How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

As I sat in the dentist's chair at 8:15 this morning, the left side of my mouth not quite numb enough to prevent me from feeling the dentist's drill and nearly flying out of the chair and seriously injuring the dentist, but managing to restrain myself to a pathetic whimper, the kind you make when your mouth is full of dental instruments and your eyes are tearing, I thought to myself how interesting it is that torture seems to be all the rage on American TV these days, and how curious a mirror television is, held up to American culture.

Of course, by all the rage, I mean one episode of a TV show that we saw a couple of weeks ago: A character whose backstory is that of a former Iraqi military officer forced to torture a fellow Iraqi officer by his American captors, tortures another character in a situation in which TV viewers are nudged into thinking that the torture is probably a good thing under the circumstances.

Isn't TV wacky?

Anyway, it gets my conspiracy-theory juices flowing, making me wonder if the producers of "Lost" have been hanging out with Alberto Gonzales, the latest in a long line of nutcase- uh, I mean, outstanding Republican U.S. Attorneys General that would include John Ashcroft and Ed Meese (who famously said in the 1980s: "I don't know of any authoritative figures that there are hungry children. I've heard a lot of anecdotal stuff, but I haven't heard any authoritative figures...I think some people are going to soup kitchens voluntarily. I know we've had considerable information that people go to soup kitchens because the food is free and that that's easier than paying for it...I think that they have money.")

Actually, it doesn't really get me thinking conspiracies, it gets me thinking that there really is no excuse for torture. That's why they call it torture.

My mouth is still kind of sore.

The Swedish word for the day is häftapparat. It means stapler.

- by Francis S.