The world is turning into a buffet. And I am not happy about it.

One of my favorite places to have lunch used to be a vegetarian restaurant called “Hermitage” in Stockholm. I liked the place mostly because they had four or five fixed dishes every day, and once you had picked one out it was delivered to you on a plate, as a finely constructed meal. No deciding, or opening little metal boxes, or waiting in line for a salad spoon - you simply asked, and you got, and it tasted nice. Lovely.

Fig 1: A buffet, possibly on a boat, yesterday

But this place closed down and then reopened and I went along last week to discover that the new owners had turned it into a buffet. And now I vow never to go there again.

You see, I am not a chef. I really don’t know how to finely balance a meal to make it tasty, interesting and attractive. When I go out to eat, here’s what I want - the minimum of choice and the assumption that the people who work in the restaurant know more about putting food together than I do. In fact, I am paying them to take care of that part for me, and to surprise me with their skill.

Buffets are awful. The queuing up, the open trays over which strangers are breathing, the assumption that more is better. I hate it all, especially since it is basically a way for the restaurant to cut down on their serving costs by making the customers do all the work for them.

And the end result of any buffet is what I refer to as “buffet gravy” - that dark, sour, sweet, smooth and chunky goop that results from mixing together far too many things that should probably never be mixed together.

Also buffets tend to benefit the kind of people who like to eat more than they should, who think it’s in some way exciting to get up after a hearty meal and then pour even more food on their plates just because they can. In fact this buffet mania reflects other aspects of modern life that I hate: the assumption that everything exists in abundance, and the assumption that the more choice we have, the better.

Now I agree that basic choices are important for a modern civilisation. But seriously, I don’t give a flying fuck in which of 15 almost identical funds my pension money is invested, or who delivers my electricity, or which mobile phone company I have, or who supplies my broadband. I am sick of choosing every tiny, insignificant thing in life and treating micro-issues as if they really matter. The little money I save from this constant choice just isn’t worth it.

So there will be no more trips to Hermitage for me. And if people want to keep me as a friend I suggest that they never invite me to an establishment with the phrases “Eat all you can”, “Buffet”, “Self Service” or “Crazy” over the door. Cos I just ain’t goin’.

/ paddy

Pointless whole number alert:this is my 300th published blog entry! Let the fizzy booze flow!

So, down to business. I’m a sucker for giving away the plot of the blog in the title, and it looks like I’ve done it again.

As you may have guessed, I am about to talk about Sweden and the strange resistance to the idea of school uniforms. Very few schools over here, if any, have uniforms, and the topic always gets a heated reaction when it is brought up.

Now I had a school uniform from the age of 12 and it did me the world of good. Put hair on my chest, food on my plate and built my character, so it did. Yes indeed.

But, to understand the issue a bit better, I here present the main arguments in favour of uniforms:

1 - You reduce bullying somewhat by having everybody dress the same.

2 - You allow the kids to see each other as people, and not just as the clothes and styles that they have.

3 - You reduce stress on the kids by giving them no choice about what to wear to school every day.

4 - You make it less obvious who is poor, rich, trendy or nerdy.

5 - You make it easier to spot kids skiving off around town when they should be in school.

6 - You hopefully put less financial pressure on the parents to always have to get the latest trendy clothes for their offspring.

And then the arguments against:

1 - The kids will lose their individuality.

To which I say: oh please… Swedish kids are already almost indentical in the way they dress, speak, look and think; can a uniform make them any more similar than they already are?

And so with nobody able to come up with a good reason why there are no uniforms, we can only put it down to inertia and a general fear of making the kidz do anything against their will. Which gives you, obviously, a generation of very bratty children who think that everything that doesn’t go their own way is unfair.

So then, am I a grumpy old man yet..? How about now?

/ paddy

So in Sweden, as I have probably mentioned before, you can’t buy a bottle of plonk in the evening, or on a Sunday. And the only place at all you can get a bottle of plonk is between 10:15 and 10:37 at the state alcohol monopoly shop called Systembolaget.

You very often come across arguments from Systembolaget as to why they should retain the tight alcohol monopoly just the way it is. Most of the arguments have to do with the projected increase in alcohol-related deaths and violence if alcohol was more freely available (and suspiciously few have to do with how much money they would stand to lose if their monopoly was threatened).

More freely available? Come on - you can get beer at 3.5% in any shop, strong beer for 20:- (2 euro) in the right bars and pretty much everybody over the age of 12 knows the number to a gentlemen called “Big Kalle” or “Daddy Love” who will get you whatever you want, whenever you want it.

Restricting demand to popular things creates a black market, and more criminals, and more contact between ordinary people and those criminals. As well as this, is is quite a slap in the face to the Swedish public, as the state has officially decided that they can’t handle their booze.

So is this something in the Swedish character? That, if allowed, they will charge around the grocery store, swigging wine, making slobbering love to unattractive people and smashing car windows on the way home?

And if this IS the case (which I doubt) then let’s do like this - have wine and booze available in the grocery stores, but allow it to be sold only to foreigners. We can handle our drink, you see, while you poor Swedes need to be cushioned and protected from the evil liquor.

So I will be able to buy wine whenever I want, since I lack the Swedish gene which would make me an instant alcoholic as soon as I saw a bottle of wine in a shop after 7 in the evening. Sound like an idea?

/ paddy

On next Wednesday, the 30th day of April, I will take my fair lady on her very first trip to the ould country. And, as an introduction to Irish planning and our general outlook on life, we will be spending a night in an airport.

Now this is not as crappy as it sounds (although still undeniably fairly crappy). Using the services provided by Mr. Ryan and his fleet of flying contraptions, we will be transporting ourselves to Stanstead airport. And then we will have to sit and wait 7 hours until our next flight, to Cork, at 6 something or other in the morning,

This gives us 2 options: trying to find a hotel at midnight within range of Stanstead and paying a fortune to stay there for only 4 hours; or simply hunkering down in the airport and trying to pass the time until we can get on the aeroplane and haul ass to Cork.

So option 2 it is, and I am glad to report that we will not be alone. Every night a whole lot of people sleep in Stanstead while waiting for Mr. Ryan to warm up his aircraft. In fact, there are whole websites devoted to the topic of sleeping in airports, where the facilities are rated according to comfort, friendliness, hardness of floor and so on. Stanstead, apparebtly, is not too bad if you get there early and grab the least uncomfortable plastic benches.

We will not be there early. But luckily there is at least one cafe open all night so I aim to bring a computer and, while my brain is frazzled by lack of sleep, try to write something creative. But if A, on the other hand, doesn’t fancy joining me sitting up in a cafe until the wee hours (and why should she) I will try to placate her with a sleeping bag and a set of fresh earplugs and the least hard bench I can locate. I can only hope she doesn’t call the whole thing off when she sees what her cheap Irish boyfriend’s idea of a fun evening turns out to be.

/ paddy

Well I have finally admitted to myself that I will not finish my masters. Yes, yes, I know - put the rolling pin down mother and let me explain.

The problem is I am very interested in learning things, but not so interested in the whole getting-the-paper part. During my one-year return to school I learned about alternative energy, steam engines, gas turbines, solar power and all manner of energy production (or, more properly, conversion). I also learned that Thursday in Sweden means pea soup, and that Finland is not a country in which to buy fruit.

I also met a group of very nice people from all over the world. And, honestly, sitting writing a bunch of stuff on a rather boring topic just to get my letters does not really appeal to me. Life’s too short and I’m interested in other stuff now. I don’t really think I will work in this area, or do any research, and, with a shiny new job starting up next month, I don’t have any financial incentive to do so.

So I will finally put my poor old thesis to rest. For the moment, at least. And now the fate of all those oil well geothermal systems will never be known.

And I will go quietly and join the swelling ranks of those who have put their theses on hold (you know who you are) and will get back to them one day, oh yes they will, one fine day.

/ paddy

I always love it when a commonly-held belief turns out to be crap. And now the latest evidence shows that vitamin and antioxidant supplements can actually be harmful.

Our bodies are chemical machines, and introducing large amounts of chemicals that are usually only required in trace amounts is quite clearly a terrible idea. And, when I think about about it, it is obvious that humans have developed to obtain their nutrients and vitamins from their food, and not from highly concentrated artificial sources.

As Michael Pollan summaries in his book “In Defense Of Food”: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables.”

And Mr. Pollan is right - eating is not really all that complicated. Just eat mixed food, not too much of anything, as little processed food as possible, and get some fucking exercise. And then you can enjoy a long and happy life which you can use to ridicule people and things that annoy you in a public forum.

It’s what life is all about.

/ paddy

Yes, I know I have been neglecting my blog duties. Sorry and all. But now everything’s alright. Forever.

Anyway, on to the rambling. Today I went with girlfriend (for quite a while now undeniably and properly a girlfriend) to see her brother’s art exhibition at the Modern Museum in Stockholm. Well actually it was outside the Modern Museum. And on the ground. Yes, this was the cutting edge of one of my all-time favourite things: guerilla art.

The piece itself was called “Minimorötter på tre höjda sushibrädor” or “Baby carrots on 3 raised sushi boards”. It consisted of many inflated things arranged in a nice way, using a big mirror that was already in place. The artist had no permission whatsoever and, when he was nabbed by security at the museum, managed to talk them into leaving the piece in situ for 3 hours.

Now this wonderful inflatable thing, all entirely home-made, was a huge step removed from the stuffy, clean-scrubbed, polo-neck wearing Andy Warhol exhibition in the main building. I was tempted to slap everybody emerging from the not-terribly-controversial-any-more work of the late Mr. Warhol and point them in the direction of something with a little more balls and edge and inflatable vegetables.

So a big hurrah for guerilla artist of the month, Caspar Forsberg. We’ll be hearing from him. And I don’t mean a postcard.

/ paddy

I went last week to visit Magasin 3, a small modern art gallery in Stockholm. The first 2 exhibitions were good, photos and suchlike, and then I followed with my companions to see the third exhibition, by Tino Seghal.

And this was utterly bizarre.

We passed through a series of empty corridors. In the first corridor was a woman lying on the floor. This I thought was odd, but we stepped around her and continued to the main room, where the walls were white and bare. Where, we wondered, was the art?

Some people were standing around, staring at a blank wall. They started to mutter and breathe loudly. A man emerged from a door and walked backwards around the room.

This was all fine and interesting until we turned around to discover that people had sneaked up behind us and now stood there. One lady, walking backwards, kept on bumping into us and another guy was doing his best to block the exit.

In the meantime the other people kept on moving and speaking and doing general freaky stuff.

At this point one of our company made a break for it. I remained for a minute but, upon discovering that the guy blocking the way was making a conscious effort to keep on blocking the way, I did a fancy sidestep and ran for my life.

It took us a good 30 minutes to calm down and wonder what the hell we had just seen. And I realised 2 things:

1) That I had unwillingly been incorporated into something I thought would be passive art to be consumed as normal

2) That, since I believe that the job of art is always to provoke and get a reaction, this was probably the best art I had seen all year.

It was still very very fucking creepy though.

Tino Seghal, Magasin 3, Stockholm. Until May 4th. Or until somebody loses it and murders the entire exhibition.

/ paddy

Over the Easter weekend I went to stay with my girlfriend’s very nice family on the rugged south coast of this rather big country. And every evening the Scrabble board was produced, and hands rubbed together in anticipation of some word-laying.

Although, being Sweden, this was not Scrabble but “Alfapet”, as Scrabble in this country was known in the past. The board is the same, the tiles are the same (except for the Swedish characters of course, and different points and distributions), and the rules are the same.

Except that they aren’t. No sir, the rules are NOT the same, which I discovered to my dismay.

You see, the company in which I sat was playing a version of Alfapet from the 70s that used non-standard rules. The rule in question which caused hackles to rise was the one concerning the connection of words. In my rules (and by “mine” I mean the internationally accepted rules of Scrabble) you may lay a word in parallel to another word as long as all the little words you make along the way are real words.

But not in the game played by my hosts. No sir, in their version each new word MUST “link in” with an existing word. You cannot, for example, lay down an “S” to turn CAR into CARS and then continue with a new word from that S. See the example here:

The first example was not allowed by my hosts; the second was fine.

The worst thing was that the entire family proceeded to explain why their rules were actually NOT a variation and were in fact the proper and logical way to play the game, despite being more complicated and not the same as the internationally accepted rules of the game.

I could not even get them to admit that their rules were a local variation. Oh no, I was simply wrong. And Alfapet was NOT a version of Scrabble (which it actually was when it was introduced to Sweden) but another game entirely which can quite happily have its own rules.

Now I have no trouble playing a variation on a game, but I find it difficult to swallow a lot of complicated reasons why one variant is any “better” or “more logical” than any another, especially when the supposedly “more logical” version has MORE rules and not less.

Still, I played anyway and was of course blown out of the water, even by the family matriarch, the 90-year old grandmother who, I am sure, could trounce me at Scrabble no matter what rules we were using.

And that, despite all the confusion, arguing and slamming shut of dictionaries, was strangely satisfying.

/ paddy

So yesterday we lost Arthur C. Clarke. For those of you not aware of science fiction, let me just say that this gent was a writer and a visionary and one of those responsible for building sf into a genre capable of standing with any other.

And that whole thing with the little boys…well, let’s just give the dead guy the benefit of the doubt, and say no more about it.

So thank you Mr. Clarke for opening a whole many doors and, indeed, for inventing quite a few others.

/ paddy

- Still life with porridge and egg

- A day at the computer trade show

- Lady picking nose and eating it

- Sunset with zombie hoard

- The King on the toilet with cheeseburger

That is all

/ paddy

Following the lead of Martin over at aardvark, I will do a little pushing for a cause I believe in. And not one of those whining save-the-world causes, for a change. This one is to promote ideas and a sense of wonder and a love for fiction and imagination, and to help make a brighter and more wonderful future for humanity.

Escape Pod is the best thing ever. EVER, I tell you. Mr. Steve Eley has, for the last 3 years, presented a science fiction story for our listening entertainment every week. These stories are often “classics” plucked from magazines and books, or else new fiction from excellent authors.

Now if you are the kind of person who turns their nose up at the words “science fiction”, and considers speculative fiction to be less “worthy” than the mountain of other made-up stuff in the world, then you can fuck off right now. Go on now, get lost.

Likewise, if you are a raving sci-fi fan who has a federation uniform hanging in the closet, thinks that Yoda is a philosopher and admires the tight plotting in Independence Day, then you can fuck off too. Because you have also missed the point.

Science fiction is as full and worthy a form of literature as any other. And, in fact, when any work of science fiction begins to be accepted as “worthy” it tends to be stolen and renamed as literature by snobs. “But that’s not really sci-fi,” they will mumble. “It doesn’t have aliens in it!”

Examples of this are “1984″, prize-winning books like “The Road”, and practically anything by Margret Atwood. It’s all very sad, but it happens all the time. Literary snobs are idiots.

True science fiction is all philosophy and wonder. It is an extrapolation of ourselves and our society into a new direction, and observing what this change will have on real people. It is not robots and rockets, although it CAN be about the effect that these robots and rockets will have on us as humans. Science fiction is simply looking at ourselves through some different filters.

Now Mr. Eley is out there reading, editing, and posting audio stories out of pure love for the field. I adore people like this, people who will pour huge chunks of their time into projects with little hope of payment, and all out of love.

To me, the absolute perfect morning (by myself, at least) is sleeping late, doing some writing, and enjoying a lunch-time breakfast in my underwear while listening to the latest Escape Pod, or to one of the 147 stories in the archive. Pure bliss.

So it’s time to get to work. Get your arse over to Escape Pod right now. Listen to some of the stories (although not all of them appeal to everybody, not even to me). And then, if you like it, donate some cash. It all helps in the on-going fight against mediocrity and against the idiot media who hurl their stinking feces at us day in and day out in the hope that some of it will stick. And sure, there’s a lot of bad science-fiction out there, but show me an area of human activity that isn’t 90% shit.

So please people, help to keep this marvelous ship afloat, because once we as a species run out of imagination then we are well and truly fucked.

/ paddy