The Swedish perspective

GoldenAdam vs Bill Murray

2012-01-19T03:00:00.000-08:00

I was about to throw this flyer into a trash bin:

But then I noticed something... Here's a screenshot from their homepage:

I stared at the screen for like three minutes and then it hit me: I was looking at Bill Murray!

Pretty close?

Well, that's all from Sweden at the moment. Peace out!

I tried to kill a spider with a rocket

2011-04-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

When I was drunk and alone on new years eve I noticed a spider in the corner of my kitchen.

So of course I decided to try and kill it with a rocket.

Weapon of choice:

I aimed - and missed. Here´s the collateral damage to my kitchen:

I was kind of bummed that I missed the little bugger. These things should be laser guided!

But yesterday I found him in another corner of the kitchen. All dried up dead and shit like a mummy or John McCain.

So I guess I won in the end?

The moral of this story is: If you're gonna try to kill a kitchen-spider use this:

And lots of them! Better safe than sorry!

Three seasons

2011-04-07T15:51:00.001-07:00

I took the first picture back in September (I think):

I walked passed the same artwork on christmas day and snapped a shot with my camera:

And so the other day as the sun was bringing this frozen part of northern Sweden back to life I took yet another picture:

I'm missing one last picture.

P.s. You suck Vivaldi!

The stuffed lion of Gripsholm’s Castle

2011-03-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have seen this picture on the Internet:

Another picture:

The story behind it is pretty interesting. In 1731 King Frederick the I of Sweden received a living lion as a gift from the Bey of Algiers. The poor lion lived out its days in a cage at Djurgården in Stockholm and when it finally died the hide together with some of its bones were put in storage.

Some years later a taxidermist was ordered to stuff the animal and put it on display at Gripsholm castle.

The taxidermist however had never seen a living lion and with some of the parts missing he had to wing it.

And that's why the lion looks like it was fetched straight out of some comic book.

Published secret documents - received the Nobel Peace Prize

2010-12-13T11:09:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you a short story about a man who had access to secret documents and information. All the information he had suggested that a leading super power was acting in a manner that ran contrary to what they promised and agreed to with much of the rest of the world a few years earlier. His name was not Julian Assange.

The man I'm talking about is Carl von Ossietzky:

He dosen't even look like Assange?

Assange however kind of looks like Karl from the movie "Die Hard":

One more picture just to emphasize the similarity between them:

But anyway, let's forget about Karl and Julian Assange and return to the person this blog post is about - Carl von Ossietzky.

Carl von Ossietzky was German and was born in 1889 in Hamburg. He died in 1938 after having spent several years in various concentration camps.

The crime he was guilty of was publishing leaked documents and data which revealed that Nazi Germany had begun to rebuild their war machine - in complete violation of the Versailles Treaty.

Because of his critical stance and his inability to shut up even though what he said was extremely uncomfortable for those in power he was sentenced to prison several times.

In any case Carl von Ossietzky was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936 for his courage and his willingness to stand up to those power and their lackeys and speak up about what was actually going on in Germany at the time.

The last known picture of Carl:

German authorities refused him a passport to attend the ceremony in Oslo. And even if they had let him go it's doubtful whether he would have made it since he was dying of tuberculosis at the time (diseases are rampant in concentration camps, apparently).

After the Nazi takeover in Germany the press worked nonstop to demonize Carl von Ossietzky and not a single newspaper reported on the fact that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The last time Carl appeared in public was at a trial where his lawyer was charged with embezzling the prize money that comes with the Nobel Prize.

Wrong kind of lawyer:

So what's my point with this blog entry? Perhaps that we should be very vigilant when powerful forces want to silence uncomfortable voices.

Are birds more afraid of scarecrows than they are hungry for suet balls?

2010-12-04T13:35:00.000-08:00

We all know that birds are afraid of scarecrows. We also know that birds (at least small birds) like suet balls.

But if one were to create a scarecrow in which the head consists of a suet ball - what then? Will the fear of the scarecrow to be greater than their appetite for suet balls?

Pretty frightening?

So in the name of science I decided to try to figure this out. Hopefully my experiment leads to either more effective scarecrows or more appetizing suet balls in the future. I'm not the one who usually toot my own horn - but I would not be surprised if this ultimately gives me the Nobel Prize for, er, well something?

Anyway.

I started with a suet ball, an ordinary suet ball:

Then I took two raisins and two small screws and a screwdriver:

The idea of having raisins as eyes is that they are eatable. The screws were like silver-colored pupils in the middle of the raisin eyes when I was done.

Beautiful eyes:

After that it was time to construct a nose. Since it is winter I decided to use traditional winter nose construction material - a carrot. Using carrots as noses is quite popular when people create snowmen, plus that the carrot is edible (though I am a bit unsure of exactly which species of birds eat carrots?).

Carrot nose:

I used the knife to carve the carrot into the right size. After that, I nailed my snowman-inspired carrot nose on to the suet ball with a toothpick.

My version of a cosmetic nose surgery:

Finally, I glued a little black hat that I made of cardboard and black electrical tape onto the top of the suet ball. I designed the hat as a classic Tophat for the simple reason that I'm pretty bad at working with my hands and a classic scarecrow Stetson style hat would have been too difficult to design for someone who barely got an F in woodworking class.

Too difficult for me:

In addition I constructed a small mouth made out of lemon-peels, because I've seen people in mafia movies scare small children by inserting an orange wedge in their mouth, and it works on mafia kids so why shouldn't it work on small birds? And there are certainly birds that can eat the lemon peel itself if the overcome their fear of scarecrows?

But anyway, this is how the suet ball head looked when it was finished:

After that it was time to find a body for my suet head. While we humans would probably be more scared of a decapitated head - most bird probably don't give a damn. So finding a body was a must.

I searched my house I found a Super Mario action figure. Not a doll! However it was not Mario himself but his much lesser known brother, Luigi, but he had to do.

So I put him on my operating table and took out my surgical tools - Dexter Style!

Not exactly the operating room at the Royal Karolinska Institute:

Delicate surgery:

There were no complications.

After that all I had to do was some crude connecting linking Lugis body with my suet head using steel wires.

It's alive!

And here we are. At the moment I can't complete my experiment because it is -18 degrees outside my window and the snow pouring down. It has been shown that birds are not interested in suet balls when it's this cold outside. Sorry.

Outside my window:

Birds rather sit and hide in the bushes when it's this cold outside. And when it gets this cold the suet in the suet balls gets so hard that the birds are not able to hack off pieces from it.

But as soon as it has become a bit warmer outside I will hang my creation outside to see what happens.

Usually there are plenty of birds outside the window that happily gorge on the food I put out for them

Tastes like chicken?

So as soon as the weather allows I'll hang it out to dry (so to speak) and post my findings on this oh so very important matter!

Peace out!

Why is this not a standard yet?

2010-11-29T11:54:00.000-08:00

So I bought a mouse for my laptop earlier today. It looks like this when I take it out of my backpack:

Then I pull on the cord and voila:

When I'm done I push on the button in the middle of the cord-thingy. And just like magic:

My question is: Why is this not a standard when it comes to cellphone chargers, extension cords, TP-cables etc etc yet?

It would forever rid the world of this:

Well, that's all for now. Peace out!

Halloween in Sweden

2010-11-17T09:06:00.000-08:00

This is how we celebrate Halloween in Sweden. We put candles at the graves of loved one. Pure and simple.

Skogskyrkogården in Gävle, Sweden 2010:

That is all. Peace out!