London :(

I have a psychological thing with this city now...Its absolutely beyond the cognitive capacities of the average person to understand how much I dislike London. Its to the point that even passing through is unbelievably unpleasant to me. I fly into one of its airports that is like an hour outside of the city. I think that big financial scam of a city planned ahead of time to have all of its local airports so far away that you have to pay for overpriced bus tickets after arriving to actually get to the city...in this case my bus ticket is almost as much money as my flight from Sweden to Sodom. I have to get to another of its airports like an hour outside the city. There is a bus that runs from the one airport to the other. It costs about 40 dollars and is 3-4 hours depending on what time you take it. So its cheaper and takes less time to fly from Stockholm to London then it is to get from one part of London to the other. I would say that this is really stupid, but thats a bit tautological when speaking of London. I will say though that this is the first time I have dreaded a flight to the US not because of the flight itself, or the fact that I have to leave where I am (more on this later)...I am dreading this flight because of the 12 hours I have to spend in London. I am not 100% thrilled about leaving Stockholm either...but for legal purposes this is necessary anyway so its no big deal. I am just tired of having to be in different places all the time. When you only stay in a country for a couple months it feels like a several month lay-over. You cannot begin a life, you cannot make friends and such because you have to leave for almost two months...so you may as well wait till you get back. Its this waiting to have a normal life, going on for nearly two years now, that I am so tired of. This has nothing to do with this particular trip to the US because it is necessary as I said...its the necessity in general of it that is so frustrating. When I get back here it seems like it will just be something else. I am like an abused dog at this point...I expect the worse-case scenario in all cases...I am used to not knowing anybody where I am, having no human interaction, etc...I am really ready for it to end. To stay in the same place for a couple years at least without one to two month trips to other places.

Mina Vänner

Got some cool news yesterday. My friends from London are coming into town. The guy who works for the NFL will be getting here tomorrow and staying for ten days for the European youth championships in American football. Could mean that I get to see a game or two as well. The other guy, who has recently moved to Dublin, is coming the following Friday for the weekend. We were all friends in London.

The budget is getting microscopic at this point though. I am fine to get through the next two weeks as I have been going, but getting through it with visitors is a different story. I have to start brainstorming some free and fun activities! I have told them that I really don't have the money to be doing much so they know...just have to convert some more English money to get a better idea. I was going to try to hang on to English money cause its more valuable, but its only two more weeks. At this point I am fairly certain that I will have nothing left when I get back to America because my rent for August to hold my apartment is 200 British pounds...I have 250 left right now. So I will not be doing anything when I get back to America...which is fine cause I don't want to.

Sun Damage

I could probably start taking heroin six times a day, chase it with a bottle of whiskey and a game of Russian Roulette; and I will still die sooner from the sun exposure I have gotten up to this point. I have bad sun damage on my face...blotchy skin basically. I am rarely in the sun these days for long periods of time, just as long as my run is or however long it takes me to walk to where I am going...yet my face is still blotchy. I guess this is the one good thing about never being able to surf again, reduced sun exposure.

I was going to go to the beach today for a swim and I decided against it based entirely on this. If I can find a place to do real swims then I will go, but I am not doing the beach again without surfing or serious swimming. If I am going to die at 29 from sun exposure it is absolutely not going to be from laying on a towel and sweating in the sand!

I should get a check-up...but...and this brings me to my next semi-rant...since I am uninsured and poor this is out of my means. I have decided that the whole "be healthy" thing is basically rich people talking to themselves. Try eating healthy on a 15 dollar a week budget, try exercising without be able to pay for facilities or on top of a 70 hr a week job. Get regular check-ups? Yeah, pay for my insurance, or the cost of health care without it. Try sleeping well with a bad diet and no exercise. Then try correcting your diet and activity level based on the eviscerated metabolic rate that results from sitting all day at work, eating improperly and then not exercising. Ha! Yeah, class is not an issue anymore...I think the only thing that is universal across classes now is how stupid and deluded people are.

Mitt Liv

I have two favorite tv shows right now...one American and one English...both, surprisingly, reality shows. For these shows I will change my routine to enable viewing. The first is , So You Think You Can Dance, the dance competition rip off of American Idol. The main difference is that this show is not an offense to its art. American Idol is kind of like a parasite on music, not to mention it is amazingly stupid. So You Think You Can Dance certainly has its stupid moment, the judges in some cases, the ridiculously contrived plot narratives added to all the contestants, but generally speaking it is tons of fun. The dancing is almost all good.

The other is an English show where Gordon Ramsey, a famous English chef (oxymoron?) goes to a failing restaurant and tries to whip the staff and business into shape. Gordon Ramsey is a self-righteous prick and that alone is interesting...but I like all the cooking and stuff. Plus, two of my old flatmates in London were chefs at Gordon Ramsey restaurants so it makes it interesting in a personal way.

Teknologi och Tid

All distances in time and space are shrinking. Man now reaches over-night, by plane, places which formerly took weeks and months of travel. He now receives instant information, by radio, of events which he formerly learned about only years later, if at all. The germination and growth of plants, which remained hidden throughout the seasons, is now displayed publicly in a minute, on film. Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today's street traffic. Moreover, the film attests to what it shows by presenting also the camera and its operators at work. The peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication.

Man puts the longest distances behind him in the shortest time. He puts the greatest distances behind himself and thus puts everything before him at the shortest range.

Yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is least remote from us in point of distance, by virtue of its picture on film or its sound on the radio, can remain far from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness.

What is nearness if it fails to come about despite the reduction of the longest to the shortest intervals? What is nearness if it is even repelled by the restless abolition of distances? What is nearness if, along with its failure to appear, remoteness also remains absent?

What is happening here when, as a result of the abolition of great distances, everything is equally far and equally near? What is this uniformity in which everything is neither far nor near-- is, at it were, without distance?

Everything gets lumped together into uniform distancelessness. How? Is not this merging of everything into the distanceless more unearthly than everything bursting apart?

Heidegger, "Das Ding"

Where is My Mind

I spent 5 hours on Saturday at the library with a German and Greek dictionary and one of my books for my dissertation. How many pages was I able to finish? 15...15 pages! I am exhausted. I cannot wait to get this done.

In a perhaps related development, my brain is starting to shut down. I have a really hard time remembering day to day things. I have had this kind of a thing since I moved to London and I assumed it was just stress. I am fine remembering the stuff I read, what I am working on, etc...but if I have to remember something like a daily task it is hard. Its not like things slip my mind, like "oh yeah! I was supposed to do that." It is more like I know I am supposed to do things and I cannot remember if I did them no matter how hard I try. I need evidence that I have done a thing I was supposed to have done in order to know I did it. Receipts, notes to myself, and saved emails serve this purpose.

The second thing is even more bizarre. This too I think may be stress, lack of rest, and maybe confusion with the languages. When I am taking notes in hand I find myself writing the letters in words out of order. I spell them right, but take a word like "understand," in this case I may write the "r" or the "s" first and then write from the center to the sides. Or sometimes I will write the 3rd letter or something first, then the 5th and then I fill in the rest of the letters if I have left enough space. In my mind I am not doing this! If I were not looking at the word as I wrote it then I would not know that I was writing it out of order cause it comes out normal. Its especially odd because I watch it happen with my eyes, but in my head its as though I am telling my hand to do it the right way and my hand does whatever it wants. This does not happen all the time, but when it starts happening it happens a lot. The only way to make it stop is to take a break. It happens more when I am writing a word in German or Swedish but it happens in English too.

God Save the (Future) Queen

Today is Crown Princess Victoria's birthday...happy birthday! Lots of Swedish flags around town today...I think the Swedish flag is my favorite.

Land of the Free

I have made a fairly difficult decision. I am not going to California while I am back in my favorite country next semester. I cannot afford it, and as everything is falling apart now (predictably) my main priority is appeasing the vultures and getting back to Sweden.

Ein Ereignis und Tumba

These are some pictures from the countryside where I live. Idyllic is a good way to put it. There is a rainbow in some of them, but it did not come out well.

Yesterday was a pretty eventful day in the end. First of all, its been established beyond a reasonable doubt that I am obsessed with Mozart's Requiem. I went to Kulturhuset again yesterday to listen to it and when I got to the counter the lady just laughed, "The Requiem again?" The reading I am doing right now is really depressing and that piece is a nice touch. The other thing that happened is that one of the stupid cats peed on my bed. At the top so it got everything including my pillow and hugging pillow. If anyone has a good method for getting cat-pee out of a mattress let me know. My war against the "fat cat" and "bones" continues. I know one of them is smarter than me, the other is so dumb that it would not have even existed to this point without human aid. The best thing I have come up with to this point is leaning my suitcase against the door before I leave. When it closes the suitcase falls against it and jams it.

Today I have a meeting at the university to try to get my paperwork in order for a visa. I am enrolled in this seminar solely to get a visa, so if it fails me there then I am not doing it...and I am in trouble. I have to try to arrange some federal loans, which is about for a foreign university as much fun as cat-pee on your bed. This is just to demonstrate to Sweden that I am financially fit to live here. I hope not to use much of it at all and get a job by November or December. The plan is Sweden or bust now though! I am fully committed. I give up on San Diego at this point...Mom and dad, thanks in advance for the help you are going to be giving me to arrange my paperwork :)

Lyssna på Musik

On my way home yesterday I could here the faint sounds of tragic, yet frivolous, music from the direction of Östermalmtorget. I thought I should go check it out, given that I pretend to be a patron of the arts. It turns out that the state puts on free orchestral performances in this square a couple times a week.

Its a nice square really. It is right along the sea and it has a big fountain and bench-style terraced concrete seating around a small outdoor amphitheatre. I sat on the statue in the center...I had heard this piece before but I could not remember the title or composer...perhaps my greatest achievement to date was winning a contest in elementary school where a couple seconds of a classical piece was played...you had to write the title and composer. I got every one of them right including punctuation! Since then I have been an abject failure at everything I do :)

It was Shostakovich though, a Russian composure from the first half of the 20th century. I had listened to him in one of my "study" sessions in the listening room at Copley Library in San Diego. Usually these were just "open the window to the garden and sit and listen to records" sessions more than study sessions. It was a good place to escape the heat and debauchery of Pacific Beach. Ah, if only the revolution would hurry up and come that way all the people that disgust me can be forced into voluntary labor so that me and my friends can live a Utopic existence of surfing, art and philosophy!

Soooo Hot!

Please, please Stockholm...refit the trains with more than two windows per car. I know you all enjoy the sauna, but this is a bit much. Its like when I used to live in TX and had no A/C in my car. I keep a spare shirt in my backpack because I know for certain that when I get off the train I will be soaked. Generally, I am sweating the entire day...and I really do not like to sweat when I am not moving. This is why, when I have to choose between extremely hot or extremely cold, I prefer extremely cold. I can get under a blanket or put on extra clothes and feel fine when its cold. I do not think I have been comfortable in a week. I sweat when I am sleeping, eating, on a train, right before and right after I get out of the shower, when I brush my teeth, when I am studying...

Paris Hilton

They play some music video from her all the time here...do they play it a lot there. We should be fighting wars against things like this...this is real terror. I wonder why people even bother attacking us when we are so clearly nearing the end of a long rot from the inside. Traces of the world's night.

Grunge

I am watching the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and I was struck by a really odd thought. The way Kurt Cobain is dressed in this video could land him on an American Eagle poster, or an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue today. The exact clothes he is wearing I imagine are trash that had not been washed in weeks, but this look has been so packaged and consumed that it is part of the middle now. How weird...given how marginal it was in 1991.

W

I just read a review of W's Larry King interview. He and Laura were interviewed I guess for his birthday. The consensus was that Bush did what he always does, spout the party line and say dumb things from time to time...and that Laura was good and poised. People used to wonder how much influence Hillary had because she was assertive and powerful...and generally since Americans do not like the idea of successful and assertive women that made people uncomfortable. Laura plays the 1950s housewife perfectly (this is a luxury that multimillionaires have) and people are comfortable with that. She "knows her place." She has a lot of cunning, a real PR whiz. I think she should lead W around on a leash everywhere they go.

Prozac Nation

I have noticed a disturbing trend lately. The tone of these emails has taken a bit too chipper a turn for my liking. Consequently, I am so content that its making me queasy...when I get happy I am reflexive enough to take a step back and say "so this is it, this is all fulfillment takes?" That depresses me...being happy is more of a downer than being unhappy...its a slyly dangerous state! But fear not, as I begin to swim through the paperwork and bureaucracy of trying to stay here and descend into poverty I will be back to my old ways :) Exploring my options I think from now on it may be wisest to get married to somebody when I want to move there and get a divorce when I am ready to leave...less hassle.

Single White Male Looking for a Visa:
I am willing to provide anything but human companionship and money, I am something slightly more or less than human and I do not have money. Currently I am employed as a well-educated professional deadbeat. My prospects are slim, but we are all going to the same place in the end anyway so who is keeping count. I would offer references, but my most recent relationships have been with the works slightly off-kilter dead German philosophers. I was able to maintain a steady relationship with the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant though...that did not really end so well...I left his work for King Lear and Zarathustra...have not really been the same since.

Frankrike!!!

1-0 France after a PK for a "tripping" Henry in the box ;) I think that may have been divinely inspired justice against the Portugese Weasels.

Tourists

I was walking in the city yesterday and somebody stopped me:

Tourist: "Excuse me, do you speak English?"

Me: "Yes"

Tourist: "Oh, ok, good...can you try to help me find this address?"

Me: "Yeah, I know where that is, you are on the right island, and if you take a left at this next street then you will be on the right street and its just on your left."

Tourist: "Tack så mycket! Its amazing how well everyone here speaks English!"

Me: "Yeah, it is...albeit considerably less amazing when they are American."

I like how everyone learns to say "thank you" in the native language. Anyway, I thought that was kind of funny. I must say though, my attitude on tourism has completely changed. Tourists in Europe are nice, excited, they seem to have good priorities...and they are always having fun! Of course, they get in the way sometimes and its better for me, a misanthrope, to have less people...but its a welcome change from San Diego and that goes for all three European cities I have lived in. They are here to actually do productive things...in San Diego tourists come there for a three day pass to act like a jerk on a beach in another city. The same tourist, who in Stockholm has a mile wide smile on their face as they try to find the palace, is a belligerent drunk slob with a sunburn in Pacific Beach.

That said, I actually hate the 4th of July and that is from living in California. I hate the summer there generally as I have said I believe, but the 4th is the worse. I cut a wide berth from my beach on that day unless the surf is really good. One time it was, and my main memory is sloppy drunk people in the inside section who only get in the water to pee. They laugh like idiots when you go by, never thinking that it may not be safe to be swimming, semi-conscious, in front of a fast-moving piece of fiberglass.

Summer here is 5000x better than in SD...I do not miss it at all right now. Fast-forward to November here and you will be hearing a different tune!

God Bless America!

(picture sent by a friend)

But can I still cheer for Sweden even though they've already lost!

Speed-dating

Well, I have to confess, it looked kind of fun. At the end things took a turn for the worst when they called the people over, gave them their "matches" and told them how they could get online in order to get in touch with them and "meet thousands of other people on the Internet." So it almost takes the look of a marketing ploy by some Internet dating company. This is a bit of a fad though. I heard about it a couple times in England. Anyway, I guess I have to support anything that requires people making face-to-face conversation with other people...even if it is in a perverse "dawn of civilization" kind of way. This sort of operates like a trick. People today complain all the time about "how hard it is to meet people." The fact that enough people are complaining about how hard this is and that a whole market of so-called solutions has grown around it suggests it might not be that hard, anyway...this tricks people into thinking they can meet someone in a couple minutes and the initiative is given...kind of like getting a cheeseburger at McDonald's or a fax from Tokyo. The catch is that you find out that you still have to be a human being when the situation arises. We are not very good at that anymore, but when we are forced or deceived into it rarely, though from time to time, we recover a touch of our species-being again. So I offer my tentative support to speed-dating so long as it is not organized by people who are trying to sell subscriptions to Internet dating sites. I still think their are better ways to meet people, but we are too far gone to waste hope on at this point. But what the heck, you can get a 99 cent cheeseburger at McDonald's in a couple minutes! There is always that...

NEEEEEEEEEEJJJJJJ!!

I came home to eat lunch, cause I am too cheap to eat lunch out. I popped on the TV while enjoying my peanut-butter and jelly sandwich (tonight I am having canned green beans and a frozen vegetarian eggroll, for all those that doubt my essential Americanness!).

Not much on, but "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" is on. Generally this show bugs me because its constructive in a negative way, but today I am tossing a flag! This "straight guy" is really just a queer guy without a queer eye I think...I think its a scam, this guy is playing straight in order to get new furniture and clothes.

I am not sure how I feel about this...I guess more power to him. I want them to come buy me new clothes too, but I do not want to be on TV and I do not need new furniture. Ha! He is crying again because they bought him a new line of shaving cream! Oh geez...tonight they are taking him out to something called "speed-dating" where you spend three minutes with like a dozen girls in some place like a bar or something. I am firmly against this.

I absolutely hate these gimmicks towards recreating the humanity in our species. "Ok, you need a social element, 19 hours a day on the computer is not working, we got this thing where in three minutes you can talk to another human being!!!" What is WRONG with people! Its like a never-ending sympton to our disease in the stream of stupid remedies we concoct! Ok, I have to go watch the queer guy with a straight eye pretend he is interested in these girls three minutes at a time!

En Glass

Swedish people seem to like ice cream a lot. My little sister would like that cause she likes ice cream a lot...so does my mom. I am indifferent toward ice cream. Its nice from time to time, but it would not cross my mind to get some. I once had a friend say to me in college, "And you know what else is wrong with you!!! You don't eat ice cream!"

Swedish people seem to be constantly with ice cream in hand when I walk around the city. There are little cafes, ice cream cafes really, that are overflowing with people. I think this is part of the whole "worship the summer" thing, which I am supportive of generally.

I still have not had ice cream and I probably won't, but I am happy everybody else is having ice cream around me...it adds to the general blissfulness of summer in Stockholm. There was also big newspaper article about what kind of ice cream Swedish people like best...they interviewed Swedes from around the country...what won? Vanilla, and chocolate was second...well, nobody ever said that Sweden was exciting, but its a solid nice :)

Swedish Hip-Hop

You may remember that classic of Swedish hip-hop that I mentioned a couple months ago, "Det Går Bra Nu." Well, the artist extraordinaire behind that masterpiece is back with the follow up. I missed the titles at the beginning and lost interest before the end so I do not know its name. Swedish hip-hop seems to have one thing in common...it all looks like an MTV sketch. The best thing is that it seems to caricature American hip-hop, which is also usually stupid and a joke.

If France loses to Portugal I am going to be emotionally devastated.