The Miracle of the Bathroom Floor

November 5, 2011 – 10:53 am

I think we’ll just skip the whole “oh it’s been a while”, shall we? And it’ll probably be a while until the next one too, so get used to it.

Anyway, I simply had to inform you all (all 7 of you, at this rate) of a miraculous happening in my bathroom. After my Halloween party last weekend (and yes, it was awesome) I spotted a stain on the bathroom floor. Some combination of wine and grime, I assumed, and thought no more about it.

But last night, while sitting nearby in a contemplative mood, I looked at the stain and realised that it was more than a stain. It was, in fact, a sign. A miracle, if I may be so bold. See for yourself:

Praise be the bathroom floor tile cruciform! (Hereby know as the BFTC). But what does it mean? Has God blessed my party? Is he telling me to stop drinking wine, at least off the floor? Is he saying I should have more parties, to the glory of his name? Or is he telling me to drop everything, disarm my penis and charge, whimpering and lamenting, for the nearest monastery?

I don’t know what it means, but clearly it means something. I mean, random images cannot just appear at random, can they? What kind of universe would that be?

In the meantime, I’m waiting for the BFTC pilgrims to arrive. And if anybody wants to buy my floor on eBay, I’m ready to deal.

/ paddy

By paddyK | Posted in Life, Religion | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (7)

Real Estate Bastards

September 7, 2011 – 9:58 pm

I try not to hate people. That’s not a way to be happy. Even though I hold certain views myself, I always enjoy talking to people with different views. Not in order to feel superior by beating them over the head with logic to prove I am “right” (as done by quite a few people I could mention), but because I might gain a new viewpoint, a new way to see the world. And that’s what life is all about, right?

But there’s one group of people that I unreservedly despise. A group that should, with all due haste, be removed from the surface of the planet; scraped from Terra’s boots like yesterday’s dried dog-shit. And these are real estate agents.

To save you reading the rest of this rant, I’ll summarise here: I fucking despise real estate agents. Like nothing else in this world. I hate them, for example, more than fascists. At least many fascists have some belief that they are doing some kind of greater good, as misplaced as it might be. Real estate agents are simply selfish, greedy scum.

Twice have I had dealings with these despicable twigs of humanity. Twice have they tried, in some way, to cheat me. And one time was when the bastard was actually working for me, selling my apartment and getting paid handsomely for his few hours of sweaty-fingered work. He tried to cheat me anyway.

I mean, what do they do exactly? They sell things that there is a huge demand for. And how do they do this? By lying, cheating, and pressing up prices. Are they experts in anything? No. Do they have a special skill that can’t be found elsewhere? No. Are they in any way necessary to the smooth running of the world? No they fucking aren’t.

They go to school too, and fuck knows what they learn there, except to take misleading photos, write deceptive texts and suck money from people. In fact, they seem to exist for two reasons – to push up property prices in any way they can in order to increase their own cut, and to keep prices in general high. Property bubbles are entirely their fault. Okay, them and the banks, but mostly them, the spineless, gutless, soulless, suit-wearing sons of bitches. Useless slabs of flesh, every last one, without exception.

Nobody put these sentiments better than Stewart Lee in his awesome sketch. And who wouldn’t like to batter estate agents repeatedly with a heavy bat? Sounds fucking delightful if you ask me.

(And for fuck’s sake, buy the man’s DVD.)

So join me in making the world a better place. Let’s all spit at a real estate agent today. A big sticky globular one, with shades of green in it. You know you want to.

/ paddy

By paddyK | Posted in Life, Ranting | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

All Kinds Of Awesome

August 11, 2011 – 10:40 pm

What, is it that time of the month already? Okay then, hang on. (Checks pockets and under bed.) Oh yeah, here’s something! The most happiness-inducing thing I’ve seen in years. (Click here if embedding is disabled.)

Isn’t that just the best? Aren’t you grinning like an idiot? These people are the true individuals, the ones who really dare to be themselves, and have a whole world of fun doing it. Glasses raised to them, and to Pink who made this excellent song.

In fact, glasses raised to all true nerds everywhere. The future is ours, people.

/ paddy

By paddyK | Posted in Culture | Tagged , , , | Comments (4)

Harry Potter and the Snobs of Culture

July 12, 2011 – 9:10 pm

Today I read what was possibly the most pretentious, culture-snob hackery I have ever come across. It was a “review” (in Swedish) of the latest Harry Potter movie, a movie I am very much looking forward to. But also a review made by a mental midget who should have his title as “culture reporter” revoked, rolled up tightly and inserted into his bottom.

Culture snobs? Where?

This guy is clearly from the snob school of culture. These are people who only regard some things as culture, fine things that they themselves once did a fucking paper on in culture-wank academy. You see these people everywhere, and they are almost always being snide about “lesser” cultural things. Things like science fiction, fantasy, or anything they don’t see as “clever” and can’t be bothered to look into because it might somehow demean them to read a book without a pompous “The” at the beginning of its self-important fucking title.

These people irritate the crap out of me. Well let me inform them – culture isn’t what a group of MacBook-owning (and come on, of course they all have MacBooks) and big black glasses-wearing idiots deem it to be. Culture, my snobby mate, is what people actually consume. I would even go as far to say that ballet and opera aren’t culture. They are museum pieces with very limited appeal, only kept alive by huge chunks of tax-payer’s money. Football is more culture than opera (and I don’t even like football). And Star Trek (despite being rather crap) is hugely more culturally relevant than some Nobel prize-winning tosser with his angsty shite that people will only buy because the slab-head won a Nobel prize with it.

Where does this reviewer get off saying that it isn’t important that he’s not seen the other movies? In what other movie review would this be okay? Perhaps reviewing the Kieślowski movies while only having seen the Red one? Or slashing “The Godfather” based on part 3? My arse it would be okay. And so why is it just fine with Harry Potter?

And then he belittles the book’s plot with his “Oh you all know how it goes” bullshit. Because he couldn’t be arsed to read the books or even see the other movies, it’s fine for us to be just as ignorant as he is. And his other point seems to be that you put enough ack-thors in a movie and throw a swanky enough director at it, then even mediocre second-rate shite like, oh, Harry fucking POTTER can look like a “real” movie.

Screw this guy, and the rest of the pretentious self-satisfied culture snobs who decide it’s okay to look down on things because they happen not to know anything about them. And a tip – next time, if you’re going to review a movie then put the fucking work in. If you don’t, then at least don’t bloody tell us in a “I didn’t bother and that’s okay because I don’t need to” kind of way.

And keep in mind that nobody gives a shit who you stood beside at some football game. Yeah?

/ paddy

By paddyK | Posted in Culture, Ranting | Tagged , , , , | Comments (27)

Tail’s Last Hurrah

June 22, 2011 – 10:43 pm

I am feeling sad tonight, much more than I would have thought. Our degu Tail (so known because he kept his tail while his compatriot lost his) is on his way to the vets tomorrow to be put down. The poor little bastard damaged his back and for a month or two now has not been able to move his back legs at all. Now they are all scabbed and hairless from dragging and the poor bugger can’t move around or stand up. He’s grown thin and haggard and doesn’t appear to be getting any better. To be honest, it looks like it hurts.

Right now he’s having his last run around the apartment, dragging himself with his front paws. He’s been given a smörgåsbord of all his favourite nibbles and watching him drag himself around I feel ridiculously sad.

I am sad because I will miss the little guy and his quirky personality but also because I think it reminds me of H12′s fading childhood. When we got him and his late friend 2 years ago I still remember how happy we both were to get them home. And we built an awesome enclosure for them and they’ve been a part of our lives since them. Now H12 is almost a teen (may the saints preserve us) and all those childhood things are fading and won’t be back again. It’s like I’m taking a chunk of our lives to the vets tomorrow to be put down along with the wee beastie.

Anyway, it’s zero hour 9.15 tomorrow morning. Spare a thought for poor Tail. His life was short but full of nibbles.

/ paddy

By paddyK | Posted in Life | Tagged , | Comments (12)

Tongue Troubles

June 13, 2011 – 2:39 pm

I am becoming more and more unwilling to speak Swedish in public. It’s getting, by now, to be a bit of a joke.

Today, I took a vacation day and found myself in another city. I went into a café and gave my order to the (young) waitress. I wanted a cappuccino so I said:

“Jag tar en cappuccino.” Which translates, strangely enough, to:

“I’ll take a cappuccino.”

The waitress stared at me as if I’d said “Bestow upon me a codpiece boiled in trench-coat lovely sir lunchbox.”

I repeated the order, in my stupid-person voice, and she got it. Now this would have been a bit amusing except that it happened a few hours earlier in a Subway sandwich butcher’s.

“Lunchmenyn, tack,” I said. Meaning: “Lunch menu, thanks.” This was Subway at lunchtime, where they serve a good many lunch menus. But she stared at me like I was insane. “Which part didn’t you get?” I asked. “All of it,” she said.

Now, my Swedish accent isn’t brilliant, and I do tend to mumble in most languages but, seriously, how can you NOT hear the word “cappuccino” in a customer’s very short order when you work in a coffee shop where cappuccinos are 20% of your business?

This has happened me many times in Stockholm too, many many times. It’s got to the point where I don’t speak Swedish very often any more when ordering things. Speaking English right off the bat always works better, and let me tell you, you get vastly more respect. They pay attention, they are more helpful, and the girls always wink lasciviously (or so I imagine).

So, my standard advice to all English-speaking immigrants who move here is: learn Swedish well. But speak to pretty much everybody in English, because then they’ll all love you and not treat you like a confused moron.

/ paddy

By paddyK | Posted in Life, Ranting | Tagged , , , | Comments (15)

A Book Done Day

June 8, 2011 – 10:27 pm

Forgive me for a moment while I blow my own horn. (And there’s a skill all the boys wish we had, eh?)

About six years I started to gestate an idea for a young adult science fiction novel. The kernel of the idea was to have a character who accidentally gained magical powers and had to learn how to use them. Being SF the “magic” powers needed to have a technological basis to them.

From there it quickly blossomed into a space opera adventure story, with traders, pirates, strange races, intrigue, emperors, secrets, biological computers, reactionless propulsion, alien toilets, immortals, hyperspace intestines, and a massive kick-ass chase sequence that takes up fully a quarter of the book.

Needless to say, I am telling you this because draft 1 was completed an hour ago. (Actually it’s more like draft 3 as the first half of the book was re-done several times.) But fuck it, I’m calling it draft 1 because it has a nice fat ring to it.

I am very excited about this book, as 1) It’s got the best character names of anything I’ve ever written and 2) Every time I went back to it after a break I thought, wow, that’s pretty good.

Plus it’s a fucking space romp, and exactly the kind of thing I’d buy myself. Which is probably the best praise I could give it.

And that’s all I’m saying for now. The book shall sit for a little while before I return and polish it to a state where others can read it and start to comment. You want to, just ask.

I love it when a plan comes together.

/ paddy

By paddyK | Posted in Life | Tagged , , | Comments (15)

Mucking About On Trains

June 4, 2011 – 12:26 am

So today was mine and H12′s big trip. We were off to Copenhagen to visit a friend and see that wonderful city where the people are like Stockholm people, but possibly a bit taller and richer and with better teeth.

We got to the train station at 12 noon and clambered onto our train, full of enthusiasm. Just 5 hours 30 minutes to another country, fucking awesome. And we’d get to cross the mighty Öresundsbron, a really sweet bridge I’d never seen. And we’d get to be on a train, which I rather like too.

At 17.20, five minutes before the train pulled into Malmö, we were informed that all traffic over the bridge had been stopped. We dashed to the ticket office in Malmö station to be told by the bent old ladies who worked there: “What? Is it? Really? Who said?” After some phone calls to their tarot card readers, they confirmed that the bridge was out, although they couldn’t say why. (A friend on mine in Stockholm, meanwhile, could see the reason plain as day on the Swedish newspaper DN’s site. Heat had warped a rail and a train was stuck.) It’s nice to see the old ladies are being kept in the loop.

We were informed that the stoppage could last an unknown length of time, that we should wear our mittens and that Jupiter was entering Aquarius. So our options right then seemed to be get a ticket back to Stockholm, or else sit it out and possibly enjoy (?) a night in Malmö. We took the ticket back.

10 minutes into said train ride I saw online that the bridge was open again. Yay. But the fun didn’t end there. Three hours into our return trip, the train stopped. An announcement was made that they needed to reset (possibly reboot) the train. They did. The train continued to not move.

We got off, wandered a bit, kicked some stones, and were at last informed that the train was dead and that we’d have to wait for the replacement train. This train would arrive in an hour or so.

So, to summarise, me and H12 stumbled home at 1:01 in the morning, having traversed the country twice, covered over 12oo km, eaten 513 train sandwiches, and were still exactly where we had started. And we wonder exactly why people are flying so much these days. May I suggest, perhaps, it’s because the trains are a rancid pile of shit?

Just a thought.

/ paddy (who would very much like that day of his life back, please)

By paddyK | Posted in Life | Comments (6)

The Royal We

May 20, 2011 – 10:39 pm

This week saw the Queen (of the United Kingdom and the blah blah) visit Ireland for the first time in living memory. Or my memory, at least. It all went splendidly. The old girl made a big effort to heal old wounds and even spouted a few words of Irish (known in the newspapers as ‘Gaelic’). She even sat through bloody Riverdance with a straight face. Nice one the Queen. We are not amused, but we are most certainly pleased.

This Segways me nicely (at a slow rolling pace) onto my actual topic, the use of “we” by people in relationships. You know what I mean. You ask a workmate “so what are you doing at the weekend?” And the answer will begin with “Well, we are…”

Hold it there, big boy. I didn’t ask what you plural are doing, I asked what YOU are doing. As in, you yourself. Why do I have to get an answer that includes a person I might not even know? It’s like you asked me what my plans were and I decide to inform you about the weekend plans of a nine-year old boy in Perth.

And tell me this. At what point in a relationship do a great many people stop seeing themselves as individuals? Does it creep up on them, or is it a conscious decision? Is it around the same time they get a shared email address? And start going to the gym in pairs? And start sending out Christmas cards with a photo of them both grinning like morons? Maybe somebody can explain.

I could also go into the practice of using photos of your offspring as your Facebook profile pic, and of informing the world on an hourly basis how much porridge little Glen threw on the floor this morning. I won’t though, because then you’ll all think I’m a baby-hater and a grumpy old bastard. Whereas I’m not. Babies are lovely. Asleep.

Now where’s those fuckin’ slippers and me best pipe.

/ paddy

By paddyK | Posted in Life, Ranting, Society | Tagged , , , | Comments (9)

Easter Eggs (Belated)

May 5, 2011 – 11:15 pm

Sometimes I just feel like being lazy. It’s hasn’t been Easter for a while, I know. I should be discussing American imperialism, I realise. I should be deciding which museums I should see in London, or why I haven’t bought any gold yet, or what the hell I should plant on my balcony. All of this I realise.

Instead, here’s some eggs that me and some fine friends made. It’s very clear which one is best. Don’t you think?

/ paddy (still wondering if they made Usama walk the plank)

By paddyK | Posted in Life, Obscura | Tagged , , , | Comments (6)

Debt

April 10, 2011 – 11:09 pm

I am a very unusual creature in that I have no debts at all. No study loan, no apartment loan, no car loan, no credit cards. And for this I need to be punished. Allow me to explain.

In Sweden if you have a mortgage you get tax relief on the interest payments. It’s around 30% if I’m not mistaken. This can be a reduction in the region of 1500 Euros per year for the average person. However if, like me, you rent your apartment then you get a tax relief of zero.

So, as a buyer, you own the place you live in PLUS you are subsidised by the taxpayer so that you can afford a better place than you otherwise could. You are effectively being rewarded for being in huge debt.

I heard that in the 80s in Sweden the relief rate was much higher than 30%. The banks then would happily give mortgages that exceeded the value of your property and properties with mortgages attached were sought after, as a way to reduce your tax.

I must admit that I don’t understand this at all. Surely I should be getting a bonus for paying my way and not borrowing huge chunks of money? It’s almost as if the state wants me to borrow money. Which, of course, they don’t. Mmm, yeah.

Does this system exists in other countries, that the tax payer subsidises borrowing? Come on readers, tell me, as I have no idea. It’s all too adult for me. The more I find out about the world, the less I get it all.

Oh well, at least I get to gloat when the interest rates go up as then I am richer compared to most other people. And when I pop my clogs I might actually have money to give the family members I leave behind, instead of the huge debt that most of my contemporaries will be leaving after them. Debt, and real ugly houses.

/ paddy (still in the black)

By paddyK | Posted in Ranting, Society | Tagged , , , , | Comments (17)

That Friday Song

March 31, 2011 – 8:30 pm

The web has been in a frenzy the last couple of weeks over a song from a wee girlie. Rebecca Black (aged 13 3/4) sings some other people’s song and gets engulfed in an amazing tsunami of rage and ire. It’s a bit hard to understand why. She didn’t bomb another person’s country, she just let some guys record her singing a tune. Sure, the song is shite, and auto-tuned to hell and back, but it’s catchy and not as shite as a few other songs I could name. She could have skipped the rap in the middle, though…

Now it’s easy to go online and say things like “U sukc” or “omg i hat u” and so on. And about a billion people did, helping to remind a 13 year old girl just how crap she is. (And on a side note, you would think that today’s kids would have better spelling, since they essentially live in a word-based medium, with spell-checkers on everything?)

But you know what’s best about this whole thing? Not the negative stuff, but the positive stuff. What people actually did with that half-assed song – used it to create some great things.

Like this one, made by slowing the thing down by 5 times and making it sound like something edgy from 1990s Iceland.

There was this one, where the whole thing was, shall we say, given a bit more oomph.

And this one, where the rather brilliant Matt Mulholland makes it sound like a real song, an amazing achievement it must be said. Go Matt!

And finally, here is the best version I have found. It’s a bit edgy, and was removed from YouTube pretty fast. But I managed to salvage it from my cache and pop it up somewhere for you to enjoy. So, yeah, enjoy, while you can, and forgive me if it’s a bit… too much.

So there you go. And just to remind you all, today it is Thursday, yeah? Which means tomorrow is… well, I’m sure you can work it out. Or maybe I’ll sing it for you.

/ paddy

By paddyK | Posted in Culture, Life | Tagged , , , | Comments (7)
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