Hey look, I managed to sustain life! Not only did I avoid eradicating life: I actually made it comfortable enough to thrive as well. So here are some tasty tomatoes grown on my balcony.
How they tasted? Hmm, well the insides were a bit more sour than I would have hoped for ( but then again, I hoped for tomatoes that tasted like sugar candy ), but the outer shell tastes like a really fresh tomato smells. That is: awesome.
Yesterday I finally got to see Sage Francis live at Debaser. I was bored to the point of splitting my skull open by the supporting acts... they were not bad in any way, they were just so very generic that bad would be at least interesting in comparison. But at around midnight "The crater face steps in". And the crowd goes ballistic. This guy has stage presence and there is nothing generic about him. There are no babes, guns and cash... or is there... there is actually, but the babes are ex wives, the guns are water guns and cash was named Johnny. And God did not kill him, no sirree.
So if you know what is good for you:
For some reason I get asked a lot why I write in English when it is not my native tongue. It is because of a lot of reasons actually:
The other day a guy at work came up to me and handed me a document. He wondered if it contained an accurate description of a new part of our system, and if it could serve as a base for writing the test cases for it.
I eyed trough it and was struck by how good it was. It covered all that was needed without getting into any non-necessary detailing. It was well written and logically formatted. In short: It was an excellent base for writing the test cases ( and for developing the module in the first place ( and for throwing you hands in the aeya in general ) ).
I asked the guy who wrote it and he showed me the front page.
Author: Me. Apparently I wrote it myself a few months back.
Its not often you are able to give yourself a really honest and unselfish praise, but it seems a bit of amnesia goes a long way ( I mean, I could have asked him "What kind of a moron wrote this crap?" ).
It is kind of strange and sweet and... stuff, how a really heavy rainstorm can make a group of grown men (but not really that grown up at all, mind you) wallow in childhood memories.
At lunch today I was sitting with some of my coworkers outside a restaurant when the heavens opened up. Many times over actually. When the first wave hit: we all went "Wow, cool!" and smiles spread all around. Then, when we thought it had peaked, if increased the cat and dog ratio even more. And then again, and actually again after that. When I looked around I witnessed wide eyes and smiles all around the restaurant.
And then it happened: Everyone started telling cute tales about running in the rain as a kid, going to sleep with the rain hammering down on the roof above, being a bit scared of the lightning and thunder but not really because the cup of hot cocoa made you feel all snuggled up and secure.
There is something about natures raw displays of force that just stumps you... Damn how I love it. Gives you the opportunity to step back and chill the f**k out every once in a while.
As I wrote in an earlier blog entry: I've now been without TV for a week. It was not hard at all, and I'm in no real hurry turning it back on any time soon. I've actually gotten a lot out of not staring at that stupid box:
Fixed up a corner of my balcony with plants and general coziness. The furniture is still awful, but its about a gazillion percent more cozy now. I've actually started using it, something I hardly ever did before.I watched the entire League Of Gentlemen TV series recently, and for some reason this was the sketch I laughed the hardest at:
(Embedding is disabled by youtube, so click the image to see it there)
...what makes it even more funny ( disturbing? ) is that later in the series: there is a reference to the aired commercial in a conversation that makes it apparent that this was actually the actress they ended up using in the final version of the commercial :D
I got a little reminder from the Police today. They reminded me to my great joy that I am indeed a criminal. Perhaps one of the worst kinds of criminal.
I have been found guilty of offensive behavior and for this must pay 800SEK to become a better person. I doubt this fine will make me a better person, in fact I'm pretty sure I'm kind of a pretty good person already.
Here is what I did: I was sitting with a couple of friends from work, having an after work beer on a Friday night, at a bar on the edge of Humlegården and after 2 beers I really had to go all of a sudden. So I jumped over the really low fence and went over to this huge tree and did my stuff. This is where the fun starts. I hear some shouting behind me as I'm getting ready to return to my friends: Three Police officers are jogging towards me with faces full of non-smiling.
They never shout at me, but for a really long time they stand around me saying stuff like "Didn't you know this was illegal"
, "What were you thinking", "We can't accept this as an ID" (my drivers licence had a crack in it) and "We'll have to wait here for a while" (They needed to call station to make sure I wasn't convicted of some other heavy crimes). All of the time these guys had the facial expressions saying "This is a very serious situation, we must be serious and
alert, this guy may be very dangerous".
All I could think about all this time was "NO: Don't say it!, NO: Don't start smiling, NO: Do NOT make a joke now, they will NOT appreciate it and will NOT think it is funny".
All in all I took up 30 minutes of three Police officers time on a Friday night because I peed on a tree in a park. A big tree, nobody could see my thingie ( the tree is located at GPS RT90 coordinate [X=6581868,Y= 1629082] b.t.w, pretty big huh :) ). Was this well spent tax money? Did I waste this tax money, or did they? I know they were wasted.
Where is the line drawn between silly and offensive?
I just took the tube ( tube = metro, subway, sossesnöret, grävlingen, bunneltranan) home from a nice date just now and noticed a behaviour that I've got myself. That does not make it any less weird. Cellphones are used to make the user look occupied. I mean: sometimes you probably play a really cool game, but I suspect that most of the time people just click back and forth between menus/flip between SMS:es/do nothing at all really. I've seen people do it, I've done it myself. It's kind of the same behavior that makes me uncomfortable sitting in a café alone unless I've got a book or magazine to read.
It's kind of a new version of staring with huge ( fake ) interest at the commercials. Both the new and the old versions are tools to avoid eye contact with your fellow travelers... Why are we so desperate not to interact?
The last time someone spoke to you on the tube/bus: was your initial reaction "Oh no"? I mean that split millisecond before your brain sorted out that the guy just asked the time... And as you started fishing out your cellphone to see what time it is: did the thought "Is my cell too cool, is he just checking if I'm worth sticking up later?" cross your mind?
Why haven't I ever asked the lad/lass across from me: "Hey, I'm meeting a friend for coffee in 10 minutes, do you know a cozy café in the south part of town?"
I got around to looking through the vacation photos from my trip to Italy today. We were sitting in Trastevere in Rome drinking several bottles of totally excellent red wine(thanks Silvia!), when I looked up and saw the awesome sight of these three signs. This photograph kind of explains why Italians don't seem to really care that much about the traffic rules... they can be pretty ambiguous. I think what these particular signs are trying to say is:
"This is a one way street, commoooon, dare to go in the opposite direction! I dare you! Nah, just kidding, you cant go in here at all."
Or perhaps a seasoned Italian driver can explain it better?
