Monday's guest blogger: Doug Lansky

Like Obama, but think Americans are still mostly stupid? You’re not alone. If you’re not familiar with Bill Maher, now’s the time to start. Here’s a segment from his recent program, “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBl-nqZeMko

[Doug is a native of Minnesota who now lives in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a friend of Henrik’s since their Scanorama days in the early 2000’s.]

All quiet on the muslim front

Oh dear, Scandinavia is in trouble again because of free speech. This time, I’m glad the Israelis limit themselves to picketing embassies (that’s freedom of speech) instead of torching them like offended muslims did during the Danish cartoon controversy (that’s criminal).

Plus, I can’t help wondering what the torchers make of the Swedish government refusing to apologize to Israel. Didn’t muslims say that free speech was misused to offend islam? Now that free speech is offending Israelis, are the torchers
a) happy that Israel is tasting the same lashing they got, or
b) outraged that free speech is once again offending religion.
Or is it only the muslim faith that should be immune to offensive opinions?

What an agonizing choice it must be; having to side with either Scandinavia or Israel. Maybe that’s why it’s so quiet over there? Probably better to sit this one out.

Take a hostage

“John Q” with Denzel is on tonight, which reminds me of one of the most useful pieces of advice my former boss gave me. She said I should take hostages before big meetings. Often I, like so many others, liked the idea of dazzling everybody with a fantastically creative idea. Never, however, was the response as enthusiastic as I had envisioned.

“Before the next meeting, have lunch with somebody in the group and let them in on your big idea. The person will feel special, and when the meeting rolls around, you will have an ally in the room. A hostage.”

Pretty smart, isn’t it?

I saw Michael Jackson at Coop Forum

Well, I didn’t really. But if people’s normal willingness to deny reality is anything to go by, reports of sightings should start popping up anytime. And they have. Someone reported that the singer is running a chicken farm somewhere in the U.S. Midwest; somebody else saw him buying Dr. Phil’s new book at Wal-Mart.
Me, I’m sticking to my Coop story because I think it’s more intriguing. I mean, what would the King of Pop be doing in Västberga?
By the way, Snoddas isn’t really dead either. He’s 83 and runs a very profitable lingonberry business outside Bollnäs.

Screwing the Swiss

Here’s a little something for you positivity freaks out there: The best news I have read in a very long time is the story about how US tax authorities are forcing Swiss bankers to hand over the names of tax-evading fat cats.

Finally some justice is coming the way of these people. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge them their money. In many cases, it’s hard-earned. I just think they should contribute to the common good like the rest of us. And Swiss bankers have for too long provided a convenient way for them to avoid doing that.

Gotta love the IRS hit squad. Thanks, guys!

Smack my Finnish dude up

In a bizarre news item last week, a Finnish crime study reported that nine percent of young male respondents had at some point been beaten or kicked by their partner. Only two percent of young women reported the same maltreatment.

Naturally, I have some follow-up questions: Has the percentage of beaten women gone down, or is it the male figure that has risen? Is there any reason to believe Finnish women have grown more violent lately? If so, why?

And what are the figures for Sweden? Sure, I’ve been slapped in the face by women, but those incidents have decreased over the years, not increased.

Risto, can you help me out here?

The toaster

I just read in the Financial Times about a student at the Royal College of Arts in London, Thomas Thwaites, who tried to make his own toaster from scratch. And I mean from scratch. He got his hands on some iron ore from a museum in Wales, and copper from an old mine. For nickel he cheated and melted some commemorative coins. And so on.

The lesson here is of course that even our mundane things around the house are finely tuned pieces of advanced technology. A toaster has more than 400 parts, made from 100 different materials. And importantly for our sense of worth as day-to-day humans: We can’t make one ourselves. We used to all be able to make the stuff we needed, because there was no other choice. Now, if our kids need a glass of milk, let alone an iPod, and the shops are closed, we’re screwed.

Even making a contraption that warms bread is way beyond our ability.

Pause for thought, that’s all.

Shiny happy people

I was told yesterday that this blog is mostly about things that piss me off. I thought about this for a while and considered whether I should spread more joy. After all, “life is what you pay attention to” as Winifred Gallagher says, and I don’t want you to think I only pay attention to idiots and crap.
But then I decided against it. I remembered that I am firm believer in not giving people what they want. If I order a Coke but the salesman knows that I would be better off with a Sprite, he will still sell me the Coke. And it pisses me off!
Just kidding, I actually like getting what I want most of the time. But if a friend always tells me exactly what I want to hear, I start looking around for someone with a mind of his own.
All this as a roundabout way of saying that this blog will stay my own personal release valve, and you will have to get your fix of life affirmation elsewhere. Things like greed, circumcision and the Burmese junta continue to piss me off, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
And remember, you’re more than welcome to post a comment starting “Yeah, but if you look at the bright side ...”

Swimming to infamy

Just as I suspected, it is at the moment popular to be mad at John Yettaw for swimming to Aung San Suu Kyi’s house and spending the night, an action that led to her being given another 18 months under house arrest. People say he has done her cause harm, and “played into the generals’ hands”.

Now, I know it’s a fun and challenging intellectual pastime to find blame in odd places, but the way I see it, the fault lies with the Burmese junta for making it an offense to provide shelter to people from other countries. The generals of Burma are the ones that are continuing to hurt Ms. Suu Kyi’s cause by placing her under house arrest.

John Yettaw may be confused, be he is not the one who is evil here. All he did was swim to a house and spend the night there with the owner’s permission. Did you know that was a crime?

Victoria’s balls

I used to be unbothered by royalty. Couldn’t be buggered if the royal family lived well off my taxes. Now I feel that all that might change next summer. Why? Because Sweden’s crown princess Victoria is getting married and the court is gearing up to a self-congratulatory royalty fest with all the other European blue-bloods.
And then again maybe not. If Victoria has any balls, she will stand up to the court and demand some sort of 21st-century people’s fest to show that she is capable of being a modern princess and future queen. I’m thinking a huge open-air party in Haga Park. Everybody’s invited, the champagne is on the house, Sweden’s best artists are performing and, most important, Victoria and Daniel sit on the grass like regular people in blue jeans and drink beer out of cans. We would love them until the day they die.
If, however, they let stuffy court protocol turn their wedding into the usual stiff, pompous, exclusive affair on the taxpayer’s bill, I for one will go republican.

How to wash a penis

Three baby boys near Vetlanda in Sweden have been infected after being circumcised by a travelling quack. Rest assured that these tragedies are the result of some sort of religious belief, and this is what makes it so sad. Because there is no need for things like this to ever happen. Even if we put aside the fact that the “doctor” wasn’t a physician at all, what are we doing carving into the genitals of babies?

This stupid religious rite should be outlawed. If your kid grows up to believe in some god, that’s sad in its own right, but let him at least keep his ability to enjoy sex.

And no, there are no hygienic benefits to circumcision. If you believe that a supernatural being created the world, do you really think he couldn’t work out how to keep a penis clean? And leave it up to you to fix what the omnipotent creater of the universe couldn’t?

Please. Show him how to wash his pee-pee with soap and water and he’ll be fine.

Going postal

Actually, it seems Sweden is going non-postal. This fall, Posten is removing 3 ooo mailboxes around the country, thinning the stock to 23 630.
I was about to get enraged, or postal if you will, over this before I read up on their reasoning. Apparently, the placement of mailboxes has been conducted very haphazardly over the years, resulting in a gaggle of them where no letter-sending (Amish) people live, and none when you really need to get that win-a-fruit-loops-beachball competition entry in before deadline.

Plus, Posten can help the environment by reducing the mileage their employees have to spend driving around in those goofy yellow vans. And finally – even after The Thinning, Sweden will still have most mailboxes per person in Europe.

So, in the end, nothing to complain about. Carry on, Posten.

Witness

To be nice to the less fortunate, I give away one percent of what I earn to charity. Yesterday I wanted to send some money to Witness, an non-profit that uses modern technology such as camera phones and video recorders to document human rights abuses. Sort of like us snooping back at governments since they find it so irresistible to spy on us. Great idea.
Unfortunately, I aborted the effort mid-donation. Why? Because the all-techno web site that did the collecting could not fathom that I did not live in one of the 50 united states of North America, had an American zip code and an American phone number. So it was either pretend I live in Alabama and invent a fake phone number, or give my money to Amnesty instead.
Needless to say, Amnesty made some money.
If Americans are asking themselves why the world hates them so much, part of the answer is that they so often pretend like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Pisses me off.

The world’s most beautiful album cover

James “Seven” from 1992.

Then I created earth

At the beginning of this summer, I had the idea of making my own earth. Apparently scientists in the Amazon have discovered 6,000-year-old gardens with soil that is still rich and moist. This in a region where everything else at ground level is either starved of sunlight due to the canopy overhead, or parched because of land clearing.

The natives called the stuff terra preta, meaning ”black earth”. It has been manufactured for thousands of years using charcoal, animal bones, manure, pot shards and other assorted refuse which has given off nutrients and kept terra preta fresh to our days.

Anyway, I found a web site that showed how to make it yourself, but lacking an oil drum, a car, easy access to firewood, chicken bones (I’m a vegetarian), and accomplices, I was overpowered by the project’s complexity. Next summer, though, I aim to have a go. So, who has an oil drum for sale?

I have great legs

Isn’t it weird how some things just stick in your head, while 99.9 percent of the stuff people tell you pass right out the other ear? Who decides what sticks?

Twenty years ago someone told me you get better-looking legs if you walk up stairs taking two steps at a time. I started doing that and I still do. It became a habit that I don’t even think about anymore.

That was one person telling me one thing on one occasion. While I incorporated that habit into my life, dozens of people have told me that I should stop having a bag of cookies for lunch, but I still do. Why won’t that stick?

Just something I think about.

Here comes the flood

I hadn’t listened to Peter Gabriel’s Here Comes The Flood in a long time, but when it came on today it took me straight back to a flight between Stockholm and London twelve years ago. Especially the line “And as the nail sunk in the cloud, the rain was warm and soaked the crowd.” I have no idea what that means, but I remember looking out the window and feeling enormous relief.
The night before that trip, I hadn’t slept a wink. Literally not a single minute. My girlfriend back then was emotionally unstable, to put it mildly, and she picked a fight around midnight, as was her habit. At that time I still had hopes of saving, or at least helping, her, so we argued for about two hours. I tried to explain that I had an early flight and that I wanted to get some sleep so I would have a clear head for the research conference I was going to. That’s when she decided we had to clean the apartment.
At two a.m? I should have checked into a hotel. But I was stupid. I stayed and cleaned the damned apartment with her all night. My brain was saying “What are you doing? This is crazy!” but I couldn’t leave her. I should have, of course, but I couldn’t.
When cleaning was done, she went to sleep and I headed to the airport. It took a few hours for me to get my equilibrium back, and it happened just as Peter started singing that beautiful song. I like to think it still lowers my heart rate a couple of beats. It really is an amazingly beautiful song.

I am not listening to Anders

Anders Borg, finance minister of Sweden, was just on the news saying he thinks the recession won’t be as long-lived as suspected. Great news, since I remember just how accurate Anders Borg was in predicting what was going to happen in 2008.
Again, why do we keep listening to these people? Haven’t economists used up the scant credibility they once enjoyed?

Balls

I interviewed a 22-year-old entrepreneur today. Probably smarter than me, but not way smarter. What he does have, though, is balls. Balls to start his own company at 18, balls to take on staff, balls to just make things happen because he believes in his idea.

I love meeting people like that because they remind me that there are humans out there who are completely different from me. Who think in totally different ways. If I don’t consciously fill my life with people like that, my comprehension of life shrinks like a fizzling balloon until I become convinced that I am the norm.

And I’m not. And neither are 22-year-old entrepreneurs. Nobody is the norm individually. But by making an effort to rub up against very different people, I am reminded that variety is the norm, and that I have a choice of which flavor I want my life to have.

Rustout

Here comes another one of those things I couldn’t say better myself, so I let the original authors say it. In this case, they are Richard Leider and Stephen Buchholz:

“Rustout is the slow death that follows when we stop making choices that keep life alive. It’s the feeling of numbness that comes from taking the safe way, never accepting new challenges, continually surrendering to the day-to-day routine. Rustout means we are no longer growing, but at best, are simply maintaining. It implies that we have traded the sensation of life for the security of a paycheck. Rustout is the opposite of burnout. Burnout is overdoing. Rustout is underbeing.”

Reaching for my iPod

I have never made it a habit to paraphrase Nazis, but on one occasion I am willing to make an acception.

Goebbels or Göring famously and stupidly said “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’, I reach for my revolver.” I say: “Whenever I hear the words ‘exciting’ and ‘interesting’, I reach for my iPod.”

With this I mean that anything that can’t be described more specifically than with these two insipid labels is probably neither interesting or exciting. Might as well fire up my iPod instead.