Squirm

Hmmm, I wonder how many points “squirm” would net me on a nice dark blue square..?

Anyway, good day to you all, and here are some things that make me squirm:

1) Chewing a wooden ice-cream stick (or thinking about chewing a wooden ice-cream stick)

2) Finding one of those brown bits in the middle of a potato

3) People who have those bluetooth headsets stuck permanently to their heads as if they are very important and have loads of phone calls to handle

4) Rocket (ruccola for the Swedes)

That is all.

/ paddy

The Diesel top blues

Those of you who are paying attention may recall my poignant story about a certain Diesel top and a certain incompetent tailor. I mentioned then that I occasionally haunt eBay looking for a replacement, but that I rarely find one.

Well I found one yesterday. The size was correct, the style was correct - everything in fact was correct except for one small detail. It was baby blue. But, in my feverish shopping frenzy, this didn’t stop me, oh no sir it did not.

And now I am the rather bemused owner of a pastel blue Diesel top, which as we speak is winging its way here from the UK. Total impulse shopping price: 12 pounds including postage. Not bad for a Diesel garment, but perhaps a tad too much for one that I will probably never wear.

As I pushed the “buy” button I had visions of dying the top from blue to dark grey. “Yes,” I mused, “It is but a bagatelle. Any dyer worth their salt will surely manage it.” And to help them along I have fiddled with photoshop and produced the above image showing the colour I actually want.

This isn’t impossible, surely? Somebody out there - please, anybody at all! - must know of a place in the Stockholm area that will dye clothes for hopeless eBay addicts in exchange for currency. How hard can it be?

And if not, then at least I have learned myself a valuable lesson. And 12 pounds for a valuable lesson is also quite a bargain. Right?

/ paddy

My Thing

Has it really been a week since my last posting? My, how time flies when you’re not blog-writing. Anyway, today’s topic: my thing.

Now before you all break down into fits of uncontrolled sniggering, let me just explain that my thing is my superpower, that special and slightly useless ability that sets me aside from the unwashed masses.

My principal thing is the power to always know the correct time. Without having looked at a clock in hours, I can make an estimate of the time which is always correct to within 15 minutes, and is usually correct to 5.

My minor thing is the ability to turn off my blinking reflex. This makes me unbeatable in staring contests and slightly unnerving to hang out with.

H8’s thing is that he can roll his stomach muscles, an extremely disturbing thing to witness. And the delightful A. appears to have an uncanny ability to always pick the best thing on the menu.

There are also people who seem to know their way around without using a map, a compass and a GPS receiver, and who can uncannily find their way back to a place having been there only once. These people scare me as I myself have a severe locational handicap.

And so, at the risk of being obvious, I kindly ask you all to tell me about your things. And please try and keep the conversation in the comments going for a good few days so I can continue to be lazy and avoid posting for another week or so. Not that I don’t care for you all dearly but, you know, spring and all that…

/ paddy

Gentlemen of the Web

I miss men’s clubs (the ones without strippers, I mean). I know I’ve never been to one, but I miss the whole idea and I wonder why it is suddenly “forbidden” to have them.

I know of a few “feminist” groups where men are excluded: self defense groups, support groups, even a feminist sewing circle where men are not allowed. And I think that’s just fine. Really, the world is much more interesting when there are places in it where I am not allowed to go.

But men-only groups get a much harder time of it. Men-only groups will find themselves quickly invaded by irate wimmin waving banners of one sort or another and demanding equality. Well in this area we HAVE equality - woman can have their segregated groups, and so can men. In what way is this not equal?

I love the idea of the Victorian Gentleman’s club. Dressing up and hanging out in a room filled with leather furniture, and other men, talking about politics, sipping brandy, cutting deals, spewing out anecdotes and comparing mustaches. What could be finer than that? And not a tempting ankle nor softly-curving neck in sight.

I realise that this will make me quite unpopular, but I propose to start a new Gentleman’s club. It will involve food, brandy, cigars, leather, talk about modern technology, and lots of deal-cutting. It will be men only, aimed at professionals in the web and Internet business, and it will be called, as you may have guessed by now, “Gentlemen of the Web”.

I will start sending out invitations as soon as I can be arsed to make them. So in the meantime, Gentlemen, dust off your best jackets and get to work on that facial hair, because there are cigars to cut, feminists to annoy and many wonderful deals to be made.

/ Paddy (ChairMAN)

Jobs for morons

Behold, this article in the wonderful Swedish daily, Expressen, home of all things mediocre, sensational and mildly embarrassing.

The article is about the latest adventures of the crisis-ridden supermarket chain ICA. They apparently put up a movie on their web site, the latest in a very popular series of soap-opera ads regarding the goings-on at a fictitious store.

In this ad a “help wanted” sign was shown for applying to work in the store, and a phone number was visible. Unfortunately the phone number was a real one, and it wasn’t for an ICA store.

Now I am with the ICA people on this one - what is the problem with putting a phone number on an ad? Surely people will know that an ad is not reality. Surely they will.

Well, apparently not. People called in. Lots of them. And even when it became apparent that the number in question was to an innocent family and not a fictional supermarket, they just kept on ringing.

This really scares me. I mean, you used to hear all these stories about people in the US assaulting “evil” soap-opera stars when they happen to see them in a shop, or on a beach and I always wondered - can there really be people who can function well enough to get up in the morning and put thier shoes on but cannot tell TV from reality?

I guess there are, and not only in the US, but everywhere, even sexy secular Sweden.

However, if I were the family, I would have taken a different tack after call number 2. I would have invited the callers for an interview, and given them the name of one of the head people at the ICA central office. Then he or she could deal with the problem of a thousand frothing-at-the-mouth crazies showing up of a tuesday morning and demanding jobs that don’t exist at stores that don’t exist.

And anyway I bet the family who were “terrorised” are only out after compensation, after having sold their story to the dodgy newspapers. So they probably deserved everything they got, the bastards.
/ paddy

The Bike Shop

So I cycled home from town today, in the balmy dark of the winter-that-does-not-come, with my shiny new bike lights and reflectors. But I am getting ahead of myself.

My half-crappy bike, you see, was not well. It was experiencing chain trouble, and gear trouble, and a few other unspecified mechanical ailments. So I took it to the bike shop which has become, for me, THE bike shop. The only bike shop in the universe. And here it is.

This is a shop in the old style, run by a man and his helpers: people who like bikes, who care about their customers and who do their jobs with passion. I love those guys. I fucking LOVE them, I tell you!

This is in stark contrast to the bike shop where I bought the bike, the ubiquitous Cykelringen (The Bike Ring). This is a loud, shiny superstore with mass-produced Chinese crap, idiotic staff and “sales” that never seem to end. They sell rubbish, and they know it, and they will not help you with a damned thing unless they are forced to by either a lawyer or a stout length of wood.

I had trouble with an expensive lock I bought there a while ago. It seized up after one year and one day, and I took it back only to be told: “Sorry, your one year guarantee it up, we can’t do shit, and we don’t want to. Please go away.”

Here I will never go again. And neither, my Stockholm readers, will you. Cykelringen - avoid. Or feel my wrath.

So the nice man in the happy bike shop unscrewed a few things, fiddled with them and put them back on, and my bike was as good as new. “You can’t spend so much time on a bike of such bad quality,” he grumbled, and I loved him for it. Then when I tried to pay him, he said, “No, no, that’s on the house.”

I felt like hugging him. Instead I bought a bunch of new lights and reflectors, which I anyway needed, and which he installed while I waited.

So people, to summarise: go here for all your bike-related needs. It’s the only bike shop you will ever need, and, handily enough, it’s right across the street from Stockholm’s best Irish pub. So you can while away an afternoon sipping Guinness and watching kind people working. Does life get any sweeter than that?

/ paddy

My lance waves free

So I started my own company a few months ago in order to take on freelance assignments, have more control over how I work and take my first steps into the murky world of fiddling my expenses.

Nerdy paragraph warning: I am a freelance Flash developer, which means I get to do all manner of kinky web tools and banners and even games. It is highly skilled and slightly incomprehensible work and I quite happily charge through the nose for it. Nerdy paragraph ends.

The tax rate in Sweden is rather ridiculously high - much more than half of what I earn on a project goes to the big grey building in town where such things are calculated.

However, there are many bright sides. Since I already have a day job, any money I earn goes directly to those nice people at the Bishop’s Arms. I get to decide who I work with and have a lot more creative freedom.

I also have the option of writing off things against tax. So every single piece of electronics purchased (cameras, laptops, shiny Christmas gifts) is essentially free.

And on top of that, I can write off eating out in restaurants as “customer representation”. If I pay close attention, and keep the tax rolling in, I could in theory eat out for free forever.

It’s an odd system - pay tax and then be practically forced to buy stuff in order to claim it back. Now I have started to see it as a “waste” if I don’t find something to blow my tax dollars on.

The dream situation would be to quit my current job, find something entirely unrelated to do a few days a week and make up the difference by freelancing. Then I could move to that house in the country (with a certain someone) and settle down to produce babies, carrots, novels and kinky Flash banners.

So what, exactly, am I waiting for?

/ paddy

Slagging off the left

It has been pointed out to me that I spend a lot of time slagging off the right-wing parties in Sweden, and in the world in general. This is probably a little one-sided for a person who claims to be suspicious of most politicians.

And it is, I suppose, but it’s just that the people with the power are always such juicy targets and the power in Sweden at the moment rests in the hands of the centre-right alliance with the snappy name of “The Alliance”. So they tend to bear the brunt of my assaults, like it or not.

However, don’t you imagine for a moment that I am not prepared to lay into the left with an equal vigour and vim. Like their dress sense, for instance. Since when has it been considered central to socialism that you dress extremely badly?

Come on, you know what I’m talking about, oh yes you do. The entire spectrum of leftism, from the grass roots to the people waving their fists on the podiums, is plagued by a staggering inability to match more than 2 pieces of fabric.

And it’s not just the clothes: it’s the shoes; it’s the hair; and it’s the facial hair. Is this perhaps some attempt to be endearing? To create trust? To show us how “down to earth” they are? Because I do not recall ever seeing a photo of Marx or Engels in a chunky-knit sweater, scraggly ponytail and pair of second-hand combat boots. And if you have one, please let me see it.

Fidel Castro is a case in point – yes Fidel, green military IS still “in” – as are the swarms of “alternative” kids swarming about town with their Palestinian scarves (made in China) and their meticulously unwashed hair. But I am not sure why dressing like a reject from a circus highlights your connection to socialist ideals, especially when your parents have 2 cars and a boat between them and subsidise your radical lifestyle with regular injections of cash.

Above you see a few examples Behold: Göran Greider, famed Swedish leftist journalist; Lars Ohly, the leader of the Swedish Left Party; some 20-year old who will end up working in Daddy’s bank one day; and, well, the last one sort of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

Now I’m not saying anything at all about these mens’ personality, intelligence or integrity. All I’m saying here is - look at the state of them. Are we supposed to pass control of a country to people who think that “combat” is a colour and cannot even find their way down the road to a proper hairdresser?

Seriously people, get it into your heads - we will not trust you any less because you start dressing like a grown-up. Really, we won’t. And is “alternative” really “alternative” if you just go and dress like all the rest of your crusty friends? The political left are badly in need an afternoon with Trinny and Susannah followed by a good slapping about and a trip to Carlings.

And now let it not be said that I am not an equal opportunity slagger. Next please?

/ paddy

Interlude

Did you hear about the Irishman who won the Nobel prize for agriculture?

He was simply a man out standing in his own field.

/ paddy (not feeling terribly productive)

A weekend in Provence

So I’m back from France. And now I finally understand the whole thing with Provence. Holy shit it’s great down there.

Normally I avoid the “look-what-I-did-yesterday” type of blog entry, but come on now - Provence! How can I resist throwing a few photos at you?

Just click the images hereafter to embiggen them.

All other details are classified, except to say that I may start to cry at any time now that the weekend is over.

/ paddy

Free newspapers indeed

So then, fickle fame has floated away again. After almost 2 days of being WordPress blog post number one, my Star Wars article has been moved to the great spare room in the sky where it will age, gain weight and become bitter and twisted.

Still, 6000 hits in two days - not too bad. The downside of course is all the young idiot men who find their way to my blog and proceed, in very bad grammar, to diss me in the comments. “Hey asshole”, “fuck you” and so on. Brilliant. Keep it up lads - the world needs more morons. Who else is going to flip our burgers?

And so onto today’s frivolity. The Stockholm underground has a (fairly) new message rolling on its information system. Under the times of the arriving trains you will now see the text:

“For everybody’s safety and enjoyment, please take your free newspaper with you when you leave the train.”

Alright, first of all it can’t very well be my newspapers if it was free, can it? And second of all - in what way does it constitute a threat to safety? Are they worried that somebody will get a rolled-up newspaper in the eye and sue them?

And third of all - why is it suddenly my job to clean up the trains? SL, Stockholm Local Transit, has a deal with the newspaper Metro to allow it to be distributed inside their buildings. And so what do they do? They pocket the money, get us all to read the vacuous slab of non-threatening “news” and then try and give us a bad conscience for leaving it behind.

Normally I am all in favour of everybody getting stuck in to keep the world clean. But in this case, I think we should all gladly scatter these free newspapers underfoot. Maybe a protest like this would force them to get rid of it completely, and reduce the mountains of paper wasted.

And if we make as large a mess as possible, then maybe SL will be forced to use some of the profits from the Metro deal to pay some extra cleaners. The tight scummy gits.

Well I’m off to France now. Expect to see my next entry in about a week.

/ paddy

Death Star Whitewash

The power of the media is immense, especially when it comes to conflicts. It is not difficult to make your own side look like heroes, no matter what atrocities they commit. Consider, for example, the Death Star.

In the first Star Wars movie the rebels steal some plans and then destroy the Death Star space station. A quick web search reveals how many people were actually on the Death Star at the time:

* 265,675 Station crew
* 52,276 gunners
* 607,360 troops
* 25,984 Stormtroopers
* 42,782 ship support staff
* 167,216 pilots and support crew

That’s over a million people, and that’s only a conservative estimate. A million people. Excuse me, just how fucking cold-blooded are these rebels? They kill a million people and then fly back to their planet and then they give out medals?

What about the million mothers all over the Empire who lose their children, most of whom were probably conscripted? Not to mention the people who are just doing their jobs: the cleaners, and programmers, and dishwashers, and pizza chefs, and all the prisoners in the holding cells. All suddenly dead, because of upper-class twits like Princess Leia, and her lofty ideas about resorting the “old order” where her family and people like them were the ones in charge.

So the rebels think this is the way to win popular opinion - to kill a million people? Many of the Death Star military who died were probably soldiers during the old Republic and simply became the new military when the Emperor took over. And the cold-blooded bastards kill them too - thousands of their own ex-colleagues - and then they have a fucking party?

Luke Skywalker is a terrorist, guilty of massive crimes against humanity. And all of the rebels are terrorists, pure and simple, by any definition you care to use. These guys do not agree with the present democratically elected government as they are far too secular for their tastes, and so they go around recruiting farm boys like Skywalker and his buddies as X-wing cannon fodder to fight and restore the ancient theocracy and the “old ways”.

And is the Empire “evil”? Well from what we see in Epiosde 3, Palpatine appears to have been democratically elected. Sure, his regime has a fascist tinge to it, but all of the military we see in the original movies are efficient and honourable, and not at all corrupt. And just try and find a military without a fascist tinge to it.

And what did this “Evil Empire” displace? A society managed as some kind of new-age feudal system, where an accident of birth (in this case the ability to be a Jedi) guarantees you rights and privileges above all others, as well as full legal immunity. The Jedi seem to be above the law, answer to nobody and are only interested in having their religion replace all other ideologies and use it to “keep the peace”or, in other words, rule everybody forever.

It truly amazes me how these bellicose fundamentalists can be depicted as “good” and then everybody goes along with it and spends 3 movies clapping their adventures. Me included. Aren’t we all terribly terribly smart?

/ paddy