Behind the wall of sleep

I snore. A lot. Enough for Mah Girl to once have hissed "Let's see how well you snore with a pillow shoved down your throat" when I woke her up at some ungodly hour. She claims not to remember having said so, but I know that burning hatred I heard then is only hidden in some locked backroom in her mind, the door to which can only be shattered by snoring.

While visiting my brother I have been sleeping on his guest bed, a hellish contraption that really has no business calling itself a proper bed. No, I exaggerate, it is a bed, though one that seems to have been built by people with a different opinion about dimensions and spacetime than us average mortals. It slopes down from the middle, in both directions. If I want to sleep on my left side, I need to be on the right half of the bed, face inwards. If I want to sleep on my right side I need to be on the left half, face inwards. There's no way to sleep on my back unless I want to feel like I'm strapped onto some torture device.

So, while here I haven't snored, not loudly enough to disturb my hosts anyway, who are in the next room with only a thin door separating us.

When we went to Wellington (wow, four... make that five words... make that six... that begin with w... make that seven... starting to feel like a Spanish inquisitor Python style here) I slept in a regular bed, and a queen size at that, so I had plenty of room to roll over on my back. I snored. A lot. Enough to make my brother resurrect a tradition that was spawned when we were in the US in 2005 and had to share rooms for almost three weeks.

This tradition has two versions. The first consists of him saying "Encarnacióooooooon" really loudly to wake me up. We watched a Marlins - Astros game in Houston, during which a spectator sat and taunted Juan Encarnación with just such a call, over and over. It was hilarious.

The other version consists of him saying "What are we gonna do tonight, Bwain?" and me answering either "Narf!" or "The same thing we try to do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!". This is a somewhat incorrect reference to Pinky and the Brain, an excellent part of the Animaniacs show. During the US trip I never managed to answer it correctly, but in Wellington I managed to groan "Narf!" before fading off to sleep again. My brother was very impressed.

Brain wasn't pondering what Pinky was pondering

All this confirms what the snore analysis I did a few years back said. I shouldn't sleep on my back. The doctor told me, after concluding he didn't want to carve up the roof of my mouth, that I should wear a tshirt at night, with a plastic ball sown into the small of its back, thus preventing me from rolling over on my back. Ouch. But might be worth seriously thinking about.

Also, he said I should lose some weight, which often is a reason for snoring. And whaddayaknow, I actually lost about 10 kilos over the last couple of months, through nothing more than shifting my breakfast habits and staying away from alcohol and most fatty foods. I haven't been closer to weighing less than 0.1 metric tons since I was 23 or so.

Though I'll probably put at least some of that weight back on during this trip. Oh well. I can always shift my food habits again when I get home. And maybe start walking some more. And maybe practice my couch potato skills less. Well, maybe the first two will be enough...

A void of indifference

Possible spoiler below, if you haven't seen Heroes.

We watch a lot of TV, Mah Girl and I. Preferably in the DVD box form, and we have a bunch of them on our shelves. Today we finished Generation Kill, which we started yesterday. A miniseries of seven episodes about a unit of recon Marines during the second US invasion of Iraq, in 2003.

I like the miniseries format. I like knowing that the writer and producer and director have a set ending in mind while they're working, and that they know the path to that end from day one. I tire quickly of TV shows that go nowhere and seem to have no goal in sight (can you spell Lost?), though shows that just fade before a proper end comes along pisses me off even more. Carnivale is one example of that (though I haven't watched it yet, its on our shelf), Millennium another.

If I'd had my way, Heroes would have been a miniseries too, at least at this point when we've seen season one and two. If the show had ended at Kirby Plaza, with the explosion, I would have been a very happy camper. Few shows, especially American shows, have the guts to end in that way.

Back to Generation Kill. Excellent script, brilliant characters and good actors, including Alexander Skarsgård in top form. The show doesn't make a political statement about the US presence in Iraq, but instead highlights the futility of the actions of American soldiers as well as show the horrors of war. The indifference of most of the recon Marines in the face of death and suffering is horrendous to watch.

I myself actually see the point of war. I'm not saying I condone the invasion of Iraq, but there are times when armed conflict is unavoidable and indeed necessary. History are full of such examples. We might have all been speaking German today if someone hadn't decided to meet violence with violence.

Yes, there are crimes committed and innocents killed in war. That is horrible, and something none of us should accept. However, this should not make us blind to the fact that war is necessary. There are greater wrongs in this world that can only be corrected through the use of force. That is sad, but an undeniable fact.

But I'd trade it all for just a little bit of piece of mind

So here I am, Thursday night, watching Criminal Minds, a semla in my stomach and a smile on my lips. A shitload of things to say, but no real peace of mind to say it.

It's not that I am in a bad place, I'm actually feeling pretty good, but I can't seem to be able to structure what I want to say. There are some things that I feel I need to get out, but they will just have to wait.

For now, a short list of wohoos!

- Faith No More is reuniting. One of my all-time fave bands is playing in Europe again this summer, after a ten year hiatus. Apart from dead bands and The Tea Party, they're the band I thought least likely I would ever get to see again. Wohoo!
- I've bought a new laptop. A Lenovo Ideapad 10-inch. A pretty sweet little machine. Wohoo!
- Tomorrow I'm hopefully getting a load of DVDs from Amazon in the mail, to go with the package already waiting at the post office. We're mostly looking forward to seeing The Escapist. Wohoo!
- I'm currently reading Starbucked, about the rise of Starbucks. Excellent stuff. Wohoo!
- Tomorrow night a bunch of people from work are going out to down ridiculous drinks and get Jakob, who is leaving to go to a small web development company, drunk beyond relief. Wohoo!

What are your wohoos right now?

We're like the Mob, only less violent. Ultimately responsible for more death and destruction

We're coming up on the end. Since December 23rd, we've watched 149 episodes of The West Wing. 149 episodes in 24 days. Yay, us! Quite the achievement.

It is the second best drama series I've ever seen, after Six Feet Under. And yes, ege, Sorkin's absence is noticeable, particularly during season 6, but (and this is with five episodes left) season 7 makes up for that.

On a related subject, I find myself irritated that I didn't buy this version of the seven season box set. I will go wipe away the drool now.

You just flash that thing, it erases her memory, and you just make up a new one?

Home sick today. Despite excellent company, stuff recorded from TV, Spotify to play around with, books to read, a shelf of unseen movies, I'm still bored. Whenever I'm home and it's not my choice, I get bored.

I've decided that being sick is part of a greater pattern though.

Yesterday I got up early and walked over to the grocery store (the big swanky one, not the POS close to us that opened up, didn't restock their shelves and then closed down after three months), and did some shopping. Three little old ladies and a guy that for some reason had decided to buy about ten heads of lettuce and a 2 liter bottle of Coke where the only other customers. Decided to take the bus back. I shared the bus stop with two Russians drinking beer. At nine in the morning.

Got on the bus, where the bus driver toasted the Russians through the open door with a cup of coffee. Their laughter became a violent fit of coughing. All those bad cigarettes, no doubt. The bus was empty. Completely empty. I remember thinking that no one else was stupid enough to be out and about at that early hour, on a Sunday. Except little old ladies and Russians.

At the first stop, the bus stopped and I suddenly saw movement in the corner of my eye. Turned around and watched as a man passed me, from further back in the bus. Another man was just getting up from his seat, where they had presumably been sitting together.

They were two seats back from me, on the other side of the aisle. No way I could have missed them. And they were identical. I mean, not twins identical, but they wore the exact same clothes (leather jacket, khaki cargo pants, heavy hiking boots, leather gloves) and had the exact same hairdo (dark hair slicked back). Both of them looked at me as they walked by. Not a casual look, but rather a “we know what you're up to” look.

Now, I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but this has to mean something. About a month after I write about seeing a UFO, two identical men appear out of nowhere on the bus? And now I'm home sick. I expect black goo to start oozing from the corners of my eyes anytime now. Where's Agent Mulder when you need him?

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts

A list of things introduced to my digestive system, mental or physical, today, in fairly chronological order:

- One and a half (1.5) slices of my mother's Christmas bread, which is really just French bread, with ham and cucumber.
- Two (2) Digestive biscuits, with cheese.
- Two (2) vitamin pills.
- One (1) apple.
- One half (0.5) cup of Rooibos tee.
- One and one half (1.5) glass of milk.
- Two (2) cinnamon rolls.
- One (1) chocolate chip cookie from Pepperidge Farms.
- Two (2) summaries of the past weeks of the NFL, in which I got to see the Arizona Cardinals disgrace themselves by handing the New England Patriots a free spot in the play-offs (ege, not dissing the Patriots here, but the Cardinals didn't even put up a fight and it was pathetic).
- One (1) plate of nachos, with ground beef, cheese, salsa, lettuce and garlic sauce.
- One and a half (1.5) bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale.
- One (1) four centilitre glass of Mackmyra whiskey, "Den Första Utgåvan".
- Three (3) pieces of marshallow chocolate candy made by and given to us as a present by Eva.
- One (1) piece of Cornflakes candy, same as above.
- One (1) piece of nougat candy, same as above.
- One (1) cone of strawberry icecream.
- Two and a half (2.5) liters of water (or thereabouts).
- Fourteen (14) episodes of The West Wing.

The water and the episodes were spread out over the day and are not, as such, listed chronologically.

Not an average day, by any accounts, but a very good and relaxing day.

One of television’s great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs

I like TV. I especially like TV when it comes in series form in a dvd box.

We're ten episodes into the second season of the West Wing. I think we've seen six episodes today. This is what passes for vacation for me, and I absolutely adore it.

However, I couldn't stomach another episode today. Instead, we turned to comedian Jeff Dunham's Comedy Central special that we recorded while we were away at my parents' place. Why? Because I needed the break, I needed comedy instead of intense drama, and I needed to disconnect for a while.

Because there is TV and there is TV. There is stuff that I can watch without any kind of emotional attachment besides the smile on my face, and then there's stuff that I can't watch without getting tears in my eyes when they pluck at the right (or wrong) emotional strings. West Wing falls into the latter category, as does Six Feet Under, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and a few others.

I'm not saying I dislike it. Not at all. I'm just saying that sometimes, a smile is the best thing there is.

(and did it work? Yeah, kind of, though Dunham isn't as funny as I would have liked...)

I wish that just once people wouldn't act like the clichés that they are

I'm a bona fide TV junkie. I'll give most shows a chance, and I can watch some stuff over and over and over.

I acknowledge that TV is a real time stealer. I acknowledge that perhaps it numbs my soul. I don't care. It's entertainment, baby! and sometimes that's just what I need.

The Best Show Ever is, of course, Six Feet Under. I watched it sporadically when it was shown on Swedish television, and was always drawn to it's dark humor and flawless dialogue. I've since bought it and watched through it all with Mah Girl a few years ago. It's awesome, in the true sense of the word. Spectacular.

I want this on a t-shirt

Shows of that magnitude, that are that well-written, transcends entertainment. They become something more profound, a mirror in which we see something of ourselves reflected back. That might sound like pseudo-religious ramblings, but it's the truth, at least for me.

As I'm writing this, Grey's Anatomy is on. That show has become a real train wreck of soap opera intrigue and drama that is completely uncalled for, filled with completely one-dimensional characters. And just like Prison Break, it had such promise, that it never delivered on.

But really, I shouldn't be watching that much TV, or spending that much time slouching around on the Internet either. I should be writing. I should be structuring that novel I so very much want to write, or resurrecting one of the countless short stories that lurk in the depths of my hard drive.

One of my favorite authors, William Gibson, said (or wrote, not sure):
I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret here.

I should listen to him.

This blog was supposed to be an inspiration for me to start writing again, after sort of a hiatus. It has helped in a way, since I'm writing here more than I've done in a long time, but it hasn't really helped me finish any stories. I need to get my bearded ass in gear and write more.

WWVMD

As in “What would Vic Mackey do?”

We went to the movies today, to see Pixar’s new flick, Wall-E. All the Pixar movies except Cars are lined up in our DVD shelf, I’m an avid sci-fi fan and we’ve both been charmed by the trailers, so expectations were high. Without spoiling it for anyone, I can say that it wasn’t as brilliant as I wanted it to be.

I need to see it again though. Why? Because of the father-daughter combo next to me that just wouldn’t shut up. “What’s that?” “Why did he do that?” “Why is that thing glowing?” “What did he do now?” An endless stream of questions. I seriously considered going The Shield on their asses.

Instead, I told them to shut up. Once. It didn’t help. So I glowered and sulked instead. Very positive for my mental health.

I’m also considering applying the Vic Mackey brand of justice to our next door neighbor. She smokes like a chimney, and it’s starting to seep into our apartment. We’ve had to air out our bedroom lately before we go to bed.

But again, I won’t be kicking in her door, Smith & Wesson in hand. Instead, I’ll call our landlord tomorrow and complain. It’s the grownup thing to do.

Oh. On our way home we met a frog. Meet the frog.

Predictability

Once again, welcome to Like/Don’t like Saturdays.

beardonaut likes:
Hangover TV: How I Met Your Mother, Scrubs, Family Guy, The Amazing Race, Dead Fish, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. I’ve been awake for over 15 hours now, at least 13 of which have been spent on the couch, watching TV. I will continue to bask in TV's warm glowing glow.

beardonaut doesn’t like:
Hangovers. If I wasn’t suffering from it today, I would research the biology of it all, as outlined briefly here. Instead, I say good night.

As me and my companions was setting out a snare

I spent a pleasant evening at a friend’s today. As always, topics discussed varied wildly, and there’s not really any fixed conversational path we walk down. I like that.

Today, the most fascinating topic, which wasn’t discussed at any length, was number stations. This is where we cue the X-Files theme song again. Sooooo cool. And quite geeky as well.

And oh yeah. I linked to Freud the other day. I was really aiming for this. Turns out Mah Girl knew exactly what I was looking for, even when I didn’t know myself. That’s often the case.

I shaved my head this weekend. I’ve sported a Mohawk in various configurations for a while now, but got fed up and took it all off. “You look weird”, Mah Girl said. I’m used to that verdict when I change my hair or beard. However, this time it went one step further. Behold:

Female colleague: “You look weird.”
Me: “I think I look nice.”
Female colleague: “What does Your Girl think?”
Me: “She thinks I look weird.”
Female colleague: “Look at it this way. Are you going to have sex with her or yourself?”

Now where did I put that Mohawk? I should be able to glue it back on, right?

The god of lost socks

That age old question. Where do the socks go when you do laundry? I’ve definitely had it happen to me, doing laundry with an even number of socks and ending up with an uneven number. One of life’s great mysteries.

Yet another victim of the Lost Sock Monster.
I considered a chalk outline on the corridor floor.

I derailed my boss from a work discussion today. A colleague started talking about the fine print on one of our ads, and they were standing right next to my cubicle (yes, I am that kind of wage slave). I couldn’t help myself. I looked over and said:
“That kind of reminds me of how they voice the fine print for ads in The Simpsons. You know, how they say ‘satisfaction guaranteed’ in the ad, and then the voice adds, hyper fast, ‘satisfaction not guaranteed’?”
“Yeah!” he said, all excited. “My favorite episode is…” And off he went. We discussed Simpsonsania (it’s a word) for a few minutes, and then he went off to get coffee. The colleague gave me his Tired Look, for stealing the boss man’s attention. Simpsons discussions trumps fine print talk, any day.

Goldfish and a bus

Tomorrow I'm playing CD:s here. On stage are hardcore band Jaganata and the Almighty Bergman's industrial metal outfit man.machine.industry. I share the booth with at least one more, so there will be time for a couple of cold ones and some hanging out with rocker friends. Goodness.

On Friday I have the day off, so we're going to kick back and start watching season two of Weeds. Then it's off here to down some drinks (no Chili Bliss though. Horrible, horrible drink, though it does have the advantage of looking like a glass full of ice and tiny goldfish) with people from work. I'm leaning towards a Juicy Fruit and a Marakesh (not pictured below).

Yes, I do like girly drinks on occasion.

Tomorrow, I'm considering breaking out of a tunnel and stepping outside my comfort zone and take the night bus home *pause for audience's intake of breath and astonished "oooh's" and "aaah's"* I'm going on seven years in Stockholm (I think...) and have never used the night bus to get home. There's a first time for everything.

Foreplay

Tomorrow at 8 p.m. is the season finale of “Life”. An hour of Damian Lewis running around, seeking revenge. A good show, and since it’s a redheaded Englishman we’re talking about, I’m guaranteed to get me some afterward. Sweet!