As usual I’m not nationalistic or patriotic in any way, but when big championship comes along that changes. All yellow and blue! And today was the big day for swedish soccer in the Euro2004. Versus Italy. Noone expected it to be much of a match, but hell it turned out to be the best one yet. And Zlatans equalizer… guess I can’t say “he’s not that good, he’s just hyped up by the media” because that was a helluva goal. Or to quote Irene Cara – “oh what a feeling!”.
You’d think that when I’m on sick leave I’d have some time to update this site with more updates and stuff… yeah, you’d think! But I’ve had stuff to keep me busy all the way which makes me kinda worried what it’ll be like when I actually go back to work next wednesday. But then I won’t have weeks of Star Trek to catch up on or a Dead Zone DVD box to watch. Or this good weather!
Have you heard about Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”? Michael Moore did the documentary “Bowling for Columbine” a few years back, trying to get to the bottom of “why are americans so triggerhappy”. His conclusion then is that americans are being bombarded by fear from everywhere in a way you can’t see in any other country. And now he takes it a couple of steps further by examining the Bush family & administration, how it got to power, what it’s done during that time, 9/11 (ofcourse), the two wars and the nonstop lying ofcourse. And guess what happenes when it’s all done and ready to premiere in the states? Disney decides to shelve the movie, atleast until after the presidential election. And their excuse? Nothing noble as neutrality or anything like that. No, they are afraid of what’s going to happen with Disneyland in Florida if they realease this movie and upsets the Bush family, ’cause there’s a Bush in power in Florida as well! Talk about proving the point Moore is trying to make! Fortunately it’s getting so much attention that they probably will have to release it or sell it to someone who have some balls. It’s getting awesome reviews here in Europe anyway, it was shown during the Cannes film festival. And the international release is still a go. It’s just the american’s that don’t get to see it. Isn’t that kinda screwed up? A movie made by an american about the american leadership done for americans with americans, but they don’t get to see it? I like Michael Moore. He might not be the brightest most neutral person in the world, but he’s got humor, he doesn’t take alot of suff seriously and sure as hell isn’t pretentious if you look at his wardrobe!
It’s finally over! Big Brother that is. I haven’t been watching it at all, not the swedish one anyway. I did see the italian version and even though I didn’t get shit it seemed much better than the “let’s get everyne drunk and laid”-approach they have in the swedish one. And I actually thought now that that’s over with we might read some real news in the papers. I was very wrong because their first pages was all covered with… Britney Spears! She was in Sweden for a whole day and they followed her footsteps – even interviwewed the waitress at the Sandy’s she stopped by and, get this – the actually got a copy of the credit card slip (with the credit card number blurred) signed by Britney herself. Wow, now that’s what I call news.
This weekend had all the ingredients to be absolutely awesome! Star Trek Voyager DVD box #1, two new Enterprise episodes, a Stockholm Trekkers day which usually means I get to see friends I haven’t seen in a while, the hockey championship finals, a Formula 1 race and beautiful weather. So what happened? I forgot how many times I’ve seen the first season of Voyager so I already knew all the episodes by heart, I haven’t had time to see the new Enterprise episodes, one of my best friends came down with the flu and couldn’t make it to the Stockholm Trekkers day, I got a speeding ticket, we “lost” the hockey final to Canada (again!), the F1 race was pretty boring since noone can come close to the Ferrari’s – and to put in the biggest blow – my grandmother passed away. Now I’m gonna go to bed, forget all about this weekend and try to deal with that last part.
But atleast the weather kicked ass!
They did it again. Both Expressen and Aftonbladet (two of the biggest newspapers in sweden) were, once again, running stories on their first page about… “The Farm”… a bullshit docusoap tv show here in sweden that, as far as I know, noone watches. Is there really nothing more important than that? No big exposé about politicians or power abuse somewhere? No good story about people doing heroic things? They are in so sad a state that I’m worried for them and us.
Now I’m a bit closer to defining a good april fools joke. I did two yesterday. One that was slightly believable but I didn’t put that much energy into it and it worked pretty fine. But on NP.com we went all the way with a faked CNN page about Natalie Portman getting engaged to her boyfriend. And we really did go all the way but threw some humor into it (just look at the “Related story”). And this one was believable right up to the point when you just stop to think about it. And that’s when you’d noticed those small things like the address to the site being “cnn.dnsalias.org” and everything being a link to the same page. And that one worked – flawlessly! So now I know. And now I’m off on another Finland-cruise.
I recently got “The Running Man” special edition DVD. “So what, that’s an old movie”, right? It is, but the reason it’s been re-released are the two documentaries on the DVD. Two really, REALLY, good documentaries too. The first one is about the society in “The Running Man” (with the Big Brother Is Watching You-theme) and the Patriot Act. And it’s not as far fetched as it may sound, and they make alot of good points about how not thoughtrough that Act was. For example, they point out that if the Patriot Act had been in place 150 years ago, the movement for liberating the slaves in USA would never have been allowed, the Women Suffrage would have been illegal and Marthin Luther King would’ve been thrown in jail for being unpatriotic. I think we can also add the entire american revolution to that list since it would have been illegal if the Patriot Act would have existed back then!
The other documentary was about how reality shows are becoming more and more extreme and just how far they can push it. And if there can actually be a show like “The Running Man” in the near future. So I highly recommend you buying the DVD to see the documentaries, well worth the $15 I paid for it!
Did you hear Colin Powell’s speach at Princeton? I particularly liked how he used what happened to Iraq as an example to what would happen to any other countries (Iran, North Korea and Libya that is) that tried to acquire WMD and how this event has made some countries reconsider. Wait.. did Iraq really have any WMD… nope, bad intelligence. And I don’t only mean Bush’s intelligence, or lack there of. Then he also mentioned how allies of the US needn’t worry about going into an arms race with anyone or trying to buil any WMD since US would protect them. So I guess Blair can just start dismantling their nukes? And “they” are still downplaying the importance of the fact that they were totally wrong about Iraq having any WMD when one year ago it was the reason to invade another country and overrule the UN, go against their oldest ally and getting the world opinion against them. But I guess it wasn’t that important.
I saw a little clip on CNN from some european Jewish convention and heard this big speach about anti-semitism and how it’s a growing problem in Europe and it’s a big monster that must be defeated. Maybe it’s just because of the fact that I’m not jewish or maybe it’s because Sweden is a very tolerant country, but this was news to me! I’d like to think of myself as a pretty up-to-date kinda guy, the kind that watches the news daily, doesn’t mind having CNN or Sky News on for hours, checks out news websites daily. And I’ve never heard that this was a big problem. Atleast no bigger problem than your average short sighted racism and anti-“everything that’s not us” mentality. But apparently it is.
I was hyped yesterday to see the NHL all star game. I’ve tried to see that annual thing since I like hockey and there are always swedes playing, but this year I really couldn’t do it… it was suppose to start at 9 but for 30 minutes of bringing out the stars and stripes and showing off and still no hockey they bring out Kurt Russell, who just happens to play the lead in the upcoming movie about the so called miracle (the movie is actually titled “Miracle”!) when the US college hockey team won the olympic gold, to talk about the glory of… I really don’t know cause I got fed up with the bullshit and switched over to the Osbournes. I was ok with american patriotism before, but after september 11th they’ve just gone overboard. But with a law like the Patriot Act, I guess you don’t have a choice.
And speaking of of setting new records, the Jackass crew set an all time “furthest anyone will go for a laugh” record – a guy convinced his parents to go to Las Vegas and renew their vows, Elvis style, and also imported a russian mail-order bride that one of the guys married the same day they met for the first time. That episode was just hilarious. It might have triggered the “oh what an awful state the world is in when you can mail-order a wife”-vibe in me, but it was all done in a funny way and the babe seemed happy about the situation…
Doesn’t the americans have a twisted sense for what should be shown on TV and what might be harmful for kids to see? They’ve never had a problem showing people killing people, violence in any form, no prob. But Janet Jackson’s boob pops out and OH MY GOD, that’s terrible. A boob. Geez, never mind the fact that the sport everyone turned in to watch is pretty god damn violent! And don’t tell me it’s not, they wouldn’t need all that protective gear if it wasn’t violent… But 20 guys beating each other up over a ball isn’t harmful for a kid, but a boob is. Like hello, one of the first thing any normal baby does is get a boob smashed in his/her face, why should seeing one more be harmful!? They are pretty weird….
Oh no, they started another run of “Big Brother”. They really should rename that show to “Who’ll Fuck Who” or something because that’s what they’ve reduced the show to. From an interesting psychological experiment of locking people from different walks of life in an isolated environment and see how they get along it’s now just about getting a bunch of hot singles into an isolated big bedroom and see how long it takes for their hormones to take over. Pretty pathetic if you ask me. And I don’t watch it, an episode was on while I was playing on my computer and as always I’ve got one ear on the computer the other on the TV and when they got the entire “so who’s ready to have sex in this place” conversation started up – ON DAY THREE !!! – I couldn’t even listen to it and flipped over to Jeopardy which was 10 times better. And you actually learn something.
Can you get nauseuos due to bad music? Perhaps it’s my current medical condition, but again I accidentally flipped through channels and was exposed to something that should be labelled “psychological warfare”… C21’s version of “One Night in Bangkok”. It’s … so awful, it may be the worst cover of a classic – ever! They should be banned from making any more music! Is nothing sacred!? Sir Tim, Benny & Bjorn are kicking in their graves and the dudes aren’t even dead yet! What an awful start to the weekend!
And now I’m disappointed. REALLY disappointed! I recently got the new Moby “18” DVD and I wasn’t in any big hurry to go through everything since I’d seen most of it. And today I saw the last part – the Glastonbury performance. As you may remember from my July 11th update, one of my favorite parts was when he apoligized for “having such a f*cking idiot as our president”. I liked that. But do you think that part was on the DVD? Nope, they’ve edited that out! DISAPPOINTED!
As you may have picked up I’m more of a VH1 person than MTV. Don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or the modern music today sucks or what, but I prefer VH1. And they have their Top 10 lists, and sometimes even Top 100 lists. Usually I disagree on a few of the choices in those lists but never anything major. Except yesterday. As I was flipping through stations I came across “Top 100 Men”, which wasn’t a gay show or anything, a list of the top 100 male popstars. And when it came down to single digits it became pretty interesting. They had already listed Freddie Mercury, Elvis, John Lennon and Michael Jackson and the #1 spot was yet to come. So over the commercial I was hard at work trying to figure out who tha hell could beat them? Couldn’t figure it out. And when it was announced I… I actually got pissed off. It didn’t make any sense what so ever. Robbie f*cking Williams?! What tha hell?! Is it time for me to start watching VH1 Classic now or what!? I find that totally unacceptable!
Oh my god, they are doing it again. They are blaming entertainers for causing people to kill people. This time some teenagers (in the states of course!) that played Grand Theft Auto a bit too much and thought it’d be cool to get a gun and start shooting randomly at cars, and OOOPS, they killed a guy. This is wrong on so many levels, and that computer game is the last thing on the list of “Things to blame”. But it is on the list though. First of all, that game comes with a “graphic violence” label. That should tell the parents, if they even cared, that “hm, perhaps it’s not such a good idea”. Then it’s the huge leap from seeing something on the computer monitor and thinking it might be cool in real life. It’s a leap I’ve never had any problem staying away from, no matter how violent the games or the movies I watched were, I never thought it was a good idea to actually build an X-Wing and fly out into space looking for the Death Star only because I saw it in the coolest movie ever. At the time. Bad role models I guess is to blame, but not only the parents, how about the #1 role model they are suppose to have in the states – their president who’s respect for human life is.. well, isn’t. Then we have the last little thing here… how did they get the gun!? Did Sony or Rockstar make the gun too? How comes this kinda thing only happens in the states? Both the shooting and the lawsuit itself, you never hear about something like this in Canada or France, let alone Sweden!
Everybody should go out and see “Bowling for Columbine”…
Wow, this weekend was so full of sports I feel like… manly 🙂 Football quadrupled and Formula 1! Boy am I happy I’ve got a sportsbar right down here in the square in Brussels (at the end of Luxemburg street). And the swedish soccer girls didn’t really win the world championship, but I can’t really say they lost it either. They didn’t go like “oh no, we got hammered by US of A, and then USA got hammered by Germany, so what chance do we have against Germany?” and play dead, they put up a helluva fight.
And here’s a question that will make me sound like a sexist or something, but really, this is all about equality… why don’t the girls trade shirts after soccer games like the guys do? Come on, the girls get a looong good look at Beck’s pex (I just thought of that), why can’t I get… I’ll stop it right there. As I said, all about equality baby!
Seriously though – amazing job girls!!
Well that “haven’t been in a car accedient” luck that I was living all year was bound to come to an end. Once again it was in a round about, I was in it and a guy didn’t see me (?) and just smashed into me. Car is f*cked up, but guess what? I’m TOTALLY ok with it! “Why?” Because I’m a down to earth guy and I knew it was only a matter of time until I was gonna collide with someone. I’ve just been waiting for it to happen, trying to avoid it. And as I said, this time it wasn’t my fault, which takes care of my insurance problem. And what’s even better – noone got hurt! Since it was in the middle of a round about there were no high speeds to talk about, just pure inertia based on weight so there wasn’t any real danger. So I’m totally ok. After all, it was a friday, I’ve just gotten the Dead Zone DVD box and UFO – Aftermath so I’m still happy.
Speaking of Dead Zone, it now dominates my “hottest comments” of all time:
1) “Let’s make a hockey team!” and 2) “Resistance is futile.”
Ok, so you probably have to see the episodes in question (“1” is from the pilot and “2” is from “Date with Dana”) to get the context. But trust me, they were hot! Speaking of hot – how about this!