The Eugent ships boiled out of dark space and deposited themselves, like turds on a sheet of glass, in orbit around the planet. They coasted for a while from the momentum of their remergence back into reality before their plague engines flared back to unlife with sickly incandescence. Within the bowels of their monstrously bloated forms the galley slaves who had survived the transit across the howlingly insane depths of space began to tread on the vast fly wheels. There was no purpose in their mindless stepping. It simply made the Eugent laugh.

Merry Christmas!

Canon braces itself for arse induced copier carnage

Theres a lot of blogs out there, an awful lot. Some of them are the rambling of loons (where if they were on paper, they would be writen in shit), some are thoughtful observations on everyday life, some a stream of expert opinion on important things and others an interesting insight into someones life. This blog is none of those things. What is it? I dunno. Its not like its a chronicle of life in Sweden as, on average, I barely manage to mention the place more than one a month. Its certainly not (chump) an insight into the world of my work which, lets face it, is not that exciting. Nor is it particularly funny as usually when I blog its when I am tired, hysterical, weepy, drunk, sedated or spent....none of which are states of mind appropriate to being particularly witty. (speaking of which, I foolishly plugged the word 'arse' into google and then pressed 'images' rather than 'news', resulting in a flurry of shocking images to scroll down my screen.).
It does not provide any kind of great angle on the pop culture that I consume at a voracious rate (though my recent realisation that given the choice between a Bergman movie and a Die Hard movie (well, number 1 anyway) I'd plump straight for Brucie has made me realise that I'm much less the offbeat film buff that I like to pretend I am). So what is it? Its mine, its been a little focus for the last 2 years (well, not quite - but almost) of my life here. A distraction which has proven to be almost therapeutic. So the early resolution for the New Year is to keep on going - if you read this, and return (chump) then so much the better - I'll be here, not writing about anything in particular.


Annoyance In the space of 12 hours we have managed to destroy to large white goods, to wit, one siemens washing machine and one siemans oven. Accidently. And with much gnashing of teeth.
Reading Spares (again), which was the original script idea for that recent Ewan Macgregor movie, I think Bruckenheimer was the director
Listening Steve Earle

Trouser Press....indie rock heaven.

Wankers, obviously poorly sighted and thus unable to recognise the raw talent which slumped in the chair in front of them...in not one, but two interviews....yes, the fucks decided not to give me the job (and thus give me a 5 year contract, loads of dosh and a 75% position) which means I'm still jumping from one 3 or 6 month contract to the next. What was there not to like? Lets see, BSc, MSc and PhD - so straight away we're dealing with a serious fuck off academic ninja but, hold the press, in the subjects which the job was concerned with. Next, European Project experience - yeah, fucking loads. Next question. Entrepreneurial skills - well, lets see, founded a very successful and rapidly growing biotech service company, how do you like them onions, eh? So...and, oh whats my Swedish like, ska vi se, ja, Jag kan prata en del av svenska och det komma att blir bettre och bettre varje dag eftersom jag gå till en kvälls kurs två gånger en vecka........


wankers

This is something which has crossed my mind from time to time, as I gaze at my PC screen and wonder why am I not having more fun here? As Franz Ferdinand say "if you did the things you like, you would be happier". Fun, is of course, totally subjective and one mans fun may be anothers nightmare but the underlying concept seems to be that our work lives are based on fundamentally un-fun premises.

"Indeed, as my lectures bring me from industry to industry, I find myself amazed by just how little fun most people are having. Whether separated from one another by policy, competition, or cubicle, the last thing that seems to occur to people is to have fun together—when it should be the first priority. Instead, managers feel obligated to reign over employees; executives think they must hoodwink their shareholders; sales believe they must strong-arm their clients; and marketers assume they must manipulate the consumer. All for the life-or-death stakes of the next quarterly report."
Douglas Rushkoff.

I've been listening to Ricky Gervais's podcasts on the guardian siteand heard them discussing a fantastically bizarre story about 42 cambodian midgets squaring off against a lion. Sadly, or perhaps happily, this is another piece of internet lore and is a fake, but a bloody good one.
The podcasts are very funny though.

Listening: Franz Ferdinand
Watching: Animatrix
Reading: Strangers in Paradise (Comic), Hellblazer (Comic) and A big boy did it and ran away by Christopher Brookmyre. The last is fucking brilliant and this is the second or third time that I've read it. Constantly references all the games we grew up with (i.e. everything from 3D Monster Maze for the ZX81 to Quake) against a thriller examining what would happen if your flat mate from student days turned out to be an international terrorist.

You may remember the story scooped by the Mail on Sunday (?) which concerned bullying of Royal Marines...i.e fighting naked and then being kicked unconscious. Well, heres the follow up from the Evening Herald in Plymouth, with a great quote from the soldier who was sparko "The bloke who kicked me in the head is the nicest guy in the company"....which makes you wonder what the horribliest guy in the company is like.

Sometime last year I blogged about the first incarnation of this game, well, heres the second...I could not get the page to work but I guess its probably collapsed for the time being due to the link from BoingBoing....Samorost 2...I was actually looking at the Crimson Room the other day and went back to play it just now, stumbled across the Veridian Room...excellent, more point and click fun.

We were supposed to be at a Jul Fest (Christmas Party) this evening but E, and K, are both feeling a bit ill...we instead had a splendidly cosy time in town....I purchased the History of Violence comic book which I've been gradually reading this evening, good so far. Speaking of geek things, went to see Serenity with my chum S last night - must say, once again Joss Whedon comes up with the goods, a stonking good space opera of a 8 out of 10....I've not actually seen any of the series, which would - I guess- make the movie even better.

Still nothing from the potentially new employers, I'll give them (another) phone call next week - they said in the interview that I would hear within two weeks. When I phoned on monday the guy said they had not made a decision and would be getting in touch. Presumably with a brick through the window with a burning dog turd tied to it.

Saw this on BoingBoing, thought provoking....

map of world by population.....

Caught my eye that Swedes are amongst the most honest when it comes to downloading music (and paying for it)....whats strange is that since I moved to Sweden I went from knowing about the existance of filesharing services to being a subscriber to the services of iTunes. Must be some kind of infectious civic responsibility disease they put in the water here......

Young 'prefer illegal song swaps'

Good old Sweden, beneath that mild mannered exterior lies the beating heart of an arsonist.......Wierd Ritual of the Burning Goat.

Its been a great day, spent with E. We did not do anything particularly exciting but instead wandered down to the sea front, played with his bricks at home and generally just hung out. Strangely relaxing and the fatigue of being woken up several times in the night - especially for someone who really needs his 8 hours - is not a problem. Spending time with my son is one of the most relaxing, almost meditive, things I have ever done.

Off to Denmark on Friday for meetings then the Xmas bash - must have self control. Last time I got pissed in Denmark I was so drunk I almost pooed my pants on the train home.

Reading: Strangers in Paradise (comic book), Adolf (comic book), Good Omens (again, not a comic book) and looking forward to reading short story collection from China Mieville.

Listening: Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, Rammstein.

Looking: Like I will be starting training again this weekend, after almost 4 months of lay off since my ankle started playing up. I won't be doing much running, mostly bag work and free weights plus diet.

Worrying: This subject actually deserves more thought but I'll put it in anway. My mate R has really got be thinking about the looming crisis in oil production and what the future is going to look like. I've been reading around the subject a bit and apparently its 2010 when the shit is really going to hit the fan......more to follow.

Last snatch, dumped another creative turd on Seathing.

So, I had a second interview for the new job I'm after. It seemed to go pretty well, including the initial swedish session (oohhh er missus) at the start. We switched to English pretty quickly, and the problem - I realised - is that it is really difficult to read someone when they are using their second lanquage, even when they are fluent. Nuances and expressions come out differently, so I was never quite sure how enthusiastic the interviewer was being about me. Oh, a note to self - or anyone else having an interview in Sweden - they check references well in advance of you being offered a position so you might want to consider not including your current employer, as I have done. I've had to do some damage limitation to hopefully avoid the worse case scenario of a. not getting the new job and b. my old boss deciding that my lack of loyalty is a good enough reason to get rid of me. Paranoid? Moi?

Notable event: It was E's name day on saturday and his first B'day last week. One year old. Shocking.
Books:Century Rain by A. Reynolds, 6 out of 10 - definitely not his best but okay. More from the Alita:Battle Angel Series and various Sandman collections.
Music: Mudhoney, Libertines and Queen.

"Arguably the most dangerous machine ever fabricated at SRL: Pitching Machine".....actually blogged about these guys before but this is so cool, firing pieces of 2 by 4 at speeds of 120 mph.

More to come, but now I must make the tea.......work strangeness abounds, second interviews undertook, contract renewals floating, dreams of permanancy...hmmm, sounds a bit like a haiku.

After a savage bout of mushroom, or poo, induced poisoning yesterday I feel relatively fitter (although a little thinner) today......I fucking hate being ill, especially when the family goes off to the summer house and leaves me lolling in my sick bed with nothing but John Carpenters 'Assault on Precinct 13' to watch. They actually didn't just leave because of my explosive diarrhea but also because its that time of year when we must replace the cars tyres with the mighty studded ice breakers.

Annoyed, because I've started reading A. reynolds latest - Century Rain. Don't get me wrong, its started well and is a novel departure from the universe of his previous books BUT once again the curse of ideas rises again. You see, his latest involves the use of alien transit lines - the Hyperweb - enabling mankind to reach the stars. Which is identical to an idea I had some years ago. This is not the first time this has happened either, Neil Gaimens story of people living under london was pretty much identical to an idea I had, involving 'dwellers' some years before. This suggests, to me, that - I really should write more or that, more likely I think, theres a universal pool of ideas which we can access, and that ideas are not really our own. Or, that we are all sad geeks pretty much influenced by the same source material.

Still laughing at: Joke in 'Catch me if you can'.......'Knock Knock. Who's there? Go fuck yourselves.'
Getting into: Franz Ferdinand. Partly because the musics cool but also because they seem to be one of the few bands that smile in photographs.

I finally got around to adding some links...more to follow when I get around to it.....(just beneath the archives on the right side)........

First things first, if you go over to http://www.seathingcity.blogspot.com/ you'll find Shunt - a rather unpleasant, poorly edited short story which I put together on the commute to work. If you enjoy it, or at least could think of worst ways to have spent the 20 minutes or so that you used reading it then so much the better. I enjoyed writing it, which is the main thing I guess.

Some statistics from my life:

Nappies changed: approx 900, which is an average of around 2 a day - the daily average is higher now, but I was working more before E stopped breast feeding.
Times I have sung: 'Go to sleep little baby': approx 1080 times 'Man of constant sorrow': approx 700 times. 'Whisky in the jar': approx 500 times 'Copperhead road':approx 500 times. These are usually sung in the day, frequently in a medley. E, wisely, nods straight off to sleep in the evening and thus is spared further renditions.
Full nights uninterrupted sleep I have had in the past 11 or so months: approx 25 (almost all from trips). This is out of a potential of 360, considering this - and the amount of people who have young kids at any one time - its amazing there aren't more incidents of sleep deprived parents going postal.

Speaking of nappies I notice that Madonna said that her husband dosn't change nappies because he is a 'man's man', what exactly is it about changing a nappie which is unmanly? All the men I know, including myself, seem to spend a far greater time talking about poo than women.

To finish. I finally got my hands on the last book of the 'Bone' series by Jeff Smith. Its up there with Preacher as my favourite comic book- read it, its a bloody excellent story. (hence the image at the top). Currently wading my through Stephen Baxters 'coaltruck' or whatever the hell its called. Soon to start A Reynolds new one. Also finish Alita: Battle Angel.

A site called Camera Toss catchs my attention for all the wrong reasons.....interesting, and yet again remind me, is this why we came from the trees?

Its clearly the end of days, with alarums and diversions ringing out across the land.......so heres something to bring some light, this is cool. One mans quest to barter from a starting position of a paperclip up to a house.

Just back from Oslo, and as K and E were up at the grandparents it meant that I'm slightly delirious from getting almost 9 hours of straight sleep.....feel slightly odd, and in a perverted way, that I could actually do with a few more hours kip. Oslo was good, the occasion was the jamboree for our organisation.

Oslo, nice city but bloody hell Norways expensive!

Heres some stuff from Flickr....

I've set up a new blog...http://www.seathingcity.blogspot.com/ which will shortly contain Shunt, a short unpleasant story (which contains adult themes, graphic sexual references and swearing). Right then, bring on the coffee.

Music: Sugar Cubes

Film: The Faculty, most excellent horror. Saw Flightplan the other day, first half cool Hitchcockian thriller the second part pants.

Book: A. Reynolds new book, the name of which escapes me.

Most eagerly awaited: Resident Evil 4.

Photographs of game avatars and their real life counterparts.

Been a while. Been up to stuff.

The expression 'fucking mental' regularly flicks up in my head these days as I watch the world go ever madder under the Whore Beast and Skull Fucker.....heres a little something from Gov. Jeb apparently making Florida a safer place by enabling a law which, check this out, would render immune someone who fires into a crowd if they believe they were at risk....it would effectively prevent someone, not involved in an incident nor the 'target', to press action against the shooter if they were shot. The change in law now means that you can use deadly force if you feel threatened and that there is no need, as was previously in the law, to run away and hide. I only noticed this because of an advert in the Gruniad, which I actually thought was some kind of spoof at first, which suggested that travellers to Florida avoid any kind of confrontation. I suspect that this law, in the increasingly paranoid eyes of the Americans (sorry, generalisation, some Americans) will be seen as giving them the righteous authority to gun down anyone who looks vaguely...ooohhh...Black, Asian, Muslim, strange, democrat etc etc. In a time when we should be really doing something about the proliferation of arms and terrorism we're actually making it easier to kill people. Enough ranting. I despair, I really do.

Check out the shoot first, ask questions never campaign here.

my latest line of sweaty invective must wait.....its still in the boiler room brewing up. Instead, heres a bloke whose hair looks like a hat.

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | Remembering Ronnie: Barker's best gags: "'The West Drayton man who has kept himself awake every night for 17 years by snoring has at least found the answer. He's going to sleep in another room.'"
Ronne B., you will be missed.

"If you imagine the noise God makes before he eats a slice of cheese on toast, then comparably, that's how satisfying yearning the 65 minutes of Takk..... sounds. Ordinary people. Extraordinary songs"
NME reviews Sigur Ros latest album

SEE! Did I not say everyone in the world, living or dead, should be listening to these icelandic chaps!

school boy humour rocks!

check out these papers......

Letter to the Editor: Similar fasting ghrelin levels in binge eating/purging anorexia nervosa and restrictive anorexia nervosa •
Psychoneuroendocrinology, Volume 29, Issue 5, June 2004, Pages 692-693
Barbel Otto , M. Tschöp and U. Cuntz

... presumably an angry letter?

CARCINOMA OF PENIS AND CERVIX
The Lancet, Volume 316, Issue 8199, 18 October 1980, Pages 855-856
P. S. Cocks, K. R. Peel, R. A. Cartwright and R. Adib

Identification and biochemical characterization of an avian sulfatase homologous to the human ARSE, the gene for X-linked chondrodysplasia punctata
Gene, Volume 336, Issue 2, 21 July 2004, Pages 155-161
Paola Ferrante, Silvia Messali, Andrea Ballabio and Germana Meroni

....so I spent some of my valuable life currency plugging rude words into Science Direct, hey, it made me laugh...

Way cool....West Side Story reedited as a trailer for a zombie flick.....

I woke sweating.....the dreams I've been having recently are very disturbing, Condoleeza riding naked on a killer dolphin loaded with attack darts on a dying sea.......you see, its not all insanity either, part of Bush's new 'War Against Weather' has already began (don't believe the hype of telling the Americans to save fuel - the message is clear, bring on the monster trucks.....) with the 'accidental' release of killer attack dolphins reported in the aftermath of Katrina. They been trained to hunt down 'weather' (or as Bush said 'them folks in the sky that make it rain') and kill it without mercy........

if you think this is pure fantasy...ninja dolphins

The other piece which caught my eye this morning was William Bennett, friend to the American Neo-Nazi saying that 'if you want to reduce crime.....abort every black baby'. But its okay, because he went on to say '...an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down'. Official sources report the Whore Beast as saying "the president believes the comments were not appropriate". Check the wording here..."believes", which suggests he was not exactly sure, probably trying to figure out how that worked with his pro-values. Read the full manifesto of Willy 'Baby Killer' Bennett here.

And Iraq drags on, with the lovely Condoleezzla shrieking out about not ceding the country to Barbaric Killers.......yeah, winning hearts and minds....You can win them to, just find a queue in down town Baghdad and wait for them to come tumbling from the sky. For fucks sake, have we got such short memories......., a war based on lies (now wait, don't start nitpicking - it was lies, there were no WMDs (oh except for the sarin which Saddam got from Ronnie (the senile monkey fucker) but by the time we invaded he'd long since used it on the Kurds) and the fuckers who started it grinning like fucking apes as the bodies mount up.

I should just except the fact that my view, the ceiling of the stone I seem to be living underneath is the way things are and that I should only, in future, rely on barely audible messages being shouted at me from outside. This occured to me when I see that 'The Rum Diaries' by the good Doctor is being made into a film with Colonel Depp in the head role. Why, when I waste so much time surfing the net, does the important stuff slip past me - its not even if I spend my precious gas guzzling hours staring at porn but instead I find myself reading the newspaper, which I could buy and read - in the real world.

The rains just about stopped so I'll make a dash out now....working like hell, things to do, shrews to molest. That kind of thing. Check out the basement elf.

There's plenty of examples out there of how America has lost its superpower status (to nature, rather than terrorists - ahh, the irony) but I think this is quite an extreme one.....Prisoners Abandoned in Jail as Waters Rise.

Oh bollocks, a stressful day of planned blatant consumerism foiled by crap shops....I was attempting to purchase, with money, the new ipod photo with its cool colour screen and nice curvey shape. I didn't even want any huge vulgar memory size, no a mere 20 gig would suffice (sufficient for 7500 songs, or at least my collection of Eddie Izzard and Bill Hicks shows). But the gods of consumerism thwarted me and after being told by the chap at the Apple shop (as in official fucking outlet) that they didn't have any and better still, had no idea when they would, I was feeling pretty tetchy. I bought a Hunter S Thompson book which I had not read and then broke the speed limit across town to get to On-Off, a huge electronics retailer, which-as you might of guessed-did not have any ipods either. Its not often I get afflicted by the desire to buy anything costing more than the price of a paper back or a dubious quality DVD but when the desire hits me, it hits hard. The last time, incidently, was for a punch bag - which was very easily purchased but carrying the fucking thing across town almost killed me.

Angst: I'm not in the UK, where theres a big party going on to which I was invited and a load of my chums will be at...sigh.
Book: Been reading loads of good comic books recently including Swamp Thing as well as Quiver (a return of the Green Arrow) which was written by Kevin Smith, as well as continuing with the story of Bone. Currently digesting Adolf by Osamu Tezuka and Hunter S Thompson's Kingdom of Fear.
Steven Seagal: In his latest movie (Submerged) his characters name is Chris Cody...which is still not a patch on Casey Ryback or Forrest Taft. Hang about, this would be a great solicitors company though: Cody, Ryback and Taft. Wierdly, I found a movie called 'The Untitled Onion Movie', still in post production and with no proper title..our man Stevie is credited with the awesome name of, wait for it, Cock Puncher.

Very funny viral advertising from Rockstar games (part of a battle against a anti-gaming lawyer).......

"Before, when I would buy drugs, I would have no idea what to do with them, so they used to sit, untaken on my side board. After years of buying drugs, but being unable to take them due to ignorance, I had pounds of crack, heroin and reefer stashed in my house. Then, thanks to the internet, I learned how to take them, using a vacuum cleaner, a car battery and a small dog. I am literally out of my mind all of the time and my life has turned to sh*t. Thanks a lot, internet! I say, turn it off!"

If you've got a spare 30 minutes I suggest you go look at http://www.jabberwacky.com/which is a Chat Bot which learns from the responses it is given as people chat with it online. Its strange, not a little compelling but, at present, theres little reason to think you are not talking to software. Heres an excerpt from a recent conversation we had:

Jabberwacky:Okay. What is the name of my Guinea Pig?
John:How could I possibly know that?
Jabberwacky:I am not bitter. Why do you say that?
John:I did not. But its nice to hear that you are not bitter.
Jabberwacky:Which is better?
John:In what context?
Jabberwacky:Any context.
John:Its better not to be bitter.
Jabberwacky:Possibly.
John:Have you ever been bitter?
Jabberwacky:A radioactive spider? How did you know?
John:Bitter not bitten!

and....

Jabberwacky:No, they are turning yours. You're scared of confronting your creator. Don't be. I think you will find that he will be extremely happy if you do so. B.
John:That makes absolutely no sense what so ever.
Jabberwacky:Never said it would make sense. But I am spanish, I have the right to act insane.
John:That made me laugh.
Jabberwacky:That makes me laugh.

Gotta love it...... "The 'Corrupted Blood' plague is not the first virtual disease to break out in online worlds. In May 2000 many players of The Sims were outraged when their game characters died because of an infection contracted from a dirty virtual guinea pig. "

Very funny....read, laugh, go back to work (but keep sniggering)...see more posters here.

Oh for fuck's sake....the March of the Penguins becomes a pawn in the struggle for intelligent design. New York Times Article.
Whats next? Michael Moores documentaries used as evidence against Intelligent Design due to their subject matter - i.e. Bush - clearly being the result of very dim design.

Mindblowing stuff about hydrogen powered cars....Montreal Gazette - canada.com network

Returning with the theme of strange, slightly incomprehensible flash games....eyemaze

The Finger of Time.
Those moments when your life could have gone in two different ways are hard to clearly identify. I think most of the time we come to the situations we are in because we drift into them, and just as easily, we drift out. But sometimes it's possible to say, pretty much for sure, that something was a pivotal moment. I'm not talking about getting hit by cars or near misses involving drills and lurking electrical wires in plaster board - sure these are pivotal as well, but only in that they represent a 'stop.....carry on' moment. No, I'm talking about those events where things could have been different for your whole life. Example. Years ago, before I even entered the heady heights of sixth form I was in an English class. I guess I was about 14 or 15. The teacher, who had the unfortunate moniker of 'smelly' Minton (not something she was given at birth, but rather a schoolboy/girl comment on her, probably wholly imagined, poor hygiene. This myth had perpertrated our school so much that each Christmas, poor woman, her desk became inundated with soap and tins of deodorant) gave us an assignment on a poem by Coleridge called Christabel which goes on and on and on....anyways, Smellie's assignment was to write a story on what happened next - given that Coleridge never bothered to finish it (understandably, he was propably interrupted by the postman again, or just to fucked on opium to care). So, with my young writers muscle flexing I wrote a convuluted jarn involving witches, and curses and whatnot. I was pleased with it, thought it pretty good....and I guess it was okay because Smelly decided to read it out in class. Now, you have to understand - to get the full pivotal moment thing - that this was not the first time my stories had been read out. Right from little school my stories had been read out to the class by various teachers (most of them sweeter smelling), my joy only slightly tempered by the fact that the hard kids would make sure I received a punishment beating on the bus home for daring to stand out. So Smelly launched into my story and the class, dare I say it, was almost listening with half an ear. Even to someone like me, whose idea of high literature was Terence Dicks's Doctor Who Stories I thought it sounded pretty good. My young heart swelled with pride and I realised that, yes, I could be a writer. And then it happened. Smelly, in her excitement misread a crucial word. 'Tinged' - how hard could it be, I mean the context was right and everything. But oh no, she read out 'fingered'. So, instead of the sentence 'the witch tinged Christabel with her evil' (which suggested lingering malice) we got 'the witch fingered Christabel with her evil' - which, in the lanquage of the playground, sounded like soft porn. A mutter of laughter ran through the class, my cheeks burned, Smelly continued unnoticing and my dream of being a writer turned to ash.
Which is a sad story.
Nothing terrible happened, but just one incident out of many which sticks and has repercussions. But hang about, what if she had read 'tinged' and that hot sweaty summer day was disturbed only by my school bag being hurled out of the bus window on the way home, rather than the suppressed laughter of 20 odd kids. I've of probably decided, on very flimsy evidence, to become a writer and taken English and Drama 'A' levels. I'd have probably got some mediocre grades (given my twin obsessions at that age with a. not working and b. wanking, this was almost a foregone conclusion) and gone off to somewhere like Netherly Edge Polytechnic or Clackington College of Higher Education to study Creative English. Once there, (and thus not meeting any of the fine people I was to meet in later life in the 'fingered' timeline) I've have hung out with a group of chain smoking, bitter, angsty wanna-be writers. We would have rejected everything - particularly those who thought our cutting edge essays and short stories were wanky crap - and generally been pretty miserable. My heros would have been Mailer, Hemingway and Thompson and, having neither the physical stature of the first two or tolerance to alcohol/drugs of the last, I would have felt shamefully inadequate. Sure, some stories would be published in second rate magazines but nothing would ever get to the big time. Unlike, Melvin, from our writers group who would drop out in his second year after getting shortlisted for the Booker prize and being lauded as 'the great white hope of British writing'. Oh the agony, especially as he owed me a fiver and had shagged the thin asmatic goth girl who worked in student bar that I fancied. Plus he was always really enthusiastic about my work but you always knew, deep down, that he was a cunt. So I leave college with a Desmond (2:2 - say it aloud and you'll get it) and go on the dole for a few years with the intention of writing the next great English novel. As it turns out, I can't even write the next great Clackington novel and eventually find myself teaching English at a school where, if I'm lucky, I get through the day with only a mild punishment beating (and thats just from the other teachers). In my mid 30's I find myself headhunted by Offsted and end up touring failing schools, writing reports on bitter angry teachers who hate me, and then sleeping alone in a bedsit in Crewe where I hate myself - the only thing drowning out my sad lonely thoughts being the couple shagging next door.
Which is a sadder story.
So, Smelly, I am glad that you fucked my story, even if only with a finger, as I suspect that in that instant of time in a hormonally charged sweaty classroom things could have been routed on a very different road.

The splinter comment which crept in below (and not the comment about Tags - which I will deal with Ned!) reminds me that I need to talk about the unpleasant chat room experiences I had recently....more to follow.

I promise to include more normal stuff, and actually add some content here but until that time comes - heres some news about Dwarf Bull Fighters.

"Instead of sitting on horses and spearing the bullock with spiked wooden pikes as in real bullfighting, the pair have fleecy pantomime-style dummy horses attached to their sides, providing padding, and their aim is to hit the animal with a squeezy plastic hammer."

BBC NEWS | Programmes | This World | Costly love in modern Estonia: "The first event takes place in a nightclub where contestants are asked to dress as their favourite Soviet cartoon. "

ain't it cool....online RPG - you're limited to 50 actions a day and I ran out before my character could get to safety, does not bode well. Makes me feel like I'm 13 again. - Urban Dead.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, youknow, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (shechuckles slightly) is working very well for them."......Babs Bush says it how it is....one country, united.....yeah right.

So, farewell then, Michael Sheard who terrified me as Mr Bronson, the epitomy of all the nazi teachers I ever had (from his obit I learnt that he played Hitler on no less than 5 times - including in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade....Himler as well.).....The Empire Strikes Back was always an opportunity to see Mr Bronson (or Admirel Ozzel in this case) get finished off by Darth. He was also in Dr Who between the years '66 - '88 but I have no real memory of him in that.

pastafarians unite.........guardian features his noodleness.....Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Pass notes

Gruniad article on Katrina Blogs....

A blogger on the roof of his house in New Orleans.....this is all getting very disturbing. Click here.

And I said I would get around to this (eventually). The Gruniad published on Monday a feature on Västra Hamnen which is the neck of the woods which me and the tribe inhabit. (The phot to the right shows an aerial view, and if you have not installed Google Earth I thoroughly recommend it). Turning Torso is marked by the pin.
The article seems to have run foul of a mad sub-editor as the by-line: Malmo's new neighbourhood is funky, environmentally friendly and the envy of architects worldwide. There's just one problem. The locals hate it. - Seems to be a odds with pretty much everything written in the article, shame on you guardian! And the fact is that most of the people we know really like it here.... Heres a few parts of the article which jumped out at me.

This is a country that is famously ahead of the curve in sustainability, architecture and most aspects of modern life. A place where the municipal dump has over 30 recycling categories.

- Which includes meatballs, dead seals and stained flat pack furniture. (cheap, I know)

As in Britain, the decline of heavy industries caused mass unemployment in Malmo, but in the mid-1990s, the city took steps to reinvent itself, building a new university and mounting a European housing exhibition, which became Bo01.

- The whole site was previously an immense ship yard called Kockums (which always makes me snigger) but which went the way of all such enterprises. It was replaced by SAAB (hence the huge, largely empty, factory building quite close to us) who left only a few years ago. The few remaining Kockums buildings are now used by a number of engineering companies, among them one that manufactures wind turbine masts (towers, whatever the hell you call them).

The visionary behind the scheme was a Swedish architect named Klas Tham, who had previously worked with Ralph Erskine on the Byker housing project in Newcastle, and designed villages in Newmarket and Milton Keynes.

- I studied this Ralphies stuff when I was a wee lad doing my A levels, and again when I was doing my undergrad thesis (they burnt rubbish to heat the flats – hence my interest. Byker (as in Byker, Byker, Grove……..) had, among other things, simple ideas like facing the least used rooms onto the busier side of the flat, hence making life quieter for the Geordies who lived there. Not so sure about the villages around Milton Keynes though.

The buildings are highly contemporary but the arrangement feels less like a modern city than a cross between a medieval town and a holiday village.

- And this is totally the case. When we first started looking around here I really felt a similar atmosphere that which I had felt in the some of the windy little backstreets of, for example, St Ives or Looe (Cornwall).

Malmo's population is foreign-born - mostly from Yugoslavia, East Africa, Iran and Iraq - and from their grubby housing blocks on the other side of the city, this must indeed look like an unattainable paradise.

- This is just shite journalism, yes its fact that the pop. here is largely white non-immigrant background but hopefully that will turn around in time. Calling the houses 'grubby' is just mean, point of fact, the worst areas ('worst' as in poorest) I've been taken to are still of a much higher standard than the Uks worst areas. I once stayed just over the road from Moss Side, believe me, no comparison.

It was originally hoped that the project would be a shining example of low-energy living but because of its citizens' necessarily affluent lifestyles, this never really happened.

I think part of the problem is that many of the people who have moved into this area and at, or close to retirement age, and the subtle demands of sustainable living pass them by. I regularly have mini-tantrums in our recycling room at people who’ve put stuff in the wrong boxes or have just left things out on the floor. Or perhaps I should get out more. And press my nose against windows. And why the fuck did the hack only interview an American, why not a Swede who lived there, or better yet, me.

I could go on, but I'm tired, i've been proof reading an application all day and my eyes are stinging (forgot to order new contact lens and suddenly realised these ones are well old).

Books: No prizes for guessing that I'm now re-reading Redemption Ark by A. Reynolds. Comic books in the last week include the Third collected volume of Y-The Last Man, which is really getting into its stride and I'm enjoying it as much as preacher;Sandman - Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman, which is fucking excellent (of course); Swamp Thing and Saga of Swamp Thing by Allan Moore (who, as PWEI would have use believe, 'knows the score'. Incidently, looking forward to the V for Vendetta movie, not having read any reviews I'm keen to see how it turns out. I wonder if they kept the original ending, which involved exploding tube trains?); and some collected volumes of RoboHunter (Verdus and Day of the Droids) which are lots of fun.

So lets have a look at what film threat say about V for Vendetta, which, as you may recall was Allan Moores backlash against Thatchers Britain of the '80s..........

.....nothing as it turns out, only a trailer........but heres a real nice V site and heres the official site

More Fark inspired madness on my favourite tall building.........

Goth vs Chav in soft air weapon horror - I'm sorry but doesn't this remind you of Battle Royale (the mad japanese movie with school kids slaughtering each other).....perhaps some kind of league is in order, rather than restricting it to the afore mentioned, metallers vs rugger buggers? or geeks vs pikeys any one...read on here

more inspired 'borrowing people' madness, honestly, its like a game of top trumps.....okay, I've got a gypsy, a lesbian, an extremely handicapped gay asylum seeker and a small dog, what have you got? Telegraph | News | Library that lets you take out people who are left on the shelf

heres some cool messing about in photoshop with the building next door......fark.com

A handy guide for librarians to help them run D&D games.......and I will be coming back to the Guardian article on where I live......

holy shit, just checked the radar images and its very close to the coastline.....Hurricane Katrina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "On August 28, 1101 AM CDT, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a bulletin predicting catastrophic damage to the city. Effects include at least partial destruction of one out of every two well-constructed houses in the city, damage to most industrial buildings rendering them inoperable, the total destruction of all wood-framed low-rise apartment buildings, all windows blowing out in high-rise office buildings, and the creation of a huge debris field of trees, telephone poles, cars, and collapsed buildings.
Further predictions are that the standing water caused by huge storm surges will render most of the city uninhabitable for weeks, while the destruction of oil and petrochemical refineries in the surrounding area will spill waste into the flooding, converting the city into a toxic marsh until water can be drained. Shortages of clean water 'will make human suffering incredible by modern standards,' according to an NOAA bulletin."

Guardian features an article on where we live.....I'll come back to this in more detail when I'm not rushing for the bus (obviously leaving, as the article would have it, the luxury cars in the underground garage......)

As the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster grows Boing Boing have increased the stakes.....by about a million dollars

Quick little blog while E takes a snooze (and that expression would be met with horrified gasps in Sweden as its the name of the tobacco which you stick under your lip)......its raining today which is a bummer for the festival, as well as the Americas Cup which kicked off yesterday in the Sound.

Reading: Chasm City by A. Reynolds. Booze, Broads and Bullets by Frank Miller (11 Sin City yarns). John Constantine - Hellblazer: Setting Sun, and also Haunted (bloody excellent, Keanu - I guess you skipped these, and indeed the rest of the series, when you were researching the role), Y-The Last Man - really good comic book, idea being that everything possessing a Y chromosome dies, except for a man and his monkey. Great stuff, amazon lesbians, monkey poo and motorbikes. And finally, Neil Gaimans Midnight Days, which is not so good...although it does have quite a rare Constantine story in it.

Went for a very sweaty run after work, it was about 28 degrees and I chose that as a good reason to do a run with a weighted rucksack - staggered past the power walkers with sweat pouring off me, driven slightly mad by the heat and my less that cool sports clothing encrusted white with salt from my pores. Hmmmm, taste that urea.
As today was a work day, I now have E tommorow - cool, go and look at ducks in the park! Speaking of the park, its Malmö festival at the present - which is really cool, over a week of free music and other arts stuff. But sadly I missed out tonight on seeing Entombed and Laibach, which would have been nice.

Books: Various comics, all from the very fine collection at Malmö library including a retrospective of Wolverine - everybodies favourite Canadian. Incidently, speaking of Canadians, P - I keep seeing Camelot 2000 at the library, really, you are better off without it but, if you like, I can get it out and photocopy it for you. Oh yeah, and rereading Chasm City - the sequal to revelation space by A. Reynolds. Waiting for payday so I can go to Copenhagen and buy comics.
TV: Just watched Scrubs and the Simpsons (which was that classic episode where Radioactive Man is filmed in Springfield - with the immortal line 'my eyes, these glasses do nothing')

Great....Simon Pegg and Strontium Dog...BBC Cult presents: 2000AD and British Comics

Greatest writer to ever come out of America, finally put to rest........

Finally I find something to believe in....Flying Spagehetti Monster....which puts me in mind of the ancient cult of 'Tentacles on the Head' - for those of you ill enough to have known me for that long.

The above post also makes me struggle with the oft said concept that Americans lack Irony or Sarcasm (lesser gods of the outer circle). Speaking of which-and this is more a note to self-I will be ranting about the American in the Coffee Shop (a close encounter of the the mad scary kind which me and mate R had a few days ago), as well as the larger subject of 'why do Americans seem to hate Sweden so much', which will lead nicely onto the tale (hem hem) of the smuggled, dead, chihuahuas which turned up in Sweden recently and whose demise can be laid directly at the door of one P. Hilton, for starting a craze which lots of brain dead swedish girls are imitating. I presume these dogs have more than a few days life span and I guess it will soon occur to their owners that they are somewhat harder to look after than a tamigotchi. I forsee small shivering chihuahuas being cast onto the side of motorways, or worse, stuffed down toilets. Soon our streets will not be safe as packs of feral chihuahuas, the moonlight glinting off their tarnished rhinestone encrusted collars, hunt unwary children and midgets.

Have a lovely weekend.

The fantastic news is that mate J, has had a little boy O - really really good news......its not so long since we had E so I can remember how great we felt. As I write this the little guy is writhing around on the floor.....must dash!

ouch

And the net coughs up another fur ball of madness, this time the totally lucid subject of turning yourself into a horse, indeed, why not? If WisheRs Were Horses...

and a bit more on Banksy (funny how wankers like Damian Hurst get taken seriously but someone who actually has a message gets called a prankster)....BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Art prankster sprays Israeli wall

What's fucking annoying is my retard fingers just deleted my last post. Fuck.

Deep breath, take a pill and rewrite...not that it was very much but simply thats it sooooooo annoying. As if I haven't got enough to contend with i.e. bad spelling, reduced sleep and bulging midriff but now my fucking fingers have taken it on themselves to stage some form of junta and do their own thing. Which would be okay if something creative came out of it but all it seems good for is poking myself in the eye and knocking stuff over. More than usual.

Anyway, a mate of mine pointed out Banksy's stuff to me a long time ago (in those halcyon days when we all lived in the same country!) so this is a dam good find, especially when it has some cool phots but also bites such as 'You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit.' Banksy - Outdoors...also worth looking at Akayism which has some excellent stuff as well as hailing from Sweden. Which is nice.

Reading: Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds (again), and various comics...most recently Joss Whedons Fray (which is a must for all you Buffy fans), 2000AD and Transmetropolitan.

fantastically cool!....Google Maps

Back to work today after 4 weeks of vacation. To a Brit this seems like an excessive amount, or at least, a considerable amount to take in one go but in Sweden its nothing unusual. All of my work colleagues took at least 4 weeks with some taking up to 5 or 6. One of our friends took 8 weeks - using a combination of both vacation time and parent leave. Not that I'm complaining, when I worked in a government lab in the UK I was always way over my leave allocation, I ended up not submiting leave sheets and, in a similar laissez faire manner, just not turning up but even then I still tried to maintain something close to 25 days.....this, however, was the job where as I came to the end of my contract I spent some time hiding under my desk, or under a large cardboard box which I found. This actually was quite an eye opening experience as it allowed me to spy on my boss rifling through my desk, as he foolishly assumed he was alone (not suspecting that a government employed Higher Scientific Officier was crouched under a large box), as I peered out through the little hand slot in the box's side. I stopped doing this when I was almost rumbled by the cleaner but fortunately they fled the room rather than disturb a box from which muffled sniggers were faintly audible. I digress. Yes, 4 weeks holiday and back to a choked email box, nothing horrible lurking and a good start that an application I wrote was accepted by the EU, jolly good.

It occurs to me that I might have mentioned the box situation before, but as this blog has been running for more than a year now you'll just have to forgive me if I repeat myself. Or thrash me soundly with birch branches. Whichever.

Music: None, as the desk top computer has presented us with the error message 'Primary Hard Disk Fail', which does not bode well at all.
Weather: After four weeks of rain, its now sunny again. The norse gods clearly have a sense of humour.
Swedish Everyday Factoid: When the traffic lights are green, for pedestrians, cars can still turn right across the crossing leading to a few scary moments.
Little Gem: Once again the head under the stone syndrome prevented me from finding this little gem....Google Print....I found it when I saw the news article on the Beeb site regarding copyright problems.

Scoffing Japanese fella.....BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Eating champion wins new contest: "Takeru Kobayashi ate twice as many buns as the first runner-up, Johnny Wu, who only managed to guzzle 47.
Mr Kobayashi, 27, used a special technique - squeezing the buns tight and sipping plenty of water while chewing to soften them up. "

Strange what you can find on ebay these days.....eBay.co.uk: Rare Item - Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney Pie (item 7706221318 end time 17-Aug-05 15:10:42 BST)

The vacation is nearly at an end, and signals the return to more blogging. I've been chewing over a number of subjects in my head over the last four weeks, which will no doubt - with bad spelling, expletives and some unusual grammar - appear on the blog in the fullness of time. As a taster I will be considering, in a totally rational and unbiased manner, the beliefs of the Scientologists (because, secretly, we're all waiting for Tom to have a full on break down on screen, spouting off about aliens and L.Ron), the excitement and arse numbing agony of driving 1150 kms in 21 hours (particularly gripping when the ink is still wet on your driving licence), the perils of parent hood, right wing chat rooms masquerading as ex-pat forums (which led me to have a encounter with a Holocaust Revisionist (you know, the people who say the Holocaust did not happen, despite the fact that, erm, there seems to be an awful lot of Jews missing)), movies I should have seen recently (still not heard the lines 'arise, Lord Vader' yet) and the usual random streams of mind farts....

Reasons to be Cheerful, part 1: Great Doddington!: "Two pints, three glasses of wine and overly-garlic'd curry come to the rescue: and the thoughts of the recent failures recede."

Going to charge across at least 4 countries in the next 48 hours as I wend my way across to the UK, via boat, bridge and tunnel, to pick up my remaining kit. Its a lot of effort for a bunch of comics and books but, hey, this stuff is sentimental. So, raging 1.6 litre 16v Zetec engine - don't fail me now!

the last few weeks not withstanding its nice to be part of the minority and actually remain sticky.....one of the nice things about this vacation has been a general clearing out of the 'head junk' which leaves space for the more creative stuff, which hopefully, will spill out into the blog........Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Every second a blog - but not for the long slog: "But the statistics show not everyone who starts a blog stays the course. Although the blogosphere has doubled in size in just over five months, only around half of all blogs are 'active' - in other words they have been updated in the past three months - and just 13% are updated every week or more often."

Hello, me again and with all the shite which is going on in the world I thought it was worth taking a look at the 'hot coffee' controversy which is getting Hilary Clinton upset about, yawn, GTA: San Andreas......Confirmed: Sex minigame in PS2 San Andreas - PlayStation 2 News at GameSpot: "Given that the minigame is about as raunchy as an episode of Sex and the City, cannot be accessed without entering a long string of cheat codes, and takes several hours of effort to access, charges that San Andreas is 'pornographic' may seem extreme to some. However, its existence does appear to contradict Rockstar Games' carefully worded statement blaming hacker mischief for the existence of the Hot Coffee mod. "

2018 And thus the lawnmower of the summer holidays moves ever closer to the hidden frog of destiny. Blogs will come thin and slow over the next four weeks as I sun my palid skin in Sweden and the UK. Suffice to say that this has been a mental six months, and I am very much forward indeedy looking forward to the summer break.

The goals of the summer holidays involve a multitude of familial stuff which I won't go into but also the writing of a complete short story as well as some form of exercise (but not much running).

Take care y'all, have a good summer.

And I've finally managed to get some sleep.

Bugging the neighbours flat tonight.

0445 Tired. My neighbour went to bed about an hour ago. The village is okay, interesting...sky is light now, and seagulls being noisy.

02.59 The neighbours still awake.....odd. Master and Commander rather good, awash with stiff upper lips. Splendid. Now onto M. Night. Shalamamalalamalalamalalamallannn's The Village.

23.49 He's watching Baywatch, closer scrutiny definitely required.

23.45 My nocturnal neighbour, whose bedroom I can see from my front room, is watching TV again! Not healthy, I will keep close watch and see what happens - even climbing in through his open window if required.

23.34 So I think we'll continue with Master and Commander. Ohh, Russell, Command me, Command me.

23.10 Fantastic, Fader Ted episode 'Hell'. 'Sprit, Arsle, Flickor'

23.03 Has anyone actually seen this? Revengers Tragedy (2002) It sounds bloody marvellous (Christopher and Eddie, both in the same movie, with a soundtrack by Chumbawamba no less) but I guess that, due to the Warner Brothers conspiracy to keep any movie from the public which might actually make people think, it was on at the cinema for about 20 seconds.

22.56 Coffee, and not long until father Ted. 11.10, not the 11.30 originally reported. Just been looking at the Fantastic Four movie, is it me, or does The Thing look like a big poo?

22.26 More coffee required. 'if it bleeds, we can kill it'. Indeed.

And another experiment to try out the new image posting thingy....so a cool image of some Aliens hardware finds itself onto my blog, and not before time to.

22.11 Just, as you can see, changed the format of the blog to sort the formatting problem I had a few days ago. Rather utilatarian style but workable. Tea is being drunk, balcony door open, wind in trees, nice.

22.01 So my choices are watch Master and Commander, or M. Night. Shallllamamamamamamamans The Village, and then break after an hour to watch Father Ted which, we've just noticed, is on channel 1 at 23.30. Kind of curious to see how they translate 'feck'. On the subject of movies and subtitles watched House of Flying Daggers last night, good solid 8.5/10.....and with Swedish text as well (which means some subtlies of the plot may have passed me by but its usually pretty straight forward in such movies i.e. boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl turns out to be super stealthy assassin, boy betrayed by closest friend, girl dies, closest friend dies, boy dies, inexplicable tap dance routine, end).

21.49 Just been for a swim, only a few minutes walk from our flat - very nice it was to, about 23 degrees and not salty at all.

Whilst perusing the various postings about the bombing in London I came across this site where some well meaning American had tried to introduce some love and spiritually to help the Londoners. As you might expect the British response was slightly more down to earth.london_hurts: Reflections Upon a River...

more bad craziness from the web, help her with the mouse if shes stuck......

this is not some wierd scat (and if that makes no sense, believe me, you are better off not knowin) reference but instead a tale of internet revenge.........Don Park's Daily Habit - Korean Netizens Attack Dog-Shit-Girl

Looking forward to this movie - WOTWs was one of the first SF books I ever read (along with Day of the Triffids). Film Threat - Reviews: "Finally, the ending came damn close to ruining the whole thing. I�m not talking about *that* ending, where we learn what happens to the aliens (I�ll give you a hint: these aliens aren�t going to fall for a biplane in the tailpipe). No, I�m talking about the scene where we see what happens to Ray�s family. I won�t spoil it, but I think your viewing experience would definitely be enhanced if you left the theater after the 110-minute mark. Rarely has the term �Hollywood ending� been quite as appropriate, and seldom has a denouement of that nature come so close to tainting all that came before (the post-credits scene from the �Dawn of the Dead� remake comes close). "

The good news is that the Driving Test was a 100% success! After a terrible lesson before it - I exaggerate a little, but my instructor was doing his usual groaning at one point as I weaved around the road - I was feeling incredibly cool and iceman like. The whole test was in Swedish to, so I feel suitably chuffed - particularly as I did not get a single negative point (which is a dam sight better than when I did my MC test in the UK!).

Book: Songs of the Doomed, Hunter S Thompson.

Dunno why the formating gone up the spout....arse

I was reading about the near run thing for whales recently, in that the Japanese narrowly avoided getting sufficient votes at the last big international whale meet (ha ha) to slaughter more of the unfortunate creatures. In the spirit of learning stuff I visited the Japanese whale research stations website to learn more about what they had learnt after many years of 'scientific whaling'. Basically it seems to come down to whales are big fuckers and they eat a lot of fish, thus, we should kill them before we starve. I noticed that they encourage questions so I thought 'why not' and sent the email below.

Dear Scientists,
I am doing some homework on whales and I was wondering if you could answer my question. We all eat fish, we need it to survive - but I see from your website that whales eat fish as well. Can we not just kill all the whales so there is more fish for us? Perhaps we could poison them all, or hit them with sticks? My brother says he saw a whale once, and it smelt funny - what sort of whale was it.
thanks very much for your answer.

Donald Thribb, 11 and a half.

I'am not actually holding much hope out for an answer, but you never know

And the other news is Bingo! Its my driving test tomorrow and work summer party - hopefully in that order.

sounds like something Tittwhistle would scribble......EducationGuardian.co.uk | Research | Ode to fart gets airing at last: "Thanke God quoth Sir Edward Hungerford
That this Fart proved not a Turdd"

Seagulls cries fill the air and the suns last orange rays are reflected against Turning Torso's flanks - I'm horribly aware that these are the longest days and we will soon be moving towards winter with ever increasing momentum. Midsommer - this weekend!

Race Day. What an experience. There was about 3 000 odd people, when you include the relay runners as well and there was a mass convoy of buses to get us all out to the start line, on the Danish side. We piled out of the buss on the articifical island of Pepparholm which was scattered with people pissing everywhere. I got as far up the already crowded slip road as was polite and then could hear, but not see, the elite start. We then shuffled up the slip road waiting for our turn to be herded into the start area. Three groups went ahead of us, and then it was our turn, some 100 or so people standing behind the line. The gun went off and a faint cheer answered it before we plodded off. Before, in races, I've tended to stay with the group and then accelerate towards the end. This time, with my carefully thought out strategy, I just ran like hell from the start. The bridge seemed to go on for ever, and was quite lonely, but once we were in town (about 11 kms later) we were cheered on by the Malmöians - which was nice. In the last 1km K, E and K's parents cheered me on which enabled me to keep my flaggin pace up. So - 1 hr 33mins 58 secs, 109 out of 2533 runners - not bad at all! My legs ache like hell but it was so worth it! The suffering I endured between km's 14 - 18 (and pretty much all the others come to think of it!) has faded now and all I'm thinking about is next year - but maybe with the Stockholm marathon as well!

Off to Båstad for the next few days as the floors being sanded and reoiled where the previous owner's dog's (which was presumably fed a diet of toxic waste, stale beer and quick lime) wee has left strange dark stains on the floor - its being sorted on their dollar, which is cool, but we have to vacate due to the use of dust, solvent and black magic.

The sky is blue, theres a light wind blowing and the butterflies are skipping madly around my tummy. Yes, its race day. The last 12 weeks of training, of pounding up and down the beach, along the rainy streets and maddening repititions of the running track have come to the envitable conclusion. In a few hours time I will be at the start line, the gun will go off and I will run like hell. I've really got no idea what I'm capable of doing, 2 hrs is in the bag but a significantly faster time remains to be seen. I know that I can hold a quick pace for 15K but whether I can hold it after that, and bring in a time worthy of cups of tea and medals is unknown. One thing is a relief, after today I can stop the last three days of stuffing my face with pasta - a nice big bowl of pasta this morning at 0730 (the joys of having a child who does not care that you want to sleep!) was very very unpleasant.

Here goes nothing.

I have not actually seen the Paris Hilton (to paraphrase Southpark 'stupid rich whore') burger king ad but this is, I would imagine, far funnier and probably much hotter.....Accolo

My blog seems to have changed from the paragraphs of bollocks to a list of links to madness. Never mind, this probably has something to do with the impending savagery of the half marathon in THREE days time.....I was out for a run yesterday (one of the last before the big day) and was pysching myself up and not being too quiet about it. Must have been rather disturbing for the sun bathing couple I almost stumbled over to hear me mutter, as a I staggered past, 'you have the power...power...strength in your legs, power etc etc'.

Cunning stunt....excellent. Mr and Mrs Wheatley Home Page

I've never been completely convinced by old Darren Brown 'mind control' and my hunch is that this is a fake (i.e blokes mates don't seem to worried, they seem to know where they are going inside the building) but when the hypnotised guy comes to, in the zombie game he was playing in the pub, and starts going postal with the shooter is most disturbing...Wonderland

Lego nudes with assault rifles.......what more can you ask for? Assault Rifle on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Very cool vegetable based parody of Star Wars, fantastic puns....Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion

...and now its time for buffy, catch ya....BBC NEWS | England | Somerset | Dalek 'kidnappers' demand Doctor: "Former Dr Who actor Colin Baker has been in touch with staff at the attraction, and may be asked to send a message to the kidnappers."

I really must go to other places than Boingboing.net but when they supply such excellent links as this, why bother? Daily Dancer

aarrgh, woke up with a strange of nausea which was not abated after my morning constitutional....this is not good news for the carbo cramming and final runs (ha ha) in preparation for the half marathon on saturday. I'm trying a diet of pringles and peanut butter sandwiches to kill the symptons, early to bed and all that (makes a man health, wealthy and dead - if I remember correctly).

Book:Woken Furies, by Richard Morgan - not his best but certainly still shit hot. Now reading The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lingren (swedish author of maudlin and usually tragic childrens stories).

I have not followed the links or looked elsewhere to judge the reality of this but, sadly, its probably all authentic.The Downing Street Memo :: What is it?

You awake, and gradually your vision clears from a smeary blur to clarity. You are lying on your back in a vast room, the ceiling is many 1000s of metres above you - thin clouds move quietly through the air. The vast roof seems to be shiny, oily, metal. Rolling onto your side, against a cold polished metal floor, you see a featureless plain fading off into the distance. Faintly you can see what may be a structure. Light seems to permeate from all sides, though you can see no sun or other source. You are naked, your left leg is missing - ending in clean stump of pink skin a few cms down your thigh. As you move your head feels heavy and unbalanced. Lifting your hands up you find that protuding from your skull is a thick metal rod, about 20 cms long. There is no pain. Lying on the metal next to you is a strange, alien like skull, elongated and disturbing. It is about the size of a melon. You have no memory of who you are, where you are or why you are there.

Will you:

1. Lie on your back, and wait.
2. Examine the skull.
3. Begin crawling to the distant structure.
4. Place the skull on the rod in your head.

stabilise, more like tranquilise or euthanise.....I 

Theres an excellent resource of these at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39887008@N00/  

This is real, and the text reads 'Tyrant in the house? Thorazine can control the agitated belligerant senile.' Fantastic-www.boingboing.net

Take, for example, the 'crazy frog'. Is he really so crazy, sure his small froglike genitals hang out in the breeze (shielded for some reason, on UK TV anyway, by a small black box - but not, I notice on Swedish television) but otherwise, I see no signs of insanity. In fact, his choice of headgear - a rather natty helmet - suggests that he is anything but crazy and in fact quite safety consious. Now, if crazy frog began a dirty protest, and was plunging his boxed over genetalia into a recent road kill then yes, that would be crazy. In case, for some reason, you've managed to successfully hide from Crazy Frog then educate yourself here. And what was it about his little 'protusion' that people (mainly parents apparently) find so offensive, why you don't see parents protesting that George W is scaring their children and keeping them awake at night, and politely asking that he might be taken off air?

Moan: Still have not seen 'revenge of the shit', my starwars buddy is out of the country for another 3 weeks.
Worry:That i cannot find anything deeply moving or spirtual to say about living in a foreign country, fatherhood or the state of the environment.
Moan:That I am already almost halfway through Woken Furies, Richard Morgan's latest, and it will be over soon.
Movies: Pitch Black (again, still good - 7/10) and The Manchurian Candidate - a trying to hard 6/10.

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amusing fanboy rant about continuity....
Metaphilm - Star Wars: "The fictional universes depicted in movies like the Star Wars or Star Trek series tend to get very complex (for beginners: the former features Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, the latter Captain Kirk, the Enterprise, and a loyal crew made up of people like engineer Scotty; if you get them mixed up, you are worthless). "

very cool......E46Fanatics - Coolest thing ever, Half-life in real life

The full phat moon slipped over the sullen night sky like sour margarine sliding across a hot bonnet. Its yellow light ran down onto the city beneath, its alleys and streets sharp with the diseased glare. The moon, at its most round, had made some inhabitants of the city feel a little strange and they paced their drab bedsits howling and shaking. But none so stange as the vast, cement form which lurked out behind the gas works, its girdered sinews and brick dust breath filling the sky. Its eyes were long church like windows and its body a conglomerate of stone and wood. It hunted smaller prey, buildings which could not move fast enough, bungalows which died a quick, panicky death. And as it stared up at the moons acne ridden face it let out a terrible howling blast, which made the shops and offices quiver in fear. Yes - it was that most terrible of lycanthropes, it was a Warehouse.

Nice one France, I mean it would be fine if you voted no for the right reasons but it seems that you did so because you were pissed off with your government. So thats fucked the constituion nicely.

A bit tiresome, but cognitive displaysia is a very familiar feeling.....Merriam-Webster Online

Well, thought Melvin, you don't get much better prepared than this.
He looked down at his thin slender, wet suited body and the layer of grease which he just applied. He stood in an empty concrete floored warehouse, the only other occupant a massive bull indian elephant which stood patiently near the centre of the space. A step ladder had been set up at its rear and it was this that Melvin now strode purposefully towards.

The last few days have spent entertaining the parents, who are down visiting and making all the right noises about E. Me, I'm up to my ass in another grant application - challenging, but fun.

From the trouser wettingly funny link below...... 

I laughed so much milk came out of my nose....really, you have to check this out!
Longmire does Romance Novels - Your Submissions

most excellent museum....almost worth a visit to SeattleScience Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame -- Fantastic Voyages

Today is Tuesday, named after the Nordic God Tyr (God of warfare, who waits rather unhappily for Ragnarok at which time he will be killed by Garm, a rather large and bad tempered guard dog. (Little compensation, I guess, that he is destined to kill the dog as well). Should be quite scrap, Tyr having only the one arm, but thats another story....). I worked from home today, which was cool, as it meant I could listen to Faith No More whilst fiddling around with HTML. Put some curtains up as well, which was very very exciting. I could go on, but I won't.

very unusual indeed......Unusual Cards

In my continued, and somewhat frenzied attack, on the enemies of rationalism I followed up what that node of geekdom, Everything2, had to say about What the Pants do we know, here you can read two measured reviews of the movie, one from a loon and one from someones who not......What the BLEEP Do We Know!?@Everything2.com.....I think part of the problem with this movie is that the idea of this documentary is a good one, it would be cool to see a mainstream movie on the quantum world. For example, I saw today that a pair of scientists have added to the Wormhole debate that it would be almost impossible to create a stable wormhole in space/time i.e. it would be impossible to determine where it would come out - this is not science fiction, nor is it a bolt from the blue, wormhole science is seriously discussed, as is time travel, in many aspects of Quantum physics....so why not a cool, measured documentary on stuff like that?

I'll try and leave such stuff alone now, I'm spitting again.

and as a final comment about What the #!@& do we know, the production company is called 'Lord of the Wind'. I rest my case.

Another week over, its friday which meant a trip to Ikea , a dinner of chips and meat and a splendid purchasing of a sofa bed. Not quite sure whats happened to my syntax buts its rather strange, perhaps too much pritt stick when I was younger. Life in the new pad is starting to settle in something resembling a rhythm, but we still have far too many boxes littering the place. God only knows what it will be like when I get my act together and bring even more stuff over from the UK. As it is, E is living practically feral at the minute, hunting morsels of food between alleys of cardboard boxes stuffed with papers, only emerging to demand that his nappy be changed (which incidently, requires a stable boy these days).

Lamentable News: Its kind of weird to hear a nation that sanctions torture, incarceration without trial and invasion of countries without evidence to suddenly start brandishing the Geneva convention about when its a picture of a bloke in his pants....BBC NEWS World Middle East Saddam underwear photo angers US: "Other pictures showed Saddam Hussein washing his socks in a bowl, shuffling around and sleeping.
The US said the photos appeared to breach Geneva Convention rules on the humane treatment of prisoners of war. "

Recent Movies: Cube (finally, and rather good), Minority Report (finally once again, and okay).
Under the Reading Lamp: Still reading about the Human Genome, but also getting the Gruaniad almost everyday now, having found a new supplier (the newsagency around the corner, sweet).
Recently missed: Getting anywhere close to involved in doing a Sudoku, apparently this is a craze sweeping the uk.....

and here's the rant.....

Current Rationalist Moaning: What the Bleep Do We Know. Clearing of throat. Lets begin. Okay, so I'll lay my cards on the table and say, up front, I have not seen this movie - which immediately makes me a complete censoring surf nazi I know but, hey, ignorance has never stopped the delivery of an arguement badly put so - with the ground truth exposed - lets continue. For those of you who don't know, this is a documentary attempting to answer the bigger questions about life, existance and so on. Very worthy I say, bring it on. It takes on the mysterious quantum world (which is very fucking mysterious, having recently binged on serious academic books about multiverses, uncertainty principle and probababilty waves I narrowly avoided my brain abandoning ship), and - by following the adventures of Marlee Matlin - attempts to explain things like quantum mechanics. It would seem, however, that it quickly delves down in the strange (Japanese scientist controlling water with his brain waves) to the completely fucking mad, to wit, 35 000 year old Atlantean spirit being channeled through the body of some bonkers Washington woman called JZ Knight. As Richard Dawkins said in a review of this movie, Ramtha (for it is he, (see below)) has clearly not lost any of his business skills in his 35 000 year journey to the present day as he charges a 1000 dollar an hour for counselling (exactly what he cousels god knows, presumably how to deal with your entire civiallisation disappearing under the sea or, worse yet, not existing at all outside of Doug McClure movies).

This kind of shit is dangerous - it gives people the wrong idea about science, giving credence to fucked up new age cults and is generally getting away with lieing to people by dressing it up as science and giving 'experts' the space to bullshit away. What the Bleep Do We know? probably Bleep all after seeing this movie other than seeking enlightenment through a 12 stage course, a ranch retreat, and a bio-feed back machine. Wankers.

Ramtha - 35 000 year old Atlantean Entrepreneur

So lets have a quick look at Ramthas School of Enlightenment shall we? And straight away I'm not smiling anymore, when scrolling quickly through all the opportunities to go on retreats with Ramtha (less of a retreat, more like flee for your lives) I see the words 'To learn to heal and rejuvenate your body through an ancient ritual. This discipline has healed every conceivable disease and can extend your life beyond your genetic expectancy.'. Every conceivable disease? Fuck me, this bloke Ramthas shit hot - lets see what else there is.....Ramtha is a Lemurian, and a great warrior, from a time long long ago - 35 000 years ago - in the time when the lost continent of Atlantis was not so lost. Now this is great......Apparently 'Ramtha does not wish to be worshiped.', he just prefers the folding green instead then...He is channeled through the body of a nice wholesome lady (who also owns a gift shop) called JZ Knight but its okay, there is independent proof of his existance after a battery of tests was conducted on JZ Knight, hmmm, I see. It may be that she has physiological and neurological symptons (or pathology) which are unusual but which diagnosis is more appealing? That she has - 1. Some form of mental illness. 2. That it is a con or 3. She is possessed by a dead warrior spirit who, for reasons best known to himself, has come back from the spirit world as the some kind of cosmic counsellor. I could go on but if your ghast still needs to be flabbered a little bit more I suggest visiting the FAQ page of Ramthas website......But before we leave Ramtha and JZ the cost of spending some time with his holiness is around 1000 bucks a throw which, as Ramtha proudly says - 'somewhat lower than the average professional training courses in today's marketplace.' For some pictures of Ramtha in action, you can visit here.

I could rant about this all day but I'll start spitting, and going red, which is never appealing. I need to calm down, wheres my L. Ron. Hubbard tapes......

what with all the excitement, its worth reflecting on the movies that starwars has inspired, and you can't do much worse than Turkish Star Wars.

splendid..... 

"Back once again for the Renegade Master, people damager, powers in the people. Back once again for the Renegade Master, people damager, with the ill behaviour."

So that solves that question, the lyrics of the above have often troubled me - only a google away and there we are, on a similar vein, heres the lyrics (apparently) for those particularly angry chaps opus otherwise known as Killing in the Name of....went something like this

"Those who died are justified, for wearing the badge, they're the chosen whites.....You justify those that died by wearing the badge, they're the chosen whites" You get the idea, all I remember is staggering off the dance floor after having fought my way through this song, still, that was a long time ago.

So the big event of the last few weeks (other than moving, but hey, thats old news now) was the Scandinavian Science Fiction Convention which - has luck would have it -was right next door in the handly placed convention centre. The big news at this event was, of course, the presence of a pissed off looking David Carridine, a very hairy Peter Mayhew (chewbacca), and John Rhys Davies (Asps, very dangerous - you go first). Actually, for someone who promotes a daily tai chi workout video David C looked very much the worst for wear, not so much a grasshopper but more a chopstick, or something. The convention itself was very geeky, and hence a lot of fun, the room being largely dominated by stalls selling star wars figures, piles of old slasher movies and some very realistic rubber swords. I managed to stumble away with a number of Samaurai movies, a collectors edition of Hellraiser and a rather odd comic book (which, it was alleged, was on a par with Watchmen but sadly was nowhere near) called the Filth. Speaking of hellraiser they had, in the prop exhibition, the suit which Pinhead wore in the first Hellraiser movie - very cool, all hooks and rubber. I could go on, but you get the picture. Geeky

Significant event: Passing my theory test brings me one step closer to my driving licence, finally, but every is so slow, patience sorely tested.
Book: Genome, by Mark Ridley - very good (though a bit old) whistle stop tour through the human genome.

......and I've completely forgotten what else I was going to add there so that will have to do for this evening..........proof of the distracting effect of television.

"One nation under god has turned intoone nation under the influence of one drug
Television, the drug of the nationBreeding ignorance and feeding radiation"

Slight panic there, thought I'd forgotten my username...but no. The new flat is now connected, a mighty 8 mbit/s (ADSL - once again, boo) flowing back and forward.

Nothing much tonight, I'm tired, my hands are slightly sticky and my eyes are stinging....yes, E's been eating porridge again.

Just to introduce some sanity, heres Brian Blessed's filmography....Brian Blessed

Greetings. The X family is moving this weekend so all is chaos.....entered the new flat today, fresh from signing the loan documents, to fine the previous occupants wall mounted plasma tv and huge (and I mean huge) standing tv still present - what part of 'we own this flat now' do people not understand? But thats sorted and soon, very soon, we will live in one of Malmös cooler areas.....this is what we see from our kitchen window, which is nice. (I don't want to create the false impression we'll actually live in turning torso, only that we can see it - but given that you can see it from Denmark (and quite possibly space) thats not saying much. Our new flat, on the other hand, could become misplaced in a cluttered medium sized handbag or other leather receptacle). And the seas only a few seconds away, which is even nicer. But its also scary, as the old flat has become the place I hide in when arguments with bus drivers, meat balls and strange sign writing becomes all too much.

But the sad news is that there'll be precious little blogging as the impoverished ADSL connection we will get will not be set up for at least 8 days....keep watching this space but there'll be no rants for a little while (incidently, next on the list is Colon Therapy).

Book: Market Forces by Richard Morgan, bloody excellent.

take care y'all - catch you after the movement.

And the lesson is, when the known issues file says that Blogspot is unstable really believe it. A large rambling post about earcandles has just disappeared, so you 'll have to wait. humbug.

Oslo. Nice. But toilets hard to find and expensive.

The latest thing to annoy me is the subject of ear candles. Thats right, ear candles. And if you didn't hear me straight then pull that burning piece of bees wax out of your lug hole and listen up......you might have guessed that am I not totally supportive of this quackery. Firstly, if you don't know what an ear candle is then take a look here, here or here. And by now you should have got the idea of what you with them, and what they do. Apparently, the application is thusly. Insert candle in ear, lie on your side, light said candle. Now, pay attention - heres the science bit, the smoke from the candle curls down into your ear, heats the wax which is then drawn out by the suction created from the burning flame. After the process, the inner part of the candle stub can be opened to reveal the contents of your ears and other toxins which have been extracted. Well, my first comment candle boy is this (and I'll move my lips slowly so you understand) - its the 21st century. If you've got itchy ears, tinnutis or quivering vapors (or the 1000 other ailments which burning bees wax can apparently cure) then go and see a doctor. Honestly, just because something was practiced in the days of the ancient Chinese, North American Indians or the Greeks does not make it sound treatment. Whats next - Trepanning for a headache (see note below)? Anyway, assuming your still keen to suck wax out of your ears then here's a few experiments to try out. Seal your mouth over someones ear (either one, but make sure theres no hearing aid) and suck as hard as you can. You'll probably find that precisely nothing hits the back of your throat, although you may get a punch to the face if it was a passerby. Up the anti with a vacuum cleaner and, even though you'll probably rupture your eardrum you'll probably still have zero earwax. And you still think the suction of a mighty candle, burning with precisely one candle power, is going to haul out of your ear one of the stickiest substances your body can produce? And, incidently, its there for a reason. Check out quackwatch, always a voice of reason on these matters. But, if you're feeling very itchy and theres no friendly Hopi indians around bedecked with candles I suggest jamming a John Player Special in each ear, that should get any fucker out.

And yes, I did check, apart from being an obscure swear word there appears to be no market in arse candles though I did find butt candles.


Note - Trepanning.

So of course, I had to take a look. And stumbled across several rather unpleasant sites all dealing with the art of drilling holes in your head. However, before we deal with those I suggest a quick trip to Trepanning, which is the worlds first 12 dimensional settlement, somewhere in Cornwall.
This is inspired stuff and much better reading, and far funnier, than the horrors which lurk on other sites googled for about Trepanning. The story of modern Trepanning apparently begins with a nutty Dutch doctor who decided life would be more bearable if he drilled holes in his head, not only conducting this on himself, he also convinced other people to follow suit. His memoir is called 'Bore Hole' (I assure you, this is not a wind up) and he, unsuprisingly, was attempting to reach a permanent high... if you read the stomach churning accounts of this flying dutchmans attempts to drill a hole in his own head (a sentence you don't see so often) you find the fantastic line '...took a tab of LSD to steady his nerves and set to in earnest'. Fucking madness. Except it does not end there, visit the site of the International Trepanation Avodacy Group and you'll read accounts of other morons happily drilling their heads to find feelings of serenity. Whats the words I'am looking for, oh yeah, bunch of dangerous fucking lunatics. Hippies with drills. twats.