Jolly Good

I spent Easter in the countryside by a beautiful forest, and now I am wondering why I live in the big city. I fed apples to horses and wood to the stove and it was all very nice. I also finished the novel Ghostwritten on the train. It was mostly awesome but had a bit of a let-down for an ending. Considering it instead a collection of short stories, it is an even better book. I also read Warren Ellis’ Crooked Little Vein which was much worse than I would have guessed. Given that he is one of the best writers in comics ever, I was surprised that his novel was much like a coprolaliac Pratchett. There was humour and there was intelligence and there was a good basic idea and there was no joy in reading it. Speaking of Pratchett, his latest book Nation was great. Given his Alzheimer’s and all, I was more hoping than expecting him to release something new, but it was the usual fare. Jolly good, that is.

Invasion of the Gay Garden Gnomes

I was hanging out with this beast. Her favourite pastime is reaching high ground and screaming.


Also, WTF of the week. The gay garden gnomes. They had lesbian ones too, equally mind-bendingly ugly, as garden gnomes often are. I just got myself a little bonsai tree.


Yet we stay happy, content and well-nourished.


But some have been gazing for too long into the abyss.

Anyway.

It was just as I feared. Number9dream was one of those great books which begin to dissolve towards the end, like grains of kitty litter in the shower, or, er, not quite perhaps. Anyway. The book was great but it just sort of unravelled infuriatingly towards the end like a roll of kitchen paper falling down from the counter and exploring all of the floor.

However, Cloud Atlas by the same author, David Mitchell, is hitherto fantastic. If I had it in me to write books, one of them would have been something like this - the concept, not the particular environments and situations. I even had one loosely planned. Now I can spend my time some other way. No games right now though. Dawn of War - Soulstorm and Red Alert 3 were both big mehs. Meh.

Fall Out

I finished Murakami's After the Quake rather quickly. It was thoroughly awesome, and the only thing that saddens me is the fact that there is no more Murakami translated into the English language for me to read. This is the bee's poop, so to speak.

I thus went by the little recommendation slips the clerks put on their favourite books in the bookstore, and got myself a book called Number9dream by David Mitchell, whom I have never heard of before. The first chapter was promising enough, weaving very fluidly between reality and the protagonist's fantasies. Then the book starts alternating between recent events and his childhood, turning suddenly into a gangster story. It gets just a wee bit confusing at times, but the book has really hooked me. I would have finished it in a sitting or two if it had not been for the release of Fallout 3 and my subsequent playing of the game.

Ah, Fallout 3. It is, imho, indeed the "Oblivion with guns" that some people made it out to be. But it would not have been reasonable to expect it to resemble the old games too much. After all, this is the third millenium and a game cannot for some reason be based on solid writing and pure fun alone. Anyway, great graphics, great open environments, lots of bugs, extremely limited replayability. I loved most of it and finished the main story in about 20 hours. The story was ok, faring quite well when compared to other computer games, but the ending... it was the most retarded thing I have ever been forced to watch.

This is your spoiler alert. Quit reading if you would prefer not to know how the game ends.

So... In the end, I stand at the water purifier thing together with a fancy warrior lady and my sidekick the non-evil super mutant, Fawkes. One of us has to go into the water purifier thing and do a thing to it so it makes everything nice. So far so good. However, there are massive amounts of radiation inside, so that person might die. My friend the super mutant is impervious to strong radiation, which he has proven earlier in the story. However, the only alternatives are going in myself or letting the warrior lady do it. That is... stupid. Either way, the person going in dies and then you get to watch some shots of different parts of the game in black and white. The game ends. What the fuck, come on people. You have one of the greatest computer game franchises ever and you make the lamest ending on earth. Furthermore, even if you decide to be a chicken and not go in yourself, you cannot continue exploring the world, which you could in Oblivion. The game is over, end of story. Also, the game was far too easy (playing on normal level). I was only on level 14 out of 20 when I reached the end, and I still had no problem blasting the hell out of exactly everything I encountered. This all led to the idea of loading an earlier save and exploring the world some more becoming a bit less appealing.

Post 93

93rd post! Ineluki ai, io Pan, eh? We played for a bit with my artsy toys this weekend. Much better than Lego!

Recent stuff I like and dislike:

Dislike: True Blood

I watched the first two episodes and thought that "hey, this could actually become interesting!" Having reached episode six, I am already a bit tired of the series. The characters are simply not plausible enough, or perhaps the divide between their cultural setting and mine makes me see them that way. I dunno. They just act rather flat and stupid, being nothing but stereotypes, and nobody really seems to care for more than five minutes after people die. Also, how the vampires not "mainstreaming" seem to be acting in general would lead to the human populace trying to make them extinct, not giving them equal rights. I might watch a few more episodes and see if it gets better, but I think I will spend my precious time elsewhere (Dexter, reruns of Black Books).


Like: After the Quake

I spent the Sunday afternoon on a bench down by Strandvägen watching people go by and reading Murakami's short story collection After the Quake. Like mostly everything else Murakami, it is awesome. Like his other short stories, these are sad and often unsettling in a way that his novels are not. They give me the same sort of feeling that I sometimes have when I wake up in the morning after having a very strange dream.

Right now, I am listening to Tony Joe White on Spotify, which is actually great, something I seldom say about new software, being old and conservative. The creators seem to have taken their cues from Apple, and it "Just Works". Like Apple products, Spotify has very little added functionality in the way of playlists/recommendations/etc, though, but as long as you only want to hear various songs you like, it is the bee's proverbial knees. Combined with Airfoil, it becomes Party Grand Central at home.


New jacket (Zara, actually), by the way, it goes rather well with one of the shirts I designed recently. I haggled the price down to €30 due to some rather hard to spot defects in the weave on one arm.

And I really, really want the new MacBook Air. Now if they could only make the battery easily replacable. Hell, the battery on my MacBook Pro died in ten months and I have been a very light user of it. I would want the iPhone if it was not so bloody limited. I pine for it, but I fear I will not buy it as long as they put strange, idiotic software limits on it (no MMS, no tethering, no copy/paste, only certain mobile operators) and strange, idiotic hardware limits (arse camera, non-replacable battery). Sigh.

Armania

The cat did not like her shower, but her paws smelled of the wee, so it was inevitable.

I am reading Haruki Murakami's latest (translated, at least) novel, After Dark, and as usual I find his popular culture references rather boring. That is, however, what is expected. Fantastic novels with lots of jazz and Beatles which mostly feels out of place - since they take place in Japan and nobody listens to Japanese music. I could be wrong, but Japanese people might do that some of the time. Anyway, Murakami's world is usually a bit of a wonderland, so I can forgive him for that.

What I have a hard time forgiving him, or for that matter lots of other authors, for is the usage of brand names when symbolizing exclusivity or expensiveness. From Bret Easton Ellis to Charles Stross to Murakami, everybody writes "Armani" when describing "expensive", because that is just such a convenient, well-known brand. However, having a pair of "Armani glasses" (as in After Dark) does not mean a person is rich or even middle class, damn it. Armani (not counting the Borgonuovo 21 or Classico stuff which I recall is more expensive) is not a particularly expensive label. Even though it is in many cases an order of magnitude more pricey than really cheap clothing, it is an order of magnitude less expensive than some other stuff many people would recognize and I guess two orders of magnitude less than some other stuff I would never recognize. Point being, could people please be a little more varied and not use the same brand over and over again. I would be happy even if they mixed it up with a bit of Prada, Cartier and Bulgari, though I guess these do not carry the same "booooooring!" connotations.

Oh, the book is great, by the way. Hitherto.

After Dark

Right now I am in the process of moving, so my angry reviews of Spore (major suck) and Crysis: Warhead (minor suck) will have to wait, as will that of the new Charles Stross book I picked up (good one!). So busy am I that I have not even read Murakami's After Dark yet.

This is what we do when the sunlight fades:

Being hugged by the fiancée

The beauty of lazily flapping angels

Being hugged by the fiancée II

Fixing the hairdo with some sort of hand moistening lotion

Public Morals Committee

The last week was spent mostly in bed, having fever dreams about atomic bombs, the public morals committee and an aggravated fiancée. Needless to say, it was not exactly fulfilling. I did read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, though, after having it on my to read-list for ages. It was not exactly a mindblowing experience, but it was a really good book, and I would have appreciated it even more had I been, say, 14 or so instead of 27. I guess the main grievance I had with the book was its lack of depth, but I fear I have been distancing myself a bit too much from "simple" (though not in a negative sense) literature like Ender's Game, i.e. books where you fully understand (or at least believe you do) the plot. I got a bit of an Ayn Rand feeling from the book - the seemingly effortless integration of ideology. Had Rand been able to write like Card, she might have gotten some points across. As it is, I honestly could not even be arsed to finish Atlas Shrugged, and Anthem just left me with an "I want that hour back!" feeling.

So after reading Ender's Game, what else could I do but fire up Sins of a Solar Empire on my trusty old pc? I get this feeling that the game is very much like what Card envisioned, and that the creators of the game have read his books. It is not exactly a fantastic game, but I think I have never experienced another game that saps time so quickly. I played for six hours and it felt like, oh, half an hour or so. When not having a cold and nothing to do, I am afraid I will never have the opportunity or inclination to do that again, so it was a good thing I won.

Next up: lots of pictures, because they are more enjoyable than text.

A Slow Descent Into Madness

I just finished reading The Lover of Ursa Major (the Swedish translation from 1938) by Sergiusz Piasecki, a 1937 book about smugglers on the border between Poland and Soviet. It was quite a refreshing read, being very different from most present-day books I have been reading recently. Interestingly, people and locales are very sparingly described, being mostly "a man with a funny gait" or "a house in the woods". Yet, the way in which it is written makes the story come alive much more than I had expected. Another thing I noticed was that there was a lot of what seemed like foreshadowing going on, but most of it never led to anything. Large parts of the book describe events that have no bearing upon the upcoming chapters, and many characters who could be expected to play a major part just disappear. I thought at first that this was a book about friendship, love and alcohol in about equal doses, but I realized partway through that it is much more about a slow descent into madness. The latter might make more sense if you know a bit more about Piasecki's life and his imprisonment.

The author does not seem exceptionally skilled in the art of the novel, but that is not so strange, given that he was a Polish intelligence officer (who smuggled cocaine and furs across the Polish/Soviet border to fund his operations) writing the book in prison. He had been incarcerated for ten years for a robbery conducted under the influence of cocaine, and apparently passed his time in prison writing books and inciting riots. All in all, he seems like an uncommonly serious badass for a famous novelist, and that is not even taking into account the fact that he was later an executioner for the Polish resistance during WWII.

Anyway, the book was enjoyable, largely for deviating so much from the books of today, but also because the story was engrossing in its simplicity. It felt very real, and given Piasecki's track record, parts of it probably are.

Aliens Solve Equations

Reading the latest Greg Egan book, I am both surprised and disappointed. While well-written and intelligent as is par for the course with Egan, Incandescense is really quite boring. Sure, describing how an alien race goes about measuring velocities and orbits could set the background for a story, but when half the story is about how said aliens solve equations with two unknowns and work with derivatives... nah. (The other half, without ruining the story, is about two people trying to find stuff in the universe, and it is not that hot either.) Simply not my type of book, especially since it contains very little of the philosophical issues that Egan usually raises. I guess I will follow the story to the end, though, but this is more because of my general love for Egan than an actual compulsion to finish the book. Incandescense will be on hold a while, though, while I read Neal Stephenson's Cobweb which seems more promising.

Also, I will present my master's thesis tomorrow, which would be a thing worthy of great celebrations (Rotari rosé at least) under different circumstances. However, what with my apartment crisis, I have a very hard time finding the enthusiasm. Also, the resulting payment of €2,600 a month in rent plus mortgages sort of puts a stop to doing anything fun involving money and forces me to take no vacation at all this year and work instead. Balls.

Listerine

I just accidentally rubbed my eye with a hand covered in eye-unsuitable substances numerous times. You know the story, tabasco, vinegar, pepper... This time it was toothpaste. Toothpaste is slightly better than tabasco or tiger balm, but not by much. I guess this little mistake was due to the fact that I had just happened to brush not only my teeth but also a downright evil blister which lives in my mouth since I decided it was a good idea to start eating my own mouth in my sleep. Needless to say, it hurt. Both blister and eye. After blinking frantically for a minute or so, I brought forth the evening's heavy artillery - Listerine. All my friends have told me that this apparently makes blisters go away in a jiffy. I have been on the listerine for three days now, and the blister has only gotten worse, so I thought I would try to hold the Listerine in my mouth for a while. Sure, that stuff is comparatively strong, but I am used to drinking stroh rum straight, and it has never been a problem before. I held it in for half a minute or so, and then a horrible throbbing agony from hell entered my normally just plain agony-inducing blister. In the hope that this meant the Listerine was actually working, I held it in for a while while almost dropping to my knees in pain. Then I spat, and it suddenly stopped hurting altogether. Cautiously, I tried some more Listerine. Illogically, no pain? Though I cannot be sure, I might actually have successfully exorcised an oral cavity demon.

I have spent time reading books, working, worrying and writing on a script for a comic instead of blogging. The latest books I read were I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max as well as Glasshouse and Jennifer Morgue, both by Charles Stross.

The Tucker Max book was just as I expected it to be, fantastically funny in a few select places and, from my perspective, rather boring in most of the others. The man is certainly talented, but I would personally enjoy some stories that are not almost exclusively about alcohol and hooking up. Although I guess if your life revolves around that and writing about it gives you more of it, why not.

The Charles Stross books were a bit different. I actually got the first one on a whim. I went into a bookstore which has a large selection of softcover books in English and asked the woman at the infodesk to recommend me eight good books, since they have a standing 4-for-3 rebate and I wanted a bunch of new stuff. I specificially told her not to give me boring books or political books, and preferably hard sf or sort of weird fiction like Murakami or Auster. I was sort of stressed, I suppose, because I have no idea what books I bought. I stuffed them randomly into my shelves (I will be moving soon, no reason to waste time cataloguing) where there was room except for one, Glasshouse by Stross. The store clerk had told me that some of her sf customers had told her that this was hot stuff, so I started there.

The plot was good, the writing never got in the way, the twists were mostly good and the ending was, I guess, satisfactory. I am very picky with endings. The book dealt with a lot of philosophical far-future sf stuff like uploading, clones, identity theft, etc, and it put this in a present-day context through plot devices I shall not spoil. I got some nice Greg Egan vibes from it, and decided I would try another Charles Stross book.

I picked Jennifer Morgue, and it was quickly apparent that I should have done something else instead. While the basic idea is bearable and sometimes fun - occult stuff exists and various governments have special units to combat it - it is not terribly original, and the story must be rather good to make up for that. Instead, Stross has made some sort of a mix between Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon and, I dunno, any Terry Pratchett Discworld novel. However, while Stross has certainly shown that he can write, he is not funny in the way that Terry Pratchett is funny and he just will not stop hammering his points in. The whole novel basically says "Haha, PowerPoint sucks! It's cool to be a Linux nerd!"

Jennifer Morgue is full of obscure references, which I think will alienate most readers, and the plot is very, very implausible, in a non-amusing way. The ending is rather forced and most of the characters feel like cardboard. This disparity has led me to believe that I have to read another one of his books, just because I am fascinated by the fact that they seem to be written by different authors. This is not to say that the book has no redeeming qualities. It is funny at times, it does have some interesting plot devices, but I think Stross' editors should have told him to "cut out some technomumble and refine the plot!" Then it could have been great, and, I think, something like Matthew Thomas' Before and After, or - best case scenario - a very light version of the Illuminatus trilogy.

I also went back to the bookstore in question and got the latest Greg Egan novel, Incandescence, which I have been desiring for ages. Up next.

Oh, and I will move on June 2nd. Hopefully. I bought an apartment and now I cannot seem to sell my old one. It stresses me Losec.

Needle Sharing

So I was sitting in a comfy green chair at the local tattoo parlor, sipping some rather weak coffee and reading South of the Border, West of the Sun, a book by, you guessed it, Haruki Murakami. Enter a young man with (what I suppose was) his girlfriend, who starts asking the tattooeress about getting a tattoo. His plan is to buy a needle for the tattoo machine, which he actually says he will share with some other guy for cost reasons, and they will both be tattooed by a third friend. I cannot for the life of me understand why he a) thinks needle sharing is a good way to save money and b) why a tattooer would sell just a needle to someone, and especially someone who sort of plans on getting diseases. It was weird.

But, I am happy to inform you that South of the Border, West of the Sun is, hitherto, the best Murakami book I have read, save for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This means that it is also one of the best books I have ever read. I am so happy to have found an author who is so good that almost all of his books leave me awestruck. I hardly want to read any further, fearing this perfect creation will be ruined somewhere towards the end.

Nine Lives

One more shopping update (even less money in my wallet...) and then I will move on to something pertinent.


New coat from the J. Lindeberg store in Sturegallerian. I managed to haggle a bit since they had two of (what I guess was) three sizes left, and my friend Jonny had bought the other one. Ergo, they had some real trouble selling these, which is not so strange given the rather hefty price tag and the fact that it will look utter shite on anybody shorter than, say, 195 cm. I know my upper body looks a bit long, but it really is not, I should probably just refrain from buttoning the lowest button. Jonny told me he would have to kill me if I got the same coat, so I guess he has to now. Never mind that we have some other identical clothes, bought both knowingly and unknowingly.

They still have the rather tight size 50 (US size 40) in the store. Go buy it if you are in Stockholm, it rocks!


My friend Anton wanted to get into the fray. He got this snazzy Diesel item. Of course it was on sale, we are such cheapskates, both of us.


This nice shirty thing is from a small Swedish brand called Nine Lives. Most of their stuff looks really good, and it is not exactly horribly expensive. Found at Focus on Nybrogatan.


This is a pretty deco drawing of Fritz Kreisler drawn by a relative of mine a very long time ago. If you like violinists, which Mr Kreisler was, give him a listen!


Finally, I finished the above book. The ending was very much like Halo 2 or Crysis. That is, a clean cut right in the middle of the action. Granted, the book's nature allowed or rather required that to happen in some way, but it was a bit too sudden for my taste, so I felt robbed of a conclusion. Still, a good read! Now, I will proceed to the next Murakami book in my pile.

Gorbachev's Tank

I just went out and got myself a bunch of art supplies. Easel, a bunch of acrylic colours (the only stuff I had left from last time was a pint each of red and black), brushes, the works. I just started on a painting which looks sort of like someone has regurgitated a mixture of absinthe and chocolate. It is supposed to be a forest, but firstly it is not yet finished and secondly I am probably the worst painter in the world. I am far too lazy to use different brushes, and I resent having to clean the brush, which leads to a lot of crappage. In a few years, this will hopefully be seen as a facet of my beautiful genius. I will, of course, keep you posted as regards my career as an artist.

I am haunted by some sort of sickness this week, and as always when I have a sickness that involves fever or fits of shivering, my dreams have been stranger than usual - I even had a nightmare!

I guess I am one of rather few people who almost never has nightmares, but at around 5 a.m. Monday morning, I woke up in a sweat from a dream of some sort of snake telepathically pulling me into a tv screen. Not that I usually fear snakes at all, so it was sort of weird. I will admit, though, that a snake pulling me into a tv would freak me out in real life as well, but not moreso than a badger trying to pull me into a toolshed or an egret pulling me into an episode of Frasier. I also fell asleep on the couch this evening, sleeping for more than three hours (which is so not me - I only sleep at night, in my bed) and dreaming of airplane restrooms in some sort of emergency situation and educating an acquaintance about the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. When I related this to her as I woke up, she asked "Who the hell is that?" so I had to repeat the process - how tedious! I remember having one fact wrong in the dream although all the others were spot on, and that was that I said that Yeltsin was riding Gorbachev's tank. Then I dreamed of a crying old lady in clown makeup, lamenting that her dog had just been run over by a train, so we sang about 40 things to do with a dead dog. Very odd. I hate having a fever.

Back to reality: The book Cowboy Angels which I am currently reading is one of the best, how shall I put it, stories about men doing things together. A Tom Clancy-esqe action-packed novel about covert ops and guns, that is. Plus a bit of time and space travelling. The difference is that Cowboy Angels is one of those books I found quite hard to put down. I am almost finished with it, and I must admit I was a bit disappointed by a few details, but all in all it is an essential read for those who want a few hundred pages of Adventurous Male Story.

Current Research

Right, I am now officially homeless. Having left my apartment last week, I have to wait until the end of the month to move into the new one. This sucks. At present, I reside in a dimly lit kitchen in Fruängen, at the southmost end of one of the underground lines. I fret for the move into my new apartment. I have insane amounts of stuff! I thought I might fill twenty or thirty moving boxes (60x45x45 cm or so) but I was surprised to find that I needed close to seventy. Plus my furniture. Plus my clothes. When I move in I will have to have a sorting orgy.

I have been doing other stuff too. I finished reading Jon Courtenay Grimwood's book End of the World Blues, which I really disliked. Like many other books, I chose it because "hey, the cover design is nice!" but unlike most other titles, I had a very hard time getting through it. Funny thing is, it has gotten a lot of very good reviews and I am not even very picky with books. It did get a little bit better towards the end, but not much. This is in stark contrast to 9tail Fox by the same author which I enjoyed. Finally being rid of End of the World Blues, I started on Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated. I have read only a short bit of it, but so far it seems great!

Speaking of great, I went out and bought Super Mario Galaxy, and I think it is possible, if not probable, that this is one of the best single-player games ever. I have only played for three hours or so, so it might still be marred by being too short or too repetitive, but what I saw left my jaw drooping. I also got The Orange Box, just to be able to play Team Fortress 2. It is certainly a good game, but it would so be much better if it was not so immensely addictive. Together with a friend of mine, I am creating a game which is sort of a mix between Team Fortress and the first Grand Theft Auto. That is, top-down 2d capture the flag action. Most of the programming is done, so now we just need to implement gameplay restrictions and give it fancy graphics. It will have pirates, and zombies. Look forward to it.

As you can see below, I am also partying TO THE MAX! My friend Anton was just partying TO THE MED, given his relative lack of party hats. On the same day as the above picture was taken, there was a hobo on the underground who was spraying pine-scented ass freshener (the stuff some people have in their bathrooms instead of good ventilation) into his mouth so that the whole wagon stank like a synthetic forest. That is probably the epitome of partying TO THE MIN.

The Devil Finds Work for Idle Hands

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!

Life in the Macro Lane

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.

War-knitting

It has been quite a while, but my business has been great. Apart from having a full-time job, I have also been working quite a lot on my thesis and searching for an apartment. The latter task, I am happy to say, is finished. I found a very nice two-room apartment in central Stockholm, in a house built in the late 1920s. It has a fireplace, a balcony and is damn nice. The problem, as expected, is that it will cost me a bloody fortune to live there.


Somebody has knitted here. I have no idea whether they made the whole thing right there, or if only the finishing touches were made at the site.


This is probably one of the best pictures I have ever taken. I am sure you will agree.


When taking a walk with a friend, I found this nice plank. It says "WE WALK SLOWLY" and I have no idea what it means.


Yes, I have been drinking again, as is painfully apparent.

I found The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to be the best Murakami book as of yet. Not only was it rock-solid through the whole story, but it also had an ending I did not dislike. I also read Hard-Boiled Wonderland, but it was really nowhere near as good. A Wild Sheep Chase which I am reading at present seems to be more like the former, which makes me pretty happy.

I took a pause in my Murakami marathon these last few days to read the latest Terry Pratchett book, Making Money. I found it to be very easy to read, but a little bit shallow. Of course, we are talking Pratchett here, and his books always tend to be rather shallow, but in a good way. Lots of archtypes and a few real characters, simple but effective stories, wonderful to read. It is not exactly a wonder why Homer (or whoever wrote those books) is such a famous guy. However, Making Money was somehow a little bit more shallow than usual. Only the main protagonist is given any character at all. Everybody else is just a cardboard cutout. Still a very good read, but I would have expected a wee bit more.

Today, I was a bit ambitious and went to Kulturhuset where I ambled around for a bit and looked at Martin Parr and Nobuyoshi Araki photo exhibitions. Parr was rather interesting. No fantastic pictures, no great art as such. However, he seems to be very gifted when it comes to capturing the spirit of a time and/or place, which sometimes counts for a lot more than the perfect composition. Araki seemed to like women who are tied up and have plastic lizards stuffed up their reproductive organs. It was a little silly, but there were some fantastic pictures of flowers and his beloved cat which made me forgive the rather tedious bondage bits.

A friend, a flower, a wild strawberry

Hey, I am all grown up, bitter and artsy. Since I have a camera, everything must now be in black and white. Also, I am honestly trying to learn to like jazz of the Bix Beiderbecke kind, but it is not going too well. I always switch to VNV Nation or Einstürzende Neubauten after five minutes.

I found a friend, a flower, a wild strawberry (which was not so wild since it grew on a balcony, so I would call it a tame strawberry, but then I would have a hard time conveying the fact that it is one of those small strawberries, Fragaria vesca, which we Swedes call smultron), a sunglasses-wearing child in a church holding a fish in front of the altar (oh, the symbolism) and a big clay butt next to flowers.







I also found I could fry some Quorn in lots of Kikkoman soy and white rice vinegar, add various vegetables and then throw in a bunch of udon noodles. Needless to say, this is a damn tasty dish which I fear I may get tired of very soon if I continue to make it all the time.

I also finished reading Dance Dance Dance which I felt was strangely familiar at times, I cannot really place it, but it was very much like some other book I read a long time ago. It also bore a passing resemblance to Lolita, which is not a bad thing. All in all I liked Kafka on the Shore a bit better, though. Of course, I have already started on my next Murakami book - The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - which hitherto is decidly better than both of the above. That might change though. The ending is so often the crucial part. The funny thing is that The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is certainly feeling eerily pertinent right now.

Dance Dance Dance

So I got the result from my final exam back yesterday, and it was positive enough. A pass, nothing more, but it still means I only have to finish my thesis now, and I will officially be a Master of Science. I like that title - it reminds me of He-Man.


Also, despite my recent horrible experiences with all things electronic but perhaps because of my sour mood caused by my recent break-up among other things, I decided to spend all my remaining cash on a Canon EOS 400D. I had the previous model in the series, the 350D, some time back, but was forced to sell it as I was a bit shorter on cash than I liked. Anyway, I got a 50mm 1.8 lens of questionable build quality which takes great pictures, a decent flash, a 55-200mm zoom and some other stuff, so now I will spend my days trying to freeze the sky. As above.


I also bought this fabulous white shirt with black cuffs, collar and buttons. It is very, very nice, and I wonder why I have never made one like that. Yesterday, I read a bit more than half of Murakami's Dance Dance Dance, which was fantastic until about where I am now, but now it is not more than great. Still great, mind you, but I guess my expectations are far too high for the poor Mr. Murakami to be able to deliver all the time.

BioShit

For the first time in ages, since I mostly play Wii and simple web games, I was actually considering going to the store to shell out for a PC game, BioShock in this case, which looks absolutely fantabulous. I had my €45 ready and willing for the Swedish launch tomorrow - and then I learned that this (offline!) game requires online activation. Do these people understand nothing? The crackers will crack, the couriers will cour (?), the "Scene" will be lit with industrial light and magic with the result that everyone will be downloading it via BitTorrent within a week, anyway. The only thing that sort of practice does is put people off from buying BioShock. Pity. It seems to be great fun, and I liked the randian slant to the game. Some Half-Life game I got quite a while ago will stay my latest acquisition for some time to come, I guess.

In other news, I am nowadays utterly girlfriend-less, so I went to a bookstore and got Norwegian Wood, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Dance Dance Dance (I just picked them randomly from the books available). All by Haruki Murakami, whose writing I simply love. Equally randomly, I decided to start with Dance Dance Dance. Hitherto, it seems as great as I expected it to be.

I have recently been reading quite a lot of books, and this - combined with a very strange semi-hallucinatory awakening this morning within which I had the main theme of a story presented to me by myself to the tones of Last Train to Trancentral - led me to feel the uncontrollable urge to start sketching the rough outlines of a short story myself. I have no idea whether it will just end up in the trash like all my other attempts at writing, but this is the first time I have actually been able to develop the protagonist (or antagonist, as it were) to an extent with which I am satisfied.