Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter

Today and tomorrow, customer service roadtrip. This is where a bunch of us (this time The Taliban, Don't Spell My Name Wrong, You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Hungry and I) pile into cars with our company logo proudly displayed on the side and drive 1100 kilometers to get to two of our customer service sites and hold reference group meetings.

A reference group meeting is where we sit down, we being product management, with representatives from our customer service, and have them tell us things we should fix. This can be anything, from text on our web page to the way one of our fundamental services works. It might sound extremely boring, but its actually very useful.

The meeting today was good, and then I had to run back and forth to solve a fairly major product problem which has been a thorn in my side for quite some time now. So close now. A simple process update tomorrow morning, and I should be on track. I'm not celebrating yet, though. I have run into far too many walls so far, so until I see a free and clear road ahead of me, I'm still paranoid.

That was one of our founder's mottoes. Always be paranoid.

And it's true. You can never be too paranoid. You never know enough. There are always questions to be asked, decisions and negative opinions to question. That's a big part of my job description. To be a difficult, annoying pain in the ass. Constructive questioning, my boss calls it. Potato potahto.

This afternoon we drove to the next site, and tonight we met up with three other colleagues. Let's call them ADSL, VoIP and PSTN. They had decided long ago to go out tonight, eat food and have a few drinks.

We found a restaurant and got a table. ADSL started eyeing the waitresses. And the women at other tables. Anything with a pulse, really.

I left early. No alcohol for me today, though lots of mirth and laughter around the table. I work with good people. I walked over to the bar and paid for my food. The girl behind the counter was the same waitress ADSL had been eyeing. "Take good care of my friend", I told her before I left.

Twenty minutes later I texted You Wouldn't Like Me to let him know that I had rescued his laptop from our parked car. "Let ADSL know I told the waitress to take good care of him", I added. The response came quickly: "She already told him herself". Mission accomplished.

Blame it on a brief bout of sentimentality

I'm not a sentimental guy. Not really. I do have some things that have been with my for a while, though, that I treasure. And today, when I realized one of them was missing I got sentimental.

Back in 1991 (I think) I spent three weeks in a language program on the Isle of Wight outside Great Britain. I didn't get a whole lot out of that, that has stayed with me, except two things: that we taught our host's parrot to curse in Swedish, and a bookmark.

That bookmark, a simple black leather thing with a Stonehenge logo (since I bought it at Stonehenge), has been with me since then. I haven't read a book in eighteen years where it hasn't been between the pages. It's been a part of my life longer than The Beard. And now it's gone. Gone gone without a trace. Strange that the loss of such a trivial thing can affect me like this.

Most likely it's because of all the memories associated with that bookmark. All those hours spent with a paperback in my hands, escaping to other worlds, on the train, at home, in the car, during lunch hour at work, outside, inside.

I looked for it in the places where I thought it might be, in some books I've read recently, on the table where I keep a pile of stuff, in the drawer where I keep even more stuff. Nowhere to be seen. To be continued.

There is only one better thing than music - live music

The last couple of weeks have been all about intense musical experiences, from two festivals and a fantastic live gig in between. Turns out I'm going to yet another festival.

Sonisphere is a traveling festival making the rounds in Europe, and on Saturday its Sweden's turn. Through some bizarre turn of events I managed to win tickets yesterday. Metallica is headlining, and while I'm not a fan, they're a killer live band. I will also get to see Mastodon, Lamb of God, Meshuggah and Machine Head, among others. Yay!

I need to find some way to avoid hearing even the slightest hint of Cradle of Filth, though....

And if I don't get to hear this song, I'll be sad.

Born again? No, I am not. Excuse me for getting it right the first time

This must be some conspiracy at work.

Two days ago I met a religious nut on the train to work. Today, a small, unassuming man came up to me on the train home and handed me what appeared to be a yellow business card. Now, would I have written this post if it was a business card? Hell, no. Which, it turns out, is a very appropriate word here. Hell.

I can't take a good picture of the thing, so I'll paraphrase here. It said:

“Jesus loves people. All have sinned. You have sinned and the penalty for sin is eternal death. Only Jesus can save you from hell to heaven. God's gift to you through Jesus Christ is fellowship with God and eternal life. Welcome Jesus Christ into your life!”

I'm not kidding. I'm looking at the damn thing right now. What the hell is going on? Have the religious nutters of Sweden decided to band together and convert me? Has there been some secret meeting where members of various Christian churches sat down and said, “that bearded, black-clad must be brought into the light of the God-Emperor...I mean Christ!” I'd like to think they said God-Emperor. That's so much cooler than Christ. But maybe not.

Seriously. What the hell is going on? Are we experiencing a tsunami of religion through what is a pretty secular country? Will I be accosted frequently by morons that believe I need to be “saved”? If it continues, I will snap at some point, that's for sure.

Now, from the headline of this post and previous posts you might get the idea that I'm prejudiced towards religious people. And you would be right. I'm a fairly open-minded guy when it comes to most things, but I've yet to come across someone that has been able to explain “faith” to me in a way that makes me understand why someone else can believe. I think I've mentioned before that I have some very intelligent friends that believe, that would describe themselves as Christians, and even one that works as a priest. I need to talk to them. And soon. If this madness continues it may be too late to pull me back from my prejudices.

The presence unfound comes to me now

This is Neurosis, performing "Through Silver In Blood" and "Times of Grace" at the Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands, in April of this year. Fantastic.

Oh. And Steve von Till has a pretty cool beard.

Isn't it interesting... religious behavior is so close to being crazy that we can't tell them apart

I've had two religious experiences over the last few days. As in “brushes with religion”, not actual religious experiences. I only have those at live gigs.

The first was a few days back, as I was getting on the bus. Further back, at the middle door, what appeared to be an old imam got on. He had a great white beard, a shaved upper lip, a knitted white cap and a walker. I walked by him as he was settling in, and as I passed him be looked up. Nodded slowly. Sagely. Like a mentor to his student. Like Obi-Wan to Luke. I nodded back. Slowly. Sat down. Smiled.

So the guy thought I was Muslim. If I shaved my upper lip too, which I've done before, I would probably get a very interesting experience the next time I try to go to the US. When I went the last two times I made sure to braid my beard, to avoid being mistaken for a Taliban. Plastic gloves and lubricant ain't my idea of a good time.

The second one was on the train this morning. Picture this. Me sitting on the train, wearing a black Neurosis tee and baggy gray cargo pants, reading Cormac McCarthy's “Blood Meridian”, headphones on, probably leaking some Neurosis noise (yes, I'm currently seriously in love with that band. Again). A woman sits down next to me. Sits still for a while, maybe one station, and I feel her looking at me.

Then she taps my shoulder, I remove my headphones and she says, and I'm so not kidding, “Have you accepted Jesus as your savior?”. What. The. Hell.

Religion and I aren't friends. We're barely on speaking terms. And this is why. Nut cases on the train that want to “save me”.

My response then? “Eh...no”. Eloquent, eh? It was 07:15 in the morning. Give me a break. My brain wasn't up to warp speed yet. Then she goes off on this rant how Satan is in music, in books, in movies. I guess the word “Blood” on the cover was a dead giveaway. Me and Cormac, worshiping the Great Old Ones together. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!

There were two things I could do.
1. Explode and rant back at the misguided fool. I was tired from a weekend of uneven sleep patterns, and cranky. A recipe for disaster, but oh so rewarding.
2. Get up and walk away.

Wisely, I chose number 2. I am The Bigger Man. When she got off at the Central Station she looked over at me with a look like “I pity you that you cannot see the way to avoid burning in hell, you poor man”. Again, the temptation was great to back up and go with item number 1 above. Instead, I took a few deep breaths and went back to the book. Don't let the fuckers get you down.

But then there's a moment like tonight, a profound and transcendent experience

Second weekend in a row at a festival. I had planned to work in between, but was instead out cold with the Stomach Virus From Hell that managed to take down five out of the seven people that shared our house at the Peace & Love festival. Surely this was a weapons test of some kind. A military jet passed over the lake one day, when we were sitting on the porch, enjoying or trying to avoid the summer sun (that last bit would apply to me and Mah Girl). It must have dosed us with something.

And of course Faith No More was awesome. Phenomenal. Other bands watching Mike Patton lead his troops should just cease to exist out of sheer embarressment that they can't measure up. Might be the best front man ever. They worked their way through all their albums, and managed to play almost every single song that was at the top of my wish list. Telepathy was somehow involved. Me and Mister Patton communicating on some unknown mental frequency.

On Wednesday I got to see the mighty Neurosis annihilate a club in Stockholm once again. Not quite as intense as the last time I saw them, except the final song, "Through Silver In Blood", which is one of my favorites and which felt like an element of a ritual performed by urban shamans in the depths of some concrete jungle. Awe-inspiring.

Now we're at the Arvika festival, or to be precise in the cabin we're renting, about 14 kilometers from Arvika. Just hanging out for now, watching Mah Girl drink a couple of cold ones and now dozing on the couch. So far, we've seen Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode, both of which were excellent, as well as some minor bands. Tonight, a few more, and then home tomorrow.

So three of my favorite bands, Faith No More, Neurosis and Nine Inch Nails, in six days. How the hell did that happen?

Looking at me, some might believe that the best part about this weekend isn't the music, but the fact that I'm the designated driver and get to drive my colleague Stefan's kick-ass car, an Audi S3 that feels like it has a jet engine in the back when you hit the gas. And they wouldn't be far wrong. Such a fun car to drive, and not only cause it has plenty of horsepower, but also because it handles really well. If I ever feel like spending 300 000 kronor on a car, I may just buy me one of those.