I have to pack. Expect an update soon including blue lagoons, Björk and ponies.

old and dusty, but quite strange.....Chrome Moon FAQ V2.01

and some idle curiosity turned this up.....Max Headroom

blogging at the minute on something like the set from Blade Runner or Max Headroom (theres something to hunt for).....the rooms draped in thin sheets of plastic which gives it the appearence of afore mentioned cyberpunk movies or low buget pop videos. Yes, we've got the painters in. They burst through the door at 0730 every morning full of thinner and camel hair with a churlish yell of delight, never mind that I'm stumbling around SBN looking for a towel....oh well.

The blogs going to be quiet for a few days again, I'm off to Iceland this thursday so there'll be no blogging then (but such things will change when I get hold of my wireless laptap, cool). Its wednesday tommorow, yes I know, but thats also lanquage school night so there may be a lack of motivation.

heres some images of Sweden, from today:-

the brown spot on the skin of the woman who sat next to me on the bus.
the sun reflecting off the shiny steel of the observatory at the university.
the bill board guy mopping his face with a dirty hankerchief.
my driving instructor grabbing my foot.
the rumble of some studs car in the streets.
the realisation that I was an English man, reading a book about globalisation, on a bus in Sweden going to a company which has offices in Denmark and represents a network of 11 different countries.
a motorbike with two people on it.
the christmas carol.
the fingers.

The driving lesson was cool this morning, learnt how to crawl drive and change gear properly. I assume the handbrake turns are next week.

music: usual mixture but at the minute, Chicks on Speed
weather: lovely sunny
cute little flash site.....yugop.com

"and thats the way to crucify a fish" said my latin teacher, stepping back from the tree and letting the black and decker with dual hammer action slip from his scale encrusted hands.

its the weekend. enjoy it. there probably won't be another one like it.

most excellent D&D parody.....actually a little to close to the truth8bitDandD

Good morning.

Its been a lovely day today, no working late, no sweating feverishly and wishing for more hours in the day. Start the working week on wednesday and end it on friday, nice.

Completely lost my thread of thought there, listening to BBC and suddenly heard the news that SETI may have picked something up but turned out to be nothing....bugger, as the great man said.

The other good news out today was that I'm off to Iceland in a weeks time, the land of geysers and Björk (which means birch in Swedish, incidently), looking forward to that I must say.

One of those little differences which mean a lot (number nothing of an irregular series): in supermarkets you always wait to pay the cashier rather than the usual british style of scurrying after your shopping and then frantically running back to pay while the people waiting behind you click there teeth and hiss with disapproval. Here we wait patiently, pay, and then pack our goods while, wait for it, they use the divider to segragate your goods. ordered. scented. nice.

it took me a second to remember who Tom Lehrer is, which is a real shame as I really used to like listening to this guys stuff, his most famous tune being 'Poisoning Pidgeons in the Park. Here, in this lovely site, a cunning flash maverick has put the elements to a little flash animation, good stuff.....incidently, you do need speakers...Mike Stanfill, Private Hand - Flash Animation - The Elements, by Tom Lehrer

music: Radio 4, news
book: still the Lexus and the Olive Tree
weather: nice.
new skill: using the brake before changing gear, much smoother.

again with the question, why exactly did we come down from the trees?....BBC NEWS | Europe | Turkish man eyes squirting record

oh dear me.........BBC - 6 Music - Robert Smith Lookalike Gallery

more proof that the world is going mad....- More Useful Everyday

a you thought I'd forgotten the link......one man/womans crusade on the net to poke fun at the evilness of 419ers..What's the bloody point ??

and as the world goes to hell in a handbasket again I resume the frippery which is this, lovingly incoherent ramble through the backwaters of my mind. I've read, as I expect you might have done, my fair share of blogs out on the net. So things you won't find here is sneering commentary or insightful thoughts on the world we live in. Those of you who know me well will know that such insight occurs rarely and sneering even less (usually in sentences which include the words conservative, reimagining or piers anthony). This is not to say that all blogs are sneering or/and insightful, many are truly awesome whereas this one, like its author, is random, inconsequential and troubled by corns.

For the minute the great onslaught at work has calmed down. It all culminated with a two day trip to Finland last week which was most excellent. The reason was our yearly forum (conference under another name) which collected the movers and shakers from all over the Baltic region. Finland seemed cool but to be honest I saw little but my hotel room, the conference centre and a few choice bars. The days of giving presentations whilst still drunk seem to have gone, after a few beers I made my excuses and went to bed.

The weekend, and indeed the last two days of vacation, was most excellent.....English chum came over to visit and thus a trip to the summer house and Copenhagen was in order. All good.

music: creedance clearwater revival.
book: Lexus and the Olive Tree by T. Friedman (all about Globalisation), The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapiscinki (about Africa, fantastic) and Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (very good thriller by the chap who wrote Mystic River). Also Camelot 3000 (as reminded to me recently) and HellRaiser (collected best).
weather: overcast.

and having read all that I'll invest some of the below mentioned tokens on a dictionary.

so my little darling blog, all dusty and moth eaten....nerry a word of wisdom spoken nor anything insensible said, not that there was never anything much of that but nothing, well, thats just indefensible. So the story is that I'm working like hell at the minute which is nice, for the hourly rate I currently get is somewhere between miserly and mean (though the word on the street is that a rise comes soon, very nice but lets wait until we're spending it before we crack the champagne and dance the light fantastic) and more hours means more play tokens. But the downside is that the blog suffers thus, until the dust has settled, I intend to take a short break rather than demoralise you with empty and unchanged pages. This is a declaration, if you will, of a short period of silence to follow which will last until I return, Gods willing, from Finland which will be in a weeks time - thus waitress service will return on the 1st of september...yes I may find time for the occaisonal snippet and if the above is a rule then rules are made to be broken but at least I have not the guilt of considering you sleeplessly waiting for a fresh update on my continuing campaign against the dark overlords of chaos and the harbingers of insect doom that they verily ride. You have been warned, I repeat full uncensored service will return on the 1st of september until then it will be light showers and occaisonal sea frets.

love a duck? I'd rather not thanks.





following on from the 'the chap', heres some find apparel to gad about in...Classic Tweed Trousers and Breeches from Scotch Corner

so a quick little sniff here as I'm off to class in a while, back from work, have some dinner then off to Swedish class for three hours, quite a full day.

Sadly its raining, which means that the death metallers in the Malmö festival ( a week long event, but its the heavy stuff this evening) will all get damp. Not me, as I'm definitely only a fairweather festival goer. No doubt it will turn into some kind of mud fuelled orgy.

its the bit about the 'fight of champions' which made me chuckle BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | HK arrests 'insect gamblers'

you can tell its a lazy day today, lots of time wasting fun here.....I'am well on the way to create a despotic state, I've just abolished democracy.Jennifer Government: NationStates

check it out, the Swedes just made 9 000 000, which puts them about 3 000 000 short of the population of London and something like the 83rd largest population in the worldBefolkningsklockan - Statistik fr�n SCB

jeesly crow, almost forgot.....today is two days into my sixth month in Sweden - so lets recap:-

I am about to become a father.
I have a new job.
I can sort of speak another lanquage.
My world possessions have been whittled down to a suitcase's worth.
I have eaten one, exactly one, fried breakfast in the last six months.
I have lost 6kg.
I dont queue anymore.
I eat pickled cabbage with pizzas and think its normal.

and so forth and so on.......98% all good.

so there was much sniggering this afternoon, as I walked back from the railway station (I'd had a meeting in Copenhagen), when I noticed a ladies shoe shop called 'Viscera', the mental image of people shuffling around with their feet draped in offal (and other soft parts) caused no end of amusement, but thats me and mine sense of humour neighbours.

Other chuckle today was at my expense for the good people of Denmark and Sweden. I cut my hair this morning, using the clippers anand returning myself to a dirty tennis ball impression rather than the coconut I was beginning to resemble. Yeah, so walking past a window in town, checking myself out, looking good but wait.....it seems I've become a Hare Krishna disciple as there is a huge chunk of hair protuding from the back of my head. Particularly funny as I was presenting the last few weeks of work in Copenhagen, I carried it off, however, my chanting and wearing orange robes so they did'nt think I was wierd.

weather: Sultry like the harems number one
music: coldplay, but I'm hoping for the Dixie Chicks


one of the better U-31 sites on the net (and yes, I've been to pretty much all of them)......The Ulysses 31 Information Resource Centre.

so how the hell are you doing, trees are sweating, dogs are panting and the sun is affectionate towards the brown.......new language course began yesterday, evening classes this time, twice a week for three hours. My class, at the minute, consists of me, two guys from Iraq, one chap from Lebanon and a woman from China. All nice and multicultural, and yeah, thanks to the Tony and George roadshow for making me feeling instantly guilty when the Iraqis introduced themselves.

music: Erasure, A Little Respect
weather: hot
book: Across the Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn

practice those handshakes why don't ya.....Order of Former Freemasons :: The Secrets of Freemasonry

Woke up feeling strangely nostalgic today, not so much for the UK but rather for childhood which suddenly seems very fresh, I guess its something to do with impending fatherhood.......'nuff said on that self indulgent riff anyway.

Jesus am I grumpy (as well as nostalgic obviously) today, I've got a whole new brace of mozzie bites (approximately 13 or so) which adds to my already insect ravaged body - since the trip to Rhodes i've accumulated somewhere close to 30 odd bites, knibbling and general insect assaults going from the mundane (wasp sting on inside thigh) to the interesting tick between my toes (removed by suffocation with vaseline, really works!), waiting for symptons of lyme disease to show themselves. There was a full on tactical assault on my legs during bouldering yesterday, little bastards. Bouldering though, bloody good, went to Kjugokull for the second time and had a triumphant time, sent a high ball problem which scared the hell out of me (particularly as the base of the rock was teeming in huge fucking ants - again with the insect thing). Having just read up on mosquito bites on the net it seems that the number of bites I've experienced means I am resensitised to the proteins the little fuckers inject into you - great.

music: Chicks on Speed
weather: lovely, 25+ and the tarmacs dry
book: nine mil, Rob Ryan
inconsequential thought: staggering geometric progressions filling the sky
recent film: I, robot, 4.5 out of 10 but also Magnolia (on tv) bloody excellent.

Please don't put your life in the hands of a rock and roll band....indeed, my nostalgic muse extends to the music of day.......

remember the days of playing 3D monster maze, fantastic, check out the adverts pages....lost saturdays of yore hammering away on the shiny little keyboardZX81 THE ARCHIVE

yeah yeah, its been short on blog and long on silence but my eyes are stinging from staring at the computer at work so no blog until the weekend........or maybe its my urinating in my eyes party trick.
love and peace.

apparently there was only 13 episodes made of this before it was canned.....in the realms of nostaglia it always seemed like more....STREET HAWK

Good morning. As the late Alastair Cook used to say in his letter from America, I used to try and listen to it when I was a kid but there was never anything about the America that I was interested in....i.e. no interesting features on Knight Rider or The A Team. Had a real beasting in the climbing gym last night, met up with one of the chaps and, once again, was subjected to a plethora of crimps and steep climbing. The climbing wall is currently quiet with a clique of half naked very strong men occupying one of the boulder caves. After the climbing wall I went out for a quick skate around town and took a humilating slappy fall, whilst stationary, when waiting for the lights to change. Ouch, pride doubly hurt.

I registered at the local driving school yesterday and received my text books, all nicely translated into English. The main book has the first few chapters totally devoted to being a safe driver and not giving in to peer pressure and driving recklessly in the quest to 'find oneself'. Every other page seems to have a photograph of a mangled car with oil and blood leaking out of it - scary stuff.


Weather: Sunny and fluffy
Music: Charlie Feathers 'That Certain Female'........and now some New Order 'Love Vigilantes'
Book: Scorcese on Scorcese, Da Vinci Code, The Death of Cinema, Stray Bullets, Arkham Ayslum.

and the internet becomes a mechanism for world peace....BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Finnish army 'drops web addicts'

greetings one and all. Freshly groomed and back from the summer house, I can't go to work straight away as I have to go and book some driving lessons - yes, that day has finally come when I must, as the toecutter said, 'ride a rubber road to freedom'. As myself and K are now the proud owners of a splendidly red car I've been spending some quality time behind the wheel, and not just sitting in the drive way making 'vroom vroom' noises. Going from nervously puttering around country lanes on friday to driving us most of the way home on monday, I don't see any major obstacles. I realised that I already know how to drive, I just needed to learn how to drive 4 wheels rather than two. But blimey, cars are boring - no sensation of speed (other than your partner saying 'your're breaking the law now, and the sound barrier' - as our awesome 16 valve 1.6 litre engine powers us across the Swedish landscape) and you've got a blind spot the size of, well, a car....never mind, all good fun.

I've just finished an awesome book, 'A heartbreaking work of staggering genius' by David Eggers, which was funny and sad, and lots of other good things as well. Just started Dan Browns Da Vinci Code which seems to be intellectual wanking, its actually quite interesting but the characters are tottering hulks of rotting cardboard who can only think in italics.

as well as twisting your optic nerves around this will also get your brain trying to jump out of your skull as you try to grapple with what a hypercube actually is.......otherwise known as a TesseractStereoscopic Animated Hypercube

Yeah, its been rather slack recently but we've had guests camping out in the front room so no blogging I'm afraid.....and I'm off to work in 10 and then the summer house for a longish weekend so nothing doing this weekend (unless I can get to a computer, my the power of my mind). Normal disservice will be restored as soon as possible.

weather: Sunny
book: The Long March by William Styron (him of Sophies Choice (not Sophies World, very very different)) and Number9dream by David Mitchell, which is bloody excellent.
Oh my god, Wes is still alive.....STARTREK.COM

 

praise be to the gods of the net....awesome awesome siteThe Project Apollo Image Gallery

its early, and I can't sleep. In fact, I've been awake for the last three hours, sufficiently cognisent to finish the Arthurian swashbuckler I was reading and hear the newspaper being delivered at 0430. It could be that my impending trip from the UK is keeping me awake as I chuckle with excitement at the thought of seeing many of the things I hold dear, or it could be the 3 cans of lager and Chicken Balti i had last night........as I get older such things seem to have a rather detrimental affect, still, no signs of leakage yet - which can only be a good thing.

I would write more but the keyboards bloody loud.

Blogging will return from tuesday, where the sites and sounds of blighty will be faithfully recorded.

weather: grey and overcast
apparal: towel and Professionals T-shirt
inconsequential desire: cheeky 6a problem on lovely dartmoor granite

looks interesting.......nice flash site toSaints and Soldiers

If you've come looking for inspiration and wit then, by god, you've come to wrong place - actually, if you ever came here for that then you really need to surf some more. I'm tired, by brain is fuzz, I've been working on the marketing for a conference for the WHOLE DAY! Crikey, its almost like working for a living, not used to it at all - and I'm feeling out of sorts because it was raining this morning and I could not get out roller blading before work, hummmpfh. Actually, it was the Captain who suggested that we roam through no man's land during a lull in the shelling. So, with our hearts deep in our boots we slithered over the earthern wall into the grey light of the dawn. The sky was a bruised blue colour and, high above, we could see the faint contrails of high altitude cruise missiles. The ground beyond the trench was ripped and torn, the earth splayed and torn by the bombardment of the last few days. The soldiers who had fought and fallen over this nondescript were evident, though none seemed to be intact, eyes, ribs and guts all exposed to the light and the crows. Billy, his face even more sallow than usual took the lead and I crawled after him, my only view the mud caked soles of his boots as we advanced, slowly, towards the enemy trench. After what seemed hours, but in reality was no more than twenty minutes we rolled down the edge of a huge shell hole and paused for breath. The base of the hole held a small puddle, and curiously, a perfectly intact flower floated on its oily surface its white petals glaring bright compared to the dun colour of the abused and burnt ground. There were five of us, Billy the squad leader, Cromwell, Mack, the new guy and myself. We huddled together at the base of the shell hole and then, as Billy dropped his clenched fist down, we stumbled to our feet and charged recklessly over the top of the enemy trench. The fear was always there, the blood thundereing in my veins and a feeling like my guts were made of liquid. My rifle felt like it weighed a hundred kilos and I tried to hunch down behind my helmet and body armour. We floundered over the last few metres of mud and dropped into the gaping blackness of the trench like demons returning to hell. It was empty, it always had been.

music: StarWars - The Imperial March. Again, why is it that with 200 odd tracks currently on the real player it insists on playing Coldplay again, good taste I agree but a little boring....lets see, , Meja - intimacy....possibly better.
weather: 21 and sunny.

hell, its monday - you're bored, I'm bored, even the floors board, why not waste a few minutes with this.......kinda like Jet Set Willy, if you excuse the pun........Supershag Land

Well, I'am always the last to know. Somehow my geek sense totally failed me and everytime I saw an advert or article about this I just thought, 'consigned to development hell' and paid no more attention. I have been waiting for this for some time, right since Darkhorse (I think it was them) did the comic book series.....Lance 'Bishop' Henrikson is in it. Which has to be a good thing. Signourney has clearly managed to wrestle her way out of the franchiseALIEN vs. PREDATOR. Talking of movies I also notice that the Sequal toPitch Black is coming soon.....

continuing my armchair obcession with splatter zombie movies.....Film Threat - Reviews

Lovely morning, the sky is blue and looking out the window I could see the sharp shadows cast onto the ruddy bricks of the flats opposite.....after days of dull light and mizzle this is refreshingly lovely.

Can't remember if I mentioned this or not but I went to the climbing gym on tuesday night, only spent an hour traversing but it was time well spent and no pain from my shoulder - most excellent. I've spent some time on the blades this week with some spectacular crashes, as I now seem to have a modicum of balance and skill which means I stay upright for far longer when things begin to go pearshaped.

Should be working today but I think I'll give myself the afternoon off - why not? I do however, have to figure out photoshop in the next few hours.


Again, some of you may not totally enjoy this but - for the odd - check out the gallery and download of the mighty Ken Palmer soloing an 8a - really nice piece of film. Many years ago I had the honour of climbing a couple of routes with him, well cool.BigPebbles Media

brain dead from hours staring at exel database, computer sickness has set in.

recent book: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, really good and very black humour.
recent comic: From Hell, Allan Moore and Eddie Campbell - its about Jack the Ripper, very very good.
I really should read something I don't like to make this seem more balanced.


lovely thought, these little chaps roaming around the martian sandsBBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Rover 'in training' for hill trek

computer......running slow...........like running through custard....must stop and eat.........need more RAM.......

well hello. So it seems that the whole of Northern Europe is about to be washed away in a biblical flood. Very frustrating weekend of rain, when it final broke on sunday afternoon me and K managed to get out for a quick skate/cycle and then a trip to Hovs Hallar to get some rock in. Managed to scare myself witless by finding myself a long way off the deck on slightly slippy slopey holds....nasty nasty.

The roller blade project is progressing nicely, invested in some elbow and knee protectors on Friday which gave me more confidence in practicing turning and stopping a little more agressively.


weather: damp, overcast. Its summer, right?
music: Stereolab 'ping pong'
last book: Axiomatic, Greg Egan. Usual quantum physics tomfoolery.

Interesting......Straight Dope Message Board - powered by vBulletin

The words downpour, tumult and cloudburst are insufficient to describe the deluge which I found myself cycling through to get to the job centre. The rain was insane to the point that from the holes on a manhole cover jets of water spouted a metre into the air as the drains all backed up. So, like a drowned rat I squelched into the job centre to let them know I was working half time (although its more like full time these days) and found the office completely empty, after a few minutes of wandering around marie celeste like offices I found the staff all busily eating lunch and generally ignoring the inconvience of an English invandrare dripping on the floor.

Most excellent Swedish word: lagom, meaning neither one thing nor the other. Theres no real English equivalent.
Desire: Good weather over the weekend so I can enjoy more bone crunching impacts with tarmac (memo to self: must not skate downhills before I can brake) and hopefully some rocky pleasures.
Music: The Specials, James Bond Theme.
Weather. The very opposite of very dry.

Possibly one of the greatest comedy moments, ever. 

I am battered. Two evenings of my new 'sport', roller blading, have left me with bruises, cuts and general light damage. Three spectacular falls to date.

Its fucking raining....how can it rain so much. Apparently this is the wettest summer on record for Sweden.

I would write more but I need to risk drowning by venturing outdoors.

anarchic art proffessors making trouble The Scientist :: Prof to be arraigned today

For some reason the sites poping up a 404 message when you click on the site, hit refresh and its okay - strange, but then if you are reading this you've figured it out.

the little old, rather grey, librarian suddenly vaulted over the desk of her musty dusty library where the hundreds of dog eared and hounded volumes had been her solitary companions. She ran out into the street, tearing her tweed asunder and casting her spectacles into a privet hedge. Squinting into the horizon she hitched the shreds of burberry around her knocky knees and fled to a better life on the high seas.

A strange thing I've noticed in both Malmö and Copenhagen is the presence of the outline of someones feet drawn onto the pavement in white paint. About a size 10 I'd say, quite wide feet, and always standing rather than walking. Not everywhere, but here and there.

Weather: Close, damp.
Music: Primus (precisely now, John the Fisherman)
Book at the minute: Mara and Dann, by Doris Lessing. Just finished by How the Dead Live by Will Self, very most modern, apparently.

shame on you Blair....so how, exactly, is the security of the UK 'enhanced' since the war, fucking wanker BBC NEWS | Politics | Blair says WMD 'may never be found'

yep, proof of the below heres me enjoying an easy V0 traverse above the sea. 

Its rollover week as I slip from 32 to 33 with only a little grease and almost no effort. Remarkably I can actually remember where I was last birthday, UK natch but I clearly remember being in my old place - the strange thing is it seems only like last month. Very cool present came via the UK from the parents, 1 and a half seasons of Father Ted....absolutely fantastic for a humour starved ex-pat.

Its very 'close' today, as Thor whacks his mighty tool and damp emissions spray on the ground. Interesting that we say 'close', but you never hear anyone say 'oooh, a long way away' when refering to the weather.

Splendid weekend of rock activity - the first in five weeks of recovery. Most excellent fun at Hovs Hallar playing on strange granite of dubious quality above landings of varying death potential. None the less top fun.

its quite possible I've sent y'all to this site before but what the heck, its way cool and I cannot be bothered to surf the dirty corners of the net today, especially after 7 hours of staring at a computer screenXIAOXAIO MOVIE

Cover art from Moonshadow, one of the most splendid comic books I've read in years. Top. 

Very quickly as I'm jomping to the railway station in 5, off to the summerhouse for the weekend.
Spent the last two days sweating a database into shape, lots of illogical computer fun. Saw the LadyKillers, full review to follow but I'm afraid it scores a lowly 4 out of ten, half a point up from last night score.

yep, have a trevlig Helg.

excellent advice for a gentleman around town..- More Useful Everyday

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

blatently strange (and Swedish)
Ja Da

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and again with the html not working.

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

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

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


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

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

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

So back for a little sniff.

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


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

The duck, a hat and a pebble.

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

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

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

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

A well known household cleaning product and a duck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today was groovy, upshot of the meeting (conducted munching bread and cheese, sitting on big pink beanbags) is that I'm off to Germany on Tuesday to be brought up to speed on a new project, all good. Plus I got more hours on some other projects as well, nice.

Well, this weekend will not see much of a blog nor monday either (I suspect) as it is Pingst (Pentecost) and we have the day off. Thus off to the Summer house, hazzah.

this gets better and better, I love the idea of the powder being called Forbid...further down the page someone talks about 'spanking their dog', please tell me someone else finds this funnyI have a 7 month old male Chihuahua, he eats his POOH!!!He... - Q&A

The schools are all finishing for the summer so the streets are becoming full of teenagers finishing their last year at high school. This means the wearing of white suits, or evening dress, sailor caps and lots of champagne - mixed with driving around the streets in open top cars, trucks and trailers - all jolly good fun.

Off to Copenhagen tommorow for a meeting which is nice, travelling across the bridge on a train, can life get any more exciting.


Just the first sentence had me laughing, but thats just me....I particularly like the bit about pineapple chunks, how do they know? Did someone test it? and how do you make feces (sic) more distasteful. My Pet Eats Really Strange Stuff

More lanquage course, usual line up of insane people, teacher with dangerous with dry and dangerous sense of humour, yep. All feels pretty normal to me. Amusing situation when the Irish girl ran through the alphabet and the teacher, after listening to her a talk a bit more, asked her if she would like to move up to the next class, suddenly every one who could speak a sentence was asking if they could move up too! I stocially stayed silent, dammit, I want to learn the alphabet again.

Woke up feeling a bit rough, either its lactose intolerance (finally), the chicken from last night or I'm getting a cold. I may even cancel climbing this evening, how mature is that!

weather: chilly and overcast.
last book: Timescape by Gregory Benford, old school science fiction from the Scifi masterworks series. Pretty good.
last movie: some dreadful shit with Tommy Lee Jones (was he born looking old) and a few minutes of Tango and Cash. That reminds me, finally saw Copland all the way through, very good and Stallones actually acting.


interesting and quite patrioticDoctor Who vs. Star Trek

Just a quick update on the new lanquage course, lots of new faces including Croats, Serbs, Nigerians, Hungerians, Londoners, Irish and Americans - once again all of lifes rich tapestry. Now this is a free course, sponsored by the Swedish government, and it seems to be really good. Nice teachers and free pencils, hoorah. The teacher explained where we lie, at present, on the A to D scale of learning Swedish. We can write and read our own Language so we automatically move to B, where we'll be assessed over the next few weeks (I guess) and then maybe moved up if required. Amazingly if you come as an imigrant to Sweden without being able to write or read your own lanquage they will teach you, for free, before you then learn Swedish - how cool is that.

On the bus on the way to Lernia (which is where I'm being taught) heard an English voice so kept an ear open to hear a fellow brit....Jesus, moaning about how shit the buses were here and how in London you did not get barged into or knocked about by people getting on or off...yeah, right, like maybe if your're dreaming and not actually on a real bus....so, this guys annoying me already because nothing sounds worse than a whinging pom, especially one who seems to assume that nobody understands him and then when someone gets onto the bus wearing a top with an English flag he's like, whys he wearing that, whys a Swede wearing the English flag etc etc. Numbnuts. Well, thats my moan out of the way - just a grumpy old bugger I expect, but hey, its a living. Incidentally, the moaning brit is in my punishment wardrobe, he's been there for a while now...........

kinda funny in that mad way people get when they can put any old shit on the internetT33n G1rl Squ4dx0rx!!

Monday. Day of Mon, the Greek God of Dough, Plant Pots and Aubergines.

Well, I should have been in Swedish III this morning but after waking up horribly early (after being up horribly late helping K format her thesis) got a phone call from the organisers saying it was postponed due to sickness of the teacher - bugger. Presumably they've got a bad case Stockholm Syndrome (see below). The weekend was very triumphant, started to get a tan after lolling in the sun for more than a few hours. Actually, it was about as loll worthy as I can get, so mowing the lawn of the summerhouse, working out in the rocky gym and running down the beach were all involved, one day I'll be able to sit still for more than a few minutes. Just spent the last hour trying to figure out how to get a Swedish driving licence, not too complicated and the pathway to learning to drive is pretty similar to the UK. I.e, permit (provisional) and then onwards to test and full licence. Only main difference is having an eyesight test before you even get into a car, not just a few minutes before your test as in the UK-I always thought that seemed a bit strange. Well up for learning to drive 4 wheels, after years of not being particularly bothered, after spending the weekend throwing K's mothers car around a beach - loads of fun!!

The other lanquage news is, however, that I will start my free government course this afternoon - its a 48 week course, every afternoon for 4 hours, crikey. Should be interesting to see what its like, probably a good mix of people on it.

Radio 4 is the background, the weather is overcast and the flat is a little chilly.

yeah well, this is something which Sweden gave back to the world - if you're at all interested in the dynamics of a hostage situation that isThe Peace Encyclopedia: The Stockholm Syndrome

So it was Ascension day yesterday and being a good Lutherian country we got the day off yesterday, which was nice. This has the added benefit of today being a 'squeeze' day (yep, the Swedes have a specific word for the day between a bank holiday and the weekend) which means that things are pretty quiet today to. We wandered off to the Summerhouse yesterday and then zoomed back for work today - I did not have so much, just database work but was all cool. Off to Copenhagen next week to meet the rest of the team and have a slap up meal, should be good. Copenhagen is basically one very large pub.

It occured to me the other day that I have been here for over three months, (3 months and 9 days, to be exact) gosh - time flies like a very fast flying thing........

trevlig helg!!

music: Faith No More
Weather, 12 degrees, windy and sunny. Theres been some chuffing great windy storms over the last few days.
Indeed....Kill Your Television

Why can I not stop thinking about Mork and Mindy?

more to come, but bloody hell - I hope this gets released in Sweden!
working title films official website

So, today saw the end of Svenska III. I only turned up to say good bye to fellow students as I've been working the last few days and had to leave early today as well. So farewell then, to P the Rumenian, P the Thai Mud Wrestler (titta ye not, its the truth) and I, the crazy turkish pizza maker. I'll be seeing some of the others at Svenska III in Malmö, which starts next week. Yeah, such is my thirst to understand what the hell people are saying about me that I'm repeating the course. No, its not because I'm a retard but the last one was supposed to last 4 weeks but instead only ran for two - hence the repeat. And today was my last lesson for a week or so at the school, after the tour de force of yesterday I found today really hard work, but never mind. Its the 12 years old next, should be fun. Going back to Svenska III for a minute, T, the Russian Au-paire was going to do course III but told me today that her family, as in the one she works for, decided that she did not need to - fair enough she works for them but it all sounds a bit too much like slavery to me. 'decided' indeed. Presumably they have her passport locked away in a nice safe place to.


Check out some of the MPEGs on this site, awesome sparks and stuff blowing up - perfect Plus, who can resist the title - Three Phase Disconnect Switch Opening Hot! High Voltage Sparks and Arcs, yeah and while we're on the geek phase of today let me point you towards Ghost Stations which is something that has always intrigued me.

In response to a few comments recently, note the above picture from the fine anime show Battle of the Planets. Please note that you can clearly see, as a result of princess wearing a very short skirt, the merest hint of knickers. Observing this does, in no way, make me some kind of freak (unlike the recently mentioned obcessive of breasts in the Day the Earth caught fire). C'mon you can't miss them - through me a bone here will ya! 

Oh yeah, this is the film I was trying to remember the other day
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) quality stuff, as I searched around the web for this I found a site where some strange sweaty person had devoted an entire site to a scene where you get a glimpse, and I mean just a peep, of Janet Munros breasts, odd to say the least.

After classes today, which were fun but my best group - the ones doing a marine biology module - were all rehearsing a play so did not turn up I wandered my way through the sunny streets of Malmö to the Nya Invandrare (new immigrants) job office to register myself in the system. I was very proud of myself as I managed to do most of the conversation in Swedish but managed to say, at point, rather than 'will you send me a letter' , 'will you shit me a letter', I think. Most amusing.
Yep, no pictures today, just good old fashioned text - we'll see how the new look feels. Still yet to get rid of the pop ups though.

Weather: 19+, sunny and blue skies.
Most recent movie: Madness of King George, bloody great it is.
Bizarre and quite funny, and also an example of viral advertising.....
Subservient Chicken

Most recent book: Memories of Ice, another truly awesome hack and slay saga - with more than a little wit and black humour thrown in. 

So, some format changes as well, don't know how long this one will last for but it will do for the minute. I think I like it. Perhaps some font changes, ahh, endless timewasting pleasure.

and did not that work rather well.......so, more picture fun in the future.

Something of a test this, just to see what happens....... 

Now this does not look half bad, I was really into the old style disaster moving starting from when I saw the, Jesus, forgotten the name...well, old black and white movie about two nuclear tests being conducted simultanously on opposite sides of the planet which throws it closer to the sun, fantastic stuff. Later on I was really into things like Earthquake and the Towering inferno. Yeah this movie will be effects riddled and the characters most likely reduced to shambling hulks of rotting cardboard but never mind, we want to see big waves and stuff.
TDAT High
Also looking interesting is Shaolin Soccerwhich seems to me the perfecy cure to Pitt taking himself way to seriously in the massacre of the Iliad, furthermore two comic book characters have wandered there way into celluloid heaven, Hell Boyand The Punisher which, as is usual for comic book translations to cinema are getting mixed reviews. Punisher looks like pants where as Hellboy looks fantastic, which is fine by me as I never really liked punisher anyway - I prefer my superheroes to be, well, super.

Well, the week staggers to a close, and I find myself stumbling like Willem Defoe at the end of Platoon out of the blackboard jungle, my clothing in tatters and my morals damaged. Yes, I've been supply teaching and have found new levels of respect for teachers. The life of the supplier is a strange one, an unfamiliar face in the teachers rum you are treated with mild contempt, a lackey if you will. They know you can smell the bitterness, and they know that you will soon escape-free from the tyranny of marking and adolescent filth. I've actually been lecturing on chemistry, which is a joke (given that I only remembered how to draw a benzene ring minutes before the class began) but the kids seemed to like the stuff on Polar Bears changing sex from PCB exposure - all good clean fun. I've also been working in my new role as an assistant web administrator and business support person up at the science park - lots of fun but very PC intense, not so keen to surf when I get home which is why the blog has not been so regular.

You see Bruce Willis character names don't even come close, John McClane (Die Hard 1,2 and 3) is cool, but the rest, Joe Hallenbeck (Last boy scout) is instantly forgettable......see.....whereas Harry Stamper (Armageddon) is, like the movie, just trying too hard.
Arnie, well, given that in some of his movies his name is his job description (Terminator, Mr Freeze) he's just not trying but, and its a big but, he does come close to Seagal like style with John Matrix (Commando), Dutch Schaeffer (Predator) and Douglas Quaid (Total Recall).


Look, I don't know why but it makes me laugh - and who buys stain resistant trousers, and do they admit it. "yes, these trousers are stain resistant, so handy during those intimate moments in the adult cinema" - never sit next to the man with a hat on his lap, thats what my dad said.
Men's > Dress Pants > Pleat Front - Lands' End

Without question Steven Seagal (him of the very quiet derision attracting ponytail and soft 'acting' voice, oh yeah, and the ability to pop your eyeballs out and crack your teeth with one buttock) has had the honour of some of the best action hero names, check it out.....Austin Travis (Execeutive Decision (notable as well as he karks it within the first 30 minutes-bravo, well done that man), Casey Rybeck - now theres a name, played twice in Under Sewage and Under Sewage 2. But these all pale into insignificance compared to the name which is Forrest Taft, the name of the film was ironically, On Dangerous Ground....I'll say. Oh yeah, the final one has to be Mason Storm...please stop it, my sides are hurting.

Come back Snake Pliskin, all is forgiven.




Last watched: an episode of buffy, the really cool one where their voices all get stolen by the freaky toothy floating guys - cut to hell though on the early slot.
weather: nice and sunny
something....
BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Swedish army underpants are MIA

Something of a phenomenon here is the use of Snus, a ground tobacco project if you want to be exact (check out
snus, swedish snus, sweden snus, swedish snuff for more information). Yep, the Swedes really like their Snus. For the uninitated its a fast delivery system of nicotine without having the irratation of lung cancer or heart failure. It comes in two forms, one is a little teabag like thingy which is inserted beside the gum (though contact with any membrane is probably sufficient though under the eyelid or up the rectum would probably sting a little) and the other is the black tar like stuff which is its true form. The latter is squidged between the fingers into a little pellet before being pushed between upper lip and gum, giving the user a kind of rat boy appearance. The advantages of this is that the user has none of the negative aspects of fagging (shivering in office doorways, setting fire to the bed or yellow fingers) while still getting their nicotine fix. I've seen chaps down the climbing wall using the stuff as they send another gnarly 6c problem, trying doing that with a fag on the go. Possibly as a result Sweden is the only country which has acheived the World Health Organisations goal of bringing its share of smokers down to less than 20% of the population. Further more, half of the Snus users are former smokers.

Now, in good old blighty and indeed in the rest of Europe Snus was banned because of the fear of the risk of mouth cancer. Now, if this were the case the one would expect to see half the population here shuffling around with half their face missing but this does no appear to be the case. Swedish deaths from lung, larnyx, mouth and bladder cancer are the lowest in Europe, which must be in some part attributable to the lower numbers of smokers, who have turned to Snus as a means of getting their nicotine. At the end of the day, if you introduce anything to your body which you know can affect it is not a good thing, but it seems strange to me that Snus, which would seem to be a safer alternative to fags is not made more commonly available. Something to think about. Here endeth the sermon.

music: none
last book: Ethal and Ernest by Raymond Briggs - same chap who did 'when the wind blows' and 'the snowman'. Very moving, very good.
weather: raining a little

well bollocks to it, no html then.

annoyingly, none of my links works-heres something close to what was supposed to be there.....

Woke up well nostalgic today, hence....The suns shining today, its 22 degrees and as I ate my lunch in the park, my back to the warm stone of the DomKryka I reflected largely on beetroot and meatballs, which I was eating at the time.
This afternoon involved me learning the new website and figuring out how to update it, its all pretty straightforward and my new chef (boss in English) seemed pretty happy - which makes me happy to!
No running this evening as my achilles is flaring up a little so more ab-glutes (probably the best exercise in the world for making you guff) and ultimate rules yoga.
So, a little more on Malmö and its environs. A good starting point is the bridge, all 7.85 Kms of it which stretches from southern Malmö to Denmark, about 5km east of Copenhagen. gives you an idea of what it looks like. It has trains and cars and the good people of the Oresund region use it every day, singing as they do so.

Today Swedish II ended, but never mind theres no need to panic as Swedish III begins tommorow......lawks a mussy, more adjective fun. Two casualties won't join us, one of them being my fellow expat which is a bit of a shame as the railway journey into Lund will now be a bit boring and lonely, but hey, thats okay, as I'll have Oinky the talking sock to keep me company.

I had a meeting this afternoon to discuss my impending work as a supply teacher, interesting. It seems I will be entertaining a bunch of kids with practical science experiments such as making soap, hmmmm.
Popped across to Denmark for dinner this evening in Kopenhamn to meet the parents before they had back to blighty tommorow, good to see them again.
More work tommorow as well with the biotech support job, I've been familarising myself with their internet site to which I have full admin access, spent a good twenty minutes of palm sweating fun when i thought I'd totally, and irrevocably, fucked it up - but no, managed to get away with it.

Recent book: Steven Erikson, House of Chains, bloody great. Lots of hacking and slaying.
weather:how can I tell, its dark...
music:none, but background television of some truly awful teen movie
Lazy I know, but still worth a look...more well found gems later
NEWS of the WEIRD - Current News

just a quickie.

the firefestival to scare winter away was cool, we arrived late and did not see the lighting of the bonfire nor the traditional songs but the subsequent lightshow was very cool. Imagine a clearing in the woods with about 2000 odd swedes, bloody great searchlights, strange trance music and a huge great fire and you get the idea.

saw a bonkers art exhibition yesterday by a Bulgarian chap called Nedko Solakov, bloody funny!

music: none, though I did listen to the Archers earlier, can someone please shoot that pretend geordie woman in it, 'oooooohhhhh Davidddd the cows have got mastitus again.......'
weather: splendid, just been sitting in the sun doing my Svenska homework
sorry sorry sorry, I'm probably going to hell....
LordCo Centre

just a quick addendum, the below linked game is horribly addictive, do not start playing if you've got things like cooking, surgery or nuclear engineering going on in the background

So the good news is that I got the job I was interviewed for, most excellent - I thought the interview had gone well but you never can tell. Its very part time at the minute but they seem keen to get me more, as long as I don't completely arse things up.

Just seen my first Swedish hip hip band, advance patrol, at the opening do for K's work - all good though bloody cold, open air gig you see........

weather:cold as a cold thing
music:none, just the damn annoying noise from the game below
well addictive.....
SUPER KICKUPS : spikything.com

Well, this is my second attempt at posting to my blog as the broadband connection (bredband in Sweden, which makes me think of Breadboard straight away, not very funny but amuses me) failed at the critical moment.
Anyway, I talked about an annoying conversation I had with a fellow student who was moaning about Sweden, desribed the forthcoming may day communist marches and prattled on about the climbing wall and its rat problem for a while. So once again, this morning I had a rather annoying chat with a fellow class mate who was previously living in Brussels, well fuck me, but Brussels is obviously the centre of the universe and all other places are like one piece of poo in a five poo bag. THe main point about coming to a new country is that things will be different, 'kay, its really not that hard a concept to grasp so don't expect things to be the same.....and particularly don't moan about them all the time, just accept and get on with it. Maybe I've become more intolerant these days, I dunno. The end of april will bring fire festivals and comminist marches on saturday, should be exciting. The climbing wall is infested with rats and large, dangerous traps add to the danger. I was failed to get to the top of anything last night at the wall, but thats okay, as I now have a chilled out zen attitude. Its the taking apart not the whining which counts.

Music: the phones working again, which is nice
weather: rather nice and sunny
My lords.......
Finn's train and travel page : Trains : Sweden

Ab-glute contractions and the purchase of 'Mens Health', these two events are related.

just finished sets of ab-glute contractions, as a kind of reward for a damn fine interview. Definitely gave it my best shot and they'll let me know at the end of the week...so we shall see. The jobs very part time at the minute but with good opportunities for the future, all good!

Amusing thing was, I got a taxi from Lund railway station (the jobs in lund which is cool) and had to wake the driver up to let me in the car. A few minutes later, once we had got moving, he fell asleep at a set of traffic lights - in true English style I loudly cleared my throat, he woke up and off we went. Suffice to say I did not tip very well.

Loads of homework to do as I missed class today and was entertaining over the weekend.

Weather: 15+, cloudy with blue patches
Noise: Radio 4
aahhhh, nostaglia - the clatter of dice, the rustle of paper and the singular power of imagination. Never have I laughed so long and so much as when we used to play such things.......
BBC NEWS | Magazine | Whatever happened to Dungeons and Dragons?

Sleeping in the front room as my parents have got the bedroom. Its early and I've just finished another job application, its actually the first questions of their initial prescreen - 'when was the last time you had personal responsibility, can you work as part of a team and are you frightened of spiders?'-that kind of guff.

Off to the summerhouse after school. Bought my first copy of 'Mens Health' yesterday. These two events are unrelated.

weather: murky and tired
comrade.....
THE YURI GAGARIN COSMONAUTS TRAINING CENTER

Yes, its wednesday and the trees have leaves and the birds are busily building nests.....all rather spring like, bloody lovely.
My parents are down from the mother country tonight so there may only be a few sporadic postings for the next few days, as I will likely be involved in family duties of water carrying, badger baiting and tinkering.

Tired today, we had a chum stay over and as her, and her child, got our bed it meant camping on the floor. Woke up far to early as suns rays broke throught the living room window at 0530 this morning - not nice! The good news is that I've got some new trainers which, after a run in them last night, made me realise I've been running with the equivelent of thin pieces of carpet for ages.

nog.

weather: 15+, blue skies.
Music: just the disturbing sounds from the website below......
Very odd, and a wee bit disturbing.
incoma

sing along with polly coming soon.

oh yeah, another thing ......you may have noticed the pop up ads which accompany this site, sorry about that and they are nothing to do with me - the price to pay for not actually paying anything. As soon as I get around to it (so don't hold your breath) I will upgrade this to do away with such things.

A little indulgence this weekend by getting out onto the rock, bouldering, for the first time since I left the UK. It was only an hour stolen from a hectic schedule of cars, visits and preparations for my parents visit on thursday. It was bloody excellent however, back to a little spot I found a while ago on the coast. Really nice clean granite beside the sea but with the nastiest landings I've ever seen - the rock has contrived to break up into thin sheets leaving the base of most of the best lines scattered with almost knife sharp boulders. Last summer I found one face unadorned with such cleavers and spent some time tinkering around at its base. On my return this sunday I found it had not only grown in size but my climbing had improved - a rather unfortunate combination leaving me stranded halfway up the rock face whimpering as I comtemplated the absolutely committing nature of the hitherto unreached last move. I leapt off, avoiding the bacon slicers at the bottom, on more than one occaission before gaining the realisiation, as usual quite slowly, that this ones a bit hard - a project for the summer then. For those of you who are really interested its a pefectly vertical face with a hard starting move off poor crimps and a layaway to gain a good jug on the left arete. Step up on poor foot holds to gain a small crimp for the right hand (long stretch), leave the security of the jug and.......who knows, in my case peel off the rock with a cry of terror.

The good news is that I'e got a job interview next week, which is nice, a biotechnology company, or rather, one which links companies with companies and encourages colloboration - all good.

weather: blue skies, 20+.....but will it last?
how can you resist the temptation.....
Nuclear Weapons Resources

Things to be aware of when you study a new lanquage. Firstly, you are not trying to buy a can of drink or book a table when talking to your teacher - shouting loudly in English and miming will not help here. Secondly, when he gives you visual clue as to what hes talking about its no use suddenly saying 'oh yes, you mean a pocket' in English. Of course he knows it a pocket you dumbass, your're supposed to be learning a foreign lanquage not showing off your English skills. Thirdly, when the teacher asks you for a new word which you heard the day before do not blurt out the first word in your head, without fail this will be very rude, unrepeatable and you will be forced to spell it out infront of the class. You only have to do this once to be labelled as a deviant. Fourth, when asked what you did yesterday (a common ploy by the teacher to get you talking) do not mention off licences, cake shops, or churches. This will get you a reputation as an alcoholic, fat bastard grave robber - much safer to simply say shopping.

Film most recently seen on TV: GI Jane, I thought Private Benjamin had a stronger message about women in the modern army
Music: Real player has once again popped its electronic clogs but I was listening to radion 4
Weather: nice and blue with a dash of salt
Website: Funny, give it a chance.....
Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About

So welcome back after the Easter celebrations where we remember Christs ultimate sacrifice for us through days of torment and suffering by eating chocalate eggs.
Seriously though, totally awesome weekend. Me and K went up to the Summerhouse on the thursday night. Its about a one and a half hour rail journey from Malmö, up on the west coast, North of Malmö. On the friday some chums of K's met up with us and we headed off to Denmark for the day - another country, day trip - how cool is that. All it involved was a 20 minute boat ride where we feasted on bright red Danish sausages which are banned in Sweden (they are far too red). We went off to Lousiana which is a art gallery on the coast, north of Köpenhamn. Sadly the main exhibition was a rather dull show about the architect who designed the Sydney Opera House, all good if you like that kind of thing but left me rather cold I'm afraid. What was much better was the modern art exhibition from the Falkenberg collection in Hamburg, bloody excellent. Some very wierd installations one of which involved a naked chap dancing in front of a camera in his flat, most amusing or was it..............the other main wierd stuff was by Paul McCartney who is a totally fucked up chap, fortunately I had one of those brief moments where my brain managed to activate before my mouth and I narrowly avoided saying 'quite a departure from the beatles isn't it', whilst watching a video of him freaking out in his studio wearing a hideous mask and loudly going insane. All good clean fun.

The rest of the weekend was top, eating, reading, running, and chatting in both English and Svenska with K's family - frighteningly my Swedish is gradually coming on, I just try to use it on any occaision now and to hell with the consequences. I obviously try to use the right words but it makes you learn faster when you fuck up at a counter in a busy shop than the relative safety of the class room.

Music: Radio four, news and stuff......nuclear weapons, blah blah, George Bush, Blah blah...........ahh, the Archers, most excellent. Winning cinnamon cakes.
Book: Stephen Erikson, Deadhouse Gates - bloody excellent fantasy, think David Gemmell with larger plots and no problems with slaying major characters (and believe me, I'm not giving anything away there, the hacking starts after page 1)
Weather: 15+, blue skies and little fluffy clouds
Excellent...............turn those speakers up loud
UPLOAD III MULTIMEDIA RUNNER UP - DREW COPE (DRUM MACHINE)

Easter is here, the chickens are getting fat and the eggs are turbulantly full of promise.
I'm off to the Summer House for the next 4 days in the excellently named town of Båstad (pronounced Borrstad) - it should be good. We will also be sneaking a day trip across the border (and the sea) to sunny Denmark to check out Louisana. This is not a marooned US state but an art gallery, similar style to the Tate Modern, very cool. Last time I was there one of the installations was simply a tv playing Blade runner, most excellent. This time I'm hoping the artist has moved onto Predator.

Its rather early and I have a train to catch as my language course is not actually in Malmö but in Lund, the big university town about ten minutes up the road.

Weather: A murky morning......
Surreal in the extreme............
Introduction

Monkeys, on television - David Attenboroughs dulcid tones lull me into a semi state of Englishness spoiled only by the subtitled Swedish scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Its good to learn Swedish from the TV, so I'm looking forward to using my technical vocab of monkey mating activities in class tommorow.

Its raining like hell here, everything definitely damp.

Truly one of the greatest websites I have yet discovered on my journeys through the electronic ether, everything else will seem cold and worthless now.
Eric Conveys an Emotion

Easter week, and the twigs are appearing bedecked in feathers. The eggs are being filled with candy and the food is the same as for Christmas, happy day!!

More books: I really should not have left these out in the first place, you either like them or hate them. I personally thought these were awesome but some have been known to differ. Try, China Mieville author of Perdido Street Station and The Scar. Fantasy (dark fantasy, as I believe it is known) with some very good ideas, reads a bit like Clive Barker before he went bonkers.
They don't really go a second reading but are fantastic first time around. His other, and first novel, King Rat is not so good......
weather: its raining, its +10 and the sky is grey
another awesome mind expanding use of the genious that is the internet....
Drive Me Insane!

4nd s0 1t w45 fr1d4y.

Did my first proper hard problem last night at the climbing wall and still feeling a bit stoked. For those in the know it was a gnarly traverse wíth the crux move right at the end on poor slopers and a poor undercut. For the unitiated it was mindless moves on a piece of angled plywood with blobs of hard plastic drilled onto it. Thinking about it that way I am forced to ask myself why? Nevermind.

So been in Sweden for a while now. Starting to find my way around Malmö, getting to grips with the lanquage and springs sprunging. So the little things which are noticably different, loads of bicycles for a start and massively wide pavements to accomodate them and the pedestrians. Police cars which go waa waa rather than woo woo. Outdoor cafes with a blanket on every seat so you can wrap yourself up against the cold. A huge selection of yoghurt in the shops (this is not a good country to be lactose intolerant). Road side kiosks selling phallic hot dogs on a little cardboard tray with mashed potato. and thats enough of that I think, its the little things which are different you know (apart from a completely different lanquage, political system and organisation of society).

Coming soon.....sing along with polly and a blow by blow account of one mans quest to find the perfect underpants. Trevlig helg!!

Music: Communards, Don't leave me this way (all together now, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh baby)
(and now its Nancy Sinatra, nice.......)
Weather:+7 and lovely blue skies
Recent Movie: 21 grams, good but don't expect to be cheered up
Website: Horribly fascinating......
Shockwave Stick Men Fighting No. 2

annoyingly the website address did not show up so here it is again in good old fashioned text

http://www.freshsensation.com/samorost.swf

So, the first full calander month in Sweden, time seems to have whizzed past. Very strange to think that last April I was in Plymouth sweating away in the science park. Times arrow and all that.
Another trip to the immigration office today, I finally managed to get hold of my case office and get my test date for my 'Lura-examen' which I need to take as part of my residency obligation. Thankfully its in English but the questions can be quite tough, related to Swedish history, the rights that a citizen has etc. Annoyingly I have to sit it wearing the Swedish national dress but I'm sure it will be fine.



Its sunny and nice, double figures once again.....!
Most excellent.......