Brad Dick

I bet Americans liked to laugh at former Japanese prime minister Noboru Takeshita because his last name sounds like “take a shit”. Which is funny.

Similar unintended dirty names and words can be found in all languages, but I think they become disproportionately funny in countries (and people) that have less contact with other cultures. If you’re an educated American learning Japanese, you realize that Takeshita doesn’t mean “take a shit” in Japanese. It’s only in English. But if you’re a redneck in Iowa who thinks even Jesus spoke English, you’re likely to wonder who is stupid enough to put up with a last name like “Take-a-shit-ah”.

Sweden is a small country where grown-ups realize that people in other countries don’t speak Swedish. Consequently, Swedish guys namned “Jerker” might use their second names when picking up girls in Santa Monica.

Brad Pitt, on the contrary, has no problem presenting himself as a “Pitt” in Landskrona, since Swedish women know that pitt doesn’t mean dick in English, the way it does in Swedish.

I have no idea what “Henrik” means in other languages, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it means buttwipe in Swahili.

Yvonne 0 – Magdalena 1

I sent some hate mail the other day, to somebody at the Swedish Touring Association, of which I a member. This somebody forwarded my e-mail to Yvonne, the Secretary General of the organization, who was my original target but whom I couldn’t reach by answering the e-mail she decided to interrupt my day by sending, nor by way of the organization’s web site.
In another universe, the new CEO of Sweden’s alcohol monopoly, a woman named Magdalena Gerger, took out a double-page ad in Svenska Dagbladet, announcing that she would be manning the phone and fielding calls between 9 and 12 am.
Same week, two women heading two big organizations, one reachable by phone on a number advertised in a huge ad in a major newspaper, the other impossible to track down.
If I would have read the morning paper in the morning like everybody else, I would have called Magdalena just to tell her she’s da woman.

My 11 percent

I stumbled across the Time magazine list of the 100 best English-language novels of all time. For the record, here are the dismal 11 of them I have read:

• Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
• The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West
• The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
• Lord of the Flies, William Golding
• Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
• Neuromancer, William Gibson
• On the Road, Jack Kerouac
• Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
• Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
• White Noise, Don DeLillo

George and his coffee

I am reading “Life, Inc. How The World Became a Corporation And How To Take It Back”, so I’m more sensitive than usual to Big Business trying to encroach on Real Life.
That’s why the fangs came out today when I saw a Nespresso ad featuring two identical pictures of George Clooney, one where he is holding a cup of presumably amazing coffee. The payoff says “Make the ordinary extraordinary”, which to me suggests that they are calling George Clooney ordinary. Either that or they are calling their own product ordinary, which makes no sense.
Even leaving aside the fact that we are deadling with Mr Clooney, are they really comparing a cup of coffee to a human being, and coming away calling the java extraordinary? I’m the first to admit that there are a whole bunch of substandard humans out there, but come on; even a great cup of coffee is nothing more than that – coffee.

My rabbit’s on fire

This is one of those things I couldn’t have made up. Stockholm has a rabbit problem, and shoots off between 2 000 and 3 000 of the cute animals every year. After that, they deep freeze them and ship them off to the medium-sized city of Karlskoga, where the bunnies go in the furnace of the local energy plant to generate heat for the inhabitants.

I don’t know if this is a creative way of lessening the city’s dependence on fossil fuels or a shocking revelation. Apparently, power plants all over the place have been using slaughterhouse leftovers as fuel, but bunnies? I didn’t even know you could set a dead one on fire.

Icelandic muzzle

Society leaders in the tiny Nordic republic of Iceland are embarrassing themselves by attempting to “re-educate” the country’s media. Apparently, news outlets have been too critical in covering Iceland’s mega-breakdown last year and the state Public Health Institute is not having it anymore.

Sounds very Maoist to me. Or maybe it’s my mistake for thinking that people in power anywhere really embrace the true meaning of free expression. When things would go so much smoother for you if everybody would just get in line, alternative opinions become such a nuisance. Pity.

Foreigners “welcome”

Not that I can imagine any of the affected joining, but isn’t it great that the “whites-only” British National Party has been ordered by the Central London County Court to open its membership to blacks and Asians?

Obama should thank Dubya

I think President Obama should send a thank-you note to George W. Bush for paving the way for his Nobel Peace Prize. Had Obama succeeded any other president, he would not be on anybody’s short list. But following the monumental inhumanity of Dubya, any person with even a shred of decency is considered a Peace Prize candidate.
This is the only way I can make sense of the decision to give Obama the prize – remembering who preceeded him.

No state for young men

Why won’t US web sites let me buy their crap unless I give them a “state”? As if everybody in the world lives in states just because Americans do. So to be a good consumer, I either have to pretend to live in Alabama, or invent the “state” of Södermanland, which confuses everybody.
So here’s to all American online marketers: Most of the world’s inhabitants live outside of your 50 American states. It would be grand of you to acknowledge that.

There is still no “Nobel Prize in economics"

I promised I would be back with this one: There is no “Nobel Prize in economics”. I feel the need to repeat this since even the Financial Times, arguably the most authoritative financial newspaper in the world, makes this mistake. The prize they are referring to, the one handed out today to two “scientists” none of us has ever heard of before, is the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”.

Why is this so imporant for me to keep pointing out? Because Alfred Nobel left a will, and wills should be honored. They should not be tainted by wannabe fields of study that Mr Nobel himself had no intention of leaving money nor lending honor to.

Gwen the homeless doll

Here’s a bizarre story that I would place in the what-were-they-thinking file if it didn’t make me laugh so much. Fitting for a light Friday entry.
Gwen Thompson is a brave/stupid attempt by toymaker Mattel to address/cash in on the recession. She’s a 95-dollar doll who is homeless and lives with her mom in a car. Gwen’s dad split when he lost his job, which would make me take offence if it wasn’t so believable.
I can’t make up my mind as to whether the appearance of Gwen is admirable or offensive. All I know is I can’t seem to work up a lather over it. I’m laughing too hard.

Rio, baby!

For you poor souls out there who have not yet visited the unfairly beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro, now is the time to start making friends there. This is a exercise long overdue for most Europeans at least, who commonly know more people in Sydney than in all of Latin America.
So don’t hook up only because you will need a couch to crash on during the 2016 Olympics, but because Brazilians in general deserve more friends. They’ve had an undeservedly bad reputation as half-naked thieves for far too long, especially the ones in Rio. And they live in what is by far the most beautiful city in the world, if you ask me.
I know the games are six years away, but if you start fishing in 2015 all the good couches will be taken. Happy hunting!

P.S. And learn some Portuguese. They will love you for it.

$93,000 for a bottle of wine

A Chinese bidder just bought a bottle (six liters, but still – just a single bottle) of wine for 93,077 dollars. Is anyone else getting a déjà vu?
Now that the papers are starting to cautiously toot the “all normal” horn again for the economy, I am left wondering what has really changed. Sure, a few banks and insurance companies went belly up, but their business was picked up by other actors. The corporations that had to be bailed out with billions of dollars are now, one year after teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, once again awarding themselves huge bonuses. And economists and business leaders are still being interviewed with reverence, as if they have the slightest idea what’s going on.
There is much talk about nothing ever being the same again after this “unprecedented” crisis, but to me things seem exactly the same. Sorry.

Why UNICEF will get nothing from me

Don’t get me wrong. I generally like UNICEF and similar agencies. I do, however, have two rules for charities:

1) They can’t be primarily aimed at helping people in rich countries.
2) They can’t exclude one of the sexes.
The UNICEF beggar letter that came in the mail today fulfilled the first but violated the second. Its goal was to provide shelter and education to girls in Nepal. An admirable goal, but get back to me when you also include the boys, okay?

Legacy of Ashes

Just saw the Bourne trilogy, again, which again led me to ponder whether or not the CIA backed the movies financially. Something tells me they did, since the agency comes across as deep down competent and good (Pam Landy), albeit with a few rotten eggs.
Anybody who is tempted to believe this should read Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes. The History of the CIA. It tells a story of jaw-dropping incompetence that started in World War II and goes on to this day in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s an amazing read that cures you of any delusion you might have of the CIA knowing what they’re doing.

Be like Gandhi – now only $23,000!

Here’s something from our friends at the “what-were-you-thinking” department: Swiss luxury-pen maker Montblanc is marketing a 23,000-dollar fountain pen in gold and silver in memory of Mahatma Gandhi.
I am no Gandhi expert, but the image I have of the man is of a low-couture dresser rejecting material goods and subsisting on a thimble of rice a day. Not of a newly bonused investment banker chasing around the duty-free shops for something particularly ostentatious.
I take the absence of the Gandhi memorial fountain pen on Montblanc’s web site as a sign that someone has brought the company back to its senses. Thank you.

Halcyon days are over

Swedish culture workers are on fire. The state is taking away their traditional means of providing for themselves. Or rather, not providing for themselves in favor of letting the taxpayers do it.

Now don’t get me wrong. I majored in “Cultural science” and so have more than sympathy for the role of culture in society. I also don’t agree with the idea that all sectors of society must eventually conform to the iron law of market forces.

I just think that if the music industry, auto workers and any number of other professions have to adjust to new environments, what’s the big deal if culture workers? Besides, these are people who are supposed to be masters at pushing the limits and challenging societal norms. Now their own norms and limits are being changed. Why can’t they adjust to it?

If these new circumstances should lead to a deficit of culture in Sweden we will have to do something about it, but to be honest I don’t see that happening. What I do see is artists who enjoy what they’re doing and have something to say getting over themselves and simply adjusting to a new way of doing things. Just like the rest of us.