, involved - like most Swedish festivals - extreme amounts of food and drinking, over a two day period. There was also dancing and singing. Similar, in fact, to Christmas and Easter. This, I believe, further supports my theory that Swedes are in fact hobbits.
Intriguing website name which sadly is not as worrying as you first might thinkCorpses For Sale

'may monkeys infest your foreign parts' muttered the old man as I brushed past him on the sidewalk. I paid little attention to his half mumbled curse until, much later, a small scruffy body pushed its way past my plastic belt and trouser top and, pausing briefly to sniff the air, knuckled away with hoots of glee. This now happens on a regular basis.

Its raining, its thundering and outside all is damp. I am dry inside, well not literally, otherwise my metabolism would grind to a sudden dusty halt but you know what I mean.
No work today, meeting in Denmark in a few days time so I've been doing some personal administration stuff - I was just about to send off my tax return (the first one I've ever done on time) but decided to avoid getting soaked to the skin so decided a blog a little.

Weather: Raining and thundering. 15 degrees C
Music: 5,6,7,8's and a little bit of Apocalytica...amongst others.

Recent books: Obviously Erikson, but apart from that.....I revisited V for Vendetta by Allan Moore, most excellent and even though it was written in the late '80s it still feels important. Finished the penultimate book in the 'Gap' series, just when I was getting tired of this series it notched up a gear, very exciting. Also, and very much recommended, is 'The curious incident incident of the dog in the night time' by Mark Haddon. Bloody great.

blatently strange (and Swedish)
Ja Da

Back again, browner and wiser. (the browness from basking in the radioactive sleet of the nearest celestial nuclear furnace (as Steven Baxter would say) and wiser from, well, just another 14 days of existance).
This is just a quick note to get my bloging muscles back into action, in the mean time heres a quick link to an old Erikson fan site....
Steven Erikson Fan-Page...yeah, I know I've waxed lyrical (what does that really mean? Curious mental images) about this guys books but really, they are the best fantasy I have read in a long time. A few comments are needed to put this into perspective, they are better than the dreadful dragonlance rubbish (don't even go there), superior to the Dragonbone chair bollocks, more exciting than the dreadful lament of the leper (you know who you are, unbeliever), and well, simply awesome. Yeah, I could mention the Wishsong of Shannara series, the Magican series, wagon wheels of time etc but people will start getting offended. Actually, I could go on here for a while and show off the rather dubious fact that I've spent an awful lot of my life reading quite simply terrible books. I could mention perhaps, Piers Anthony, who wrote a number of series, some good and bad, but I always had my doubts about the curious sexual undertones. When he produced a book called, I kid you not, 'the colour of her panties', I gave up. There is, of course, good stuff out there but this guy, as you may of guessed, has really got me gripped.
Read Eriksons books - message ends.

On a completely different note my friends 4 day old baby fell asleep in my arms today, quite incredible to hold an entire human being so easily and strangely relaxing.

so. A quick break in the holiday before we skip to the summer house for the remainder of the week. Its swedish week this week, me and K are conversing only in swedish with the exception of English Hour, where we can fit in all the angst, wit and repartee that my Swedish fails to accomodate.

So, Rhodos, the food, the 6 hour battle with the nocturnal blood suckers, the fantastic swimming and the cool scenary. More to follow.

The bastards in Malmö stad (city council) have cut the trees down outside our apartment - gits. I assume it was them, rather than a sudden and wholly unprecedented plague of beavers.

Recommended books: Collected short stories of Neil Gaimen, Smoke and Mirrors, as well as the comic book, by the same author, The Sandman. Jolly good. Currently ploughing through the latest book by Steven Erikson, Midnight Tides, once more with the rampant hacking and slaying but with a previously only hinted at rich vein of black humour.



Keep on eye on this, the final frontier awaits...
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Countdown to private space trip

I promised this months ago, the best Swedish advert (to my mind), click on Polly-Sången (the Polly Song)
Polly - Karaokemaskin

so you don't need to come here for a few weeks as I'm buggering off on holiday - for the next week me and K will be investigating the cheese mines of Rhodes and then, for the second week, collecting tennis players sweatbands in Båstad - charmed, I'm sure.

In actual fact, I've now been in Sweden for exactly 4 months, so heres some highlights.

1. The Potato Day in Båstad, no not an episode of Father Ted but the annual potato event in a small coastal village in sweden. Lots of potatoes, lots of swedes.
2. Watching tv a few weeks ago I stumbled across a variety show style program - part of this was an open mike spot. I saw possibly one of the saddest pieces of tv ever. An old wrinkled man came on to the stage clutching chains, a plate and a trumpet, he smashed said plate on his head (cutting himself quite badly in the process), then wrapped himself in the chains, and then attempted to do a handstand. This failed miserably, sending him sprawling across the stage whereupon he blew a single pitiful note on the trumpet before hobbling off stage. Odd.
3. The lanquage thing. Mistakes to date, saying loudly (in Swedish) 'I think I might have pissing icecream', 'I'll just go and fart', and numerous mistaken references to the past, future, and quite possibly the fourth dimension.
4. Th job. Pleased with this, and seem to be going well. I've managed to offend latvians by calling them lithuanians, and estonians by saying their conference was a summer school, but no major international incidents yet.
5. Accent (Language thing part II)-my accent seems to change on a daily basis as I attempt to learn the Swedish vowel sounds, sometimes I seem to sound like a strange american person other days simply like a muppet.

and theres probably more - rereading this list I realise these are not actually highlights (there are thankfully, more rich and rewarding events occuring)but I lack the stamina to go into details this evening. I'm off the Rhodes horribly early tommorow morning, I still have to make pancakes, pack, and get to bed. Speaking of which, a brand new bed which is blooming huge - IKEAS's flagship bed no less, fantastic. I assembled it today, an early attempt was aborted last night by the downstairs neighbour banging on the ceiling as I toiled away with a hammer, cursing those IKEA sweatshop workers with their nimble fingers and penchant for soft metal which breaks, folds, and threads. Last nights other highlight was an extremely hot curry, possibly one of the hottest I have ever consumed whose after shocks are still causing some tremors now.

be good y'all. Don't have sex with animals, make sure you wash your hands after using the toilet and never attempt home surgery.

Your husband has gone Mrs Brown, I am X1-11, the exterminator.

oh, as you asked so nicely - this site, and others like it, have become somewhat of an interest......
Infiltration

Sorry sorry sorry - the neglection shows, moss grows over the blog and small animals ferret in the dirt, mushrooms grow and the flowers have not been watered. I've been working my curvy yellow butt off (to quote the great Homer J Simpson) and staring at a PC in the evenings loses it charm somewhat. This will be sorted, but this week has been kinda crazy, ya?

Anyway. I'll post again before the weekend when I'm being forced to Rhodes for a week - tough life.

if i even thought you said the word 'muggle', I'd shove the snitch far far up your cauldron.

and again with the html not working.

Finally the school outside our flat has got around to their leaving ceremony, this means loads of flash motors, trucks and wagons festooned with balloons and branches full of kids wearing sailor hats and posh clothes. Talking to my work colleagues today, apparently the game is to have the best vehicle to get you to the ball from the school - E said the girl who won in her year used an elephant!

The buses are very clean here, and they have earphone sockets so you can listen to the radio, nice.

weather: blue and nice
music: Santa Esmeralda, Don't let me be misunderstood.


I spent a fairly listless 30 minutes of surfing before I unearthed this gemROCKETBELT

and a little bit of a close up of venus
The Transit of Venus June 8. 2004

Holy cosmic planetoids! This has happened only six times since the invention of telescopes apparently.......
The Transit of Venus June 8. 2004

So back for a little sniff.

Muscle cars and harleys. The streets are full of them, on my way to meet K earlier the streets reverberated to the roar of a mustang, a few harleys and numerous Japanese customs. The interesting thing is that there are no real rusty wrecks driving around, and I've seen loads of old motorbikes in really good condition. The thing is, you absolutely cannot ride your bike, or drive your classic car, during the winter - remember it gets to -10 here no problems and snow tyres are required by law - so two wheel fun is just not going to happen. Thus it is pretty hard to take your bike out in really bad weather, and they don't salt the roads, so bikes tend to stay in pretty good nick. Plus, theres a scandinavian obssession with big engined vehicles, particularly the two wheeled flavour. Remember, the meanest hells angels outside of the US are in Sweden and Denmark - I kid you not. Plus we've got Bandidos and numerous other gangs roaming around.


Check this out - truly did something good come from the abortions which were the Matrix II and IIIMatrix Ping Pong - Bullet Time

The duck, a hat and a pebble.

yeah, I'm probably obcessing a little bit but I found this site during one of my electronic forays - not bad at allMedlinePlus: Shoulder Injuries and Disorders though the calm all american voice gets on your teats a little bit.

More to follow, off to meet K from work. Finished at about 1600 today myself, busy day getting the newsletter service sorted out and learning a new software package, I like my job-interesting work, they pay me and I get free bananas.

After yesterdays self serving maudlin rant back to the normal bollocks......indulged myself with a few DVD-skivors last night, K was out with her school group. Thus, I watched the last two episodes of band of brothers and then Bad Boys II, which had, for my money, one of the best car chases I've seen in a long time..the end of the movie was a bit strange, ending as it did in a full on invasion of Cuba and finally seeking the sanctuary of Guantanomo bay, rather ironic I thought.........Band of Brothers has been a bit of a trek for me but finally got through all the series, I actually read the book years ago and was pretty impressed with the series, I really should not watch stuff like that though, Saving Private Ryan gave me nightmares for ages.....sleep patterns seem to have recovered after fridays onslaught, slept in this morning and did not even wake at 5 when K went off to do a story for the newspaper. Actually going back to the Second World War, I note with some interest all the activity on the bbc web site regarding D Day, while surfing through the various sites I found the interactive SMS mobile phone game where you take the role of an SOE agent, this has - I feel - moved someway past remembering the carnage of yesterday all those years ago.

music: Jonathan Ross (repeat of saturdays show)
weather: Unusually overcast
worth watching once, funny in places....YogaKitty Home Page

A well known household cleaning product and a duck.

Well. Its been a while and this week has been somewhat of a watershed for my life in Sweden. An ephiphony, perhaps. The week started well with a lazy few days spent at the summerhouse, interspersed with climbing and training. And that was the first incident, I contrived to pull a tendon or muscle in my shoulder which left me in considrable pain and clearly not able to climb for at least a few weeks. Now, almost a week later, its certainly healing and I anticipate training beginning next week, perhaps. But this was not a disaster for me in itself, but it suddenly made me very unhappy and it seemed to amplify all the feelings that I have, to a certain extent, been repressing as I strive to make a life for myself in this country. Thus, for a few days, I felt very down about the whole concept of Sweden - very down indeed - but then came somewhat of an ephiphony, as I mentioned, this is this, as Bob Deniro said in the Deerhunter, and 'this' is very fine indeed. Life here is good, and it was if I needed to get through a barrier of dejection before I came to recogonise this. Now I hate being injured, and not able to train or climb, but in someways the injury made me confront the fact that I have a new life, in a new country - it threw everything into perspective. Perhaps, god forbid, I actually discovered a little bit of maturity.

So what else is new? Well, the climbing I did do last week was bloody great. I prospected for new problems around the coast and came up with some gems, which certainly don't seem to have had that much traffic, really good. On the tuesday I took a day trip to Rostock, via southern Danmark, which was really good - I'm now involved with a European Framework Project which looks quite interesting. I will get more work from this towards the end of the year. It was a fun trip with one of my Danish colleagues, really good.

And so today, VHO, as Banks would have it after a night carousing in Denmark, Copenhagen. We had a brainstorming session in the office which lasted from 10 until 4, very good and then hit the gin and tonixs. Some hours later we staggered to one of the poshest and newest restaurants in Copenhagen. Gourment food in the extreme! I reckon we had a bill of about 100 quid each - reet posh like. I could get used to this lifestyle! Then left there and back to one of the directors houses where we imbibed more liquor - why do I never learn, after champagne, gin, beer, stout, never never finish the evening with a ten year old malt! Hells teeth, me and E managed to escape back to the safety of Malmö before the guys headed off for more corousing! The Danes are party monsters.......indeed. We had lots of fun navigating our way around the Danish subway system and the night train, full of drunken Swedes........so, as usual, spent the night having a good conversation with Mr Armitage Shanks.

Music advice, get hold of the soundtrack for Kill Bill Vol.1 (which I finally managed to see), absolutely shit hot, as they say.

So that brings us nicely up to date, sorry about the delays in posting but for a while the heart and ability was not there, but onwards and upwards. Come in red 5, your time is up.

Music: Hotei Tomoyasu, Kill Bill Theme.
Books. Currently ploughing my way back through Donaldson's Gap into Conflict series - I think this series uses the words sweat and dread more than any other book, ever. Managed to get hold of Baxter's evolution which I'm looking forward to.
weather: high octane blue
Link: ya, ska vi se nu.......
chop suey sillyness