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.

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.

Picture Post I

Today, I will just let my rather crappy camphone speak for itself.


This is what my notes in school have looked like for the past decade. In all honesty, I really am crap at taking notes. They always end up being deranged drawings with no signal to noise ratio whatsoever.


I visited a flea market today, and picked up some great books for about €2/each. Strindberg, Márquez, Slas and Gorkij/Pesjkov, as well as a nice photographic book about Palestine, anno 1925. The latter is full of really nice pictures of the region - city life as well as various scenic views. Whatever one might think about the political situation today, the land was definitely more beautiful then.

I also found a book about Charles Rennie Mackintosh at the annual book sale, and through mysical means I accidentally procured a brooch designed by the same man a few hours later.


Sometimes I just seem to doodle way too much. The big guy is Truth, and his two anorexic kids are Incomprehension and Divestitude. This might be some kind of notes from my studies.


This is an ad campaign by a Swedish labour union, Seko. They seem to have a bit of a problem conveying their message, and this campaign sucks big time. Not because I am against unions in general, but because they demand higher wages for everyone. Sounds more to me like they just demand inflation. However, it would surprise me if that was the case, even though surveys show that people actually become happier if they get a higher wage, even if the inflation eats up the whole increase (as opposed to the wage staying the same, and no inflation).

Is it more equal wages they desire? If so, then just say that, damn it. I also like the middle ad which is a parody of some standard sales campaign and says "Employ 3 - pay for 2", signed "The employers". Seko then writes with really small print at the bottom that "this is our interpretation about what the employers want".

Had I way too much money, I would run the campaign "We are Seko and we will eat your babies! Raaar!"

Cardboard Box Coffee

Being at work, one of the things I like the most is the industial foodstuff they provide us, free of charge. Today, I found a bucket (!) of almond cookies, which tasted as stale as cookies in buckets can be expected to. I also drank stale cardboard-ish coffee, procured from the machine that one of my co-workers shuns. My life started long after the second world war ended, and surrogate coffee disappeared into the mists of time, but I think this is not far from the taste. And still, I rather prefer it (in small doses) to my go fasta red Nespresso machine at home. It is not like I do not appreciate good food or good coffee, but I really somehow like the cheapo stuff here. Whereas some people are drawn to the aesthetics of fascism, I am drawn to the foodstuffs of communism.

Well, not really.

This weekend will bear with it a damn lot of work for me. In addition to studying for two of my three last exams, I will also be spending time on cutting and producing a movie for the benefit of kids in India. Basically, what I do is make films about various charities in India which will make the moneyfolks in Europe open up their wallets to give these kids a proper education.

I think it is quite a worthwhile way to spend my free time. It can cost as little as something like $10 to teach a kid in the slums of Delhi or Mumbai to read and write. Now, that is what I call value for money!

Speaking of cardboard, try to find the song Cardboard Box City by Levellers (or let the magic of the 'net provide you with a copy), for it is damn good.

Comics

Rigt now, I am watching some kind of horrendous anime called DearS. The English dubbing is awful and so is the original Japanese voicetrack. Add to that stupid sex jokes and that typical absence of actual animation, and it is just like so many other bad anime series out there. I want more Miyazaki, or, lacking that talent and budget, at least more stuff like Lain, Witch Hunter Robin, Wolf's Rain, Haibane Renmei, Last Exile... Talent! Hello?

You may take those implicit recommendations at face value, the above series are really very good, especially Lain.

And now I turned dear DearS off.

Speaking of drawings, I generally prefer them sitting still, except when it is a cheap money-saving trick. That is, I like comics, even though the word is so strange nowadays, what with most comics being full of death and despair. Anyway, in the last few years, I have read through such a shitload of comics that I am a bit ashamed of myself. I could have learned a new language or raised children - maybe even saved the world or something. But no, I have been reading all the Dark Horse and Vertigo stuff, plus a lot of other comics of the same ilk. I cannot say I have not enjoyed it, though, even if some of them were really a waste of time. I mean, stuff like Preacher, Black Hole, Y the Last Man, the Vertigo Pop miniseries are positively brilliant whereas comics such as Spawn are rather tedious in the long run. Maybe, however, the authors did not intend for someone to read 200-ish issues in three days.

Anyway, the recommendations from last week's reading are I Paparazzi, WE3, Tell Me Dark, Tattered Banners and Seaguy. They are good to a rather varying degree, with the last two being discordianismly absurd, the first nightmarishly absurd and the
other two being horrible tales with comparatively happy endings, which I happen to like.

Welcome

It would seem that I have, perhaps against better knowing, started a blog again. My last one was five, six years ago or so, and I recall there being angst and grinding of teeth with getting it to work properly. Now that blogging is in fashion, everything seems to be quite a lot easier, what with the standardized interface, all the "web 2.0" bits and the fancy formatting being just so much easier. Since I mainly want to spew whiny words, I guess this blog will not differ so much from the last one.

Uppland is a region in Sweden, in which the glorious capital - Stockholm - is situated. It is also pretty close to the name of a pretty bad, as I recall it, record (or maybe it was the band itself?) with a rather good-looking sleeve which I listened to a very long time ago. It is a mystery why I decided that Uppland would be a good name for a blog, but it might just have something to do with all nice blog URL:s already having been taken..

This blog, as already mentioned, will be mostly whiny. I will, however, try to serve some cheese with the whine.

For now, I implore you to go visit zombo.com, which is an old favourite of mine, as well as look at some Louis Wain paintings and drawings. I have, perhaps, a bit of a thing for insanity.