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.

Sten Tolgfors is a liar (and so is Ingvar Åkesson)

I have a hard time understanding the yes-side in the debate about the new Swedish "FRA law", which stipulates that all Internet traffic into and out of the country should be monitored by the FRA for - guess what - security reasons. The Minister for Defence, Sten Tolgfors, has actually stated in a major Swedish newspaper that this is certainly not "mass surveillance", since the FRA is only allowed to spy on information going out of the country, and according to specific search terms (which are not disclosed). Furthermore, there are unspecified "controls" which "monitor" their actions.

Well, guess what, Mr Tolgfors, you cannot really find the specific data allowed to be spied upon without looking at all the data, now can you? Somewhere within the deep, dank caves of government, all the Internet traffic will be caught and processed, and Swedish citizens will have absolutely no way of knowing how, where or when. The spooks will have the authority to map everybody's life without a warrant. One of the justifications is that "Hey, we could actually catch bin Ladin, Sweden might be al-Qaida's next taget!" Guess what? Mr bin Ladin encrypts his Internet traffic. Mr bin Ladin does not have a beef with Sweden. Mr bin Ladin is just a straw man for a government increasingly desperate to secure their insane law.

The government's statements are so bloody stupid that I am unsure whether Mr Tolgfors really believes in what he is saying, or if he has made devious calculations coming to the conclusion that a large enough part of population are such complete idiots that his cause can actually profit from his lies. I hope for the former but suspect the latter. Also, I sort of wonder what the ulterior motives are. More power for the government? More happiness from the U.S.? Transition into a fascist state? None of my guesses are particularly uplifting.

Oh, and from the horse's (the General Director of FRA, Ingvar Åkesson) mouth. My translation, mind you.

"FRA has never and will never 'monitor all citizens'. Only the traffic that is deemed to be interesting and that refers to foreign circumstances is selected, which is a fraction of all available traffic. Only a very small part of this information will in turn ever end up in FRA's system." (emphasis mine)

Apparently, Mr Åkesson is nothing short of a liar, because you cannot really be the General Director of the Swedish equivalent of the NSA and not know that to be able to select the interesting information, you have to somehow process all the information from which you want a subset of information. The "interesting traffic" does not automagically jump into the lap of the FRA, while the rest of the bytes flow past, unperturbed and unmonitored. Ergo, everybody's business is now showbusiness to the FRA.

Genetic Engineering Facility

So, now I have had my vacation for this year. It consisted mostly of painting walls, buying furniture I do not like and moving things around. That is, preparing for another attempt at selling my old apartment. All in all, it has been a pretty crappy vacation with a few notable highlights.

My cat seems to really like living with me. Not only does she follow me around everywhere, she also seems to genuinely like living with me, and seems to have no interest at all in leaving. If I leave the door open, she just sits by the door looking moderately interested. She also seems to have the best night temper of all cats I have ever encountered. She curls up at the bottom of the bed when I go to sleep, and she is still there when I wake up. No running around hitting things, no waking me up by screaming or sitting on my face. Maybe she escaped from a genetic engineering facility trying to produce the perfect cat. Her only real problem is the fact that she is a bit too obsessed about her food, but given that she has been living on the rough for at least a month, that is to be expected. I think she is slowly realizing that there is an ample serving of food twice daily, and that there is no need to make a fuss about an empty bowl.

Right now, I am going through piles of old CDs and DVDs I have burned during the years, in the hope of finding something worthwhile. There were some pictures from my 2001 trip to Japan, songs I wrote back in the 90s, embarrassing party pictures and a lot of music I had forgotten I ever used to listen to. All in all some great reminiscing.

As for the last few weeks?

We visited the museum of natural history or whatever they call it in English. This fish says "nom nom nom *buuurp!*" if you feed it the correct "food bricks" or "blääää!" if you feed it the wrong ones. It is important to feed your catfish properly.

I saw the first boat ever that actually made me lust for it. A 60 foot trimaran. Sadly, I think this one is not only insanely expensive, but strictly for professionals. It is also ocean-going.

I looked about as happy as usual.

I finally tried some durian together with a friend. It smelled like hot garbage and tasted like hot garbage (or rather, how I assume it would taste) mixed with fruit. I will not try durian again.

Stockholm is really beautiful during the summer. I caught the Gotheborg on a picture.

As a stark contrast, they have recently finished building this "hotel" in the middle of the picture - in central Stockholm, no less, blocking what was once a beautiful view from Norra bantorget (on the other side of the hotel, from the vantage point above), making one of the nicer bits of the city dark and dreary. It looks like a futuristic rendition of Naglfar. At least, that is what I call it. What the hell were they thinking? Progress is not making the city look like the worst of Soviet.

RIP RAW

Going through a lot of old discs, I found a picture of me (jeez, I am glad I stopped looking like that) and Robert Anton Wilson when we met in Stockholm in 2000 or so. It brought back memories not only of meeting him, but of all my Discordian friends and the various weird stuff we used to do. Those were the days, indeed. Rest in peace, RAW, we are still thinking about you.

Hobocore

This is the hobo-cat I found and who now lives with me. She is the sweetest cat I have ever met, but she is so whiny about food all the time. If I gave her as much food as she demands, she would probably have eaten herself to death already.


This is a human hobo I met recently. I was going to give him some food, but he left. Notice the fancy hobocore socks.

Spirit of the Gym

There is a computer game of some sort called Pangya Golf with Style or something. I have never played it, nor have I ever been interested in doing so. However, my sleep tonight was a bit weird (too much beer, I guess) and I apparently played the game in the world of dreams. It was awesome, and was like a cross between minigolf/putting practice and a Harry Potter movie or Pan's Labyrinth! All of the holes had gargoyle eggs or magickal stones, and a griffin circled in the sky. I was a bit nervous, because the whole situation was sort of eerie. Then all was well again except for the fact that my lizard (a lizard I actually had many years ago) was biting a big yellow frog, and I had to bend her jaws open to separate them. Ah, dreams.

After another apartment-selling failure, I went to the gym today to work off a bit of frustration. Training harder than usual, I was dizzy, sweaty and exhausted when I finished my workout. Then I saw her. A woman I believe I saw five years ago or something when I was training at another gym. She looked exactly as beautiful and radiant now as then, she went through the same motions, still totally oblivious of her surroundings, wearing headphones. So self-occupied was she, that I realized that she is probably just the Spirit of the Gym, appearing to those who need encouragement. I notice these things, and I was encouraged.

The Horror

The horror. The most intrusive law ever devised has passed a vote in the Swedish parliament. All traffic on the Internet (except that which does not cross the Swedish borders, which is of course bullshit) will be monitored and collected by FRA (previously the National Defence Radio Establishment, though I guess they will change their name to the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit). This of course interferes with freedom of speech, press freedom and a host of other things people in a developed democracy would take for granted. Not in Sweden, not anymore. We will be an Airstrip Two, or Three, or Four, I am losing count, for Oceania. The law is nominally to stop "terror" and stuff like that, despite the fact that Sweden has basically never seen any terror at all. The money could be spent elsewhere, such as the armed forces, which have recently been downsized so much that Sweden would hardly be able to defend itself against any realistic threat.

This abomination of a law was approved by almost all members of the centre-right ruling coalition, save for Birgitta Olsson (who voted a courageous "dunno") and Camilla Lindberg, the only person courages enough to stand up for her beliefs. In all honesty, I would like to see the yes-voters tried for treason. However, I am not entirely sure whether it is illegal to subvert and destroy democracy.

Also, I found a cat on the street and we liked each other. I took it to the vet for a check-up and to see whether it had an owner. Since it was completely unmarked, it now lives with me. Pics later.

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.

Down at the Porn Store

I live pretty close to one of the larger porn stores in Stockholm and sometimes when I feel bored or just want to spend some time away from computers, I go spy on its clients. I know, I am closer to 30 than 20 and should not take such obvious pleasure in spying on people for no good reason at all. But still, everybody needs hobbies. At times, I have even brought my camera, shooting with a 200 tele the customers entering and exiting the establishement. Why? Because they all look so fucking guilty! A sluggish gait, their backs slightly bent, they look like they have received a harsh sentence indeed. Maybe they just want to look inconspicuous, who knows. Anyway, the tele lens in question sucks in low light conditions, so the pictures are mostly blurry. I still save them in my archive of completely pointless electronically stored things.

Another funny thing with these men is that they all look to be between, say, 30 and 40. They also all wear really mundane clothes and look perfectly boring. I would have guessed, ex ante, that people renting Fuckenfest Achtung Total 14 or whatever clicks their dicks, would be old geezers not aware of the endless supply of free porn on the Internet for those so inclined.

Me? I greatly prefer the endless supply of great comics on the Internet.

Entropy: Increased

What is the deal with those fiftyfive-ish men with rather big beards and often, but not always a tiny bit of a beer belly? They tend to sport dark brown or green hats, felt or leather, with wide brims and sometimes a leather vest (of the "practical" kind, not the "gay man" or "biker" kinds) which looks like it has been used for many years but has been well taken care of. These men almost always wear a shirt of some kind. Not a dress shirt, but a practical one made out of thicker cotton with at least one pocket. The colour of the shirt is often olive green, greyish or brown.

The fact that some men look like this does not bother me at all, what bothers me is that they are almost always alone, and they almost always look happy! I want to know what they know that I do not know. I believe they might hold the keys to heaven, but they are apparently not sharing them. They are like Mona Lisas with beards! Also, I wonder if the communicate - and how do they procreate? My theory is that they do it like amoebas. They duck into a dark alley and just split, one smug, enigmatic man then coming out each end, only the shade of their hat telling them apart. I did admittedly see two of them together, though. Once. I guess that was just because they had accidentally divided in a one-way alley or something. Oh well.

I am having a bit of a personal hell with my apartment business. In hindsight, it was apparently pretty fucking stupid to buy a new apartment before selling the old one. But, since I talked to I think ten different estate agents who all promised that it would be a piece of cake to sell mine, I was lulled into a false sense of security and now I have two apartments and not enough money to even pay interest on the loans. Damn you, estate agents.

My plan consisting of "healthy food and exercise" to lose a few kilos has apparently backfired. I have gained three or four kilos in as many months. I hope, at least, that it can be attributed to building muscles. However, it so happens that every time I go to the gym, I feel a bit guilty for increasing the entropy in the universe more than usual, speeding up the process of heat death. I wonder if this means I am deranged or just nerdy.

Eris

I have met a nice young lady who paints for a living. Since I have no disposable money to speak of at present, I offered her a bunch of highly-specialized art books in exchange for making a fantastic painting of the Goddess Eris, chief deity of Discordianism. I think it turned out quite well, despite a minor incident where I smudged the cat. It will hang in a place of honour in my new apartment as soon as I get it framed.

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.

Status

Trying to finish thesis, moving to a new apartment, lots of other stuff. Be back soon!

Stalked by Mucha

Recent times have seen me doing more worthwhile stuff, spending less money on crap and I guess generally growing up. I have started going to the gym, thrice weekly. This is nothing short of incredible given the fact that I am usually a lazy bastard who deftly avoids any and all exercise except for very, very long walks. Having been rather skinny all my life, I never felt the need to exercise for the sake of my looks, which I guess is sort of a bad thing, since I have started having back problems due to sitting to much in front of computers all the time and not moving around enough. Ergo, lifting weights! It has become sort of fun, actually, and I have hitherto not missed a single day of training in three or four weeks. Yay!

In other news:


This is so great it is almost silly. Mucha's "Moon" as a backpiece. Of course, as you can see it is not a completely finished tattoo, but getting there.



I bought these great litographs by Hans Viksten at an auction for a shamefully low sum. I have always loved his art, and I suspect that is all about imprinting during my childhood.


This is the piece (another litograph) that was hanging in our home when I was a wee child, and now decorates my bedroom. It rocks.



I must admit I bought the two paintings above only for the very nicely made frames. I thought they were prints or something, but upon closer examination they were actually oil/ink paintings from 1881 by K W Westerberg, whoever that is. They are actually rather nice, so I kept them.


I am not exactly sure what this is. It is from December 1930 and I believe it to be a sort of electricity switch which can be set to turn electricity on for stuff during certain times and certain days of the week. It is rather heavy, very nice, and will sadly be put to sleep to become a regular clock (unless I can find out a way to make it behave like one through bypassing all the weird mechanics).


But life is not all work. Some play must be involved. In hazard suits, with Disaronno. Sorry for the picture quality. We were one mask short, so I had to stick to the goggles.

Between the Sheets

There are times when I am half-asleep and in a state between pondering the world's problems and dreaming about puking monkeys doing the macarena. Suddenly I am jolted awake, having an incredible idea in my head. I scribble it down on a paper, and then I go to sleep. Later on, I wake up and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Last evening was one of those episodes. I devised the ultimate financial system, better than capitalism, communism and whatnot. It looked like this:


The day after, I woke up and realized that it was complete and utter shite, with assumptions so ridiculous that only an economist would not laugh at them. I especially wonder why the curve is s-shaped, so that rising above a certain level, the citizen suddenly costs society money again. Not to mention the problem of actually discerning the amount of production the individual citizen engages in.


I also bought a whole kilogram of sweet licorice which was just stupid. My tummy hurts. At least I found a cthulhu candy in the (bottom of the) bag.

American Psychopomp

I had the weirdest, weirdest dreams. Not only did I have several psychopomp episodes fleeting between dreaming and reality, with strange shadowy characters in the room with me, both benevolent and malicious. I also dreamed that the Tokugawa Shogunate emerged from the sea around the United States aboard gigantic submarines. I would not have been so surprised, had I been drunk or something, but it was just a regular Wednesday night.

I got the raddest shirt ever, by the way. Pictures soon.

Embarrassment of a Solar Empire

I had another "saying stupid things on national television" episode today. I am to be in some sort of fashion show hosted by Hanna on Z TV, aired tomorrow, and I sort of dressed up in tight, dark blue jeans, a turquoise dress, a horrible grey sweater and a shabby Burberry coat. Then I talked about how this style was inspired by "rural nobility" (sic!). All in all, I was almost as silly as the time when I appeared as a post-apocalyptic techno rocker (speaking of which - only a few months left 'til Fallout 3 - woo!!!).


I also met a very nice hobo. Hanna gave him some cigarettes and he talked about his homeless life for a while, relating to us a story about how he had fallen asleep this weekend, drunk as hell, outside a local theatre. Some women had apparently painted his nails and put on lipstick while he was sleeping, which would have been a so-so prank, even had they been his friends or something. Doing it to people on the edge of society, however, is just fucked up.

He admitted to stealing the yucca palm leaves he wore as ears, or horns, I dunno. He justified it with a simple "the yucca palm has 500 leaves, and new ones will grow!" I thought it was pretty poetic.

Yesterday evening was spent testing Sins of a Solar Empire. It is a new space strategy game rather devoid of unique ideas but with a lot of things going for it like the sheer scale in combination with possibilities for micromanagement, nice graphics and a generally nice feel to it. Sort of like Supreme Commander in space.

At first, I felt I was in love. However, on the smallest map, it took me about three hours to corner the enemy civilization, not even defeating it. If a casual game lasts at least half a day, how are people without unlimited quantities of time supposed to play it? However, problems quickly became apparent, such as the AI being a bit retarded, the scout ships being nigh impossible to destroy in time, the pirate raids becoming very tedious, and so on. And, there is no campaign in the game, only skirmish. Come on! I like playing campaigns, even if they are badly written and rather short. They give me some sort of purpose and motivation for playing, instead of just taking some short "Eurasia and Oceania have always been at war" at face value. Anyway, I will not be buying this unless they come out with some (a lot of) fixes.

Scratch that. I will not be buying it, because if its crappy aspects get fixed, I will spend far, far too many hours playing it.

Proto-lolcats

I was rummaging around my belongings today and found an old passepartout with nine little pictures in it, cats with catchy captions! Upon closer examination of the tergo, it appears these were collectible pictures. Smoke a pack, get a kitten. And not any kitten picture, an old-school lolcat picture! Hey, how is that for an incentive structure?


(The author would like to clarify that he is for some reason not especially amused by lolcats in general, and these are almost as bad. This is pretty strange since the author has liked many, many other retarded Internet memes. He will now stop writing about himself in third person.)


Here are the guys responsible. De Reszke. Sounds much like a bad (and apparently aristocratic) guy or guyette in an old Bond movie. Most probably a sinfully sexy lady who falls in love with Mr Bond towards the end of the movie and pays with her life for that mistake. Or who sits in front of her computer all night reloading icanhascheezburger.com.

I would write something about how this exemplifies the proliferation of memes online and offline through the ages, but I really cannot be arsed. Find somebody cultural to do that for you.

KTHXBYE.

Cash is King

I have not been able to stop myself completely from rummaging around various vintage stores. Below are two of my best finds during recent weeks.


This is a suit from Peter von Holland, whom I have not heard of previously. I found it at the Myrorna (mostly used crap but some used non-crap and some non-used brilliant stuff) store by Adolf Fredriks Kyrka, for those of you who are interested. They had lots and lots of clothes that must be from some sort of deadstock. The price tags were in Dutch, so I wonder how all the stuff ended up here. Anyway, this was the best piece I could find, note the buttons!


I love this knitted Johnny Cash sweater. It is actually knitted that way, not just coloured or some other simple process. Also, I am trying to re-learn my long lost guitar skills, and I thought the new sweater made it fitting to start with the Johnny Cash version of Hurt. Though dead simple, the fingers on my left hand still hurt like hell.

The Things Men do

I have spent my recent time working, playing Team Fortress 2 and planning for yet another move. This time, however, I expect I will be letting someone else do the heavy lifting, because the November move was one of the most gruelling experiences of recent years.

In other news, happy new country, Kosovo! Not that I am a Balkan expert, but I think the right thing happened, more or less. Let us all hope that both Serbia and Kosovo join the European community, perhaps not as amiable friends, but at least with some sort of an armistice (such as PRC and RoC).

Oh, and if you are Swedish, please do not miss Maciej Zaremba's latest series of articles. I sometimes wish I was a demagogue of even half his skill, but if just a quarter of what he says is true, I am appalled.

Powder

I found a very interesting web site called Fun-Motion. It collects links to and information about physics games. That is, games in which physics play an important part.


One of the games linked on the site, Powder Game, reminded me of when I was a child sitting in front of a Mac Plus and playing some sort of "simulation" game with fish and sharks. If the sharks were many, they ate most of the fish, but then they starved, which resulted in the fish multiplying again - on and on it went, fish represented by grey squares and sharks by black. It has no meaning and no end. In Powder Game, however, you can affect what happens through dropping water on fire, magma on ice or virus on fireworks, for instance, everything being represented by colourful dots. I love it! I will have to test some of the other games the site links, but for now I am perfectly content with dropping nitro in the fan.

Also, among the real games, I have been playing Eets a bit. It is loads of fun in small doses and, for those of us who are law-abiding, well worth the ten bucks it costs.

Watch this space for a bunch of new pics coming soon.

A Severed Head at the Very Top of the Construct

Before being abruptly awakened by my constantly refurbishing neighbours, I had an interesting dream. Somebody had built a large sculpture, or rather device, of sorts. It was made entirely out of glass and chrome, resembling a sort of M C Escher figure. It had two parts, capitalism and socialism, which looked exactly alike. When these two parts were joined, a little mound of earth appeared at the very top of the construct, and a severed human head should be placed thereupon. This was apparently the epitome of human ideology.

Speaking of human ideology, I have been following the media reporting regarding the legal action against The Pirate Bay with some interest. It is both amusing and disheartening to see incompetent journalists (Svenska Dagbladet, in this case) describing file sharing on the 'net as "a pyramid structure of a Bandidos type" (er, what?!) where almost all unlicensed media files online are distributed by "the scene", a network of shady, evil profiteers. The worst thing about this complete bullcrap is not that the media lie or that they bend over and quote the copyright mafia verbatim. It is at times like this (and there have been quite a few) that I really start questioning whether what they write about other subjects, those I am not intimately familiar with, is true. When unfair and unbalanced becomes outright lies and bought journalists, society is in a dangerous situation.

Well, maybe it has always been this way, and the fact that I once thought that the calling of my life was to be a journalist, noble herald of the truth and defender of the people, pen in hand pointing towards darkened places, has made me at least try to pretend that it is not. Poppycock.

Buttercups

Note to world: David Troupes has begun drawing Buttercup Festival again. Yay Dave! This is by no means an insignificant event.

I had been reading Buttercup Festival for years, and was downright shocked when it quite suddenly ended, my online comic evenings changed forever. I think one of the reasons that I like it so much is how it starts out comparatively trite to slowly become a work of genius. I could keep linking awesome strips all afternoon, but go to the site and read them all instead.

I am still miffed by the fact that my beige Buttercup Festival t-shirt got lost. I never lose clothes like that. It is not like I went out dressed one day and then came home topless.