How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

I am anti-meme. But, I am even more susceptible to guilt than I am anti-meme. So when I get knocked on the head with a meme, I react. In this case, Joel has asked me to name five thinking people with blogs. I guess it is a chance to direct people to a few of the links from my unwieldy list at the left.

1. Mig. I laughed, I cried, I gasped in wonder. When I grow up, I wanna write like Mig.

2. Lisa. Okay, so Lisa mostly thinks about how twisted life is for a straight woman in New York who needs to get a new job, can't dance to save her life (but loves it nonetheless) and has a most complicated relationship with her mother.And she's moving kind of slowly just now. But we almost met when she was in Sweden last year, but the great Norse god Odin was working against us. The next time I go to New York, I'm gonna meet Lisa.

3. Eric. Okay, so Eric mostly thinks about how twisted life is for a gay man in New York who goes to a self-esteem-destroying gym (as if he weren't a nice hunk of man himself), who hates when people use foreign names instead of the perfectly good English ones for places (such as "Firenze" instead of "Florence"), who perseverates on the theme of famous beautiful people who are his age, and who obfuscates everything with layers of irony of an astonishing multitude of weights and thicknesses. But he thinks about these things a lot! I am addicted to Eric.

4. Mr. H. O, the most wondrous of art. Where does Mr. H., proprieter of Giornale Nuovo, find it all? I'd love to have access to Mr. H's library.

5. Lynne. Dissecting the English language, from both sides of the Atlantic. Amazingly, in real life there is a mere two-degrees of separation between us, since she is the friend of an acquaintance of mine, whose mother was a Branch Davidian in Waco, Texas. Addenda: I neglected to mention that the acquaintance is one of the best friends of an old boyfriend, the erudite Jessi Guilford. There, have I done right by you, Jessi?

And you know, you should really check out my friend Billy, and Loxias and Karie (the first blog I linked to that still exists...) as long as you're at it.

The Swedish word of the day is tänkande. It means, of course, thinking.

- by Francis S.