I saw “Rock the Vote” on CNN the other day. As the name suggest, it was an attempt to be political and hip at the same time. A debate program with the 2004 US presidential candidates taking on the youth of America. One thing that surprised me was how they all agreed on how to solve the current problems in Iraq. If it’s a workable solution or not, I have no idea, but everyone agreed that the US should let the UN take charge in there. Everyone agreed that was the best way to handle it. The only one who still thinks it’s the best idea for US & UK to stay on top of it is… well, Bush…
Have we had enough Bush-bashing this week? Sorry, it’s just that when watching CNN so much it gets pretty easy.
UNREAL! “They” did it again! Read my update on April 26th… are you done? Well, the saga continued when it was appealed to our second highest legal institution, “Svea Hovrätt”. And guess what? “She didn’t appear too drunk or drugged out of her mind and the guys thought she wanted to have sex – with all four of them”. Unbelievable! But it makes what I said yesterday a little clearer. The weird thing is that the 5 that acquitted them were all women! Although 2 of them voted against the verdict, the majority wins. I’m ashamed to be swedish now.
Is the american jury system better with “normal people” deciding guilty or not? Although I’ve never experienced it myself (and hope I don’t!) I wouldn’t think so based on all the TV shows and movies I’ve seen on the subject. ‘Cause in a country that executes people that are found to be guilty of murder in the first, I’d REALLY want the people deciding to be competent in the legal field, not Jeo-blow!
About yesterday’s entry, you might be asking “how tha hell did that Patriot Act go through congress!?”. Sarcastic answer to that would be “it’s unpatriotic to stop an act ordering people to be patriotic”. And I’m not sure that’s far from the truth. After 9/11, what politician in the USA would dare to go against an Act that was designed to prevent it from happening again? Who would dare to oppose the president at a time like that? And doesn’t that point to a huge flaw in democratic society? That a politician have to do something he or she feels is wrong, only to please the voters? To avoid comitting political suicide? It’s happened sometime in Sweden too that popular opinion has forced some bad choices. Any solution? Appointing a group of people who weren’t publically elected? The other side of the coin would be the Swedish court system. The judges only go by the letter of the law disregarding public opinion and sometime common sense. Like that “she didn’t look 14 and dressed older, so it wasn’t ‘sexual abuse of a minor'”-trial a few years back.
I usually don’t complain if I don’t have a counter solution, but this time I don’t. ‘Cause I prefer living in a democracy that makes some mistakes than in say China.
I saw an interesting mini-documentary about the so called “Patriot Act” that was passed after 9/11. It basically gives alot of agencies in the states alot of power to do alot of things to their citizens and even more to people “just visiting”. People who, from the “governments” point of view, is un-patriotical (remember that old “you’re either with us or against us”-speech?) will be put on “look out” lists that makes it diffcult for them to for example take an airplane. And there’s no way of appealing that either, so it’s not an official agency handling stuff like that. And now there’s a Number II coming that will “encourage” civilians to report un-patriotical behavior to the authorities. Meaning neighbor will spy on neighbor.
This is pretty scary if you’ve seen Babylon 5! Over the course of the first 3 1/2 years of that show it showed the Earth government doing just this! Setting up special agencies to deal with patriotism, setting up a Homeguard and “encouraging” people to report un-patriotical behavior and so on. Pretty scary how 7 year old storytelling seems to come true. “Land of the free” my ass… And now I guess I can forget about flying to the states anytime soon if “they” were to see this place with all the bush bashing. Because it’s not only limited to Americans! Right after 9/11 “they” set up a list of people & organizations the felt were supporting terrorist activites. And somewhere in that list was a tiny little organization in Sweden that helped imigrants and also helped them to send money back to their families in the middle east. But because they were on that list they weren”t allowed to do anything at all. And same problem with appealing… “to whom?”
Well today I did something I’d never thought I’d do – I went out to join the Hash House Harriers for a run in the african jungle. Yeah, you heard me, I was actually running in the african jungle! Seriously, who would’ve thought it 1 year ago that I would be running…
I’ve got a terrible confession to make. I actually like Lene’s CD. “Play With Me” has got to be one of the best tracks all year. And that has got to mean the rest of this musical year has been a complete mess!!
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”…
Sorry. Nothing to report. Not mot much is happening over here. Not that I can talk about anyway 🙁
And like a month ago when Anna Lindh died, I’m not even in the country to attend a memorial or anything. Although I’m terrible at those things, I’d still like the option of attending.
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!!
So Bush have done it again. Come up with a great quote that might have sounded good in… well, somewhere like in an empty head – “no civilized democratic country would develop weapons of mass destruction”. Says the man in charge of the only country to ever have used Da Bomb. For military purposes anyway.
Two things about my personality that has recently come under fire – 1) My lack of “taking charge” and actually do something about that thing I’ve wanted to fix for a while. And 2) I’m a terrible interior decorator (so much for me being gay!… ok, that one was prejudicial, but I’m trusting you see the humor in it!). As most of my friends will tell you I usually need a good kick in the ass to to do something. Doesn’t matter if it’s deciding which restaurant to eat at or to change the wall my bed faces (hey, that’s one underestimated issue to think about!). And if there was a swedish version of the Fab 5 they’d have their first mission right here! But since we don’t my friends took it upon themselfes to just swing by here on a calm saturday and literally drag me to Mio and buy some new shit for my place. And I’m grateful they did because I probably would never have gotten out of the apartment today had they not shown up. Not to mention my apartment looks a liiiiiitle bit better now. And when it comes to my living room, the old styling saying of “a quick look and get rid of the first thing that you notice” wouldn’t work since the first thing I notice is my TV and my speakers since their kinda too big to NOT notice. So I guess that size does matter… and we’re back to being gay again…
Can you tell I’ve been up way way too long with far too little sleep by the way I’m babbling now?… thought so!
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!
So who would have thought that Sweden would ever beat Brazil in football? I mean in real life football, not any cyberversion? I never thought that’d happend. But yesterday “we” did! And I’m proud to be a swede when they did it. Hockey WC gold in all honor, but beating Brazil in a quarter final felt a hell of a lot better. And the way they did it… way to go girls!! (or do they prefer “women”?) Now let’s see if they’ll be greeted in the same way when they come back as the guys in 1994 were. Even though Sweden is a model of equality between the sexes (we even changed our constitution so that a woman can and will inherit the crown!), I doubt it. Unless ofcourse they win the entire thing. Which they will!
Best quote of the year – “Leaks of classified information are bad things”. Wow, what rocket scientist said that?… noone, it was the President of the US of A… that Bush guy continues to surprise me, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I don’t consider myself a political person, but when it comes to him I just can’t lay off it…
Go see “Bowling for Columbine”. I’ve always been critical of the sloppy gun regulations and the attitude of the NRA in the states. But after seeing this documentary I can relax knowing that me and Moby aren’t the only ones who thinks something is pretty screwed up “over there”. Although it was pretty one-sided, biased, Moore was set to get Wal Mart and Heston, but what I really liked was when he just went off to places not knowing what he’d find, like in Canada. And after this documentary, you gotta like Canada 🙂
Sad day today. It may be friday, it may be day after pay day and I might have a great weekend ahead of me. But… Robert Palmer died the other day of a heart attack. At 54. And both “Addicted to love” and “Simply Irresistable” were some of my favorite tracks. So sad.
But on a happier note : The US vs France war of words continues.
I like shopping over the web. It’s much more relaxed, you can do your research and there are fewer chances of spontaneous unecessary purchases. But then there are the very bad things, like when I decided I needed a DVD recorder. Costs about $550. Then I also needed a new scart cable for it and that was only $30. And today I got the e-mail saying it would be delivered in mid-november!? Only because they didn’t have that freaking cable in stock the system holds the entire order. Actually had to call their customer service to fix that. I guess programming that little additional intelligence was too much for them…
Today was the memorial service for our Anna Lindh. Beautiful event, although I think they could have been a little more low key than shutting down half the inner city. And I had just made it back to Arlanda and got in my car and turned on the radio to haer the live broadcast. I gotta give it up to Eva Dahlgren, who’s music I’ve never been a huge fan of, but to be able to stand there and sing those songs without breaking out in tears, which I did and I wasn’t even there!, absolutely fabulous. (And if someone could get Jewel for my funeral, that’d be great…)