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."