Another perfect way of wasting your life can be found at Google Trends, where you can search for what people are searching for.

Thus, I found out, more people in the UK, than anywhere else, and in particular Milton Keynes, have used the search term 'trousers'. The people who looked for 'wanking' the most were the British, and once again were concentrated in Milton Keynes. 'poo' drops MK down to third place, with Portsmouth taking the number one slot as the potty mouth of Britain.

I found this at Google Labs, the Mars phots are worth checking out.

I've had some interest in the whole free running deal since I saw the absolutley wild movie 'jump london' but this is fucking awesome....russian climbing - Google Video its actually latvian, but never mind.....heres some more latvian free running - Dvinsk Clan Awesome awesome!

First blood to the mountain bike then. A few seconds after the front wheel slipped away from me, after bouncing down onto a very wet and slimey piece of duck boarding, I lay on my back and studied first the sky and then, after the pain signals reached my brain, my elbow; where blood oozed through the layer of mud liberally caked on it. Fortunately all the important stuff seemed to be working so I was able to cycle away under the gloomy trees while the rain continued to do its best to undermine by bike and lightening marched across the sky. Bloody excellent, I love it.

Still no insightful oberservations about life in Sweden other than, erm, its crayfish party time soon which means lots of crayfish and silly hats in the stores. Not so good for pregnant people though (bottom feeders and all that (not pregnant people, the crayfish...that would be one wierd craving, wait a minute, a crayfish craving bottom feeder, stop stop, bed time I think)) so will be missing out this year (its not much fun eating an entire mountain of the red critters by yourself. And on the pregnancy point, the little one has being making concerted efforts to freak me out 'alien' style. Remember the dream sequence in Aliens, where Ripley is the Gateway Station Hospital, and you get the idea.

and with the world still going to hell in a hand basket its good to see that JC decides to manifest himself to man 'going through a nasty divorce WDSU.com - News - Holy Shrimp: Man Sees Jesus In Dinner....so thats all right then. On the subject of 35 000 year old Atlantean warriors channeling themselves through a grunting multimillionaire I was hoping to take a look at ramtha.com to see whats going on and what self help courses I could enlist for but sadly its down.

Guardian Unlimited Arts In Glasgow, beware of flying axes: "Don't take crap from your own audience
Jean Jacques-Burnel, the Stranglers
'Very early on we decided that audience interaction made things an event. We developed a philosophy called Truth Through Provocation. For the encores, we'd be in Edinburgh and say, 'At least people in Glasgow know they're Scottish whereas in Edinburgh they think they're English,' and all hell would erupt. We had a similar approach with hecklers. If people spat at us, we'd wade into the audience, until one day we decided it would be more fun and more effective to drag them on stage and stick a banana up their arse. In New York we couldn't get bananas so we used celery. Some people were amused - when Terry Wogan mentioned it on the radio people started queuing up to get it done. But when we tried it in France, it ended our career there for years.'"

Which, despite all hell breaking loose around the world, gives me hope for humanity.

Guardian Unlimited The Guardian After 40 years' burrowing, Mole Man of Hackney is ordered to stop: "Until six weeks ago they had the audacity to tell us the house was structurally sound. The whole of the opposite street lost power one day after he tapped into a 450-volt cable.'" I admire this, in my first student house I fantasised about doing the same. I think I got as far as, when drunk, digging in the loose soil of the understairs cupboard. I managed a few centimetres.

aacch, just spent the last five minutes listlessly surfing the net looking for new age wankers to point fun but, you know, it really just made me sad after I'd read the 10th testimonial from, I dunno, Cynthia from Greenwich, who said 'after five days of the program I felt the toxins leaving my body'. Bollocks you did. You just felt l0ts of cash leaving your body. Anyway, I just couldn't be arsed to continue. Continuing with the science theme I was reading Ben Goldacres Bad Science website and learnt the disturbing news that Brainiac have been falsifying 'experiments' to make bigger bangs for TV..disturbing indeed, and no real surprise. Instead here's some blokes doing the real thing, and just for the hell of it, chucking kilos of sodium metal into a lake.

Swedish life is getting back to normal, E is going back to day care and the days are steadily counting down to the spawning of the next one. Gosh. Had a few beers with a Swedish chum last night which was most excellent. We went to the Pickwick pub, the local British bar and I noted that it comes complete with Adamant urinals. Aaaah, the taste of home....or something.

Reading: Snapped up complete collection of 'Moonshadow' so currently rereading that.
Potty Training: Not going well, the boy just needs to wee on a few more bits of the wooden floor and it will all be a uniformly off-yellow colour.

Something which has bothered me for the two years or so that I have lived in Sweden is the weather forecast. Not just for the grimness of the winter reports (i.e. grey, cold and miserable, stay indoors, try to think happy thoughts and stay away from sharp objects) but for the wierd fact that weather, in sweden, does not seem to happen in the morning. By which I mean that the prediction for, tommorow, will only be from 1400 hours onwards. This has led be to believe that the weather in the morning does not actually exist and is, in all probability, a special effect. Or perhaps its that the weatherman can only be bothered to get up and wave seaweed around, rattle pinecones and squeeze his spots after lunch.

Listening to: Managed to have a quick listen to the archers, after missing about 5 weeks of it. Ed's come back and Mikes getting frisky with Clary. Oh, the humanity.
Reading: X-Men, in Swedish.
And in the news today:......New Scientist SPACE - News - Alien 'art' soon to be revealed

Welcome :: Hoffworld :: David Hasselhoff King of the Internet - Powered by Pipex!.........a brief burst of chest hair madness to start the day off.

The wedding was bloody excellent, the evidence being that I still feel knackered. I wish I had the energy to write more, but it would probably come out as the crazed meandering of a diseased mind. Very tired, like I said.

Book: Marrow, by Robert Reed, most excellent and with a very, very large spaceship, how could it be anything else?
Music: Soundgarden (A sides) and Mr Cash.
Footnotes from History #34: The Endorian Holocaust. Read more. oh, and heres the link to the Star Wars Holiday Special, if you can be arsed.

Sweden swelters sexily.....temperatures are hovering around 25-30 and its bloody lovely in the sea. Of course, it also means that my body becomes a smorgasbord for all manner of beasts leaving me with welts the size of golf balls on my shin, that cavity behind my knee and elbow. Why not my biceps? or knob for that matter - at least then it would look vaguely impressive, rather than just silly. I've been up at the summer house for the last two weeks and spending my time playing with the family, digging holes on the beach, cycling, reading and training. To celebrate my 35th year I was purchased a fine mountain bike, which I am now trying to stuff up my arse my jumping over stuff I am far to old, and fragile, to sensibly consider. I took a trek out the other day and ending up carrying the bike up a very narrow cliff path in the baking sun, much to the amusement of the people watching. The stones they threw were affectionate, I'm sure.

Books: Reread the first book of LOTR - 'fly you fools', marvelous. 'History of Ukrainian Tractors', which is an excellent novel and not as dull as the title suggests (if you've ever worked with any Ukrainians, this book will be particularly enjoyable). Currently reading 'Mailman' which is intense as I hoped but I could do with a little less graphic descriptions of panic attacks. And the usual array of comics including Sin City, Bloom County and some cool stuff by Warren Elis.

True Story: I was out with the family cycling last week when we came across a couple of horses quietly grazing in a field by the roadside. As we want the boy to experience the sights and smells of the country we dismounted, unstrapped E from his child seat and proceeded to pet the horses. Shortly thereafter, as I leaned further over the fence to slap one of the beasts haunches, there was a loud 'crack' sound, I felt like I'd been kicked in the ribs and the horse leapt into the air, turned tail and fled. The moral being, don't lean against the electric fence and don't earth yourself through a horse.

I just read the draft of a earlier piece I wrote to start the blog again. It was bollocks, and was not even close to what I wanted to say. So, simply this. I loved A, he was massively important to my life and I will miss him.

And, well, theres not actually going to be much on the blog for the next few weeks. I'm off to the summer house for about four weeks. I may post a little, if I can be arsed, from the local cyber cafe but I suspect a may be a little caught up wrestling wolves and bears (two mammals enter, one mammal leaves).

ta ra for now.

ScienceDirect - Social Science & Medicine : Contesting contraceptive innovation�Reinventing the script.....check out the authors name, bad geek bad geek - abuse of powerful search engines.

The Observer Business New oil shock ahead as $100 spike looms.....forget all the other shit, this is the early notes of the tune called 'run to the hills, run for your lives'.

now, wheres me interceptor?

well fuck me sideways, Nomak in Blade II was played by non other than Luke Goss. I probably shown have known this a lot earlier, but there you go. Incidently, Luke Goss = Bacon number of 2.

The last few days has been bloody lovely weather which means that the whole of Malmö, ney Sweden, has descended almost to my doorstep to bask on the 'sun promenade'. This is the wooden boardwalk which runs for about 200 or so metres down the sea front here. Almost all the buildings on it are flats, so the owners have an obstructed view - in summer - of acres of sizzling scandinavian flesh. I understand that several of the flat's owners wanted to have the boardwalk private but were told, pretty much, to get stuffed, given that the whole redevelopment of this area was partly funded by tax payers money. If you walk about another 5 minutes down the coast you come to the start of about 3 kms of beach which, now, is pretty much deserted as the place to be seen is the aforementioned. Unless, however, you're one of the nudists (who have a little area at the start of the beach, carefully marked out with white stones)and then the place to be seen, or more accurately, get your cock out, is proudly on the beach, idly slapping yourself dry as you gaze, unabashed, at the shocked englishman.

Listening: Arctic Monkeys. Bad Brains. Prodigy.

From the BBC website:

The local election campaign was overshadowed by the flurry of government controversies, including the storm over foreign prisoner releases and John Prescott's affair with a secretary.

Yes, the - ahem - mislaying of rapists, murderers and other violent offenders (debt to society repayed and all) is clearly a major fuck up and thus well fits the controversy headline but two shags affair (which conjures up horrendous mental images) is NOT a government controversy. Sure its a controversy for his life, and presumably for the body of the secretary his whale like mass descended on, but its got fuck all to do with his ability to be part of the cabinet. Politicians are supposed to be representative of the people, but as soon as there is a sniff of 'sleaze' we demand a type of lifestyle akin to that of the pope. Please explain, its only sex. Its not like, oh I dunno, going to war based on a foundation of lies.

and the day starts well by, it feels to me, effectively abandoning my child into the care of strangers. No, i have not converted to Scientology but instead we're in the process of breaking E into daycare (or 'Dagis' as it is referred to here (which is slang)). We spent most of the last few weeks spending each morning there, either me or K, but starting yesterday we began the process of leaving him there without us. Tears, poo and lashings of angst. Was the result for me. Actually, I feel kind of okay about it as opposed to yesterday, when I did not.

Speaking of poo I managed to catch Viral Gastroenteritus off E, he got it mildly whereas as I got it massively. One day lost with lots of backdoor action as I verily squirted through the eye of the needle, this when I wasn't busy shouting down the bog. The end of the winter has been fucking horrible, this is the third time in as many months that I have been bed ridden. Its playing merry hell with my training schedule but has meant I've pretty much lost my love handles.

Reading: Fast Food Nation, excellent. The End of Oil, just starting it but right up my street. Also rereading Woken Furies (Richard Morgan), as always a good read combining, as it does, the words 'cock' and 'blaster' on the same pages.

Listening: The Archers, I reckon Alistair's going to top himself.

The exciting news is that the Scandinavian Science Fiction Convention is back at Malmö Massan which, as luck would have it, is just around the corner. Its a conference centre now but used to be a SAAB car factory. Interesting little factoid there. Among the guests at the convention are Carl Weathers (Major George Dillon in Predator and Apollo Creed in almost all of the Rocky movies.....), Craig Parker (Haldir from LOTR, who seems to have done mostly voice over work in Power Rangers) and Marc Singer (Donavan in V but also Dar, in the beastmaster). So, usual bunch of bitter, slightly mad actors then. Last year had a very pissed off David Carridine, although the guy who was Chewbacca seemed pretty happy. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing Paul Blake, who played Greedo in Star Wars (and, as the ever useful IMDB identified, had a role in Crossroads). And, following on from that, and further proof that the Internet 2.0 is indeed the greatest social revolution of all time check this out.

And yes, the blog is coming back to life which also means tales of sausage bikes will no doubt follow.

Watching: Alien Special edition, Dark Crystal, History of Violence, LOTR, Starship Troopers, Akira.
Reading: Ruth Rendell (shite shite shite, I was stuck for something to read and it was either that or the hobbit, in swedish. Wrong choice). Rough Guide to Science Fiction (which has resulted in me ordering Death Race 2000 from Amazon, we shall see. This is actually one of those movies which got talked about at school, where you knew the lines, the plot and the grossest bits without actually having seen the film. I remember discussing in great detail Alien, countless zombie movies and mad max without actually ever having seen them. The prize was, of course, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, of which, it was said, they used real live people for the actual cutting scenes. It was somewhat of a relief when I finally saw it (ha ha), some twenty years later that it was not actually a snuff movie and was, in fact, not that gory.)
Listening: Guardian podcasts

God, just haven't got the energy to write the usual bollocks (its not as if I can claim some form of writers block, that would suggest some element of actual ability)....don't know whats up but my usual internet frolics have seemed somewhat boring recently. Still, boingboing cheered me up (as usual) with among other things, a link to all the images from Abu Ghairab (that high point of the American version of Pax Romana, i.e. Except democracy or we'll kill you), how to put your eyeball back in and an interview with Alan Moore, which is the link I actually went for. (MILE HIGH COMICS presents THE BEAT at COMICON.com: A FOR ALAN, Pt. 1: The Alan Moore interview

Alan Moore, of course - for those whose life is not brightened up by the consumption of comics, being the creator of V for Vendetta....coming to a cinema near you.

So whats up with the Swedish life....well, looks like the job front is going batshit as the NGO i work for is haemorraging money and has none to give me - so back out in the job market for little johnny I feel. Arse. The good news is that I got hold of the latest Steven Erikson book 'The Bonehunters' which was getting off to a bit of a slow start until Karsa turned up and kicked the shit out of some demon type beastie....fantastic. Actually, thats not the only thing in my life which makes me happy, but its the only thing I can be bothered to write about now.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

Seems like I've had some form of blogging block and, in actual fact, this will only be a short post as I have to get the dinner sorted. However, the news is that an Equaliser movie is in production - fantastic, this was one of my favourite shows in the '80s. Edward Woodward as Robert McCall. Always classic, every episode fucking brilliant and usually ending with him in pursuit of the bad guy, shouting 'stop' and then a split second later shooting him to death, then standing over the steaming corpse and gravely saying 'I warned him'. Director will be Paul McGuigan, who did gangster number 1 and lucky number slevin. I think.