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.

I knew it! This has been bugging me for weeks, even though I don't watch the show (yeah, right) I kept seeing this guy appearing on OC which annoyed the hell out of me as I know his face from somewhere Alan Dale (I)......its Jim! Vietnam vet poisoned by his wife, if I remember correctly.

So John Mills has shuffled off this mortal coil, actor in two of my favourite war movies, Ice Cold in Alex and Dunkirk, - ICIA also being one of my favourite movies of all time. John Mills (I)

Ireland was cool, another day trip to another country - after the meeting I managed a quick tourist trip to Trinity college and sneaked a quick look at the book of kells.

Books: Bill Bryson, A short history of nearly everything - which is good, and interesting but ignores (so far) all the science which ever happened before the 15th Century, and particularly that which occured before the Greeks. Also, Greg Egan - Permutation City - Australian computer geek writing the best hard science fiction you'll ever read. And speaking of hard science fiction I read Tau Zero by Poul Anderson which, aside from the noveltly of casting the Swedes as the guardians of the post holocaust world in the future has a really cool idea as its main story i.e. a space ship which can never slow down and goes closer and closer to the speed of light meaning, relativistically, the universe grows older than the crew.

and of course we'll never really know how much useful 'intelligence' was gained from the 'interrogation' (and the dark understudy of torture the use of this word hides) but I'm willing to bet that it is precisely zero. I remember a long time ago, when 9/11 happened, a friend of mine commented that now would be a time for the new world to truly arise and that America could take a lead in rising above the squalor of mind associated with such an attack - but no. We bombed the fuck out of Afghanistan, started an illegal war on the basis of lies and now are rattling sabres with Iran. Perhaps some of this is justified, but I just feel that there must be a better way.BBC NEWS | World | Americas | US interrogation methods cleared

Back from Dublin, begorrah....saw the book of the Kells and a Russian. And, now, to work.

peering into a glass darkly.........RHIC Scientists Serve Up �Perfect� Liquid

EXT. Close up of a road side. All we see are blades of grass, dust and gravel. In the background we can hear a skylark and the noise of wind in the trees. Above the grass we can see a brightblue sky. Its a sunny summer day. The camera begins to move. Drifting through the grass. We now see pieces of rubbish and bits of tyre in the grass. We come to tarmac, at the same time we hear a radio, quietly at first, but then louder. Someone searching through the stations. A blast of music, some football and then....

Announcer

.....volume of holiday traffic has meant the

roads into Cornwall are jammed for almost ten miles from.....

EXT. The camera continues to drift across the road surface. We now see a close up of a car tyre, and then the under belly of a car. The noise of the engine drowns out the radio. Steaming water drips from the shaking car, and there is a pool of oil underneath it. It is a car at breaking point. Behind this car we see others, jammed behind it. The noise of the engine is discordent, the sound of metal on metal. The camera drifts past the other tyre, and we see a nail wedged deep in the rubber and a slight hiss as we pass by it. As the engine noise disappears slightly the radio comes back.

Announcer

......the largest event of its kind, with over.....

EXT. The camera drifts between the cars, jammed on a dual carraigeway. Again we pass under another car, its engine rattling and creaking. We hear, faintly, the voices from inside it.

Parent

Stop it! For gods sake just be quiet!

Child

But look where he's put his finger!

EXT. We now pass onto the central reservation, underneath the crash barrier. We see a corner stretching away from us, one side of the road glistening with heat shimmer, the other full of stationary cars. The camera slows, and stops, resting beside a crushed tenants lager can on the tarmac edge. The radio fades but we become aware of another noise. A high pitched, tuned whistle which has a deeper note buried within it. It becomes increasingly louder, higher in pitch and then, from the left of the screen, there is a bur of yellow and blue as a motorbike screams down the empty road. We see only a glimpse of a fat back tyre before the bike disappears, accompanied by the doppler affect of the sound. The crushed can trembles in the wind it makes. We hear another engine noise, different but just as loud, a lower growling noise as another bike punchs past the can. Again, all we see is a momentary glimpse of bike before it too is gone. The can trembles again. There is a brief pause and we hear the radio faintly.

Announcer

....and the AA saying to only make your journey if

its strictly neccessary.....

EXT. The noise suddenly rises as a bike bellows past the can, travelling much faster than the first two. We have an impression of shape and dark colours before it is gone, with a machined howl from its exhaust. The noise is intense, our ears are ringing. The can is flicked across the verge and out of sight.

Music: Beck, Loser.

EXT. The camera is now swooping down a valley, alongwhich a dual carraige way. Three bikes race down it, alone, while in the other lane hundreds of cars - full of holiday makers - sit.

and so forth, and so on.

Poland was fun, lots of strange dumplings to eat, candles for the pope and cool art galleries. UK this weekend to see the folks, and then ireland on tuesday. Ironic that I get to visit the emerald isle after leaving blighty.

Unconditional moan #1: Canceling Enterprise. And how many seasons more of Voyager did we get, hmmm. Clearly there is no justice.

Unconditional moan #2: War of the Worlds remake with Cruise and SS (thats Steven Spielberg not Steven Seaga, though that could be cool...)....I wait with something close to terror at what they will do to my number one all time favourite science fiction story.

Unconditional moan #3: What the hell is marvin supposed to look like in the new HGTTG?

And a big huzzah, the comic book version of Shaun of the Dead is coming soon!

And Dubya, you fucking wanker, drilling for oil in alaska. At the same time as the Millenium Ecosytem assessment pretty much says we're fucked.

So, my dear friends, it has been 10 days - 10 whole days, my stars - since we last spoke. And I must say you're looking well, almost too well, perhaps that ruddy glow of your skin and the shiver of your shanks is due to, well, methods of rejuvenation which are not quite wholesome, hmmmm?

And what a ten days its been. Lots of work, between both here and Denmark with too much time spent staring at computer screens. We escaped the city last weekend (which makes Malmö sound like a smoggy chaotic hell but thats not really the case, though some of the cycle lanes are quite scary to cross) and drove up to the summer house. This enabled us to do the seasonal ritual of changing the tyres from winter 'dubs' to the normal summer ones which has the immediate effect of removing the constant roar you experience as the metal studs on the dubs wear away the road. And, I'm afraid, thats as much as I can muster at the minute - off to Warsaw tomorrow not, unfortunately, the Free City of Krokow - for all of those who remember Twilight 2000.

Books: Einsteins Miraculous Year - which was tough going so I moved onto steadier ground with Lost Discoveries by Dick Teresi. Its very cool, about how the Egyptions etc had invented algebra and geometry way before the Greeks (though I found myself discussing this loudly in the greek restaurant in Malmö today, rather embarressing, especially when you refer to Aristotle as a 'wanker') Also reading Stamping Butterflies by John Grimwood which I was not at first impressed by but now am loving - and hes written loads of other stuff, cool
Movie: Signs by M Night Shalllamamalamalamalamalaamalaman, not bad, 6 out of 10.
Game activity: Currently trying to make my cow in Black and White do things other than pooing and ripping up trees.

The last week has been intense, even the 'red day' of monday was consumed with work - a feverish construction of a database while juggling two or three other projects in the background, I'm not complaining but against the background of selling the flat, and buying a new one, its a little hectic. And squeezing in my shuffles around Malmö.
I sleep very well these days.

Except for the zombie dreams.

The flat looks like something out of house and home at the minute, we've 'styled' it for the viewings which basically means removing everything which personalises the apartment and making it more anonynomous. As we've been having quite a lot of interest it means that we're living very very anally, bowls washed up straight away, books returned to the book shelf and clothes folded and put away. Maybe some people live like this all the time, but god, its hard work. The Swedish system of viewings is very efficient, we're given about a days notice and then have to vacate the premises while the estate agent shows the potentials around, I was tempted to hide under the bed to see what they say but feared I might be discovered. Or worse, they might think I come with the flat.

Books: Calvin and Hobbes, Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Young Women, The Kalahari Typing School for Men, The Lovely Bones, The Universe Next Door, and the little guide to Sweden I've got (from the Swedish government, because I'm an immigrant).
Notable events: My first Identity card, arrived in the post yesterday. Not only does this represent some kind of infringement of my civil rights (apparently, according to some) but it also means I can finally book my driving test, and pick up parcels at the post office without producing a passport, residence permit, tax details and character witness.
Annoyance: Where the fuck are the 2nd hand games I ordered from Amazon (Myth III and Black & White), they might have only cost a tenner total but I still expect them to get here.