How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

Well, Melinda. This post is for you.

Are you sure you want to be an editor for a magazine? It definitely has its good points. One of them being the satisfaction of getting the finished magazine. Of course, I'm too much of a coward to actually read the magazine once it comes back from the printer (maybe sick of it, too.) I only leaf through it, barely glancing at the pages, waiting for somebody else to find the typos and mistakes.

Not that I'm above torturing those people who are brave enough to do it.

When my friend Å. had the first issue of a new magazine she was doing come out, my friend G. and I decided to play a little joke. Å. had just been at the printer in Finland and came back regaling us with stories about the stacks and stacks of porn next to the presses at the factory in Tampere. So, we cut out near-pornographic photos from fashion magazines (a sleazy guy in a bed; a naked ass bisected by the string of a string bikini) and carefully pasted them over the actual pictures. When the receptionist, who had been in on the conspiracy, delivered the doctored magazine to Å., she about had a heart attack.

Å. tells us that revenge is a bitch, and it comes unexpectedly.

And now you're probably saying to yourself, ''That Francis guy sounds like a jerk.'' But I'm not, I'm not! I just like a good joke now and then. Just ask Å. (The whole thing was G.'s idea, I was merely an accomplice.)

This is what adults do when they work at magazines.

The Swedish word for the day is skratta.. It means laugh.

- by Francis S.