stoff
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!
Salmonella, huh? That’s what the latest tests show – I’ve got a bacteria party in my intestents. Pretty gross, huh? It sure explains my lack of apetite lately, do you know how depressing it is loving food and not being hungry – ever!? And add to that the fact that the sun goes down at 3, and the holidays are closing in and I’m still single – even more depressing. But I was assured by the good doctor that this little depressing attitude was related to the illness so no worries there. Still on sick leave though…
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!
Do you know I watch an average of 5 movies per week? And that’s a slow week with few DVD releases and 40 hour work-week. So guess how many movies I see now that I’m just sitting at home all day 🙂 So with a couple of movie channels I see alot of different movies, some I’ve already seen, some I missed when they were in theaters and some I never heard of. And those I’ve never heard of are usually crap. But every once in a great while a movie I’ve never heard of pops up and just floors me. And this great while it was “Tape”. Three people in a motel room and it’s all dialogue and all good! Don’t think I’ve ever liked Uma Thurman as much as I did in that movie. I highly recoment it!
I tried going back to work yesterday. I really tried to work but I simply didn’t have enough energy and even worst – motivation. What kinda illness effects you in this weird way, that you just feel apathetic, lack of interest? People keep saying “over worked” but I don’t feel over worked or stressed out. It’s weird. But for the first time (and I can always wish it’s my last time!) I’m on… sick leave. Only for a week until next examination at the hospital. So what do you do when you’re sitting at home not feeling like doing nothing at all?… Nothing I guess….
So after my little trip to Congo with my health problems, it sure was nice to get back to Sweden! Already at the airport it felt good. Picked up my car from the parking lot and started driving the long drive home… when it totally quit on me. Something wrong with the fuel injector, nothing to do but call a tow truck! Set me back some $300, and then we’ll see what the repair will be. My car has really been visiting the shop alot! Fortunately I got a pretty good salary last week so my economy will probably hold, but it wasn’t the way I was suppose to spend it! Oh well, going home to my parents for a typical swedish thing – advents fika 🙂
So that wasn’t just a case of foodpoison I guess! This was the worst week, healthwise, of my life! I know guys tend to complain alot when their ill, I don’t. I just say “I’ll live, it’ll pass” and it always does. In 20 years I’ve never been admitted to a hospital (I think anyway). I had a trip to Africa planned right after I got back from Scotland. That’s really the best way to get away – Africa! Only place I’ve been able to go without a computer for 7 days without giving it a second though. Anyway, I still felt bad on sunday evening so I went to our local hospital in Huddinge. They did some tests and weight me in at 113 kg. That’s all the beer I drank in Scotland. Anyway, they thought I was fine so off I went. Before I even landed in Kinshasa (Congo) I felt worse and a nice nights sleep at the hotel didn’t help and the night between tuesday and wednesday was so bad I was really starting to wonder if I’d ever make it back home. Seriously! I mean being in Africa feeling worse than you can ever remember feeling before, that’s scary thing. And 40 degree fever will do things to your head. So I had to go to a hospital. And going to hospital in Congo is nothing you really joke about, is it? They took some blood and I passed out. Not because I can’t stand blood (I am a blood donor remember!), but because of my temporarily terrible blood preassure. Then they weighed me in at… 107 kg! 5 kgs in 4 days. OUCH! After the testing the doctor quickly stated I must have one bad infection somewhere (which turned out to be in my throat) and gave me a ton of pills (all in all I eat 13 pills per day now!) and sent me on my way.
And now it’s thursday and I’m starting to get back to normal. I’ve started eating again anyway. Funny how you can’t eat when you’re sick which makes you weaker and less able to fight off an infection which kinda makes you wanna eat even less and it just spirals down. And I look back at these past three days as a nightmare ’cause it was really really bad there for a while. Totally delerious and… well, sick. And this wasn’t really what I had in mind with my “let’s get away” thing, now I want nothing else then to go back home to my warm bed and mother’s home cooking!
Guess it’s true.. there’s no place like home.. or we could say “home is where the heart is” but enough clichés, I got 5 kilos to gain!
And I’m just back from that trip to Scotland to honor my sisters 30th birthday!
We began on wednesday outside the airport when Marina (AC’s best friend) & Christer (Marina’s husband) jumped her and scared her quite a bit. Atleast I think so, I was inside to surprise her when she got that far. And man was she surprised! And now she realised that we were actually gonna follow them on their trip to Glasgow. So off we went (btw, Ryan Air has the worst leg space ever!). And at the hotel – next surprise! An old neighbor of theirs had driven from Finland to paaaaartei.
And then on thursday when she was off shopping – there’s Paul’s (AC’s husband) sisters! And a couple of hours later… here’s AMY! I’m not sure if she was overwhelmed yet but we took it easy and went out clubbing. And on friday took it pretty easy, shopping and stuff and at 4 the party started again! By now we had gotten Paul’s parents, uncle with wife, our three cousines, aunt and just about anyone else who might know us and want a good time. And me and Paul saw everything we had made and it was good! Although I hadn’t met some of these people at all, some just once, others infrequently at family occasions, it didn’t matter, we all had a blast and although AC’s 30th was the reason we were all there, it turned out to be a real family event!
But on saturday, all our ammunition was spent so we just took it easy. And I guess I shouldn’t have done that because that’s when I got some weird food poisoning or something, felt like crap all the way back to stockholm, BUT SO WHAT, the weekend was great! Ok, I guess I could have gone a little bit easier on my body, not drinking beer from 11 am to 2 am without any breakfast, and perhaps I shouldn’t have had 5 red bulls with double vodka in one night, BUT SO WHAT, it was great!
Credit for the weekend goes to Paul for outstanding arrangement (with a little help from me), Lauder’s for letting us party in their Pub, Alec for just being Alec and everyone who showed up for showing up! Definitely once in a lifetime thing and she’s bound to remeber it for a long long time!
Now the big question is how to pull off Operation 3-0 CHARLIE in 19 months! Might not be so easy to surprise the surpriser 🙂
Operation 3-0 BRAVO : Haven’t been able to write anything here since I’ve faked being out of the country so my sister AC will get the biggest surprise when we’re going to Scotland! Remember in January 2001 AC and me went over for Operation 3-0 ALPHA which was to surprise my other sister. This time it’s our turn. And it’s set to be a helluva party! But she’s on the bus now and I’m off to start collecting the surprise party 🙂
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.