This week things are running at very low steam. The majority of my workmates are away on vacation, or in that other city, or even sick with the wonderful vomiting bug. This gives the idle worker plenty of time to think, sitting in the badly air-conditioned office while the sun scorches the world brown outside the window.

For example: What do we want? Where are we going? How do we get there? Who do we take with us? How do we KNOW when we have gotten there? And at what stage do we turn back if “there” wasn’t really the place we believed it was?

And should I do something about the guy I bought this shirt from on Tradera, the Swedish eBay?

I mean, he advertised the shirt as “äkta”, meaning real. And then when the package arrived it had obviously come from China (the clue being the big fat Chinese import sticker). And a little googling swiftly showed that it was indeed a fake.

Now the shirt was cheap, I grant you, but the quality sucks, and if you advertise something as “real” then it bloody better be real. (Whatever “real” means in this situation.)

So should I report the dude, possibly a bad idea given his obvious underground connections and the fact that he (literally) knows where I live?

Or should I do like the rest of the morons who gave the guy good feedback on Tradera and  just let it be?

Given my state of mind at the moment, I think option 2 will win more or less by default.

But feel free to comment anyway. You know I like it when you comment.

/ paddy

No, it’s not funny at all, is it?

We should probably all put on that copy of “Thriller” and stop laughing.

I’ll miss the poor sod.

/ paddy

Sometimes you just have to love the US. Not often enough, but sometimes.

Like in this case: a town in South Dakota has a council election and two candidates end up with 126 votes each. So, since the town charter does not mention what to do in this situation, they turn to State law, which says that “candidates must play a game of chance to determine a winner.”

So they roll a dice to determine who will be first to pick one of two marbles from a bag. Mr. Baker won the dice roll and pulled out the white (naturally) marble to win the council seat.

Maybe such an arbitrary system would be perfect in picking public officials. I know – let us take the percentage of the electorate that do NOT vote at all, or that spoil their vote, and use that percentage to appoint representatives using marbles.

For example, if 40% do not vote, then allocate 40% of the seats to the “marble pool” where any and all interested members of the public get placed. And then, once the marbles are pulled, we have full public representation!

I must be a genius.

/ paddy

As you may know, if you can be bothered to remember pointless details like this, I work in a company that produces online Bingo games. In each Bingo game is a chat, and the chat has a bad language filter. This means that the chat master can decide which inappropriate words will be blocked from appearing in the chat window.

The actual list of words serves 3 purposes:

1) It shows the level of humour expected from the average online Bingo player.

2) It shows what the average chat master EXPECTS the average online Bingo player to come up with.

3) It gives us all a good chuckle.

So here it is, in all its bawdy (and alphabetically sorted) glory:

( . )( . )
80085
8008s
The message has been rejected!
a-hole
anal
anus
arse
arse bandit
ass
ball hang
ball swing
balls
bastard
beaver
beef curtain
bender
big vagina
bitch
bloody heck
bloody shite
blow off
blowjob
blue veined piccal
bollocks
boobs
bottie burp
bugger lugs
bum hole
bunk up
chinamans eye
chink
chug nuts
chutney ferre
cock
cock off
cock pit
com
corn hole
cum
cumming
cumstain
cunt
dick head
dildo
dingles
docker
docking
dumbass
dumbshit
dump master
ejaculate
erection
fag
faggot
fanny
fart
flapper
flaps
flippin heck
foreskin jumper
forskin
fu
fuck
fudge tunnel
gala
galabingo
gash
gasher
gay
git
gook
groaper
hole sniffer
japs eye
jobby jobby plop plop
knob
kojak in a crew neck jumper
kojak in a rollneck jumper
labia
lameass
lmao
love pocket
masturbate
mecca
mong
motherfucker
nigger
nipple
nob
nude
nugger
nutjob
nutter
oh my fucking good
omfg
orgasm
orgy
peckerhead
penis
piece of shit
pillock
piss flaps
pos
pussy
qft
queer
quit fucking talking
scrotum
second hole from the back of your neck
semen
shit
shite
shitter
shut the fuck up
slag
snatch
son of a bitch
sonofabitch
spam sandwich
sperm
spic
spooge
stfu
tic tacs
tit head
tits
titts
tosser
turd
twat
twocer
up yours
useless pillock
vagina
wank
what the fuck
what the hell
whore
wtf
wth
www

So, a spam sandwich, anyone..? Or how about a nice jobby jobby plop plop?

/ paddy

It’s funny with things that are the way they are only because of the way some other related thing is, or at least was a long time ago. Don’t you think?

Point in question: buttons. And bows. Or to put it more simply, why do women’s clothes button on the opposite side from men’s clothes?

Think about it. Go on, think! And then read on.

Here’s the main reasons I could find:

1) Rich women in the past were largely dressed by servants and it made things easier for them by putting the buttons on the opposite side than was natural for right-handed people. While men, even rich ones, mostly dressed themselves. And then, of course, women who did not have servants tried to pretend that they did by having clothes that buttoned on the left and it rapidly became a standard.

2) Men’s jackets were modelled on armour which closed in a way that was designed to prevent a right-handed opponent from jabbing something sharp and painful through the seam. 

3) Men’s jackets were designed to make it easy for them to unbutton with the left hand while drawing a sword or gun with the right. And men’s clothes in general tended to folllow millitary fashions while women’s were based on more domestic concerns.

And now a related question: what is the point of the little pockets in men’s underwear that you are supposed to drag the little guy through while peeing in a public toilet? Has anybody actually gotten this to work? Ever? If so, please let me know the secret because my shoes have had quite enough surprise yellow showers for one lifetime.

And don’t even get me started on shoe-laces…

/ paddy

The big news today is that the Swedish Pirate Party has claimed one of the 18 Swedish seats in the EU parliament. The Pirate Party’s main angle is the loss of privacy due to Sweden’s anti file-sharing and general electronic snooping laws. And, of course, they want to let us download stuff, which is always nice.

We sure as hell need these guys in the dialogue; they gained over 7% of the Swedish vote and therefore they are speaking for quite a few people. And now perhaps the other parties will take this topic a bit more seriously.

Here’s a related link to generate some hits. And here’s what I think:

In Sweden Culture is heavily subsidised. An article in some newspaper some time ago (you can tell I lost the link, can’t you?) showed how much of every opera/theatre ticket is paid for by the customer, and how much by the state. In some cases, half or more of every ticket is covered by grants and state handouts. And the biggest subsidies are always available for Culture, with a big C.

Now most people don’t avail very often of Culture with a big C. Most of us however often avail of culture with a small c. And these days a huge chunk of this culture is consumed online.

So if the point of subsidising culture is to increase people’s exposure to it, then shouldn’t the state be reducing the funds going to opera and interpretive dance and instead making it harder for their citizens to be sent to jail for downloading and uploading bad TV shows?

Obviously the people who define “Culture” are the ones making the rules here. And they are completely out of touch with the times – culture has moved online.

So let’s do this: let the state divert a small portion of our tax money from High Culture to the eternally whining publishers and let us all get on with the business of entertaining ourselves in the way we want to.

And here’s why: you don’t mess with the download community. Because as well as being smart, technical and flush with cash, we also have a wicked sense of humour and will always find a way to get around your snivelling attempts to tell us what to do. We could pay for downloads; we just don’t feel like it. But we will happily cough up a few million to ship a dead horse to somebody who pissed us off. 

Technology moves faster than the law and always will. Please, continue to waste your time, but the Pirate Bay will sit in a cushy prison, have their fines paid by volunteers like me who like to stir the shit, and afterwards they will enjoy eternal fame. File-sharing is here and it’s staying and no tight-arsed law is going to change that. Adapt or die.

And maybe if we share enough files we will, as a bonus, get rid of all the “artists” who only make music and write books because they get paid and not because they love to do it.

/ paddy

Last weekend saw quite a few things happening at the same time in Stockholm.

First there was some unseasonally hot weather. For me, this meant sunglasses, a big hat and hiding in the shadows a lot.

Brains…

Then there was the Elitlopp, some kind of horse race, of which I understood little and cared even less.

Soft luscious brains…

There was my son’s yearly class picnic, where I witnessed a fantastic water-fight and made some good deals whilst sipping brandy and eating badger’s nipple-tips.

Braaaaains…

There was the marathon, which was a marathon, but hotter.

Brains brains brains…

And finally there was the zombie invasion. Yes it was Zombie Walk 2009, and a hoard of 100 or more zombies staggered through central Stockholm, baying for brains, chewing lumps of bloody flesh and generally showing off their blood-soaked entrails and underwear.

I would love to link to this, but there doesn’t seem to be any kind of main organisation involved. Zombies, it appears, are organisational anarchists, with no central coordination. They live (or die) for the day.

Check out the Facebook group (Stockholm Zombie Walk) if you’re into that kind of thing. And you should be. 

The next Zombie Walk in Stockholm is in October and I will definitely be there.

As long as there’s lots of brains.

/ paddy

J. B. S. Haldane is mad scientist of the day. Born 1892, he was naturally interested in a whole lot of things (as were most learned gentlemen of the day) and did pioneering work in the effects of high pressure on human bodies. This work was vital in understanding how the human body reacted when, for example, diving, and it was not a sure thing that divers of that era would return to the surface with their minds and/or bodies intact.

To do this work Haldane used a scary-looking metal chamber, where he could put his victims and watch them squirm as he increased the air pressure and introduced carbon monoxide and/or elevated levels of oxygen.

He was also happy to jump into the pressure chamber himself and suffered numerous injuries from his experiments, including near-lethal gas poisoning, damaged ribs and the occasionally blown-out ear drum.

Which brings us to the quote by which we should remember this great man:

“The drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment”

Mad scienists – now where would we be without them?

/ paddy

A favourite anecdote of mine concerns Salvador Dali, who, it cannot be denied, was a very interesting guy.

Apparently Dali liked to eat out, with large groups of friends in tow, but was not so fond of paying the bill. So he made a point of paying using a check from his checkbook and, just before handing the check over, scribbled a little drawing on the back and signed it.

And now the owner, suddenly in possession of a signed Dali, would usually just frame it and hang it on the wall and show it to his friends instead of cashing it at the bank.

He was also in the habit of giving away signed blank canvases to interesting people to help them along with their Dali forgeries, and generally just fuck with our heads.

Isn’t art just great?

/  paddy

So I spent a good deal of the last few years thrashing Macs. Or, more correctly, thrashing the Mac users who are convinced that a shiny piece of hardware makes them in some way “cool”. I also had the misfortune of working in multimedia company where one or two of these “cool people” insisted on using Macs and made life hell for the rest of us, with font problems, format problems and so on.

But then a few things happened. Thing 1 was that I went to the Adobe Max convention in San Francisco and saw that 80% of the people there – some of the geekiest tech people in the world – had MacBooks. Hmm, I thought, interesting.

And thing 2 was that I experienced the pain of trying to do my irritating twice yearly Windows install on a crappy PC laptop. And after a few days of this my facade cracked. So I marched to my local Mac shop, threw far too much money on the counter and said “Mac me, my good sir!”

And, do you know, I liked the thing immediately. Once I got over the cuteness, that is. It just runs and does what its supposed to do. There is no stress, and that is what a tool is supposed to do – reduce your stress and become invisible by doing its job well.

And the touchpad – oh boy oh boy, the touchpad! Two fingers, three fingers, four, yes FOUR fingers at once! Try it out and see what I mean.

So yes, I have bitched about Macs for ages, I know! But I have also always said that the ability to change our minds in the presence of new evidence is what makes us intelligent. Or at least that’s MY defence.

Plus it IS kind of nice to sit in a cafe, sip on a latté and work on one’s poetry, looking up with a superior grin every now and then. Jolly nice indeed.

/ paddy

I have discovered a certain phenomenon over my years of working in offices in Sweden.

This is the problem of the Milk Leaver. The Milk Leaver is a person who desires to use the milk in the fridge, but discovers, when they lift up the carton, that it is about to run out.

So, instead of actually using up all of the milk  and being forced to take responsibility for it (having to fold it up, throw it in the bin, locate more milk and open it) this sad example of humanity simply leaves a tiny amount of milk in the carton, not even enough for a squirt in a small cup of coffee. This neatly passes the problem onto somebody else and allows them to use the “Who, me? But there was milk left!” defence with a clear conscience. 

Milk Leavers are annoying, in a low-key kind of way. Sure, it saves time for them, but it is laziness, and laziness of the worst kind – anonymous laziness that can not easily be discovered or blamed on anyone.

And I wonder – does this concept exist in other countries, or in other offices, or is it only me that gets irritated by it? And if it doesn’t exist elsewhere else, then what DO people consider to be the most annoying office misdemeanour?

Spill your guts, people!

/ paddy

Once again I am stuck in the choice jungle, hacking my way grimly forward with the machete of truth and justice.

Moving into a new apartment always brings lots of tedious choices, but now it’s just going bonkers. Choose Internet, choose TV, choose telephone, choose a sofa, choose a power company…does it all have to BE this difficult?

When I was a kid – blah blah blah – (fill in own anecdote-about-simple-childhood here).

And then, to add insult to injury, I was forced to get a new kind of bus card. Now it’s a nice bus card and its got a chip and all and you can open doors and things without removing it from your pocket. But it comes in 5 colours so I had to choose which colour I wanted when I bought it.

Hello, why do I CARE what colour it is? It will be in my WALLET and I will never have to see it, that’s the whole POINT. Too much choice is not good for us, it’s a terrible disease of society. Just give me the default and stop asking me stupid questions. In fact I think I will print up a t-shirt – “Just give me the default”.

And then comes one choice more – a new TV. Will it be black or grey? Will it be fat or thin? How thin? Really thin or really REALLY thin? Will it be normal, plasma, sausage compatible or HD?

HD TV, if the ads are to be believed, will make me happier, because its better to watch the same old crap with some more pixels. And we all know that  Happiness = Pixels/Pi.

But what KIND of pie..?

/ paddy