Some of these were taken from a car, which posed a bit of a problem. Most of the good pictures, composition-wise, were too blurry to be useful. Some of them turned out really nice, though, especially since people generally stay unaware of a photographer passing in a car. I know one of these people, though.
I make my own food most of the time, generally because the pre-made solutions, save for those from unreasonably expensive restaurants, are way too often icky. However, while I am extremely picky with the aesthetics of other things, like my clothes, my apartment, my friends... I care not at all about how the food looks, as long as it tastes good and does not contain nasty shit.
This is just a close-up of my brie, penne rigate, soy sausage and dark bread dish. I never knew brie looked so revolting! Well, it is mold, so it should not exactly be surprising.
I have never felt more American than when I made this last week. It is a garlic baguette. Covered in mozarella cheese! Mmm... It took its toll, though, after eating it I almost felt like puking from all the fat.
This was supposed to be a chocolate cake. Unluckily, we improvised a little regarding the recipe, so it turned out to become the largest chocolate donut I have ever eaten, and it looked like a turd. Good going!
This was great! Mashed potatoes with some cheese and pepper mixed in, together with chanterelles, carrots and soy sausages. The stuff in the picture is the leftovers, it looked better at dinner.
In some small way, music is like drugs to me. We have all heard that comparison before, I guess (or any combination X is like Y where X and Y could represent love, religion, music, drugs and a number of other things dear to some people), but it was not until I stopped using my iPod (or any other portable music device) on a daily basis that I realized how much it has generally been clouding my thinking.
I am not talking about listening to music in the background at home here, but rather listening to music in the foreground while walking or commuting. Suddenly, I think a lot more, and I think way better while walking than while staring at a computer screen. And most importantly, I come up with new (and actually listenable) music myself, something which I find impossible to do indoors unless I have had at least a bottle of wine and in the latter case the music in question is not listenable when I have sobered up.
So, this evening I will be sitting on a cold and possibly somewhat damp bench in a park close to my home, composing a new song.
In other news, I scanned some of the other old pictures I found. They are as interesting as the others - especially the profile with the purple lipstick. I cannot for the life of me understand what the crew were thinking, but it certainly is a great memento to show the grandchildren.
I was pretty upset today by a debate article in Svenska Dagbladet, one of the largest "real" (as in not only concerned with tv-shows and insane and/or nude celebrities) newspapers in Sweden. Not only was it written by Jan Myrdal, one of the Swedish left's least likable people in my humble opinion, due to his love for dictators and massacres worldwide, but it was also the single worst argument for not allowing same-sex marriages. Disregarding the classic "Think of the children" argument which I can actually see myself sympathizing with to some extent (as long as there is scientific proof to back it up), it was all a rambling tirade of gibberish which only serves to affirm my animosity towards Mr Myrdal. Nowhere did he manage to convey a good reason that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry.
Being neither a homosexual (because of laziness, I use the term here to describe all the various forms of non-heteresexual people who are sexually attracted to consenting adults), nor a hater of homosexuals, I have not had the energy necessary to get a deeper understanding the whole gay debate or the mechanics behind it. My main problem is understanding what the problem is. As long as we disregard the question of having children and discuss only consenting adults (as well as assinine ideas such as trying to force religious institutions to marry homosexuals even though it is against their tenets!), I have never seen a good reason to not allow homosexuals to do the same thing heterosexuals do. Well, gay men usually have abysmal taste in music, but apart from that, they are generally like everybody else. The previous sentence might be illegal under Swedish law.
Speaking of music! I have started digging classical music again. It has been ages. I used to love Dvorak, Prokofiev, Debussy, Bach and many others, but I realized when I accidentally put a (J.S.) Bach mp3 on my phone that I have hardly listened to any in... five years or so. No more of that bereavement, though!
Another weekend and another movie. This time I saw Ratatouille and was extremely pleasantly surprised! Granted, it followed all the rules of cheesy (ahaha, I made a funny) childrens' films, but it did so while being fab both visually and storywise. Actually, it is probably the most beautiful 3d-rendered movie ever, though it cannot measure up to the most beautiful 2d work. As long as you are ok with all the overt moral pointers and the completely hackneyed sort of cartoon romance, it is one of the few must-sees of 2007.
I had the weirdest dreams again. I think the initial setting was that I would go away for a weekend trip to London (which I am actually planning to do in a few weeks) and just hang around. However, my time in London was brief, and I found myself instead in a very small country called Rowenia or somesuch. It revolved around a large brick building, which I believe was an old boarding school or customs station. Together with my travel companion, I speculated in the origins of the country, and how it could just as well have been a part of a larger country such as France.
The architecture seemed western Mediterranean enough, and a dead giveaway was that the soldiers spoke French, which led to me having a problem communicating with them. As we took in the sight of the large brick building under an overcast sky, I noticed that a rather large and lively stream with lots of bends ran next to it on one side, which actually lapped the building walls. I said aloud that I wondered how on earth the building was holding against the forces of nature like that, and my companion replied that there was most likely an ongoing process of building and destruction. In some places the wall looked new, and in others you could see the mortar crumbling and falling out from between the bricks.
We continued our tour through the small country, and found ourselves walking over some sort of bridge resembling a drawbridge, where there was a sloped, broad street between some houses which could as well have appeared in Kiki's Delivery Service. Visby-esque, that is. Suddenly, we were ushered away from the middle of the street, as there was apparently going to be a parade. The French-speaking soldiers did their best to communicate with me, but I could not understand their requests. Then a woman appeared, who was quite apparently trying to get it on with me. It went badly, to say the least, as she suddenly accused me of having spit on the back of her neck. I took a look, and sure enough, there was some foamy, slimy liquid there. I told her it must have come from the sky, even though I was not sure whether I had accidentally spit on her while speaking.
The resolution to the situation eludes me, as I was suddenly at least twenty years older and on my way home from this weekend trip, which, it was stressed, lasted from Friday to Sunday. Friday to Sunday. Friday to Sunday. I had a beard which was starting to grey and a big black bag of some sort. I got on a bus down by Stadsgårdskajen in Stockholm but when it arrived at my stop, the bus just passed it by, despite my cries of frustration aimed at the bus driver. My bag also got stuck between the seats, so it was a few more stops before I could get off, next to a motorway. Defying death, I ran over it to catch the next bus in the opposite direction.
The sky was still overcast, and there were no people about, just cars, even though this was just a small grassy knoll in the middle of a city. I started walking in the direction of the bus I wanted to take, just to see it pass me by. I started running, very fast indeed, and the scene changed to one where I think I ran along Strandvägen, from Dramaten towards Djurgården. There was water on one side of the road, at least. I recall the bus being number 55, and I actually managed to race past it to a bus stop where I stood, panting, waiting for the bus to stop to pick me up. However, to my dismay, only bus 51 stopped at this location, and the bus driver just gazed my way with a very sad and distant look. During my whole run, an icon depicting Jesus, in the Russian style, laid in the water, slightly submerged, glowing with a greenish sheen.
Then I woke up.
I saw Stardust the other day. It has been a while since I read anything about Neil Gaiman, and ages since I read Stardust, which I recall being a very good book, though not on par with Anansi Boys, American Gods or Good Omens. Watching the movie, I started remembering bits and pieces, but not enough to say whether it was accurate or not. Not that I usually care too much about a movie following the source, except in blatant cases such as Constantine. What bollocks. I love Hellblazer, but I could not even watch the movie. Anyway, Stardust was a perfect cozy feelgood film.
Also, I finished Sputnik Sweetheart, and though the ending was the typical Murakami thing where a lot of plot threads are just dropped, the book as a whole was very good, and rather different from his other books in that it was much more concise and to the point, for good and for bad. Still, I mostly wish I could read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle for the first time again.
My life for once: I move out in just a few weeks. It feels very strange to leave my home of five years, but I suspect that I will be pretty happy once I settle in in my new apartment, with its pretty balcony. The dark cloud on my winter sky will be my thesis, which is still nowhere near finished. Damn you, thesis! Oh, and I have enrolled in a one semester geology/astronomy course. The Devil finds work for idle hands, you know.
Also, I found a lot of pictures from almost a decade ago, when I used to do modelling work for various magazines and designers. In hindsight, I did look pretty silly, and I cannot understand why they coloured my hair pink like that. It was a pretty fun job at the time, though. More pictures coming soon!
So I had the weirdest dream tonight. Yesterday evening, I was sitting at home in my sofa with a bit of a cold, reading Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase. Without spoiling too much of the book, the Dolphin Hotel makes an appearance in this book, just as it does in Dance, Dance, Dance. The funny thing is that the protagonist in the latter book has dreams about the hotel. So did I.
The setting was a large, run-down hotel, which in my dream changed as I walked through it. There were corridors that disappeared when I turned my back as well as wallpapers that changed their colours between various drab pastels. I especially remember taking the elevator as high as it would go, floor eight, in search of my room. I was, for some reason, carrying a lot of bread and vegetables, wearing only slacks. I then took the stairs to floor nine, where there was only a large wooden panel at the top of the stairs. Realizing I could open it, there was another door behind it, which I dared not enter. Instead I went down to the lobby where a tall, blonde man greeted me, speaking softly in a German far too fast for me to follow. I indicated that I did not really comprehend his wishes. He then switched to English and gave me two tarot decks. The cards were identical, save for their size. One deck was much larger than the other. I proceeded to pull out one of my own, a design called Basic Tarot (which I actually own in real life, because I at one point in time thought the cards looked nice for some reason). Having looked at the decks he gave me, I queried him as to why he had not given me Crowley's Thoth tarot instead, and that I would have preferred the edition with three different versions of The Emperor. He then gave me a very strange look.
There was also much ado about some glassed-in area in the centre of the hotel, but I cannot for the life of me remember exactly what it was about, except for the fact that the hotel's owner looked like Chuck Norris.
In the non-dream world, I have been playing some games due to my convalescence. World in Conflict is quite nice. The graphics are good, the story is more or less plausible and the explosions are, for lack of a more subtle description, gratifying. My first impression of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, however, is crap. It is just like Battlefield 2 except it is no fun. Maybe I cannot grasp the mechanics, maybe I am not in its target group. I dunno.
My new Tamron 90mm 2.8 is a very, very fun beast to play around with. Not that I have the slightest idea about how to shoot properly with a macro lens, but since I am quite happy, that can wait. Meanwhile, I am looking to find a cheap ring flash. Not that the results are especially pretty, but apart from looking cool in themselves, ring flashes bring desperation and hopelessness out of any motif you could think of. A bit like Tolkien's ring, actually. And therefore, my precious!
(Please note that I never even bothered to read the Lord of the Rings books, and I only saw two of the movies.)
I started playing the new Company of Heroes game, Opposing Fronts, and found it to be... exactly the same. I was just a little bit disappointed. Especially since the Germans sound like people trying to fake a German accent while being slightly retarded. I guess I should give it a few more missions before being disappointed. However, my hopes for World in Conflict, which I acquired today, are much higher.
This last Sunday, I went to Hötorget to shop used books for silly low prices. I have found some very nice literature there at times, and this day was not an exception. I got a big book about the churches in Copenhagen, complete with illustrations of various details and there was this Polish book about European art in Polish collections, from before the war if I remember correctly.
