ALCOHOLIC HOUSEWIVES

K

2009-08-21T23:44:00.004+02:00

So that last one was a real nice grade A super rant. Whatev. Unfortunately that awesome show I was talking about has now been replaced by four hours of "Sweden Idol" or whatever that international singing crap show is. Again, nice rant, and oh not that anyone is reading anyway, but I'm about 1 week from putting this clown show on indefinite hiatus since no one reads it. And with good cause. Links from my thoughts from just this one day (at work and at home, imagine what my daily life is like):

http://www.xbiz.com/articles/92416
http://pitchfork.com/forkcast/12569-vulture-nsfw/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqfY_kpHcQo
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090322/NEWS01/903220312/-1/today
http://www.movieline.com/2009/08/the-7-eeriest-parallels-between-avatar-and-delgo.php
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/aug/20/wolf-creek-shuts-down-nuclear-reactor-after-power-/
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nas/ether.html
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0511350/bio
http://www.gtplanet.net/gran-turismo-5-gameplay-video-shows-environmental-details/

the list goes on way longer but the rest is very NSFY
not safe for YOU.

BITE ME

2009-08-07T23:21:00.011+02:00

Yah I was gone for a while. You didn't notice nuthin' and you won't notice I'm back... So SHADDUPPAYOMOUTH-A.
This'll probly be long tho.

We are seriously poor after the trip to the US so we stayed home and watched TV tonight.

Background:
One of my favorite shows here are of the "Uncovered" British persuasion, "Ibiza Uncovered" especially. It's a reality show of drunken whatever-the-British-equivalent-of-white-trash-is tourists flashing their dicks and tits for an hour and basically fucking in the streets 'cause they are too drunk and horny to make it back to the hotel. And, yes, IT IS THE HOLY GRAIL OF REALITY TV.
P.S. the current name of the blog was inspired by an episode where two 40-something women ditched their husbands and 7 children for a week to go to Ibiza and try to find 18 year old boys drunk enough to "shag" them... And trust me, they succeeded. Anyway tonight we watched the heavily edited American equivalent like "Party Police" or some shit about drunken white trash at Lake Havasu in the US.
Observations that we made:
Young people in the US have such a messed up view of sexuality compared to the equivalent Brits. The Brits (boys AND girls) are totally realistic about it "Yeah I came here to screw a bunch of people, I'll make no bones about that. I'll probly only get lucky like three times this week but it won't be for lack of trying to score with EVERYONE." Like they all know exactly what is going on, no confusion. I'm sure there are plenty of Brits who don't want to only get drunk and fuck, but those are the boring ones so I don't care. Compare that to the Americans, who put on these ridiculous acts "Ohhh, I'm the good girl who likes to dance drrrty and flash ma tits all over, but I wouldn't mess with you (actually I'll mess with your dog if you give me one more beer)" and "Oh I'm the alpha male who likes to run my mouth and gets laid 8 times a day (except I've only seen a vagina once besides my moms and wouldn't know what to do with yours if you gave it to me on a silver platter)". No one actually comes out and says "I'm only here to get laid. Period." They all seem to have no idea what's going on or how to get what they want despite all wanting the same thing. It's like they are all playing some part in a terrible daytime UPN tween show where mentioning or showing anything even remotely resembling "the business" is strictly VERBOTEN.
There is one explanation for this: in the US party shows are heavily edited so the children don't learn how to act appropriately in drunken orgy style situations past what they have seen in wholly unrealistic Hollywood movies. In Britain the party shows are heavily unedited and the children understand early on that if they want to be drunken sluts for a couple years then just fuckin' do it and don't mess about or you'll blow yer chances. Plus you probly got about 68 more years to be all serious and lame and shit. Listen, this all made so much sense earlier that I could have written about 5 graduate theses on the subject. And that's not even touching on the (flaunted!) complete lawlessness of the British show and the authoritarian moralism of the American garbage (only two sets of tits, and both BLURRED). GOD I should just go back to school and be some pissant philosophy major. I could crank out about 6 degrees a year with this preternatural nogginizing! Masters, PHDs, whatev. They'd give up in about a year and just name the university after me.
END
Next topic:
The most recent episode of Top Gear:
Speaking of theses, if you've ever wanted to know how a battle of wits between Britain and the US would go, look no further than Jeremy Clarkson's conversation with Jay Leno. I'll give you a hint. Jay Leno: NOT. FUCKING. FUNNY... EVER. No matter how hard he tries. Jeremy Clarkson: doesn't try to be funny out of respect for Mr. Leno. STILL. FUCKING. FUNNY. There's so many research papers here I'm hyperventilating. And I haven't even mentioned Japan!!!!

C'mon! Overwrought? Sigh. Ok, maybe a little.
Top Gear.
If you don't agree that it is one of the best TV shows ever... I can understand your point of view. However, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND CAR CULTURE.
Bitch.
I urge you to educate yourself, because you are missing out. Look, one thing I realized in the US these past couple weeks; understanding lots of different cultures increases YO' PLEAZHA. Kinda like those ribbed condoms, or the dog-catchin' dad in "Friday" right? IT'S MAH PLEAZHA! Music, film, cars, video games, literature, anime... Those are just the obvious ones... Tibetan throat singing, Kendo, biology, guns, C'MON there's tons of crap out there. Do yourself a favor and pick a few things yer not into but think you could be and get into them. Just pick something, anything, that you're not that into and read about it! It ain't much work and there is plenty of shit yer missin' out on I promise. But, ok, so you will get into trouble for instance when your film buffness clashes with your car buffness...
"Good night."
The two most unfortunate words ever chosen on a program of ONLY fortunate word choices. If he had just managed to keep his huge mouth shut for two seconds and just DRIVEN for that last shot think of how great that whole segment would have been. Ah well, he gets paid to open his mouth and we all love him for it, water under the bridge Jezza, water under the bridge.
Now get back to not reading my blog you basterds!

FULL DISCLOSURE

2009-06-03T21:33:00.012+02:00

In the previous post I was comparing casey and his brother to the music of xiu xiu. Indeed the only reason I checked out casey and his brother was because I read an article about xiu xiu that referenced those characters, and how we laugh at their tragedy er something I don't even remember now... Anyway, I extrapolated some more out of the comparison blah blah no plagiarism here!

I'm slowly accumulating pictures of things that I suspect may be of some amusement for native english speakers that probably don't seem that odd to swedes. I call my collection "pictures of things that I suspect may be of some amusement for native english speakers that probably don't seem that odd to swedes". I'll share soon.

More youtube clips!!!
This is an I guess "anti-alcohol" (I didn't bother to check out the website it's pimping) commercial that plays on prime time TV and before movies here:
ok the embed isn't working so here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qndon0E05Qo

Yes, PRIME TIME TV. Perhaps you couldn't help but notice that among other things it portrays a young man recieving oral sex in a public restroom while he films it with his cell phone then later shows the footage to his friend who is understandably very amused and, I'll speculate here, quite impressed with the first young man's prowess.
Ahem.
Yes.
Um.
I don't think I'm getting the message I'm supposed to...
Suggestion to casting directors of future anti-alcohol ads:
Think over your casting choice for "oral sex girl #1" long and hard.
Long.
And hard.

HERE, YOU'RE WELCOME!

2009-06-02T18:03:00.007+02:00

Well I've officially lived in Sweden for exactly one year and a few days now. Feels weird. Have to say I didn't mind the winter at all. Actually I liked it, it's nice to have snow pretty often. The only bad thing about summer is trying to sleep when it is so light. But having light all day when you don't have to get a good night of sleep is awesome enough so it balances out I guess.
I had some purpose for posting... what was it... oh yes.
Can anyone explain to me why in the hell I find this so hilarious???:

I choked on my own laughter the first time I watched it. I have no idea WHY it's funny though. Iced canes??? OMG CLASSIC! There's a second part where they call pool "felted holes". I choked again.
More deliciousness:

That is by far the most genius piece of comedy I have seen in a LONG time. The strangest part is how close (I assume unintentionally) it comes to being a xiu xiu (usually what I'll reply if you ask me my favorite band, that er Ghostface Killah)song. Like REALLY REALLY close. But the affect this hamburgers song cultivates is the exact opposite of the aesthetic xiu xiu cultivates (I think???). Is it simply a parody of xiu xiu? Not likely as the other "Casey and his brother" songs don't quite bear that out. Although the "School" song is frightening in a xiu xiu way, it's still more terrifying than any xiu xiu song I've ever heard, and yet is still funny. Could it be that Jamie Stewart's deadpan capacity actually runs THAT deep??? Genius is as genius does I gyiss. Anyway, here's hoping that Jamie's abuse humor never stops bummin' me out and that recently-burned-to-death-emotionally-shattered-visibly-battered-17-yr-old-neglectees never stop being so f-ing hilarious.
If for some strange reason you thought the above was horrible........y AWESOME like I do check the montage out, EVEN ROCKY HAD A MONTAGE!!!
Even if you didn't like the above, promise me you'll check out the songs "School" "Robbers and Cops" "Xmas Wish" in the following, they are alternately macabre, terrifying, disgusting, disturbing and HILARIOUS:

Brilliant!

LONG WEEKEND OVER : (

2009-05-24T20:14:00.010+02:00

Sigh. The long weekend is over.
After having 96 hours of freetime here is what was accomplished:
Yes I made a bookshelf. Well, by "made" I mean assembled the pieces we got in a box from Ikea. No, you are not seeing things, the bed is indeed as long as the room is wide. And it is a tiny bed BTW.
Frida's sister gave us this weather predictor clock thingy that has a wireless weather detector yer supposed to put outside. So I made a little hut for it out of an old plastic bottle and put it out on the back porch. Yes, this is absolutely the geekiest thing I've ever done and I've done more geeky things of varying types and degrees than you can imagine.Anyway I went to all that trouble makin' a little hut and stuff and the damn thing says it's like 70 degrees outside when it's really like 60 degrees outside : ( Somehow it knows that it's cloudy tho, and also tells you if the temp is going up or down.
Moving on... We saw Angels and Demons last night. I guess it could have been worse. I liked the ending, cause the movie was over. Naw, I mean it wasn't awful, but it was pretty silly, especially for seeming to take itself so seriously. I really missed Rome while I was watching it though, basically the whole movie is just one constant reminder that Rome is frickin' sweet. And I'm pretty sure only maybe 10 of the 138 minutes were ACTUALLY in Rome. The rest was CG and soundstages, and probably other Italian citys, as far as I could tell. It also made me think about the fact that Ron Howard has been in showbiz since he was like 5, and he seems pretty normal. He must be the only one.
Oh, I also accomplished this:
I pissed somebody off cause I put glass in the trash room. Good thing they don't know I'm also the one who kept putting regular trash in the compost bin cause I didn't bother reading the signs above them. Look at all those exclamation marks! If they practiced sharia in this country instead of anonymous public shaming I guess I'da been stoned.
Pretty nice weekend over all though.

4 DAY WEEKEND

2009-05-21T17:47:00.003+02:00

Today is a holiday so I don't have to go to work. I don't know what the holiday is for but it means I get today and Friday off. I bought some MGD at the alcohol store. I really like MGD. I never used to buy it at home cause it was more expensive than my dirt cheap favorite Miller High Life Light ("the champagne of beers"). But I think if I had been slightly more rich I would have bought MGD all the time instead of High Life. Absolutely nothing else of note. I won a little bit of money at poker this week. No idea why I started playing again out of the blue, but I did. I been playing pretty well. Main thing is the patience. And the not getting pissed at bad beats and going on tilt. If I can keep those two things up I usually play pretty well.
Maybe another post later in the weekend.
Oh, p.s. Norway won the Eurovision contest with some lame violin song. Boring.

EUROVISION SONG CONTEST

2009-05-16T17:24:00.004+02:00

I actually caught some of this a couple nights ago.
IT WAS GLORIOUS. It is the weirdest shit ever. There is no context that will allow you to make any sense of it AT ALL. It is AWESOME!
If you somehow have absolutely no idea what it is, it's what it sounds like. A bunch of european countries have contests to find their entry for the year, and then all the countries compete against each other in the country that won the previous year... Anyway some countries try to blend their traditional music with pop music. Entertainment ensues.
Observe:

And a lot of it is just TRULY AWFUL heightening the entertainment to levels till then unkown to me:

Watch that one to the end. WOW
Anyway just had to share that little tidbit. Thinking about watching the finals tonight but I think it might be boring after the shock of the first viewing wears off.

Valborg, Uppsala, 2009

2009-05-15T22:40:00.006+02:00

So the week after the car show was this holiday called "Valborg" in Swedish or "Walpurgis" in English. I really have no f-ing clue why anyone bothered to "translate" this untranslatable Swedish holiday that is celebrated in pretty much no other country anywhere. Especially since the english pronunciation sounds almost nothing like the original Swedish. Whatev.
I live in Uppsala. Uppsala has the biggest and oldest university in Sweden (oldest in all of Europe pretty much for that matter). To say theres lots of students here is an understatement. So here's the gist of the holiday: Everyone is shitfaced. Styrofoam boat races. Champagne is sprayed on ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE. I heard literally THOUSANDS of champagne bottles being popped open. Yeah, some other stuff happened I don't know, mainly it's an excuse to be wasted by 10am.
Pics:
First things first, some of the beer I was drinking:
I like falcon beer. It's pretty cheap and doesn't have much taste. What more could you ask for? This particular varietal is of the "BBQ Lager" persuasion. What makes it "BBQ"? I dunno, pork scrapings and charcoal dust? Who cares. Note that it's 3.5%. That's mostly what I drink now since you can only buy the real stuff when the government says you you can. Which is workdays and about 2 hours on Saturday unless you wake up early on Saturday. And what kind of drunk are you if yer doin' that??? What self respecting government DOESN'T allow people to buy alcohol at convenient times?! How else are they supposed to non-overtly oppress? Weak dude.

The pile got much bigger than that. And this is like one pile of about 10. Those are champagne bottles BTW not beer bottles. Maybe you can see but alot of them are broken, and yet I saw no one with gashes in their feet, or any blood whatsoever for that matter, and I still can't understand that since everyone was stumbling around drunk and dancing like crazy to the band that was playing... A guy who actually used to work at this exact place told me that it is extremely common that people get slashed up though, I was just unlucky to not see it this time. Anyway, they must have seriously had about 5,000 on hand at this one student club (out of like 13, they are special clubs for only students). You could buy one for like $15 (a STEAL here) and people were just buying them to spray on their friends. Then there was (sadly?) the really drunk folk that were picking up the already sprayed ones and pouring what was left of them into one bottle trying to fill it up so they could get drunker.
Probably what this guy had been doing:
Two feet away was:
Everyone else.
Earlier in the day:
A big park with about 7000 people in it, at least. Funny part: The absolute most stupid drunk people there were two American girls stumbling around with no idea where they were yelling "PARRRR-TTAAAYYYY!!!! 'S A FUCKIN PAAARRRTTT-AAAYYY!!!! WHOOO!!!!!" and all the Swedes were absolutely terrified. If by terrified I mean ignoring them. Which is what Swedes do when they are terrified, btw. I chuckled heartily at my found meta-ironic-comedy.
Fonmetaromedy.
Oh, almost forgot the boat races, this is the first activity at 10am, there were many people too drunk to walk properly already:
Example 1 above, three dudes outfitted in multi-colored ponchos floating gently atop a giant sombrero. Does it make sense? Absolutely not.
Example 2; a giant chess piece. Note that it is about 8 feet taller than the bridge it is about to go under. I was super excited to see it get knocked over. Unfortunately the douchebags had preplanned er somethin and disassembled it like 2 seconds before going under the bridge and I assume reassembled it after. I dunno cause I lost interest when it didn't cause any injuries. P.S. Frida argued with me about what the knight chess piece is called in English. I said "knight" and she said freaking "horse" which is what it is called in Swedish. Why she thought she knew better than me what it was called in english when SHE DOESN'T EVEN PLAY CHESS is beyond me. REally funny how long it took me to convince her it wasn't called the "horse" though. I mean I understand why she thought it was but still...
Example 3; there was like 4 people dressed like mice on this piece of cheese. One had a bongo and was playing this sick-ass voodoo beat. Another got on all fours and danced the most outrageous demon possessed mouse dance thing I've ever seen. Mind you this is all while they are floating down the river on a giant piece of cheese shaped styrofoam. Again... Sense? NONE. Awesomness? MORE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE.
And finally my bar none absolute favorite picture of the day:
Someone had found a wood pallet and this chick was just standing on it crowd surfing. Everyone was going f-ing frothing at the mouth crazy over it. The girl was like Queen of the WORLD. This must have been like what was happening before moses got his ass lightning bolted for not stopping the golden calf worship or whatever. Truly awesome, they REALLY know how to get wasted here...

It's spelled "Koenigsegg" FOOLS

2009-04-24T20:33:00.020+02:00

Car show was pretty tight. We'll just go straight into the pictures. If you don't like them skim the text cause there will be at least one mildly interesting anecdote that has not THAT much to do with cars.
It's me! Ok so the picture is backwards because that was self pic mode but that says 430 SCUDERIA
as in:
As in:
As in the one that is faster than the Enzo. Was in the top 5 of cars I've always wanted to see in person. It did not dissapoint.
So, the anecdote, one of the "spokesmodels" came up and was talking to me. The point of these hot girls standing around talking to dudes who are obviously lusting after the cars and NOT (ok well not as much) the chicks and then trying to talk to the dudes about the cars when it's fully understood by each party which of them knows almost every detail of the car being lusted after, it absolutely baffles me.
Choice comments from the girl:
"They pay so much attention to the details. Like, the details. Like everything on the car."
Oh, so that's why they can ask for and get $300,000 for one and sell out of them every year before they are even manufactured. The details! I can't believe I never thought of that!
"You have to take special classes to drive one, it's not like a city car. You can't really drive it in the city."
Well, that explains the 5-point harnesses and carbon-carbon brakes then, huh?!
"It's like, you think you could just get in this or like get in and drive an F1 car but you can't."
No, actually I didn't think that. Actually I thought if I got in and tried to drive an F1 car it would go a little something like this:

OOPS!
And that was a professional rally driver driving. A good one too.
And the crown jewel quote:
"Have you driven one of these before?"
Okay, am I stuffing $50s in your thong? WTF?
The way I usually look, even coming home from work, I expect people to ask me things like "When was yer last meal ya poor soul?" "Have ya had a hot shower this month?" "There's a soup kitchen just down that road!" But "Have you driven a Ferrari F430 Scuderia, like EVER?" If you really love the word "no", then by all means, ask this to everyone. You'll be plenty happy with the results.

Anyway, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she just was trying to make conversation to the only non-horny-old-midlife-crisis-dude hanging around that wasn't unattractive. Right. I'll just tell myself that. That's her ass on the far right of the picture directly above. She was cute. And Dutch. Hey I said it was only a mildly interesting anecdote.

Weismann was indeed present. They make some crazy retro-y stuff.
The ones I designed for the formula car last year were a lot prettier... The judge even said so! (From the Ariel Atom, this guy here:)
Got to sit in the new Audi R8 V10, which I don't think is on sale yet...:

Have to say the RS6 station wagon felt nicer with those ridiculous race seats.
Anyway, the highlight: Koenigsegg was there but no CCXR Edition : ( but they did have a display model so that was cool.
Despite how the pictures look I actually have lost some weight since I got here. And gotten even handsomer. I know you thought it was impossible. But it wasn't. That's the Koenigsegg coat of arms there. Er whatev. I like this part much more:
It's a little ghost sticker that they put in the rear window of each car. They used to assemble them at an old Swedish air force base in a hanger er something. The ghost was the air squadron's mascot. So Koenigsegg adopted it. That old factory burnt down if I remember correctly, so they have some new digs, but kept the ghost. I think it looks badass cause it doesn't look badass, and yet is, thus amplifying the badassness.
If you are new to this blog, my humor is tongue in cheek. A lot of times you will not know I'm joking but I am. Also, WTF are you doing here? Please keep coming back! Join my other 3 fans! Please!
^^^^Sorry but it is pretty badass, hence the coolness of the non-badass mascot^^^^
The gauges were downright dainty tho, I'd be afraid to sneeze while driving, pretty sure they'd shatter.
The tires, however, were far from dainty. I'm not a big dude but my hands aren't small. I usetacould stretch pinky and index the top five frets on a full scale bass (still could if'n I had a bass to practice on). Thats a good 6-7 inches. The rear tires are at least a foot across. Prob 14 inches er so. Okay so I had to google it. They are 13.1889764 inches across. Google doesn't lie. And it measured them to the nearest half 100 millionth of an inch. With some alien technology I guess.

On a completely unrelated note we randomly stumbled upon a rabbit jumping competion a couple weeks ago:

If you look really closely and ignore the freaks that are participating in this you can probably JUST make out the little bunnies jumping over obstacles.
I was absolutely spellbound watching the rabbits running the obstacle course. For some stupid reason no one else was and I was drug away by the hair.
Gotta end this the only way I know how, with some poetry:

GIRLL WE OFF IN THIS G
FOGGIN WINDOWS UP
BLASTIN' THA RADIO
IN THE BACK A MY TRUCK
BOUNCIN' UP AN' DOWN
STROKE IT ROUND AN' ROUND
TO THE REMIX
WE JUS' THUGGIN' IT OUT

Fin

WOOOOOOO!!!

2009-04-20T21:45:00.003+02:00

ATTA BOY SEBASTIAN!
I'm the dude at the bottom left. Sweartagod.

So the weekend kicked ass, mainly because of the dude up there, but Stockholm was pretty tight too. Nausicaa wasn't as sweet as I remembered, Miyazaki has done some much better stuff, but it was still worth seeing on the big screen. Carro's new apartment on Kungsholmen is really nice. I randomly saw one of the coolest dudes from work at the 7-11 around the corner from Carro's place when I went to get sugar for the cake we were making. Over 1 million people in Sthlm and I run into somebody I work with when I step out for like 5 minutes. It was cool though.

This weekend is shaping up to be awesome too. Fredrik and Gustav will come to Uppsala and we will all go to Flustret a.k.a. Jurassic. Frida will be in Gävle. Shaping up to be dudes night out #2. Too bad we won't have a 'bago named "The Warrior" that eight drunken assholes and a two hour drive at 2:30am couldn't kill. No, it took a tornado to do that. I don't think many involved in dude's night out #1 read this but, shouts out to you all. Legendary. Just legendary.

Oh, and a car show Friday night also. Not just any car show, like a supercar show supposedly. The website says even Weissmann will have a display there. WEISS MAN. I really really REALLY want to see a Koenigsegg CCX Edition. I think there's only like, what, 5 though? I dunno they'll have a display there and this IS the stupid country where they are made so I guess I got the best chance I'll ever get to see one in person. SWOON.

Nutmeg by ghostface ft. rza is the JOINT
C is the heavenly option by heavenly is also the JOINT
I'm really pissed I can't download shit right now because the list of shit I want just continues to grow and grow. And most of the shit I can't buy anyway so making it illegal for me to download it is pointless. You bastards!

Maybe more tomorrow. You bastards!

EPIC

2009-04-17T19:02:00.002+02:00

WHOOOOOOOO VeeeeeeeeeeeTTEEEEEELLLLL!
Second pole of his F1 career today in China! Only had one lap to do it in Q3 and he pulled it off. WoOt!!! Dude is a monster! Red Bull WHAT!
Damn I can't believe it's been 13 days since I posted last.
Today we are going into Stockholm for the first time in quite a while. I get to go see my favorite Miyazaki (actually they are all my favorite *GUSH*) movie which is playing for some reason on the big screen in two theatres downtown. After that we will meet up with Frida's friend Carro. Hopefully there will be plenty of drinking after that, but probably not since after paying for the movie I'll be broke as a joke. Like $5 to my name broke. Getting paid once monthly sucks, especially when like 75% of it goes straight to bills by the next day. I was s'posed to be rich already, WTF? Guess I would be if I wasn't paying the way for other people. STUDENT people. Cough. Frida. Cough. Huh? She better make bank when she's done er her ass is out on the kerb.
Gotta go for now. Fika calls.

EN TILL

2009-04-04T17:10:00.006+02:00

Couldn't help it, gotta post one more. Short. Since life is goooooood.

View off my back porch like 10 minutes ago.
Some of the neighbors have something called "Norwegian forest cats" that wander around down there (I saw one right after I took the pic). I'd never heard of that but I guess it's a real thing. Anyway those fuckers are HUGE! Ok I mean really maybe only a little bigger than any other house cat. Their feet really seem to be gigantic, I guess fer tree climbin' er something. Last time we saw two and one actually was in a tree. Then yesterday when I got home from work there was one stalking something in the neighbors yard and it's brown so I thought it was a wood pile. It was kinda like stretched out while it was standin' there and it really did look a lot bigger than a normal cat. Maybe just my imagination though. Anyway I really want one now so I can train it to climb the trees next door and then drop out of them onto people heads and claw their faces. Tight.
Actually screw that, there's these things here called lodjur a.k.a. Lynx in english. I guess a family of 'em have taken up residence somewhere around Uppsala (where we live). I need to capture one of those bitches and train it in the unholy arts:
Yeah BOYEE!!! Think about that bitch chargin' at ya and casting soul steal lvl 48!!! 50 pounds of running pissed off unholy awesome WILL knock you on your ass, I don't care if you're frickin' Chuck Norris. THAT'S THE JOINT!!! (photo courtesy wikipedia)

Back to chillin'

SANTA=SATAN

2009-04-04T15:27:00.015+02:00

Just move the N! Think about it! Promise me you'll think about it! You ain't gonna think about it : (
VETTEL!!! REPRUZZZZZENT!!! WHAT WHAT!!! DATS MAH BOYEE!!!
Watched Låt Den Rätte Komma In the Swedish movie from last year that got 43 award nominations and 6 wins. It was aight. I guess all the nominations was cause peeps from other countries was jes happy Sweden made a decent movie... I just wrote like a 300 word essay about the isolation aesthetic in most Swedish movies and compared it to the movie Capote and presumably the book In Cold Blood and also the reality of Swedish society then read it back and realized how tragically boring it was so I deleted all of it.
Today I told Frida one of my brilliant plans. If my contract is not renewed in June I'll start training to row across the Atlantic. It takes about 90 days of 8-12 hours a day of rowing, and probably a good 8 months of training 10 hours a day before that since I've never rowed anything before in my life. (Wait does double fisting brews count as rowing? Nahh, prob not...) She had the balls to laugh at me. I'll show her good in exactly 11 months after June.
Pictures!
Norrviken station where in the few times I use the train to and from work (which sucks btw, although I'd say about 35% of the time you don't have to pay since they never come by to take your money, which is tiiiiiiight) I stop by.
There's m' train.
Frida's parents and granparents at our place on the weekend before my birthday.

All the stuff Frida baked me for my birthday not including cake! It was all really good. Carrot cake is my fav! Mmmmm!
Cake!!! that 28 is for 28/1.2 meaning I'm 23.3 years old! The /1.2 didn't fit!
The weather here is amazing today. The door is wide open and I'm wearing shorts!
The slightly longer than KS winter is more than worth it for this.
I gotta crack another beer now and drink it on the back porch, LATER FOOLS

2009-03-28

2009-03-28T14:56:00.018+01:00

As usual no major self-discovery, stunning insight or earth shattering news. Amazingly I have actually done some stuff this week.
/update format

-Monday went to class and afterwards hung out with some dudes from my Swedish class, two greeks, a brit, and a dude from Cali(fornia).

-We discussed the public urination habits of Swedes. Verdict: Whole different sense of shame here. Whole different.

-We did discuss other more positive things about being in Sweden, but I'd rather mention the embarrasing stuff. Cause it's more interesting to read. No?

-I've developed a very positive opinion of Greeks after meeting several through the Swedish class I'm taking. The ones I have talked to are all hilarious. Or quite smart. And usually a very entertaining combination thereof.

-Not such a good opinion of Russian mail order brides (*cough*egotistical*cough*).

-I've heard the Finnish dude in class is really funny to hang out with. I think he makes a lot of money and travels a lot as some sort of business man. Only thing I know about him is he really likes Metallica and Iron Maiden. Oh and, amazingly, he must have worse vision than me since he has these THICK-ASS glasses, thickest I ever saw. If he was short and wrinkly he would look exactly like Hans Moleman.

-Back to Greeks, they talked about Soccer hooliganism quite a bit. Apparently football clubs in some countries are like thinly veiled and very effective parapolitical entities, with the fans like borderline mercenary armies. Apparently full circumvention of the political and legal process becomes a routine excercise. Who knew? I guess people who pay attention to European soccer. For example: you own of a football club and need to tear down and rezone a few square miles of a city for that massive new mall project that will net you billions of Euros and don't want to bother with things like "property law" or "protected historic buildings" or "taxes". Just tell the 20,000 fans of your club that pesky thing called the "government" is going to put an end to the team if you can't build your mall and thus afford to keep Pele on the payroll (or something like that). Massive protests. Problem solved. I probably butchered the example (which was just one true story from their hometown), but you kinda get the idea. The funny part was they were fully aware of this phenomenon, hated the corruption of it, yet at the very end of the story Vangelos, with a murderous glint in his eye, was all "BUT I STILL LOVE THAT TEAM DAMMIT!" Fascinating.

-Thursday we went to this bar in Stockholm that had a bunch of pool tables to play billiards and have a farewell party for the dudes that are retiring (on my birthday). They gave us a lesson on how to play and then we had this short tournament as teams of 2. I basically ruined me and Peters chances to win everytime. After the tournament the dude that gave the lesson did some pool tricks. He asked us first if we wanted to see some tricks. It was really odd cause it was exaclty like the end of that Simpsons episode when Mark McGwire is like "Who wants to see me hit some dingers!" er whatever. Kind of odd. I dunno I guess the tricks guy was famous er something (probably only in Sweden) cause his picture was on the wall a lot.

-Anyway we drank and ate on the company dime (I hope, cause I never paid fer nuthin'). I can't believe how unaccustomed I've become to the affects of alcohol. The dudes that were gonna retire were pretty drunk when we (the Uppsala guys) left. Aparently the Sthlm dudes went to another bar after that. And the bar after THAT bar wouldn't let them in cause they were all too drunk. Then everyone was there the next day and seemed to be in much better shape than me. I guess I've become as big a pussy as I had feared.

-Funny story from the billiards place. These two women came that apparently used to work for the company and are BIG cougars, I guess, judging from the one story that everyone was sure to tell me before they showed up. One word: cucumber. Fill in the rest yourself. Cause this is a family blog. You sick goddamn perverted fuckstains.

-FORMULA 1 STARTS TOMORROW!!! I've been really pumped and scouring the internet reading about it for months. All I can say is I REALLY REALLY wish I would have had the money to bet on this season. There won't be another chance to make as much off the underdogs for a long, long time. My boy Vettel qualified 3rd. Brawn GP took the pole and 2nd. Merc.-McClaren was garbage and Ferrari not a lot better. I want to make sweet love to Barichello and the Brawn cars while Richard Branson films it.

-That humor (humour?) was oddly British. I've thought a lot about how easy it is to parody British humour. Easy as madlibs. Observe:

"I'd expect to hear that from a (English city)ite with a (piece of clothing, hairstyle, or fashion accessory). You look like (English D list celebrity) after (embarrassing activity)"

"Americans are fat"

Cue uproarious Brit laughter.
It works every time without fail and every British joke follows one of those two templates.

Will post more and some pictures later tonight.

BRANIFF
Believe it!

New Stylezzz/Gold Soundzzz

2009-03-07T22:53:00.012+01:00

Aight foo's vi ska försöka med det nya utseendet på bloggen nu, so skip to the sections (the big bold text) you are interested in, that way I can write as much as I want and not feel lame for the huge post since you can skip what you don't want to read about:

MUSIC

"Final Day" - Young Marble Giants
According to wikipedia the YMGs have some loose connection to Scritti Politti AND Nirvana which is helt bra eller/or hella cool in my book. This song is what I personally consider a "perfect song" and I can count on one or two hands the number of those I've heard, and I take the title of "perfect song" very seriously. A perfect song rating by me is completely independent of genre, topic, concept, lyrics, instruments, band, artists, whatever, you name it. Look, if Limp Bizkit and/or Coldplay created what was in my opinion a perfect song I would readily admit and celebrate it, though I'm 99.999% sure it'll never happen. Anyway, I usually highly dislike songs that sound all palm muted indie cool gayness (which p.s. this song was about 27 years ahead of that particular fashion) and yet it's somehow more than what's at the surface. Not a single misplaced sound, poorly chosen word, or wasted note in 1'42" of flawlessness that leaves you begging for more when it ends all too soon (kinda like, uh, LIFE?). Look, you may not agree and that's cool. We're still buds.

"Get By" - Talib Kweli
I never listened to Talib Kweli before this song (or after for that matter) yet somehow since my best homie Ryan told me Talib Kweli was the shit (and he also said Pete Yorn was the shit, so, ya know, take that with a grain of salt) I've just assumed he was. And Ryan was correct. This song brings all the hotness you can imagine. You like bass? You like rhymes? You like soul? You like idiosyncratic piano loops (I love 'em!)? It occurs to me just now that for some reason Ryan has much better taste in black boy music than in white boy music, which is really odd cause he makes some damn good white boy music. Can someone explain that to me?
"We rock like Paul McCartney/from now until the last beat'll drop"
Fuck yeah, you already did your job, and there's still two left.

While we are on the topic of explaining things to me, someone PLEASE explain to me why '93/'94 were by far the absolute best years for hip-hop? Has there ever been as productive a year (ya know, time frame wise) for any genre of music? I'm thinking motown could outstrip it if someone had the time/nerdiness to correct me. Do it, I'd love to know.

PICTURES

One tiny part of the lovely paper mill outside of Frida's hometown. You have no idea how bad this thing smells when it's working at normal capacity. Imagine feeding your baby indian food for a month straight then getting it drunk on cheap beer one night and then changing its diaper the next afternoon. What came out of the baby smells similar, yet way better than this thing, I promise you. Frida's parents' house is like 30 miles north of it but when the wind is wrong you won't want to go outside if you can help it. Frida just corrected me that there is a paper mill closer than this one that makes the smell at her parents house.
Does it matter?
Lots of snow in Gävle a few weeks ago. You can kind of tell from the picture if you look at the size of the car with respect to the snow piles. The snow plows make big ass mountains that don't melt usually, so if there is a few snow storms and no warm weather they just keep stacking up.
Snow pile in Frida's neighborhood.
Bridge over the river near Frida's house.
View from the bridge.

CULTURE

The amount of piss next to roadways and sidewalks is UNBELIEVABLE. You'd never know it in countries that don't have snow that sticks for weeks at a time, but apparently either people absolutely LOVE to park their cars and then pee right into the snow in front of them or a lot of people are bringing their dogs everywhere they go and not giving them enough breaks on the way. I dunno but the amount of yellow snow I've seen here is outrageous. Never touch the side of a road or sidewalk with anything but the soles of your shoes. That's all I gotta say.

Going to a concert on Sunday night in Stockholm. I'll try to take pictures and post them on here. It's exciting cause I haven't been to a real concert here yet and this one is at, as far as I can tell, a very hip bar in the very hip area of Stockholm (not the expensive hip area, the poor hip area... I can't afford expensive hip, basically no one can here). I'm planning on wearing my ugliest most unhip clothes to make sure everyone knows I'm not hip, so we'll see how that goes. I'd hate to be mistaken for someone cool in the cool part of town, ya know?

Konstig Vecka

2009-02-27T17:45:00.004+01:00

Songs of the week:
-Dream On - Robyn w/ Ola Salo (evangelic indeed!)
-Epilepsy is Dancing - Antony and the Johnsons ([lyrics:music::wine:food] uhh, perfect match!)
-Graceland - Paul Simon (Tiiiiiggggghhhht)

Animal sightings to or from work:
-1 fox
-2 moose
-NO DEER!?!? Usually see like 60 a week, and no other animals.

Things from the USA I'm really missing right now:
-My copy of Watchmen (thinkin of having my parents send it to me CAN'T WAIT for the movie)
-ALL my Evangelion DVDs (I couldn't find some so didn't bring them back in Dec. :.( REGRET)
-Halo, to some extent (too heavy to bring back xbox)

The mechanical engineering dept. boss was gone this week so I guess everyone took it as a slack week cause there was almost no work for me to do. REALLY boring. Or possibly there just actually wasn't that much work. Here was my Thursday (NOT representative at all of a normal day, just the boringest day of this lame week):
Roll in with the Uppsala mafia at 8:00 sharp. Sign into computer. Open Inventor. Login to part database. Go to foxnews.com. Read pretty much every article. Go to CNN.com. Read pretty much every article. Oops, 9:01 late for coffee break. 9:35, continue reading CNN and move on to LJworld, pitchfork, and autoblog. Continue reading these websites whilst occasionally switching over to the Inventor window to grab the chain I'm modeling and swing it around like a whip a few times to make it look like im at least playing around with the program I should be using to accomplish "work". 11:28, put on jacket and go mill around in the hall outside the big boys room to make sure everyone knows it's lunchtime. Walk to Motor (what we call the lunch restaurant since its in the car dealership and all). Ismet asks me a little about Kansas. I answer with some lame 3 yr old level Swedish. Eat panbiff med indiska kryddor (like indian spiced meatloaf). Wasn't too disgusting as long as I avoided the big yellow puddle of grease that accumulated on one side of the plate (the restaurant is really cheap and cruddy, which is not typical here, but we go there cause engineers are generally stingy). Get back at around 12:30 and surf more internet. Get an email around 14:00 about a part that I messed with a couple months ago and didn't put into the database right when I was done fixing it. Start correcting my mistake. Christopher comes in and tells me since he doesn't really have much for me to do I may as well check every assembly I've ever put into the database to make sure I didn't make the same mistake on those (easier than it sounds). I thank jeebus I finally have something to keep busy. Last 2.5 hours are spent going through each assy I've checked in to make sure it is linked to it's part in the database. Amazingly out of about 75 there was only three I made the same mistake on! And it kept me doing something semi-worthwhile!

Really been thinking this week about somehow changing the format of the blog. These random unstructured posts really suck. But I guess since I'm sooooo lazy about updating that's just the way it goes. I'd really like to have some kind of more structured one topic posts, like music critique, culture update, pic post, work, freetime, etc. type thing. Maybe I'll try to do that.

About to go to "Buddy's", the Irish bar with the BEST BY FAR hamburgers I've had since I've been here. Gotta leave now. When I come back I'll continue this post. Keep that in mind if the, er, "tone" changes. IF YA KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

Back from Buddy's. The service there puts the rest of Sweden to shame. They actually moved 3 people from a 4 person table to a 3 person table so that they could fit the 4 of us in. In the first 2 minutes we were there, we were helped by 3 waiters. That is unheard of here. GREAT service. The hamburger was not as good as I remember, but still a 9.8 by Sweden standards.

Hey I knocked one out early Friday night so maybe I'll get to another one before the weekend is out. I'M GOIN' TO GRACELAND! MEMPHIS TENNESSEE!!

Sigh

2009-02-21T15:49:00.002+01:00

During the week I always have these grand and profound ideas for things to post on here, you know deep meditations on Sweden, life, learning a new language, the nature of the universe in general. That type of garbage. Of course then when the weekend comes I can barely be bothered to actually sit down and write even though I have the time. Then when I actually do write something I'm usually preoccupied (or I been drankin') and it usually comes out half-assed and fairly boring. Sorry.
I found out on Friday that I finally get to move into the big boys room with the other mechanical engineers. I figured it was coming since there's two guys retiring next month and another in June, so there will actually be space for me, but I finally found out for sure at the engineering meeting. They've had me sitting in a room with three consultants, all of whom I really like, especially Peter, he's real cool. But I think the actual physical distance between me and the guys I'm supposed to be working with has been a big chunk of the vaguely "separate but equal" vibe everyone feels re me. Now we won't have to walk halfway across the building to talk to each other at least. And I'll get a bookshelf. Tight!
Well if I remember any of those super-insightful things I wanted to post over the last week maybe I'll make another post soon. Otherwise see you next weekend.

Pic megapost!

2009-02-14T18:04:00.016+01:00

Watching:
Snow Buddies (no I'm not joking, I wanted to see it so piss off) - So terrible and yet so awesome! And so disturbingly similar to porn, I'm all "what's all this story crap, just get to the alaskan husky money shots!!!!"

Looking forward to:
GET HIM TO THE GREEK!!!!! - Aldous Snow is back... ON DRUGS FOOLS! AWESOME!

Listening to:
Pitchfork 500

And let's talk about that. FINALLY finished 497 of them (three didn't down... er I couldn't find them at the store, for some reason, but those bands/songs I had heard so wasn't missing anything). I had really hoped to find a ton of cool new stuff to check out. I found Antony and The Johnsons. That was pretty much it. OUTTA 500 SONGS! C'MON PITCHFORK! You're so much better than that. Anyway, if those were the best Animal Collective songs they could find then I'm glad I've never given them the time of day cause they blow goats and then yak onto the pony. There is some seriously boring shit on that list. There's also quite a few of what I would consider "the best songs ever" that I already loved. Then there's a lot of WTF is that doing on here? But the fact that Lightning Bolt, Brainiac, Slayer, Iron Maiden, and Les Savy Fav and quite a few other awesome bands that shouldn't have but did make the list made me quite happy. I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish (I get the Rolling Stone reference, besides that) but I guess it was something along the lines of add rap, raggae, and some of what they considered underappreciated "underground" songs by bands that you've already heard of but maybe never gave the particular song or album a chance. There is quite a bit of early hip hop that sounds terribly dated, never in a good way. No idea why it was included other than to be cool and "black it up" just for the sake of it. Not that that's a bad thing, there was a few songs falling in that category that I (sadly) had never heard that are freaking great (uhhh, "I Got 5 On It"?). Also; worst song: Rawhide by Scott Walker. WTF?? IT'S AWFUL. Was happy they included "Cry Me a River" by J.T., it's a good song. But Kelly Clarkson? C'mon, now you're just trying to be too slyly hipster ironic. And what's the deal with LCD Soundsystem? I get it, Talking Heads were a great band. Stop cloning their songs already. I mean yeah you can never go wrong, but it's still annoying. Anyway the whole thing just left me sorta confused after listening to it. And now if you aren't bored to death heres some pretty pichers!

I got my phone linking up to my computer again after months of it not working (STUPID GARBAGE WINDOWS VISTA) so I'll post some pics which are from several months ago and possibly summer. Or just tonight in the case of the first one. Sorry if there is repeats from my previous pic post. First in honor of my home slice Schultzzz:
Oh shit! Pretty face is goin' to HELL!
Next in honor of my bro Adam:
Care for some FAGOTTINI with you CHINA WANG?
Just some cool street art and concert poster from downtown Stockholm:
The view from the apartment we were staying in at the beginning of summer in Stockholm:
There's lots of rainbows here. Think it has something to do with the sun being at a low angle in the sky so much blah blah.
I so wish there was some blood dripping and pooling in the second pic. God that would be awesome.

Out.

SkIDReSAn!!!

2009-02-01T20:26:00.002+01:00

So I went skiing for the first time ever (yes EVER) yesterday. I think my closest exposure to it until now was the South Park episode parodying late 80's ski resort movies. Er whatever. Speaking of which that episode is freaking super-classic. The payoff at the end??? "Quaaiiidd, start the reactor..." Brilliant!!!
Back to skiing. Wow. It is really really hard. And since EVERYONE here has done it since they are like 8 months old I looked like a complete doofus out there. There's like a baby slope with about a 5 degree gradient and little animal puppets that show the kids where to go, on which I assume the 8 month olds start out. Luckily for my self esteem I started on the next level up where the two years olds were skiing. I think it takes them roughly 45 seconds to reach the bottom of the slope. The first time I went down it took me literally 45 MINUTES, no exaggeration. I spent much of that time on the ground spitting out bloody snow and groaning about the pain in my legs. Ok, there was no blood really, but that's surprising. Little kids for whom it was entirely within their realm of possibilities that Santa Claus COULD be waiting for them at the bottom of the hill (with presents even) were flying by me at 60 mph, and looking way cooler than me in their ski gear while they did it. Anyway, 45 minutes later at the bottom, my whole body was shaking, my inner clothes were SOAKED with sweat, my outter clothes were covered in snow, and I felt that same pukey feeling like after you've run flat out until you, well, puke. I didn't puke and the next time down only took like 15 minutes. By the 5th time down I could kind of keep myself under control, and I only fell down like twice. Then it was time to leave. Next time I'm really hoping to reach bicycle speeds!

Erm

2009-01-30T21:32:00.002+01:00

Listening to:
Beautiful Child - Swans (you won't like it, I promise... rest of the album sux anyway, older stuff seems much more promising)
Hot N Cold - Katy Perry (every damn morning)
Prayer to God - Shellac (so awesome)
Just a Friend - Biz Markie (how is this song this good?)

Playing:
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (mainly driving the F2007, the only car the game needs IMO!)

Watching:
No Reservations Season 5 (finally!!!!)

In the immortal words of the little japanese yakuza from the pretzel lady episode:
"Fuhgivuhness prease!"
Whatever spirits possessed me to write such a shameful post have run their course I assure you.
Not much happening lately. Back in Swedish course after winter holiday hiatus. Learning a completely foreign language in a different country truly is a unique experience. Hard to explain and even harder to imagine. I thought it would kind of be like discernible steps of progress towards some final goal. Totally not like that at all. It feels like 5 steps forward then 2 back then one to the left and one forward again, then 4 to the right then 3 backwards, then 2 more to the right, then 8 forward... Really confusing and frustrating. Like at the morning coffee break on Wednesday Anders was talking about music and the movie the Departed. I understood like 90% of everything he said NINETY FRICKIN' PERCENT. For instance, he said he was watching it with some Malaysians (don't ask) and at the scene when Frank trades the chinese triad dudes the computer chips er whatever the Malaysians laughed. When Anders asked why, they were like "Those obviously aren't chinese guys, they are mainly koreans." Then the next two days of work, for 16 hours I understand like 10% of everything said. How can I understand something so obscure as that and then nothing?! In class I can bust out with "I believe the dinosaurs died out around 260 million years ago when a giant meteorite impacted the earth which caused the sun not to shine which killed off lots of plants, which then killed off lots of plant eating dinosaurs which then killed off the meat eating dinosaurs." Then the rest of the week I've maybe strung together 3 coherent meaningful sentences, despite my best efforts. LORD KNOWS I'M TRYIN'. On the train I'm accidentally reading in Swedish about the new Upptåget train schedule I couldn't care less about without even thinking about it. Try to read about something I really want to understand in the newspaper... Oh sure I understand most of the words, but what meaning am I getting out of it? NONE. YARRRGGH. I mean I guess for only being here 7 or 8 months I'm making a lot of progress, but that means basically nothing when you can't understand everything 100% of the time, which is the entire POINT of having written and spoken language... If you can see where I'm going with that. Ya know, that whole efficient communication thing.
Oh well, I need to go sleep now. Write more soon.

Dr. Octo

2009-01-20T20:29:00.006+01:00

Mental disorder, person and alias/
55.6 computer TRACKS on your ASSCRACKS

Things you don't know about me:

I was a minor cyber-meme-celeb back in 2003 or so. My wrandom writings were published anonymously in Harper's without my consent. But no one knew then, and only one maybe two of my closest friends have any idea... At any rate I apparently have a .se website dedicated to the legacy of those anonymous posts. Especially ironic now. I guess. If you know what I'm talking about send me a message.

"Hello big chief! Le's talk, why not?"

Out.

UpDaTE HOtTTtLINE # 9

2009-01-16T18:13:00.009+01:00

Currently listening to:
-No Epiphany - Fucked Up
-Sunglasses at Night - Corey Hart
-Overpowered - Róisín Murphy
-Penetration - Iggy & The Stooges
-Seven Souls - Material

Currently playing:
-Fallout 3

Currently watching:
-Top Chef Season 5
-Top Gear
-Joy Division documentary
-Låt Den Rätte Komma In (or I would be if I could understand Sweden talk gooder : ( someday I will though...)

Wishing I could:
-Go to a batting cage, for some weird reason. I haven't since I was like 15 but I have this inexplicable craving lately

Going to:
-Hopefully goin to a club called Flustret, or as my work friend calls it "Jurassic Park". I've heard a lot about it and I think I'll go with my friend from Swedentalk class. I'm looking forward to it. Oh, and the name... I think in english we might call it "Cougarville" or somesuch. The age range is supposed to be like 14-65, full of lovelorn divorcees and junior high girls, making for a danceclub I actually really really want to go to.

All for now. I forsee at least two of the four people that read this getting a call from me this weekend. Look out!

GOD FORTSÄTTNING

2009-01-08T19:04:00.011+01:00

New Year's Eve was great. We ate, drank, smoked, played games... For dinner we had Rudolph as an appetizer and Bambi for the entree. Yes, reindeer and deer (well elk). And, yes, I have been waiting over a week to say Rudolph and Bambi. Smoked cigars at midnight, with millions of fireworks going off everywhere and every church bell in the country ringing, it was awesome.

Anyway in the spirit of the new year here is my best of 2008 list. Actually it won't be in list form. Oh, and I reserve the right to use any year.

Comic strip of the year: Rocky. I think I've mentioned it before on here as a favorite for reading practice. I'm sure I'm violating any number of copyright laws by posting these examples here, but if you are about to prosecute... Just tell me and I'll remove them forthwith:

I didn't bother to fully decipher the first one but he's in Norway promoting his new book (the material for the strip is derived from his real life experiences mostly, and he is Swedish) and complaining about his fans and then later he's on the toilet and a fan sticks his hand under the stall to get an autograph. The second quite comical romp occurs at an in store book signing again on his book tour in Norway. A child (with the Norwegian flag on his hat and shirt) asks very politely in Norwegian for an autograph in a notebook and Rocky's Norwegian handler tells the kid to piss off cause Rocky is only signing "Rocky" books or "Rocky" magazines. The little kid runs away crying in Norwegian (Wæææ!). Rocky says "Yeah, yeah, run and buy the damn book for $600 and then get your ass to the end of the line, you all have oil here so you can fucking afford it!" Then a smoking hot teenage bitch (female dog!) asks if he can sign her shirt and his handler starts to say "he's only signing..." when Rocky lunges over the table and grabs the bitches shirt and says "These are my fans!!! They made me who I am today!!" Then the Norwegian handler says sarcastically "Sexually frustrated geek with hubris...?" Get it? HAHAHAHA!!! It's interesting because he often writes in different languages, showcasing the national propensity for multilinguality.

Anyway, next up on my "BeSt oF 2008!!!!" list: Michael Jackson: Thriller. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(album)
Do yourself a favor and read that. It was nothing short of a musical revolution. The Beatles (self-admittedly) put white faces on black music and cashed in, becoming what many consider the greatest musical act of the century. Elvis before them. FINALLY a black person was truly cashing in on his own music and not just being used as a means to a financial end for some bald fat sweaty white dudes who couldn't dance their way out of a wet paper sack. To think that only a little over 20 years ago MTV were scared to give a black person primetime exposure and had to be threatened before they would play his videos at all. MTV!! WTF?? Do they even have white people on there anymore? (I kid, I kid, I wouldn't know anway, I can't remember the last time I watched it)

In other 2008 music news, be sure to check out: "Give it away" by RHCP. The fact that that song pushed them into uber-stardom completely blows my mind. The song is nuts! Go back and listen to it again and ask yourself if you could ever have predicted that song would be a hit. If I had to guess before it became popular I would have said: "No way, it sounds retarded!" Retarded awesome! Radio stations refused to play it because it had "no melody". Seriously the song is awesome but in a completely idiosyncratic way. Maybe that's why people went crazy for it.

D.J. Shadow "Endtroducing". If you haven't heard it you suck. The first album EVER created entirely from samples of other people's music. FIRST EVER. Everybody does it now. Perpetually imitated, rarely equaled.

Favorite blog of the past few years: TOKYO DAMAGE REPORT.
www.hellodamage.com/tdr
I visit this site with damn near religiosity. I think it has all the mainstream appeal of Gorgoroth (oh, another good thing that actually is from this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avnsgYvHPK8&feature=channel
watch TILL THE END, you won't regret it, and if you like it watch the other 4 parts) but if you are interested in Japanese culture and/or metal and/or have a little knowledge of either you will hopefully find the blog hilarious. Schultz is an absolute crazy looking GENIUS.

Coolest milieu of the year: Late '70s Miami cocaine culture, BEFORE the cuban/colombian wars. The amount of money made in the span of time and adjusted for inflation... Well I guess the current run of Ponzi scheme, sub-prime loan, and general regular workin' dude rapists probably have it beat by a long shot, but WHO HAD THE DISCO CLUBS?!?!?! HUH???? That's right. Plus it built a city, and DIDN'T ruin the worldwide economy, so it had that going for it!

I guess thats enough of that for now. My daily three hours of "me" time have dwindled to 30 minutes.

PEACE

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2008-12-31T11:48:00.012+01:00

I guess I did post in November. Howzabout that. Well this will count as my December post, just barely.

Hey, can you find the American hiding in this picture?

Swedes: "I must say chaps, this is a reasonably enjoyable night!" "Quite!" "Indubitably!" American: "I'M ON THE NIGHT TRAIN BITCHES! BOTTOMS UP! WHOOO WHOOO!!!"

What an American ass! I bet that douche doesn't even remember that picture being taken and then posted on the club's website for everyone in town to see. Dumbass! I'd like to say it's not as bad as it looks and they just took the funniest of several photos of us. I'd like to say that, but, ya know...

And on to updates...

-Haven't crashed my bike into anything and nothing has crashed into me yet... Surprisingly.

-I'm on what I like to call an "accidental personal hygiene shopping error" spree. First I bought this $5 (non-vibrating even) toothbrush cause the sign said it was on sale for like $2. Nope, the sign was for a different one even though it was right in front of the one I got. I was pissed. Then I brushed my teeth with it. To quote one of my favorite movies: "I don't know if it's worth five dollars, but it's pretty fucking good."
A few weeks later I bought this Gillette Fusion razor on accident cause from where it was behind the counter I thought it was the cheap one (it was really like $18 for the holder thingy and like 2 replacement heads, hey I'm legally blind okay?). It has like 5 blades on it, looks like a jet fighter and I'm pretty sure just placing it gently on the ground anywhere in Iraq would take out way more insurgents than I could with a tank. Anyway, I shaved with it and... extrapolate using previous quote.

-The company Christmas party was pretty cool. It was on this island in the archipelago, and we stayed overnight at the hotel. Since it was dark and most of the houses were deserted for the winter (i.e. no lights on) we couldn't really see much of the island. Good food, this weird singing group of 2 girls and some guy that were parodying Swedish songs and singers that I didn't really get, but it was still funny to me cause the singer dude was waaaayyy over the top (and I'm pretty sure drunk). Running around smacking everyone on the back like old pals, incorporating everyone who walked by to get to the food table into his act. It was entertaining. I sat in the one seat that was right next to them (didn't know they would be performing there) so the spotlight was on me the whole time and the dude was basically spitting in my food everytime he opened his mouth. Which was really often (he was singing). From what I've heard about company Christmas parties here, I thought people would get way drunker at the bar later than they did. Although one older guy who I really like (who reminds me of a big bald bearded teddy bear) did get pretty drunk, it was awesome. Good times.

-Swedish classes are on break till February. I'm much much better at reading now and I can almost follow most of some newspaper articles, if you can follow that. Especially if the article is about a beating, stabbing, murder, race riot, or car accident. And about every other day I can understand 90% of my favorite daily comic strip "Rocky". It's about an anthropomorphic dog, mouse, and frog who are friends and get drunk all the time and then occasionally go on dates with other (remarkably attractive) anthropomorphous cartoon animals of the opposite sex. Really that's about all that happens. Listening is still an exercise in concentration and luck (not to mention extremely frustrating and tiring). Speaking I would say is still at a 3 year old's level or so but with an adult, how shall I say, sensibility. For instance: "Me potty now." "I want food on dinner." "When shall we go at party later?" "How much for sucky sucky?" is about my level of discourse. And really if you think about it those are pretty much the only phrases one would ever need know in a foreign language... If I had to stop learning now. Oh, and trust me, everytime I learn a word that could even remotely be twisted into some kind of perverted meaning I do everything in my power to make Frida annoyed at my immaturity.

Gotta go for now. I have a feeling tonight will end up the exact opposite of the above picture, with me being the straight man and everyone else being crazy. Since it always happens that way. I believe I've mentioned my inability to synch up with everyone else's partying. Sigh.

Gott nytt år bitches!

IT'S COLD

2008-11-13T19:27:00.003+01:00

But not that cold...

YET. My fingers were numb riding my bike home from Joel's place after work tonight. I'm NOT looking forward to riding the bike in snow and ice. At least I have a helmet now which looks dorky as hell but I truly believe it is only a matter of time before I'm hit by a car on my bike. I've already crashed twice on the one day it was icy screwing up the bike really bad and busting up my hand, but when I got the bike fixed I had snow tires put on which was jävla dyrt (f-ing expensive). When Frida took it to the repair place for me they were like "Did he have to go to the hospital? How bad was he hurt?" So I guess if the bike repair guys say that the thing was messed up.

-My new favorite Swedish word is "sjuksköterskeutbildningen", and I are proud cause I can say it good fer realzz. The meaning is boring but it is a bus stop. Peeps in my Swedish class say it's worth the bus fare to hear the Stephen Hawking robot voice with the Swedish accent say it when you stop there on the bus. "Nästa, Sjuksköterskeutbildningen" Joy!

-I hate Jason Mraz so, so, so much. I want to claw my eyes out when the song comes on the radio in the mornings on the way to work, seriously. I can't believe the other guys still tap their feet to it like it's not the most dry-heave inducing tripe ever conceived by humans. Maybe I should say something. I guess I'm too polite.

-Still playing Castlevania. I recommended it to Jerker. He said he played it on his PSP for like 10 minutes and quit. It felt like the sky had fallen on my head. I wept bitter tears of defeat.

-Really want to see an Amon Amarth show after Cosmo Lee's entertaining review on Pitchfork. Favorite quote from his review: "To see men, women, metalheads, and Wall Street types [when he was at a show of theirs in NYC], young and old, chanting, "Oden! Guide our ships!" was quite heartwarming." Guess I should start by listening to some of their music. Meh.

-Watching the new Dexter episodes a few days after they come out still. Gonna start watching the new season of Top Chef tonight too. Also watching season 12 (newest) of Top Gear as it comes out. Just got the newest epsiode tonight. Top Gear is seriously one of the best TV shows ever, even if I do fast forward through the garbage interviews with British people I don't know when they introduce the Star in a Reasonably Priced car.

-Don't have much time to listen to music, which is truly unfortunate. I wanted to get an ipod when I'm back for Thanksgiving, but thanks to the stupid dollar gaining like 30% on the crown and a lack of fundage it looks like that's down the drain : ( : ( THANKS A LOT STRENGTHENING DOLLAR

Oh, on that note. It was really difficult for me to see how impossible it is to accurately translate one's wages from one currency to another, but this kind of puts it in perspective. Compared to when I started my job I now make 30% less money in dollars. That is a crapload. But my wages haven't changed at all and prices here have remained completely constant. You can see from this example alone how pointless it is to try and convert my wages here to dollars and compare to what I might make at home, which I did when I got here as I didn't understand this strange reality. You can definitely translate prices for goods though. When I got here a lot of good stuff in the U.S. (i mainly was comparing electronic gizmos like an ipod, but a general rule of thumb is half price in the U.S.) was about 50% less than here, but not quite that much anymore : ( : (
I now are sad for no ipod.

Work story!!!

2008-11-06T21:11:00.007+01:00

So! A good (and exciting!!!) story, and one that will maybe give you some idea of what it is I do... Some of the time. So, Jerker and I went to our old factory warehouse to take some measurements of a spreader that was shipped back to us for refurbishing. It's been in service in Germany for like 7 years, and it's all beat to hell and dirty as shit. So there is three main parts to a normal spreader. The center section and then the two twin-beam arms on both sides of that. The arms telescope out from the center and are held together by an end gable on the outside to shape like a giant rectangular U. Anyway this spreader is separated into it's three parts, and we are going to take measurments to see how close to tolerance the TBUs (arm thingys) are (answer: not very... now). The port had done some of their own repairs to it while they had it and we have to figure out if the out of tolerance...ness is from them or us or what, and why there was uneven wear in certain spots and not in others, etc. Stuff like that. Anyway, the TBUs are about 25 or 30 ft long and weigh about 5,000lbs each. The one we are messing with is about 4 feet off the ground on these giant metal stands. In order to check the tolerances we have to get the thing squared up as even as possible and as flat as possible, which means lifting it off it's stands and putting metal plates under it. Obviously we have two giant winches on the ceiling to lift it with. We adjust the end without the end gable (read: lighter end) with no problems, but it still isn't quite square so we have to adjust the end WITH the end gable (read: heavy as shit). One of the regular workshop guys is like "Yeah just slide the straps down to the other end and lift." And proceeds to do it, then tear ass with the winches to jack up the heavy as hell end like 6 inches in about 2 seconds, then slam it back down. "See?" and walks away. I'm like "I think we should support the other end, I mean, if it slips..." Jerker "It'll probly be fine." Here's the thing about inertia: It's very difficult to comprehend, even when you know how much something weighs and can see how big it is. If the winch isn't DIRECTLY over the center of the TBU then no matter how slow you lift it a tiny force to the left or right will send 5000lbs hurtling in that direction. Imagine having one of those huge Ford Super Duty trucks hanging in the air and swinging in the breeze. If you try and stop it from swinging, even though it looks like it's going slow, it will KNOCK YOUR SHIT DOWN. Anyway, Jerker very slowly winches up the heavy end. It starts to go a little to the right and then SHIT! It pulls the light end (like 2,000lbs) RIGHT OFF OF THE STANDS. The other two real workshop guys came running over cause it must have sounded like it fell through the earth and hit China or something. I can't really remember how loud it was cause I was too scared when it happened to notice. Luckily there was a wooden pallet in a very lucky spot that shattered and absorbed most of the impact thus no damage was done. When it fell though, I had my hand on a 1/2" thick steel plate, the corner of which ran straight up the length of my hand at about 50mph when the heavy end slid off. SOMEHOW it didn't slice it right open, well, in half really. I have no idea how. We both got REALLY lucky to not have more than only a scratch on me. I learned my lesson: Don't just SUGGEST them, ALWAYS INSIST on the safety precautions and if for some crazy reason you are refused, sit the shit out.

Yaw-mo-be-there

2008-11-06T20:19:00.003+01:00

Haha I tricked you. I split this into two posts so you would read them both. DUMMY! NOW READ!

I'm very glad Obama won. Did he go back on his signed agreement, opt into public financing, and buy his presidency? You bet. Do I like that? Not one bit. Can he turn everything into rainbows and unicorns. Doubt it. Is the US headed toward "socialism"? Well if whatever he does sucks you better believe it'll be undone faster than you can say "Hussein" by the Republican horde that swarms Washington next election cycle. So everyone lamenting the fact we elected a "Marxist" can suck my sickle and two hammers. The election is over, remember? You can leave your fear tactics and scary word list on the desk, they finally failed you and they are of no use now. Next election you better bring something more to the table or it'll be four more years of your money going straight into the pockets of free-loaders and high school dropouts. The fact that the entire world is totally pumped that he won means a lot to me. And it'll be freaking awesome being proud instead of mortified when people from other countries start talking to me about our president. Which doesn't come up THAT often but still.

Oh which reminds me, I made this post mainly to talk about something that happened today, but I'll tell this short one too. There's this dude at work, who's probably like 65, kind of strange looking and almost always gives me a hard time about not being fluent in Swedish yet. Tuesday we went to the Port of Stockholm to test a new spreader design we've been working on for a few months. On the car ride there everyone was talking about the election, of course, and they were asking me about it. Anders (boss) asks: "Do you think Obama will get elected?" Me: "Yeah, I'm pretty sure." Old dude: "SO HOW LONG TILL YOU THINK HE GETS SHOT?" Everyone else just kind of chuckles, embarrassed, and I'm like "Well, there are a lot of crazy people with guns out there, but the security is good, they know it'll be more dangerous for him, blah blah, I really hope that doesn't happen, blah blah..." The issue fades and we get on with the (pretty awesome) day. Anyway, Wednesday, it's official, he's elected, and at the coffee break I can tell this dude is absolutely CHOMPING at the bit to say something to me so I do everything possible to avoid him. Sure enough right afterward he comes in all pretending to talk to my buddy Bosse for like two seconds and then comes right up to me and: "So how long till he gets shot?" AGAIN. I give the same answer as the day before, undeterred he presses on: "WHAT DO YOU THINK THE KU KLUX KLAN THINKS ABOUT HIM BEING ELECTED?" I'm like dumbfounded now. "Um there's not much of the Ku Klux Klan left..." "WHAT DO YOU THINK ALL THE BLACK PEOPLE WILL DO WHEN HE GETS SHOT?" Me: blank stare. "I BET THEY WON'T LIKE IT, DO YOU THINK THEY WILL RIOT?" Me: mouth agape. "I BET THEY WILL RIOT!" I slowly turned back to my computer to ignore him and he walked away.
Moral of the story: There are assholes in every country who take great pleasure in rubbing you the wrong way for no reason other than they like being a dickhole, I guess. On a nicer note... At the Stockholm Port, I went up in both of the gantry cranes they had. I don't like heights at all, and the walkways on these things are probably at least 200ft in the air. The walkways are basically metal grates that you can see right through straight down to the ground, there's nothing else underneath you, no supports for the grates or anything. It really looks like theres basically nothing holding you up. I was pretty happy I didn't freak out. It was fun being inside the cockpit thingy with the driver though, in the front the floor is glass so you can see straight down, which didn't bother me since I was enclosed. When they drive those things hard it's impossible to stand upright, it knocks you right over, it was like an amusement park ride. Really cool.

HOORAH

2008-10-26T16:56:00.002+01:00

I'm updating!

I will be back in KS from like Nov. 25th until Dec. 4. Give me a holla and we'll drink beer.

We went to a nation last night (like a bar/club for students, Uppsala is a university town after all) and I drank enough to dance, so it was a good night. They played Thriller, and my favorite Swedish song by Håkan Hellström, it's sooooo awesome. Like jangly guitars and all upbeat. People scream the lyrics, everybody's all sweaty and happy. Nations are fun. At the pre-party I could juuuuust understand what people were talking about in Swedish, some of the time. It's weird because I've been concentrating so hard on understanding people and now that I actually barely can, sometimes it's when I'm not concentrating so hard that I understand the most. Weird how it works.

Yesterday I was walking around downtown and in the main square area there was like tons of people holding banners and handing out literature from all different groups including one with a red banner with a hammer and sickle on it and something about the "proletariat" written on it, and a dude on a loudspeaker harrassing everybody, and I think people were walking by and snickering at him. No idea what was going on there. My favorite part though was that amidst all the political activists and survery takers and solicitors and Serious Business was a dude in a giant tiger suit walking around handing out balloons to all the kiddies promoting the fast food chain Max. I wanted to give him a hug but I was too shy : (

It's not really cold here yet, in fact the weather is really similar to KS so far, at least surprisingly so for me. It's just darker a lot more than back home, and getting darker every day. I hear repeatedly all the time from basically everyone about how much warmer the winters are and how much less snow they get than when everyone was young. The older the person the bigger the difference It's kinda scary I guess. I'm definitely not on the doomsday predictions and mass extinctions tip, but damn, it really hits home up here.

Watching season 3 of Dexter and it is just as good as the first two seasons, if not better. I'm really pleased about that, hopefully it continues on this path for a few more seasons.

Mainly playing Castlevania SOTN for PS1 on PS3 (downloaded it off the playstation store). The game is classic, I really really like it. I really really like the PS3 too. Glad that I bought it. I'm also looking forward to buying Rock Band 2 when I'm home (it won't be out over here for several months I think) and I'm probly gonna get Little Big Planet too. Really dumb they had to pull it out of stores to take a song off the soundtrack because it contained lyrics from the koran, but whatev. Guess we gotta be P.C. At least it wasn't like the "Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Cuddle and Coo" doll:
www.kjrh.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=5c383aca-c3d2-4b3d-b4a5-5a8108ba4971

I got a bike now so I've been riding that to the houses of the guys who give me a ride to work, and that's been workin out ok, but it kinda sucks being sweaty on the car ride there. Also bought the cheapest electric guitar that the music store here had, just to mess around with, I was dying to play something even though I'm pretty terrible and can only play "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" right now. I've been working on some slayer, but doggone it if their songs aren't a little tough. I can play some of it about 10 times slower, and thus not nearly as cool. Oh, and I can kinda play some of "Gimme Danger" but it sounds funky. I forgot to buy a tuner (don't really need one anyway, I just tune by ear off websites set up for that purpose, I mean, I'm no David St. Hubbins so it works for me) so maybe thats why it sounds funky, the B string may be a little off... but more likely the tab I was going off of is wrong. Anyway... Frida needs to use the laptop so I'll sign off for now.

ta-ta

RIDICULOUS

2008-10-03T18:01:00.003+02:00

Here's your update you vultures:

-Frida was in the hospital with meningitis. That sucked. She is 100% recovered now though. It wasn't the bacteria type that can kill you in a few days, so that was a plus. It was a regular ass rhinovirus that decided "Wouldn't it be sssssupersssssweet if instead of infecting her sssssinussssesssss we infected the membrane between her brain and ssssskull? C'mon! Let'ssss do it to it dewdssss!" She was sick for a good two weeks, half of which was in the hospital supersick. And yes, rhinoviruses all have lisps.

-Went to Rome for 4 days. No way to describe it, you just gotta see it with your own eyes. Favorite parts were: Sistine Chapel - Pictures don't do it justice, you just gotta see it in person, St. Peter's Basilica - it is impossible to have any concept of the size, even when you are in it your brain cannot process how big it is, awesome, Colosseum - again with the size, I thought it was gonna be much smaller. I can't figure out how they built these things. If I tried to make a wall of bricks more than 4 ft high it would tip over forthwith. How their shit is still standing... Well, I guess that's the draw isn't it now? Rome overall was pretty nice. Good weather, not polluted, relatively small area, well dressed people. I'm sorry but I thought people there were in general more attractive than people here in SE. But you know me, I like tall dark and handsome *BLUSH* Plus Swedes dress weird. I'm used to it now I guess, but Italians just dress nice. Oh, also went to this monastery where they have like thousands of monk bones and skulls all decorating the inside, all over the walls and ceilings, including kid skeletons. Really macabre, kinda sick, yet super awesome.

-Got the new 46" HDTV and have been playing tons PS3 in my small amount of spare time (and not updating the blog, obv). Mainly GT5 Prologue and GTA4. Can't freaking wait for Rock Band 2 tho. Will def. pick it up when I'm home for Thanksgiving.

-Started Swedish classes. Interesting folk in the class, all different countries. The french girl has the thickest accent ever. I try not to laugh. Two Americans besides me. Haven't talked to them, mainly to this Greek guy, Spyros, an Australian girl, this kinda odd Italian guy, and the teacher. Everyone is about my age, including the teacher.

-One of the guys I ride to work with bought his car off a gypsy. I told him we think of gypsies in the US the same way we think about fairies and dragons. Some kind of mythical beast. But he bought his car off one. Classic. Gypsy isn't the P.C. term by the way. In case you ever meet one. Kind of like eskimo.

-Harris was eating a hamburger sandwich on break the other day. Not too strange you think? Well, that's what they call horsemeat here. Our hamburger here is "hamburgare" in Swedish. Anyway, the meat is kind of dark and when I saw it I figured that's what it was so I had to call him out on it. I'll get around to trying it one of these days. It sounds pretty tasty actually, it's smoked, for flavor! What I may never try is the rotten herring "surströmming". I probably couldn't get past the overpowering rotting fish smell to actually put it in my mouth.

-Still hate Jason Mraz. Had that fucking song stuck in my head the whole time in Rome. It very nearly ruined the trip. They play it every morning on the radio when we drive to work. I HATE IT SO MUCH

My October resolution is to update more.

Later fools.

2008-08-17T17:13:00.003+02:00

YOOOOOO.
I'm so lazy about posting on here. Since last time:
-Brett's friends from Oklahoma were here. One was a bartender. I guess he was a schmoozemaster cause he chatted up everyone that worked there and somehow we ended up getting about $200 worth of alcohol for free at this nice restaurant downtown. Apparently that never happens, but it did this time. It was quite the Tuesday night.
-That weekend was cityfest in Gävle. Good times, good times. They have this food called langos which is kinda like a unbaked pizza on a piece of fried bread. No red sauce but like sour cream and cheese and onions or other stuff depending which on you get. They are freaking awesome and I think they only have them that one weekend for cityfest. The previous weekend we had a kräft (crawfish) party and I got drunker than everyone else and then threw a fit when we were supposed to leave cause I wanted to party more. Everyone laughed at me. Then cityfest weekend I'm like the least drunk and everyone else wants to stay out and party and all I can think about is going home to sleep. Really gotta synch up with everyone else. Oh, but at the kräft party Gustav and Anna had just come back from Greece, and they kept pouring everyone shots of this Greek moonshine that they carried back in this like beat up plastic water bottle, like the kind bottled water comes in and then you throw out. It looked truly frightening, my first question was "Have you actually had this yet?" and my second question was "How is your vision right now?" I guess they sell the stuff at grocery stores, you have to bring your own container and then fill it out of this big jug they have er something. It was pretty good though, it didn't taste nearly as strong as I think it was. And I didn't go blind.
-This past week virtually nothing happened. Won a little money at online poker cause I've been home like everynight. And this weekend we stayed in Stockholm and just walked around on Kungsholmen yesterday, which is a pretty nice area actually, not trendy like Söder and not fancy like the fancy parts of town, but still nice. Although actually I think it is pretty trendy like Söder. But whatev. Besides seeing these giant mounds of poo in two different doorways that were obviously not from dogs, and were probably from the same person, and were truly disgusting, we found this tight store called "Grandpa" where they sold random shit. Kinda like urban outfitters a little but with less clothes. My favorite finds were this GIANT book of photos called "Swedish Fetish". It was just a bunch of people in leather, whips and chains, ball gags, tatoos, corsettes, gimp costumes, cool "Swedish" shit like that. I really wanted to buy it for our coffee table. It would be great. Although I don't think my sense of humor translates well to, you know, people. People would think I was a total perv. And they'd be right. The other find was this memory game, you know the one where the cards are face down and you turn them over two at a time, but this one had pictures of boobs. Like one boob on each card, not a complete pair. Again, hilarious. Again, sense of humor probably doesn't translate. Again, perv.

"I don't know how you guys do things in Europe..."
"New Zealand."
"Ch'yeah, probly!"

I have a new list of movies I want to see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_nasties#The_DPP_list

I hate Adrien Grenier.

The weather here has been mostly rainy and cloudy the past few weeks with a few exceptions. The temperature is like averaging 65 F, need to take jackets or you get cold out in the wind.

On TV earlier they had this really weird show called "sport opera" I guess, that's what's painted behind the commentators anyway. First they had a guy in face paint singing. Then the commentators talked about it, then they played an instant replay of what he had just sung. Then they had these dancers come on and do this really weird air-humping motion with giant smiles on their faces for like 2 minutes straight to some classic opera, then the music stopped and they danced around for like 5 minutes with no music at all. I actually liked the second part, then I wondered why the hell I hadn't changed the channel yet.

I have like 4 canker sores that refuse to go away and everytime I eat or drink juice they burn like all the volcanoes on earth are in my mouth. Damn!

So that's the update. Enjoy.

Urge to kill fading... fading... fading... OR Racecar PIX MeGaPoST!!!!!!

2008-08-02T15:32:00.019+02:00

The rage is all gone. I'm looking forward to seeing the Batman movie at home on blu-ray someday, despite what I said yesterday. I'm sure I'll like it a little better next time now that I know it ain't king shit of fuck mountain. Axl Rose remains and always shall be king shit of fuck mountain. So disregard yesterdays rant except for that part.
Moving on...
You may recall (but most likely not) that I have been trying to go to this race team's shop here in Gävle to check out some of the new cars they have acquired since I was there last summer. In the last year their team has branched out from the guy I know and his brother plus one mechanic into like 4 more mechanics/techs plus a team captain, Stanley Dickens, a Swedish racecar driver AND the great-great-grandson of THE Charles Dickens. So they have expanded a lot I'd say. Anyway, I took Thursday and Friday off work which finally allowed our schedules to match up enough for me to make a quick visit to the shop on Thursday night. It was tiiiiiight. Not sure where to really start, I guess I'll kind of caption the pictures:

I don't think they had this one last time. Porsche Carrera Cup car. You buy these as you see above directly from Porsche for a race series specifically for these cars. They build these at the Porsche factory on the same assembly line as regular street Porsches I believe. These babies are all stripped out and have some bespoke carbon fiber work on the wheel arches and aero bits. Also has a standard roll cage. The engine is race tuned too, natch. Non-turbo. I believe Claes said they got this one from some team that was racing it in some FIA series, but I could be wrong about that. Also raced in the 24 hours of Le Mans a couple times.

My favorite part of this car, since it shares a lot with street cars, it actually uses a regular ass key, which you can see up there complete w/ Porsche keychain in the standard Porsche left-of-the-steering-wheel style orientation. I think this was a '96 model year car. Real pretty, Claes says it sounds amazing too. Unfortunately he didn't start any of them up this time : /

A view of the shop from the front door. It's in this inconspicuous warehouse out by the ocean. In the background on the lift is the 2006 GT3 RSR they were racing in their series the past few years. It's a real looker too, they started it up last time I was there. It sounds mean as hell. Porsche also, obv, from the shape.
The underside of it. Some pretty header work there. Anti-roll bar. The blog won't let me upload these in their original resolution so it's gonna be blurry, sorry.
The Porsche Lola. They had just bought this last time I was there. It wasn't looking NEARLY this good then. They fixed it all up like brand new. Here she was back in her glory days: http://www.championracing.net/2006/History/Porsche_Lola.htm
I recommend taking a peep if you like what you see in the pic. They bought it off some guy in England who bought it from the team I think. Oh, Lola is a specialty racecar manufacturer, http://www.lolacars.com/
which is why it's in the name along with Porsche. Lola made the car and it was powered by Porsche I believe. Claes said he had planned to take this thing out and see what she could do but when they were finished refurbishing it it was just too pretty to play with.
It is spectacular looking. All carbon fiber, a real racecar.

And here's the beast itself. I believe it's chassis 015R, previously raced by Graham Nash Motorsport. I'm not sure how I know that, I think Claes mentioned something in an email and I googled it. Saleen S7R. I don't think they have hardly touched this since they got it. No idea what the plans for it are. I was a little too star-struck to ask all the questions I wanted to about all the cars. And I was only there for about 45 minutes.

Cockpit. Thing had some sick gull-wing door action going on.

Engine bay, and rear. Brand new exhaust, whoever they bought this from was planning on racing it in some Nordic series, which had noise requirements. Really slick car. It was much bigger than I had expected. The street S7's look much smaller in pictures. The front is small, but the ass-end is mammoth.
On to the car they are currently campaigning:

Can ya make out what it says on the carbon intake plenum? Yes indeedy, it is an honest to god REAL Pratt & Miller C5R. Serial #011, the last example before the jump to the C6Rs that I had the privilege of watching race as a guest of Pratt & Miller at the 2007 Grand Prix of Houston. Meaning we were in the pits 2 feet from the cars. I think I've told this story on here before. Anyway, it was freaking sweet... But back to this car...
If you can see in the first pic of the engine bay, the big orange tubes that lead into tiny silver aluminum intake restrictors? Yah the orange tube is supposed to be the amount of air going into the engine, and the weeny assed restrictor is what they have to run in addition to like 200 lbs of ballast or so for them to stay competitive. I think he said they are down to about 580 HP or so. The Oreca Vipers they race against have like 800 HP and are lighter. So in summary, the C5R has to be much less powerful AND heavier in order to stay competitive. Because it is that freaking awesome in "stock" form. I know it barely makes sense, it seems like this thing should be getting spanked by cars that are lighter and more powerful, I mean that's just physics, but it is so well designed, put together, and cutting edge compared to the other cars in the series it has to be seriously handicapped. Another thing about this car that blew my mind. Claes says parts are much cheaper than for any of the Porsches they have owned. That also makes no sense, There's millions of Porsches out there and like, well, 12 of these. And yet Pratt & Miller supplies parts for "reasonable" amounts of money. Unfreakingbelievable. It was super-duper awesome to see this thing. Claes loves it. I can see why.
Well, as I wrote in a previous post, I had mentioned in an email to Claes that I would love to volunteer around the shop or at races or something. Didn't think much would come of it, and he never acknowledged it in any emails, but when I was about to leave we started chatting a little, and long story short he said he would give me a call sometime to help out at a race or something. They weren't sure when they next one was because apparently the races have been called on-off repeatedly, but probably in September. So, more pics and exciting megaposts to come!

THE NIGHT IS DARKEST BEFORE THE BLAH BLAH

2008-08-01T21:10:00.004+02:00

So I saw The Dark Knight just now. As I told Frida, I must immediately post to my blog because if my post isn't fueled by rage then it won't be worth posting and I can already feel the rage waning. Heath Ledger. Give me a fucking break. You did a good job playing the joker in a fucking batman movie. Whaddya want, a fucking medal? OH SNAP! You died from taking too many drugs before reaching the age of 30. Whaddya want, a fucking medal? OH SNAP! Everyone's sayin' YOU JUST MIGHT GET A MEDAL! Albeit in the form of a little golden man named Oscar. Props to you for dying! I guess the cockstains in Holier-than-thouwood all gathered together at a big Film Actors Guild meeting and thought "Hmm, drugs are glamourous, obv, but how can we make them MORE glamourous??? I KNOW GIVE SOME ONE WHO OD'D AN OSCAR FOR PLAYING THE JOKER IN A BATMAN MOVIE! I mean, he died right? That MUST make his performance REALLY worth something!"
Talk about overrated, seriously. I'm so pissed right now. Mainly because I was misled into believing this movie was gonna be really awesome and worth seeing, and Heath Ledger is like some kind of acting god for pulling off playing a crazy clown badguy. Pshaw! And I don't mean a contraction of my name. When will they start giving actors awards for NOT doing drugs and depriving the world of real honest to god GOOD entertainment. Or even people who do drugs but don't turn in to fucking wah wah crybaby morons. "Oh I have so much money, oh people love me, boohoo boohoo the pressure is so tough! I need pills to go to sleep at night" Why don't you buy some prostitutes to wear you out before beddy-by time. Fucking money well spent if you look at the alternatives. Here, take Axl Rose, here's what he's got to say:

"I have a different physical constitution and different mindset about drugs than anybody I've known in Hollywood, because I don't abstain from doing drugs, but I won't allow myself to have a fuckin' habit. I won't allow it."

When's he gonna get HIS fucking medal, give HIM an Oscar, seriously. Dudes hangover-black turds on Sunday morning will now literally entertain me more than Heath Ledger can BECAUSE HE'S FUCKING DEAD. All hail Axl, this century's Mark Twain!!!!

FUCK Heath Ledger, and fuck the Jokers that made me think this movie was gonna be sweeeeeeeeet!

YO

2008-07-27T21:53:00.002+02:00

At apartment, on couch, watching The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It's hot. Since nothing here has air-conditioning and it's been in the mid 80s I think (not real sure) it's a tad unpleasant. Example: We went to eat lunch at Kista Galleria (a mall) on Friday and I rode in Anders' 1974 Mustang II. That thing was a piece. He says his wife wouldn't let him buy a new Mustang when he turned 40, and maybe when he turns 50 he'll be depressed enough that she'll let him. I thought that was pretty funny. Anyway the point is in the parking garage it was warm, and according to him parking garages are never warm in Sweden, so it's been very hot for here. I hung out with Fredrick last night and tried to explain the heat in Kansas to him. I don't think he understood how miserable it can be there in the summer. We had a good time out tho, went to the really trendy bar in Gävle where we saw the Gävle soccer team, or he did, I didn't recognize any of them. Also got in free to the Heartbreak Hotel, another bar, cause some guy he knew gave us VIP passes. It was an ok place, even though it was huge. They had a live band playing some Swedish songs that everyone knew, including some song called "I fuck better when I'm drunk". I thought that was great.
Went to Piteå last weekend. It was nice. I really like Frida's uncle's place there. It's kind of out in the country, a farming area, it's dead silent, and when you go out walking in the woods you have to yell a lot so you don't run into bears, which are at record numbers right now. We also made the fairly short trip over to Finland, this town called Kemi or something. It was depressing as shit. The dark, warm, humid and rainy weather didn't help that much. The town was bombed to dust during WWII and so everything had a really ugly Soviet concrete grey look to it. The reason we went tho was to see this dead priest's corpse. Seriously. It's in this tiny church in Kemi. Apparently the guy said like "if my words aren't true then i will rot in the ground, but if they are true than my body shall not decay" or something. Oh, this is like 400 years ago or so. I guess they dug him up a couple hundred years later and were shocked to see his body was still there, just all black and mummyish. So now they have his mummified body in this glass casket in the floor. It's pretty fucking macabre. It was awesome. They say they've done tests and can't find any sign of preservatives er whatever you call that stuff that you mummify folks with. But whatev, I didn't think it was all that strange he never rotted. I mean, he looked like a 400 year old dead guy, whaddya want?

Lately I been watching the Sopranos mostly. Good show, I likes it. Can't wait to see The Dark Knight, probly gonna do it on Thursday. It's like $3o for two movie tickets here. Ah well, it's worth it. Also really looking forward to buying and playing Rock Band 2. And while we're on the subject of stuff I can't wait for, really looking forward to buying a nice car to mess around with. Not for several years tho : ( I daydreams a lot.

Trying to learn the language is going kinda shitty. It's hard without lessons, and I have to concentrate so freaking hard just to have an idea of what people are talking about. Still frustrating. So I guess when school starts back up in a couple months I'll take lessons then (at Upsalla).

Ah well, later ya'll.

2008-07-15T21:16:00.004+02:00

Well, so it's been 13 days since last post, oops. Not that I had all kinds of awesome stuff going on or anything. Just that I'm already in a routine, go to work, many times go downtown and screw around for a while, come back, cook dinner, download some music or movies or TV shows or something, watch stuff, read about cars and junk online, go to bed, repeat. It would be rather boring to read about so blogging now will be relegated to when something exciting or worthy or writing about happens.
Work is good, everyone is on vacation pretty much, many companies in Sweden completely shut down around this time, but alas, spreaders operate 24/7 around the globe so we have to keep regular business hours with a skeleton crew. Christopher actually flew to Isreal this afternoon to meet with some blokes who want to buy some of our stuff and had some odd requests, like I think they wanted us to fatigue test a spreader through like 500,000 cycles or something ridiculous, and then to which we said something like "well we have sold many of this type of spreader and they have been going for years and years with no problems, we are past the testing phase" but apparently that was not the answer they wanted. Anyway I'm hoping soon enough I'll be able to go on trips like this, although as I think I've mentioned the guys at work mostly see it as a hassle, especially when it's to meet people who have weird requests and questions. But I love to travel so we'll see...
Had an almost proper thunderstorm yesterday, I think I heard thunder at least 3 times. The rain here is so pussy it could make baby Jesus cry. When it rains I want to be legitimately concerned for my LIFE, not just get my shirt dampened with little polka dots. And another thing about the rain. About 80% of the time, they weather is perfectly clear in the morning but about 3:30 in the afternoon rain clouds start rolling in and the rain starts daintily falling as it is so fond of doing here. I'm guessing this is some sort of side effect from living right next to the ocean, but it's lame since it starts right about the time I leave work and clears up right after I get home. : (
Well, Midsomer Murders is on, and I've missed over half of it now, so YES I'M STILL ALIVE NOW QUIT READING BORING SHIT AND GO LIVE YOURS!

CHAOS IN STOCKHOLM!!!

2008-07-02T21:53:00.005+02:00

WHAT COULD IT BE?! Have the people taken to the streets to overthrow the government? Has the military staged a coup? Have anarchists burned the Riksdag to the ground? Have the Chinese invaded? Is it time to, say, crack each other's heads open and... feast on the GOO inside?!?! Why, yes it is Kent. Or not. The paper honestly had that HUGE FONTED! front-page headline Sunday. Why? The city bus drivers are on strike of course! Duh! HOW WILL SOCIETY FUNCTION?!?!
I was seriously scared that I wouldn't make it to work Monday solely based on this headline. And what happened on Monday? Pictures of mobs armed with torches and sickles beheading businessmen in the streets while golden calves are erected to Baal and wealthy merchants take small children as slaves to fulfill their wildest sexual desires faded into the reality of 33% more expressionless non-eyecontact making Swedes silently riding the subway to work. I mean, I'd hate to use the word "alarmist" here but...
Today it was noticeably (actually a lot) busier than usual though since no buses at all are running. Have you ever seen those youtube clips of the begloved asian subway workers whose sole job is to push the people hanging out of the subway car doors inside so that the doors can close? Well it was ALMOST like that. Everyone was packed in like sardines and worried about getting stuck in the doors. I haven't been here that long but it did seem out of the ordinary. Moving on...
Stuff at work is good. For the next month and a half or so most people will be taking vacations, meaning that for instance today I was alone in my little room where usually the three (male) contractors sit with me. I was lonely : ( No matter I filled the silence with Swedish radio off my cell phone. The reception unfortunately sucks and there seems to somehow (if it's even possible) be MORE talking and LESS music than US radio. When music actually IS being played the eclectimeter spirals out of control. Michael Jackson, Lil' Wayne, and Dolly Parton are bookended by Scorpions and some type of Swedish childrens song the only words of which I knew were "grandma" "car" "vacation" and the conjugated verb "I need" repeated ad nauseum. Ok so maybe this is partly due to the fact that I'm constantly surfing for music since 90% of the time all I can find is freakin' Sweden talk. But really even when I don't touch the dial I get some great mash-up style action going. I really appreciate the M.J. especially, I really think I have an unhealthy love for his music, and to a larger extent HIM. So piss off about it already. Oh, and if anyone knows the Dolly Parton album that hipsters like (and I don't think it's the one with "Jolene", but if you're POSITIVE then say so) let me know cause I want to download it for fr- er, um, from iTunes. Or something. But yeah, I really like the radio when it's playing music. Does anyone out there have Giselle Bundchen's number? I'd like to know that also. She's hot.
Hmm what else to tell... This post is relatively good, I'm happy about that.
Oh here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Cars-Trucks___New-2009-Black-Nissan-GT-R-First-Allotment-in-the-U-S_W0QQitemZ250265466439QQddnZCarsQ20Q26Q20TrucksQQddiZ2282QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item250265466439&_trksid=p3756.m14.l1308
Copy, paste, and thank me later.
I finally got my paycheck cashed today, after getting dicked around by another bank which shall remain nameless (common theme). I guess this is a good example of life in Sweden: /Rant In many places (probably a majority I would say) if you want service you have to take a number from a machine that is conspicuously hidden somewhere inside the place you need service from. So today at the bank the ticket machine was broken, so I had to walk into the bank and stand in line while the machine was being fixed to take a ticket to be in a line to be helped. That was a tad weird, but what was weirder was the hippie-ish thirty-something bespectacled Swede with a ponytail and Birkenstocks who tried to ask me in Swedish what was going on and immediately walked away when I said I spoke English without giving me a second look and asking someone else only to return and start making the situation even weirder by trying to explain to me how weird the situation is that Swedes have to stand in line to stand in line, because they are so rigid about rules or something. If that's so then how come some dick with no ticket just walked right in and when someone was done with their transaction he just walked right up and proceeded to take 10 minutes of the tellers' and MY time by pretending to just ask a small question and then proceeding to structure an entire transaction in front of my eyes, while the teller did nothing more than appear ever so slightly annoyed, but continued to smile and be polite. Yeah, that pissed me off a little since I had to wait 35 minutes for my turn to do something that I've been trying unsuccessfully for over a week to do. /Rant.
Yeah, from my limited experience, banks here suck. I am reminded of the times I worked at a bank and turned people who were trying to cash their paychecks away. However, I was always NICE no matter how pissed they got and gave the people as many other suggestions for alternatives as I could think of, ESPECIALLY the hispanic immigrants who I always had respect for. UNLIKE the bitch at Swedbank who was just, well, a bitch. But today (after my 35 minute wait) all was forgiven when the old lady who I was praying not to get took over for the young (also bitchy) guy who I was praying to get and ended up cashing my check no fees and no questions asked. I really though she would be the bitchiest of all. How wrong I was.

UTÖ

2008-06-27T23:44:00.010+02:00

So Utö was cool and no one was sacrificed. That I know of. Two of the dudes that work at Bromma have boats so we took those to the island. Oh, this is after two hours of meetings in Swedish. The best part for me was the discussion of optical strain gauges, since it was in English and I actually knew what was going on for 20 minutes or so. Anyway, after those we loaded onto the boats (about noon) and immediately after leaving the marina (like literally 3 seconds out) beers were cracked. Leaving the marina:

That's my boss Anders on the left and my buddy Kjell-Åke on the right, he's awesome. Note the Staropramens in hand.

After a short 25 or so minute boat ride we pulled into a small island and ate lunch:

Benny is in the foreground with Christopher and Gerry over his right shoulder, with Jerker over his left, and that's Petter tying the boat to the dock. Quite the seaman! Note the Swedish flag. Those things are EVERYWHERE here, and without the slightest hint of nationalism. I really appreciate that.

Anyway for lunch there were these AWESOME sandwiches, with like three kinds of meat, cheese, and condiments all arranged somehow so as to magically create like three sandwiches from one. ‘Twas amazing. This included my favorite sandwich topping: CURRY CHICKEN. SO GOOD. Us eating lunch:

After that there was an impromptu soccer match with coffee and bulle (basically cinnamon rolls), then it was off to Utö. The other boat next to us on the way to Utö:

As soon as we got to Utö we checked in at the main area, had more beers, then walked down to the local football pitch for more soccer. I played on the “skins” team of course, all though in my case it was more of the “sparetirefurjackets” (GET IT? I’M FAT AND HAIRY). They tried their best to get me the ball so I could score but I was way too shitty. I did make a couple tight steals and and maybe one decent pass though, and nobody went easy on me that I could tell, which was cool. I’da been pissed if they just let me score er something. After that it was more beer and I was invited to the sauna. I politely declined as from what I understand that usually means nudity, and with no chicks in sight I was less than eager. I’m not sure who went but I don’t think it was many. Then came dinner. We got what was apparently some special Belgian beer:

When did they start brewing that Bud you’re drinking? 150 Years ago? That’s cool:

THEY STARTED BREWIN’ MY SHIT IN 1074! IN A MONK ABBEY! PROBLY WITH DRAGON TEARS! OR SOMETHING EXPENSIVE I DON’T KNOW! THEMS MONKS! THEYS RICH!!! It was quite a good beer though. We talked about someplace downtown that has like 100 types of really rare beers. One of them you could only get buy putting your name in with the appropriate people (after the matter of finding them), waiting in line, getting a ticket mailed to you, driving to the brewery in France or some shit, paying exorbitant amounts, and then only being allowed to get a 12 pack at most, er something. But this bar supposedly has it on tap, which I’m told is some kind of amazing feat. I was good and buzzed at dinner. My boss all but forced me to take a vacation this summer (unpaid... which wasn't mentioned really) because everyone else will be gone for two to three weeks for the next, er, two to three weeks. I respectfully declined. I will take a day or two off to go to Piteå, but that is a “non-issue” to him. I said I only started in June, so I don’t need to “recharge my battery” yet as he claimed. He countered with “but you had school before that” to which I cleverly replied “YES! But now I have evenings and weekends free, which is LIKE a vacation, EVERY WEEK!” He still wants me to take time off but fuck it.

Anyway long story short I was drunk so I went home early (despite the protestations and offerings of libation from nearly everyone) so as to not get shitfaced on my first outing with co-workers. Others did not. Apparently one guy who shall remain nameless woke up at 4am. On a rock. In the woods. And had to find his way home. I hear this is common behavior for work parties here. PATTY LIKEY

Sorry for the cut and paste style here... I cutted and pasted all this : ( Oh and Tana, I'm taking all these pics on my cell phone, so that's as good as they get until I get a proper camera, which I have no plans to do anytime soon. Sorry!

IT COSTS MORE THAN IT TASTES

2008-06-24T22:44:00.009+02:00

Midsommer was tight, got waaaaaaaaay too drunk, but everyone else (cool) was so it was aight. Main thing I remember is Fredrik throwing a big bottle of mustard on the ground for no reason and stomping it till it exploded. Apparently I was screaming "strawberry" in Swedish to anyone who would listen. Yeah, that kind of night.

Sweden fact #8 or so: Concepts of personal space in public seem to be inverted from the US. I got off a train and stopped and put the suitcase I was carrying down... Right onto some bitches foot, who then appeared to get angry. I didn't make a sudden movement at all. She was BEHIND me and must have known I couldn't see her, yet she refused to change trajectory when I stopped thus getting a suitcase to the foot as she tried to sidle by me with some kind of strange crab-like movement rather than just walk in a new direction. Happens to me all the time. People REFUSE to give anyone else any gangway. It pisses me off so bad. Frida said when she first got to the US it really confused her because if anyone in a grocery store aisle or wherever got near her they would keep 2 yards away while apologizing profusely. WELL THAT'S THE WAY I LIKE IT SWEDES! GIMME SOME DAMN ROOM OR YER GONNA GET YOUR TOES STEPPED ON BEEITCHES!!! Seriously it does annoy me since I can't seem to get the rythm of moving around people down right.

Some pics:

My workstation. There's more papers there nowadays. You can kinda see the covered courtyard where we take coffee breaks. There's a foosball table there too that is quite popular.

I took this one when I was pretty drunk at Anna and Gustav's. The person in the top window was playing what appeared to be the new MarioKart on a giant tv. Really pointless pic, sorry. It did make me think of Andy though when I saw it.

My new favorite beer. It's called Sju Komma Tvåan or seven comma two. GUESS WHY?! The reason it is my new favorite however is because of the two martens playing pattycake while one wears a jester hat. Fucking awesome mate!

Yeah it's kinda pretty here... Sometimes.

Tomorrow we go to an island called Utö an hour south of Stockholm proper for some kind of work meeting of something. I'm not real sure, all I know is there will be boating, beer, soccer, dinner at some famous restaurant, and then I think we stay in cabins overnight. When it was mentioned it was all in Swedish and not a lot has been said about it since then. Also since I don't have FUCKING EMAIL AT WORK YET so all of the informative messages sent never reached me. Anyway, if you don't hear from me in a week or so it was probably all an elaborate farce to lure me to pagan ritual grounds so they could "sacrifice the American to Thor". Or somesuch.

I should have packed for this but I've been busy setting up my laptop. I downloaded the season 11 opener of Top Gear that aired on Sunday and I'm really pumped to watch it. I might take my laptop to Utö just for that. Maybe. They race a Prius against the new M3 I think, and test a F430 Scuderia. I'm sure Jezza jizzes. Which reminds me I saw a 612 Scaglietti tonight, as well as an unidentified blue car with a porsche behind it. You have no idea how pissed I get when I see a car and can't figure out what it is. I though it was an F430 because of the rear glass, but the tailights and ass looked like a Corvette. It was too far off and driving away to tell for sure what it was. FUCK I'm pissed I'll never know.

Hope ya'lls doin' well. Drop me a line sometime huh?

SWEDISH MIDSOMMAR

2008-06-20T12:51:00.002+02:00

I THINK THAT'S HOW YOU SPELL IT!
We are back in Gävle after picking up our German friend Franzi and her boyfriend Derek from the airport last night after work. Some small airport an hour and a half south of Stockholm. This allowed me to see where Frida works in Södertalje and let me tell you, it's a pretty ugly place. Factorytastic. The trip down to the airport was really nice though. Hillier than around Gävle, and quite pretty. Anyway, Franzi and Derek are here to party with us over the weekend. Mucho drinko tonighto.

Oh, I bought a laptop with the help of an electronics store gift card that Frida's parents gave me for graduation. It was the next to cheapest model which in my book is always far better than the cheapest model. Point is I can update this shithole and keep in contact with people much more easily now. Just let me know if you want my MSNmessenger of AIM contact info. I guess that's how it's done, I don't know, I haven't used that technology in a couple years.

This week I tried two new Swedish foods: raggmunk med fläsk and pytt. Raggmunk means "pick up monk" and they are potato pancakes that I had to almost choke down because they were so greasy. I won't say they were disgusting cause they didn't really have much taste, unless you count "grease" as a taste, but I probably won't get it again. The fläsk is of course the big chunks of bacon. It was allright, didn't taste exactly like bacon, but kinda close. The pytt is diced potatoes with onions and sausage and junk in it. Imagine going to IHOP and ordering like "loaded hashbrowns" or whatever they call it. It's exactly like that, and it was pretty good. Sven saw me get it and his comment was "Ah! now you have a chance to finish what you left on your plate yesterday!" Apparently they save up the scraps all week and throw them in, a traditional leftover dish. It was probably my imagination but it did taste the slightest bit rank. Still liked it though. They also recommended that I try the Thai restaurant nearby work, I think they were maybe slightly embarrassed about the food at the car dealership restaurant.

Can't think of much more to write right now, anyway need to go help setting up for the party tonight, there will be about 10 or 14 or something people here. Parties are really pretty fun, especially when everyone is drinking hard... After Swedes get a few drinks in them they really like speaking english and asking interesting questions about America like "is high school really like in the movies? Is there jocks and nerds and stuff?" Seriously it is really entertaining trying to describe your high school experience to a drunk Swede. That's just one example. Usually I really hate small talking inane details about myself but they come up with some great conversation topics here at parties.

Gotta go!

Train Station

2008-06-16T17:32:00.002+02:00

Since I have time to kill (still a foreign concept, yet AWESOME) and no internet at home I'm at the train station using a public computer to post this. Which doesn't really matter except that it may cut me off and I'll probably be making some grammatical + spelling errors.

So I finally figured out my scheduling system at work. See if you can too!

According to the terms of my contract (and everyone else's at this job) I am supposed to work 38.75 hrs/wk , but with flex time, which means that at any given time I can be within +/-10 hrs of my theoretical total cumulative hrs to that point (meaning like rolling over indefinitely) without any adjustment to my agreed upon salary/month. BTW, this is NOT including lunch and coffee breaks, which would eat up at least 6 hrs of that per week, which means in all honesty I only need put in ~33 hours of actual work a week, provided I show up the required amount of time that week, which technically I don't have to due to the flex time. So one week I could put in 23 hours of real work and not get docked any pay. I would have to work 38.75 hrs/wk from that time forward, or more than that amount to make up the negative time and be allowed the flex time again. This also means of course that I could work 48.75 hrs one week and not get paid any overtime, in fact, not get paid at all for the 8.75 hrs extra I worked. But then I would have 20 hrs of flexibility I could use anytime without consequence. And since no one really works overtime anyway it's also less of a big deal. Make sense? It took me a couple of explanations to get it. Oh, and also, I'm supposed to show up between 7:00 and 9:00, and leave between 3:00 and 5:00 within this system, there is no questioning or frowning upon any arrival or departure times within this framework. And that's a shitload of flexibility. Especially given I show up every day at 8:00 and leave every day about 4:15. I can't imagine any other way of doing it. It's gonna take me a while to get used to it.

On a totally unrelated topic: The UEFA Euro2008 soccer championship is going on right now. So Saturday night while Frida was at some graduation party for people I don't know I went over to Gustav and Anna's place and watched the Sweden/Spain match with a bunch of rowdy (and a couple wasted) Swedes. Spain is always a pretty heavy favorite in this championship only to usually choke in the finals (I'm told, fuck if I know anything about european soccer). It was a good time and as happened last time I hung out with them, Fredrik and Gustav tried to get me shitfaced on liquor, this time on some nice Laphroaig, which I actually liked (whiskey not usually being my choice, especially when I'm not trying to get wasted and make an ass of myself). Anyway, they tried the old bait and switch, pouring my requested tiny amount in one glass so I would comply, and then after I turned my head handing me a glass half full of whiskey with one small ice cube. I noticed immediately, but I didn't want to be rude so I took it IF YA KNOW WHADDAMEAN. Somehow I didn't get wasted. Since that story really sucked I'll say something else maybe more worthwhile about that particular night. Apparently it is all the rage to hook your laptop up to your TV, get drunk, and watch YouTube videos at parties here. At first I was skeptical but it turned out to be tight. People were shocked that I had never heard of doing that at parties before. Of course, everyone in the US could do that, fuck if I would know, I'm pretty much a loser. The coolest parties I've been to (and I don't mean that facetiously) pretty much included alcohol, guitar hero, and if we were feeling adventurous, rambo movies. Somehow I doubt the basic formula shifts much tho. Provided cocaine isn't involved... That probably changes things. Again, fuck if I would know. Wow that was a tangent. There's a lot of stuff to write about alcohol here. But maybe another time.

Currently I am really excited to buy an HDTV. I won't until the end of the summer when I have more money and hopefully the prices come down on the current models I want (LCDs all). I'd really like the newest Sony with the Bravia 2 engine, but they cost hella bank (yes I said hella bank). The model numbers are really hard to figure out tho since they don't correspond to their US counterparts. I think the KDL-XXW4000 (insert your screen size in the XXs) is the latest greatest model, but the features change the numbers so it's hard to tell. I also like the Samsung Series 6s which are basically as good as the Sony's but I think a little cheaper. I'm sure this is exciting for you. If it is please help me choose with some informed opinions.

Another thing that is exciting is that I emailed this dude Claes that owns a racing team in Gävle. I'm gonna try and visit them in a weekend or two and see the new cars they obtained since I last visited. These include a Saleen S7R (serial #15) a Pratt & Miller Corvette C5R. This is the same Pratt & Miller who lost to the Gulf Aston Martin DBR9s this weekend at Le Mans, which sux, and the same P&R I was a guest of at the Grand Prix of Houston last year which really really kicked ass, the C6R being the car behind me in my Myspace pic. They were super cool in Houston, they let us right into the pits like 2 feet from the 'vettes getting their tires changed and refueled, which was a severe safety hazard I'm sure, but everytime anyone would say anything the P&R guys were like "THEY'RE WITH US". It was hella tight, YES HELLA tight. Anyway I told Claes I wanted to volunteer some time around the shop, or at races. We'll see where that goes, probably nowhere. At least I'll get some good pics while I'm there.

Well that's a decent chunk of the last few days. Someday I'll get some pictures up here so there'll be more than just these here purdy werds for yer lookn.

Car Report

2008-06-08T15:40:00.004+02:00

As a car nut this weekend has been crazy. Since the weather was nice but mainly because of the holiday I guess, cars were cruising up and down the main streets downtown (Gävle) including a bunch of awesome old classic '50s and muscle cars (the muscle car culture here is like 10x what it is in the states), several "raggare" cars which are old muscle beater cars that they purposely make look shitty, including one that had like "county police" and a big police star hand painted (really crappily) on the sides with lights on top and everything, it was hilarious, all it needed was the dixie horn blaring constantly and I would have been shooting milk out my nose (had I actually been drinking milk, which I hate). Two Audi R8s (an ugly ass white one with black side blades and a beautiful one that was I think daytona gray pearl), a really well kept Supra NA that I think had been converted to turbo judging by what looked like a giant intercooler under the front bumper. And the piece de resistance, two- yes two Skylines. I think they were only R33s, but still, pretty freakin' sweet. Nothing you would see in Kansas. Crazy how many nice cars are around here in Gävle, it's not even that huge of a city.

Weekend-end

2008-06-08T12:20:00.008+02:00

Not much fascinating stuff going on this weekend, just taking it easy and trying to catch up on sleep as always. Went to the beach yesterday and there was some dude sitting there with about 15 REALLY HOT girls around him. Don't know how he pulled it off, he looked like Simon fucking Pegg. Plus I hadn't seen that many hot girls condensed in one spot here... Well, ever. I know the stereotype is that everyone here is gorgeous, but trust me, it definitely ain't true. Not that everyone is ugly or anything. One thing I have noticed however is that girls here on average seem to have larger breasts. Like if you took any girl here at random and any girl from the states at random, chances are the one from here will have bigger hooters. EXCLUDING overweight people. You know, I'm talking like average decent looking girls. Through this very scientific thought experiment I have also attributed the phenomenon to the amount of dairy products available here, which is staggering.
Think about it.

Oh, and my theory for why the stereotype is that everyone here is gorgeous? The Brits. YES, those bastards. Seeing as how ~~I've never been there yet it's still plainly obvious~~ they are all hideous, and judging by they fact they travel here MUCH more often than anyone from the US... See where I'm goin here? By comparison, everyone here IS gorgeous. Oh, and the brits are COMPLETELY OBSESSED by huge tits. I swear. They will forgive any face for a set of EEE's. Even Rupert Murdoch newspapers over there have entire sections dedicated to large juggz. Which, even though the paper IS kinda tabloidy, really has to say a lot. "Condi Rice to Visit Kenya, Page 1" "SEE DAPHNE'S HUGE TITS, PAGE 2". WTF guv'nah?

Another small thing of note pertaining somewhat to the red coats: Swedish TV kinda sucks. This has something to do with the fact that everyplace I've watched TV here has had fairly basic cable. But still, except for most of the British shows, shit sucks. Plus, it's weird how they import the worst shows from the US (except Married With Children, which is beautifully called "Our Worst Years" in Swedish, with "Our Best Years" being Days of Our Lives, or some shitty soap, which has confused me at least once), yet all the British shows seem much better. If they are also bottom of the barrel, then what are we missing outside the UK? I shudder to think. Oh I guess last night at like 1:00am The Wire was on, but like one day a week and late at night? Weak.

Welp, going to H&M to try and pick up more clothes for work since I have basically nothing even remotely presentable. The dress code (as with everything else at work) is super-relaxed. One dude showed up in a plain ass t-shirt last Friday. Everyone wears jeans. Still, my clothes suck so I'm snatching up some cheap replacements at H&M, which is the shit for that kind of thing. Oh, in Stockholm they have an H&M on every block I swear. It's absolutely ridiculous. I think maybe they are all linked underground and it's just one big malignant tumor swallowing up the city. Anyway, after that we take the train back to STHLM for the week. Hopefully nobody commits suicide by train tonight, like last Sunday. Shit delayed us for like two hours, and trains are really boring when they ain't movin. Really, can't you just use some rope or a gun? So much less dramatic too.

I kid, I kid.

First Week of Work

2008-06-06T00:26:00.005+02:00

So.... I don't have a good buzz going this time (Andy) so this post may be a little less strange.

Currently I am back in Gävle for the national holiday weekend. Apparently a few years ago they had to actually ~~force~~ strongly suggest people take off work to celebrate this holiday since Sweden has never really had to be liberated from any other countries, at least not since like the 14th century or something (after which they were usually controlling pretty sizeable swaths of land as I understand it). So nobody really gave a shit until whoever had the authority said "don't bother coming in to work today", giving people an extra day a year to get shitfaced I guess (like they needed any more). All I know is it made my first week of work 4 days long.

When not in Gävle preparing to party, Frida and I are living in a part of Stockholm called Bergshamra. Our friend Fredrik who goes to the Royal Technical University hooked us up with his student apartment for the summer while he is back in Gävle working. This is good since we will both be working in Stockholm until school starts up again for Frida. She'll be at Saab Scania programming computers to ~~kill people~~ optimize interfaces and stuff and I of course will be at Bromma designing ~~pornography~~ spreaders (which is not what I always think it sounds like). Fredrik's apartment is small and in a student "ghetto" (which means that a minority of people in that area have slightly darker skin and speak Swedish with a faint accent, or are asian with glasses and a hello kitty purse) but it still kicks ass because IT'S IN STOCKHOLM, BABY! We will be there until probably Septemberish.

This week, this week, hmmm, so much to say... I found out that you can actually get not particularly great food in Sweden, and realized that I've been spoiled by good restaurants and great home cooking. Everyone at Bromma (in the mech. eng. dept. anyway) goes to eat at this restaurant inside a car dealership (trust me it's weirder than it sounds, there's a bright yellow Hummer H2 half blocking the door) "because it's cheap", meaning $8.00/entree, no drink (other than water), no salad, no bread ($9.75 with that junk) and trust me it is cheap (meaning not great). They "specialize" in traditional Swedish fare (again meaning cheap, since basically no one here had money until about 75 years ago or so) such as falukorv, which is like a HUGE fucking sausage (we're talking 5 or 6 inch diameter at least, the inside of which looks like bologna), isterband (or "lard-ribbon" in english), heavy sauces, rubbery potatoes, etc. But my favorite has to be fläsk, which is like HUUUUUGE fucking pieces of bacon in "four onion sauce". If I had known beforehand I definitely would have ordered it, but I will next time.

Also, people approach me constantly and start talking Swedish, I have no idea why. Apparently I have been randomly approached this week as many times as most Swedish people are in a year. People just start "blah blah blah"ing in Sweden or whatever talk they are used to and I'm all "I speak English fool" and they are all "Oh, please to take our photograph as we riding escalator!" or "Please give me money!" or I don't even know what since half the time they just walk off without saying another word when they find out I use a normal language. Freaks.

I guess I should say more about my work for anyone who is interested. I don't have a cubicle, which is super sweet. Bromma just moved into the building about a year and a half ago, and everything is (as is fairly typical in Sweden) understated, modern and nice. I share an office with two contractors Bosse and Sven (retirement age), and another guy Peter who is roughly my age (a little older than me) and super cool. There is windows to the outside AND into the enclosed courtyard where we take our mandatory coffee breaks (seriously, they will come get you if you aren't standing by the coffee machine ready to go). Speaking of which, the coffee is infinitely better than at Kalmar (sorry Kalmar) and you can get REAL cappuccino, espresso, even hot chocolate out of it. Anyway, so far this week I have made a model and drawing of a pre-designed part (just a big chunk of steel pretty much), and then designed an adapter for the sensor shafts of a hydraulic motor and encoder and I am now working on a spacer/coupler for the same, which was kind of difficult but I figured out a solution right before leaving work today, which means I won't be able to finish it till Monday : / Oh and I don't have a calculator at my desk which really fucking sucks. And if they want to make a decimal they use a , instead of a . which is weird. And then the whole metric system, which is so ridiculously much better than fucking English retard units.

Hmm, other than that, I haven't had any problems using the bus or subway, and haven't gotten lost yet, which is surprising since I have no fucking clue where I am most of the time. Oh, another interesting thing. In the US when we graduate high school of course we get the cap and gown. Here they get a fucking sailor hat and they drive around in the back of dump-truck looking things honking and screaming. It was seriously annoyingly loud downtown this week. What isn't annoying however is high school girls in sailor hats and bikinis, I'm not sure that will ever be annoying to me. To quote a great man: "Wow-wa-wee-wa".

One last thing. I was super lucky to get this job. I doubt (pretty damn sure actually) I would have gotten anything as good as this back in the US. Luckily for me I don't think they understood the GPA system that well, or at least paid little attention to it. They judge people more by their work ethic than their grades, which I feel is a much better measure also. So; working through school + glowing reviews from Kalmar + shitty GPA = good job for Pat = (still) lucky.

I'll probably post again this weekend before I go back to STHLM. I don't have ~~another hungry mouth to feed~~ internet access in the ghetto so if I don't get back to your messages/emails for a while that is why. You'll just have to wait. Ass.