The Authority
On Monday, I bought The Authority TPB Vol. 2. Good shit in the reinvented soopahero vein. Anarchist/humanist non-governmental superheroes who likes to party, who kill dictators (and god, even), includes a queer couple, a druggie shaman, the spirit of the 20th century manifested in a chainsmoking kick ass woman, a hacker mechanic with liquid intelligent metal for blood and a person who talks to cities.
Today, I hear fucktwit Dubya Bush proposes to make real SDI, although SDI was dissed ages back by mathematicians, computer scientists and whathaveyou techies, who PROVED that such a thing could never work due to it's complexity. Dubya don't give a fuck. He wants to rob the US nation clean for the sake of his skells & buddies in the military-industrial complex. Oh yes, you can bet Dubya has a good deal of stock in the "defense" industry. But for the sake of money & ego tripping goes him. That's when I wished that something like The Authority existed to twist his fucking balls 720. Or 1440. How dare you, you goddamn spookspawned motherfucker, you? Sit in the chair you built and pump up the volume, Mister Cumrag Bush!
Wednesday, May 2, 2001, 04:14 p.m.

I just bought the new RANDY album!
Randy are great. Pure fucking rock'n'roll from former sk8 punx turned smart. This is party music, just like label-mates The Hives. A bit of Marxists, still. I like that. A bit of Clash. I like that too.
I had so many things to say, and now I can't think of diddly squat. Well, serves me right. I just renewed my Punk Planet subscription, which isn't very interesting for anyone not me, but. But.
There's a huge police apparatus going on here right now, some kind of international minister meeting. I'm sorry, but I care too little about this. I'm much more concerned with Napster's eventual demise (due to filtering of words such as "Jackson", "Young" and "Black"). Fuck that. Last week there was a big demonstration in the anti-globalization vein, and policemen and militant anarchists had a bit of a tumble, masks on both sides. I'm tired.
Music has been great, though: Randy, Money Suzuki, Peaches, a Johnny Cash recording from after American Recordings, the massive Murder City Devils, the even more massive new Rocket From The Crypt record, Group Sounds, a couple Zeke records I bought at a sale, a Nick Cave live in Vienna April 8, 2001 (meaning the current tour), Air's new album, 10 000 Hz (Yikes!), Soledad Brothers, Kahimie Karie, Nikki & The Corvettes, yet another brilliant SoulJazz record, namely New Orleans Funk, Love's Forever Changes, Saul Williams, Jackie Mittoo, John Prine, Hot Snakes Live bootleg... It's all soooo good! The world is OK in so many ways. By the way, I've seriously cut down on masturbatory sessions. The calluses started to become an embarrassment.
Friday, April 27, 2001, 05:36 p.m.

Fuck WMA!
Why are you fucking blagging about your oh-so-copy-proof-and-superior format, when it gets unfucked faster than you can say "Bill"? Jeez! When will you morons ever learn!? It is NOT in microsoft's interest to make an effective audio CP, since it's already been shown that such a feat is near impossible (discussed on vuln-dev a while back). What IS in their interest, however, is to sell encoders & players & to monopolize on them... If napster/guntella/limewire is marginalized, and wma will be the audio format elect, microsoft will nearly control that sector as well... Proprietary SUCKS, you goddamn LOSERS!
Wednesday, April 18, 2001, 06:21 p.m.

A friend was recently in the midst of a pieing...
Jiminy! Today I played "Truth or Truth" with a friend over icq. I know it sounds like a vapid idea, but it was strangely cathartic, and yes, even exciting. I actually said secrets never before told, and that's kind of liberating, but scary, to be sure. One of the biggest onslaughts of feeling I've felt in quite some time. I wonder if it will affect anything.
Tuesday, April 17, 2001, 09:53 p.m.

Speak is dead
Speak is dead. Or on extended & undefined hiatus. It's such a pity. Speak was one of the best magazines I've ever read, almost consistently delivering the Goods. There are plenty of things that I've learned from it, that I doubt I'd ever heard about, had it never existed. Plenty of things.
Due to something that seems like a stance of "No Compromise", Speak finally folded - it had been hinted at for the past few issues - with issue twenty-one. Due to something that seemed like a manifestation of the fact that media is in the hands of the will (or perceived will) of advertisers. Advertisers often demand editorial room be given to their products. Advertisers don't want to read criticism of their product. They want bland, and bland is what most magazines give them. Not Speak, though. It focused on literature, politics, speak, thoughts, photography, and culture in its broader meaning. I sincerely think that the world lost something. Where, now, will I find out about new american fiction, about photographers, about weird academics? The internet? Well, sure, but it's not enough. I crave magazines. I crave paper products. Anyway, I'll miss it, and hope I do find another paper that can give me the things Speak gave me. Am I whining, or what? Fucking eulogics, eh?

On another note, I've not spent my time writing lately. I honestly doubt that someone is still checking this excuse for an online diatribic rant diary. Putting me down myself, yes. I don't know what I do with my time. My free time. There so much to do, but I spend so little time doing it. Instead I chat about crap, with not very interesting people. On the other hand, I also chat with some very interesting people, but people on the 'net has this very non-tangible quality that is sometimes good, sometimes not. For the past month or so, I've met quite a few interesting persons in various private chats, but chat is a very har way to convey information and to lead a meaningful discussion. For one, it's not very time-efficient. To be sure, typing takes much longer than talking. Also, it's very easy to misconstrue typed words, especially when typed on the fly. Arguments flare up much more often than in spoken interaction. But all in all, it's cool. It's just another way of interaction, and perhaps must be viewed with other eyes.

I have a long tradition of chatting. When I first got email in 1991, we weren't allowed true internet access, being confined to the domain we were in. Rumours were circulating that there was a backdoor into the internet, and to get into this hot dog shit called irc, and MUDs. And there was something called gopher, too, and ftp. A year or so later, we were granted full internet access, and I jumped into irc, ftp, gopher, and also muds and talkers. With muds, I was fascinated with the prospect of playing something similar to that old "Colossal Cave" game, but where game characters were mixed with real people. I remember especially when someone pinched my butt in one of my first forays, and I realized, shit Alabama, this is weird fucking reality. I realized that one of the main things with the MUDs and talkers was a social dimension, where the game itself was marginalized, and the interaction with other people was the major part. My heart, it pounded after that butt pinch. It should have ended there, perhaps. I continued to chat in many many different kinds of media, often, perhaps in a socio-sexual context. In adult talkers. In irc sex channels of various and sometimes dubious character. But also in different kinds of hm software related channels, to be sure. Sometimes, I haven't chatted for months, sometimes, daily and for hours. But the chatting has this dark pull that makes it hard to give up, and I don't know if I should quit it. I won't, of course, but I think it might be a good idea to cut down on the more social chatting and keep chatting in fora less sexually oriented that some of the ones I currently frequent. Surely, I've made true friends in the process, but I think I should do something more creative. It has learned me to type pretty fast, though, but the language might have suffered. Or not. Fuck, I don't know, but je ne regrette rien, and all that.

The past month or two, I've had some very interesting chats, though. About Jaques Brel and Mick Harvey and Baudelaire and typography and art and photography. And it has, for the first time ever, made me considering meeting these people in real life. But since this context is a very international one, it's not extremely likely. Am I making sense? Am I talking in riddles here?
It has to do with a way of being, and I don't know how to be. I'm fucking 33 and shouldn't have to be facing crossroads anymore, although, I'm afraid, I've always dodged the crossroads by closing my eyes and walking in a random direction. Perhaps that is something to envy. But now, I think some new direction might be in order. I'm sure some new direction might be in order. And it won't do to let destiny to decide anymore, because obviously destiny don't give a flying fuck.
Monday, April 16, 2001, 09:50 p.m.

nice swede takes nice pictures of rock events. dig? dug!
I'm sitting late at work, converting a DivX to mpeg1, having found the first episode of Cowboy Bebop in that pesky format promoted by windows people. I'm sure DivX can be great, even for videophiles, but not when they keep compressing too hard, just to be able to fit a movie into one CD instead of 2. Fucking cheapskates!
Anyway, I just felt like checking out the old Dipper site, to see if there were some rumours about a forthcoming album. Most likely it will appear on the classic Silence Records label. But alas! no rumours whatsoever...
Wednesday, March 21, 2001, 07:05 p.m.

SomEttHus
New Cerdo logo font by Core for Chank. Core is der Mann. even if he wasn't a dear friend, I'd still call him one of the greatest new independent fontograffers. SomEttHus (free translation: AsAKite) is a full graff char set, and even though there has been a lot of them, this is the best researched. I don't think it aspires to beauty, but rather to that urban, hurried look a tag usually has...
Buy it, print some tags of your own on adhesive and voila! - you're an instant hoodlum, spamming the walls with your messages;)
Wednesday, March 21, 2001, 02:48 p.m.

Destroy the Mainstream!
Went to see John Waters' "Cecil B. Demented" yesterday. As usual, pretty goddamn funny. And following a pattern: every John Waters movie is more and more mainstream, if mainstream means nice & not so offensive. Maybe Waters is trying to co-opt the mainstream, doing a little detournment if you will, just as the mainstream ripped exploitation, underground and dementia movies off, doing their own bland monster movies, their own bland Hannibals and their own bland sinema. Don't get me wrong, I really really like Silence of the Lambs. But as Cecil B. Demented says, Waters might be doing.
Ever since Cry Baby, the undisputable pope of trash has been putting out a series of movies that seems to be funny, camp movies with some excessive moments. But they are far more. Slowly, Waters is probably getting more and more viewers. Slowly, he implants scenes with underground icons (such as the Serial Mom scene which has one of the characters jerking off to the monumental mountaineous mammaries of Chesty Morgan in Doris Wishman's dubiousDouble Agent 73. He implants references to Sam Fuller, to William Castle, to his own subterranean countervanilla life in Baltimore. In fact, the teabagging scene from Pecker is a real life experience from a gay bar in Baltimore. Corrupt yer mind and your ass will follow.
Wednesday, March 21, 2001, 01:57 p.m.

Brinkster, mutafuck.
Hey! I'm on a goddamn roll, like yer man Mack Diesel, for frig's sake! I just found this great little thingie with cool videos. Not like this vile shit an unnamed friend mailed me. All in good faith, of course. I believe in full disclosure, man! Chexor out the greatum musicum linkum on brinkster and give the smut a rest.
Thursday, March 8, 2001, 04:58 p.m.

Wave Twisters
I just checked it out, and it looks fine. Did you see the QBert video Inner Space Dental Commander? It was taken from the Wave Twisters movie, which is ultra-low budget and let me tell you: the term "mad skillz" was coined especially for movie tricknology such as this! Boss shit.
Thursday, March 8, 2001, 04:43 p.m.

All Your Base etc... [slight return]
Yawn. I'm tired, slightly hungover and b.o.r.e.d. Thus the above link to the hype of the month for this past err month. It's still pretty darn funny. Anyways. Right now, life is not very very exciting. I must get out of the rut. This is boring and counterproductive. I just gotta figure out what I want to do. Or I will end up a kook. Yup.
Today was frustrating as fuck: someone accidentally delivered a spanking pornographic Powerbook G4 Titanium, the hottest thing since Seka, by fuck. I was dumbfounded, but when I had to return it it felt worse than all the coitii interuptus you can imagine. Damn. Shit. Puke. Fuck. Oh well. Easy come, easy go.
I just sat here surfing female prison inmates, it being Womens Day and all. What a totally weird idea! Who'll pay for getting the address of these hot or not-so-hot sheebas behind bars? Well, sign me up, doc.
2 weeks ago I did an incredible killing, buying the most beautiful comic book ever, the collected Jimmy Corrigan. Oh my bite-sized ass! It's totally totally nice! Chris Ware cvan be summat boring, I think, but his design skills are ridiculous! Damn, that's many exclamation marks!
Lately, I've also ordered a fat ass Raymond Pettibon book and Apocalypse Culture II, which will be a feast to get. Hopefully the customs won't put their grubby hands on it, because then it will be expensive! I hate not being able to buy stuff from the US without having to worry about the stuff getting stuck in customs. The most irritating thing is that England has no VAT on books, but we have that in Sweden, right? Well, seeing as we're both part of the EEC we should have to pay the VAT in the country we buy the product in, right? Well, NO! Apparently, that rule doesn't apply to books. Is that fucked over-and-out, or what? Fuck free trade! Of course, there's plenty more to be angry with. I'll try to write more later.
Thursday, March 8, 2001, 03:34 p.m.

Epitonic- more free & independent music
In my series "Fuck The Majors, But Not Major Briggs", I hereby promote the nicety-niceties of Epitonic. Oodles of nice stuff, sir. Lots of it stuff I've never heard, such as the just downloaded Blectum From Blechdom tracks. Kinda abstract porn-noise electronica.
And I went AWOL on eBay for the first time, reacquainting myself with Marie, who used to run the greatest mailing list for used CDs. Hopefully, it won't cost me TOO much.
(Soundtrack: Detroit Cobras: "Mink Rat or Rabbit", Fucking Champs-"Thor is Like Immortal", Phantom Surfers-"Pursuit (sic) of the Leather Girls", Murder City Devils "Every Shitty Thing", The Fall-"Dr. Buck's Letter", Chilly Gonzales-"Real Motherfuckin' Music", Sage Francis - "Slug & Sage Freestyle", Blectum from Blechdom-"steps", Otis Redding-"Amen", Pansonic-"Reuna-alue" etc etc...)
Thursday, February 15, 2001, 05:15 p.m.

Espra-the next Napster?
This was the most relaxed weekend in ages (meaning: no partying), and I must say it felt good. On saturday, I bought the new Soundtrack of Our Lives CD and Bob Fingerman's excellent Minumum Wage Book Two. Everyone who's ever been interested/a part of the New York late 80s 'scene' (Lunch, Kern et al) will enjoy it. Everyone who likes good art and great storytelling will enjoy it too. Everyone who quotes from odd TV series and likes comics will like it. Go buy it. Bob Fingerman - he's a great chum.
I also watched movies. I love finally owning a video (but I wonder where the fuck my Akira Collectors Edition disappeared). So I watched Supernova (I watch all SciFi movies as a rule, but... let me say that it's not very good. The upside was Angela Bassett, who's one of my top 5 women in the movies, looks wise. Can-dy!), Shanghai Noon (Jackie Chan is the FUCKING boss! One of the best Jackie movies I've seen, and Owen Wilson is good too. Nice to see Lucy Liu (is she lesbian or not?) not being the Ally McBeal ice queen. I didn't even recognize her but vaguely. As usual, there's some cool deleted scenes at the end, the funnest being when Owen undubitably farts in the bathtub. I'd like to se that happen in a effin Hollyweird movie! God bless HK!), Three Kings (surprisingly good, and showing us how fucked up that police action was).
Finally, I watched Grosse Point Blank on teevee. I've always loved that movie. Sure, it's not very deep, but the story is fun, the acting is good and the music is GREAT. The kicker: I'm also class of '86, like John Cusack/Minnie Driver in the movie. And this year I've been invited to a 15th anniversary. Crikey! I wonder if the soundtrack, if I decide to go, will be as good.
Tuesday, February 13, 2001, 08:34 a.m.

Atrocity was one of the corner stones of the Internet, but now it's plain boring.
Not 'alf bad! Suddenly - when I went out for lunch today - it was spring. Or spring-ish weather anyway. That makes a person happy, yessiree. And I'm listening to good music: Coasters, BDP, Junkyard Dogs, Fucking Champs, Cave-In, Donnas, J Church, Ryan Adams, Presage, The Fall, Phantom Surfers, Beat Happening, The Isolationist... Yup.
I also found a massive listing of playboy playmates from the 50s-> today, and BOYEE! those 50s-60s gals were so goddamned sweet! Nice girls, you know? Yesterday, I rented Magnolia, which was above average, but not the revelation some people thought it. Me, I've been downloading several Simpsons episodes. Still funny after all these years.
Will Requiem for a Dream ever screen in Sweden? Probably not. Pi was a indie success, but went straight to video here. People have no goddamned taste. Bloody morons. If I see another Bruckheimer crapomobile screen I swear to god I'll um write a petition. Or fistfuck the bastich. Better rethink that: old Bruckie will probably enjoy it no end.
Thursday, February 8, 2001, 05:52 p.m.

'beat' takeshi is the coolest fucker
latest google searchers that found this page:
1. eraserhead nipples
2. nude picture of eminem
3. dogs fucking sheep
4. annabel chong
5. hiphuggers
6. ficken divx
7. desktop fighter
8. monks fucking nuns
9. lone wolf and cub posters
and
10. xxx 3ivx
I really should stop using such foul language, huh? most of these searches are bound for disappointment, hehe...
Monday, February 5, 2001, 04:12 p.m.

Oni released!
I used to love games. The past few years, the only really great game I've played was Deus Ex. And now Oni is released by the great great heads at Bungie (Pathways into Darkness, the Marathon series, Myth...)
Fuck me! I wanna buy some records, but it's so fucking expensive!:(
Monday, February 5, 2001, 03:55 p.m.

Lots of free great music!
So long since I wrote, so long. I feel somewhat disoriented, having not slept as well as I usually do. My dreams were close to nightmares: everything lacked comments in them - files, records, movies. Back covers blank, info boxes empty. I felt thirsty and dried up like a husk. pretty nasty. I wonder if I'm getting a fever or something.
Yesterday, I talked to a long-time friend over the phone. The conversation was both interesting and mildly nauseating, due to the fact that my friend is a sometime (or oftentime) substance (ab)user. In my droll kinda view, drugs are no good. Or god for that matter. Not most of the time anyway. They might be of help, sure, but as soon as you feel that you need them, it's just another shackle. People who subscribe to 'recreational' or whatever drug use often tend to canonize it and themselves into renegades at odds with society. As if dope smoking is a real act of subversion. I'm sure that drugs can enlighten, but frankly, I can't but feel bad about those who prolong their use of it beyond that illumination.
Of course, talking about drugs can be taboo, so i won't further go into it. Suffice it to say that I once used a pretty powerful alkaloid, and that was a highly interesting experience, which I felt no need to repeat. I still think about it at times. But I also tried a herbal drug which proved to be very bad juju, since I took a far to big dose. It felt pretty bad, and I think I entered what Stanislav Grof called Basic Perinatal Matrix III: visions of sharp edges, crackling glass, needles, dry plants, metal, shit. [I learned about that when reading The Invisibles] You know the feeling: sometimes when you're running a deep ugly fever, you'll feel the same way. Anyway. Let me tell you: it was enough to make me never ever want to use ANY drug again (exept caffein, alcohol, sugar and nitrous oxide). Not that I ever did use drugs to any extent at all, much less tthan the average college student, let me tell you. Anyway, it was a lesson that I learned more than four years ago.
On another note, my neck is tense as hell, and that's caused me to feel weird in the past, slightly out of reality. I understand that it looks weird mentioning this straight after I talked about well... Anyway, tensions in neck and back can give me a feeling of being a bit 'vague'. I had it a lot before we begun to receive massage at work, but it still feels weird. Gotta do something about the way I sit. Or maybe I should just stop sitting in front of a computer even when I'm not working...
other than that, a lot of stuff has happened:
1. my old fella Mats resurfaced after no contact with me for maybe 3 years. Grand! As i wrote earlier, it's totally blissful to meet old friends that you just continue to talk to. Picking up the thread.
2. Martin's girlfriend Maria moved back to town after a 3.5 year hiatus studying in stockholm
3. my friend Naffa and his family who lives on Zanzibar (where I'm still planning to go sometime this year) now lives in a near-civil-war zone. I'm a bit worried, but Naffa always was quite resourceful and streetsmart.
4. since i'm really fucking high tech, i bought my firs vcr this saturday. hurrah! only 2 decades too late
5. bought a cd burner of the most suave 16xburn variety
6. watched a girl drinking sambuca, setting fire to it in her moth and pouring cinnamon on the blue flame, causing a big ass fireburst to leap out of her mouth. erm. i like that in a girl.
7. bought giant robot, nerve, bust, juxtapoz, the latest Hiaasen, a James Ellroy omnibus with lesser-known work
8. snow. cold. warnings for massive power failure. due to the cold, the power seems to be running low in Sweden. I'm holding my thumbs.
Back to my neck: it feels irritating, disorienting. I'm thinking of starting a bad-ass regimen of physical exercise, since that seems to be helping. problem is, the symptoms seems to be similar to anxiety attacks, although i doubt they are. Maybe I should go se a naprapat och a chiropractor or something. or maybe i should do something else with my life. Anyway, I find this interesting, how your body and mind are intertwined. Maybe I just saw one too many Sopranos episodes...
Monday, February 5, 2001, 03:00 p.m.

Tic Tac Toejam
Well, this is just to show that I'm not dead or any such thing. Nor do I feel sick, ill or totally out of whack. I just haven't felt like it, is all...
A lot of, you know, everyday things has happened. Friends have been hung with, meals have been consumed, records have been listened to, drinks have been had, furniture have been lifted, drills have been used, floors have been vaccumed, butts have been ogled, flowers have been watered and so life carries on.
One of the funniest things that's happened in these past weeks though, was the resurfacing of my old friend Björn, whom i haven't heard a word from for over 18 months. And suddenly he calls, saying he's in town. Turns out, he's living in Oslo these days. It's so great to meet people that you have a long history with! Me and Björn, we started to hang out in '85 or so, when we both were involved in putting on concerts at a place back in smalltown Vänersborg. I was 18 and he was 16, which meant that we discovered a lot of things together, like music and booze and girls. We were oddballs back then: high top sneakers, mod suits etc wasn't haute couture in our hometown, to say the least. We listened to Public Enemy and Slayer and LL and Dead Kennedys and Beasties back when there was no real distinction between people who listened to hip hop and people who listened to punk and thrash. We had a ghettoblaster and tried to play basketball with little success. We drank beer in the parks. We smoked cigarettes and listened to 'Sister Ray'. We borrowed cars and went to illegal clubs in Gothenburg to watch Swans. We read Tintin and Kerouac...

And we grew up, and we moved, and we had less and less contact over the years. But it still feels like we've never really been apart. We're still good friends. And I must tell you: that feeling makes me so very happy.
Thursday, January 25, 2001, 11:34 a.m.

Der Onion Zeitung
Keee-RYST, I'm tired! My neck is a-hurtin', my throat is sore and I have eaten but a mozarella and red onion-bagel today. Yawn.
Slow at work today, many still have holiday. I've been editing an audio CD to be used for a big award tomorrow, and I used Peak TDM for the first time in a while and lemme tellya, it was a smooth motherfucker to work with. I actually was going to use proToolsFree, but it's always a bitch to get Digidesign stuff to work. Did those guys ever hear about user-friendly? Fuck that. I used ProTools Mix a while back, and that actually was easier to handle once I had put the shit manually in appropriate folders here and there, and downloaded appropriate DAEs and such tawdry files from DigiDesign...
What the holy hell am I talking about? I'm not an audio nerd, but I sure enjoy fiddling with programs that are hard to get a hang of. Happy New Year, y'all. I was to drunk to think up a promise, and when did I ever keep a stupid new year's promise, anyWAY?
I bought a nice book edited by The Onion guys, and I just told a friend at work some of the highlights. I still have tears in my goddamned eyes! I kinda forgot how much fun The Onion is. It kinda, for me, belonged to a time when I was reading Suck, Salon (back when it was salonmag.com, since salon.com was owned by some ugly-ass byo-tee parlor) and Onion several times a week. These days, I nary ever go there. The fickleness of it all! I'm talking about the internet, sho'nuff. There are so many things that I'm sure still are good, but I've kinda left it behind. I very rarely surf, nowadays, not like I used to, adding bookmark after bookmark. I honestly don't know what to look for in the ad-riddled 'Net of today. For the sake of Pete, even the pornography was once free of ads once upon a time. Yesterday, I for some quaint reason started up a newsreader for the first time in ages, perused some groups and was really shocked by the amount of SPAM therein. Out of 800 posts in one smutty alt.binaries.pictures. newsgroup (well, sue me, I felt like checking it out), only 4 or 5 was actual pictur posts, not being advertisement. I have to say, USENET is now officialy dead as far as I'm concerned. And it used to be such a great place. Honestly. I could sit for 10s of hours in a row just discussing stuff of all kinds. I even started a lively thread about the best mustard in the world, to mention one. Screw YOU, commercialist amoral capitalist smutpeddlers of Viagra, Penis Pumps and get rich now pyramid schemes. You fucking DIE!
Wednesday, January 3, 2001, 04:17 p.m.