Last night we watched "When good plastic surgery goes bad," one of those voyeuristic cautionary tale shows, not unlike "When good pets go bad" or "When good weather goes bad" or "When good cops go bad" or "When good bosses go bad" or "When good babies go bad" or my favorite, "When good milk goes bad."

The husband loves these shows.

What I fail to understand, however, is why anyone would allow a so-called doctor to have at one with something called a pickle fork. Or go back to the same quack (whose medical instruments include a kitchen spatula) five more times to allow him to try to repair the mistakes he already made because he is, in fact, not an MD but a Cuban used car salesman who speaks seven languages.

The Swedish word for the day is misstag. It means mistake.

- by Francis S.

Time for another longer Swedish lesson.

#4. The Hierarchy of Nordic Countries (from a Swedish point of view). Swedes seem to have some definite views about the countries around them. Or rather, the husband does. I like to think that in this respect, he reflects typical Stockholm thinking. Warning: If you are a citizen of one of the Nordic countries, you may find the following offensive and want to hit me with a large stick. These are not, I repeat, not my own opinions. I have no opinions on this topic.

Denmark belongs on the top of the hierarchy, well, along with Sweden of course. It's part of the European continent, as opposed to the Nordic peninsula, which makes it a cooler, hipper place with a (possibly) better culture than Sweden. Of course, it is half the size of Sweden so it loses some points there for being smaller. Swedes also generally have trouble understanding Danish - it sounds rather like someone talking Swedish and gargling at the same time, in my opinion - but embarrassingly enough, Danes almost always understand Swedes. So, Denmark both gains and loses points on the language issue.

Norway could be considered the boring country cousin of Sweden. They have oil and lots of money, yeah, and the scenery is pretty, but they're hopelessly provincial and hey, they were part of Sweden until 1905 (to be fair, they were only part of Sweden for about 100 years or so; Norway, Denmark and Sweden have a long history of taking over bits and pieces of each other so Norway has been part of Sweden on other occasions as well). They're dowdy but okay, sort of. Definitely beneath Sweden on the Nordic hierarchy.

Finland is the barbaric little brother of Sweden. Looked down on because of its lack of manners and tendency to carry concealed knives, Swedes nonetheless have a grudging secret admiration for the Finns because they are tough. And of course, Finland was part of Sweden for a lot longer than Norway was part of Sweden, so despite some longstanding resentments (Finns traditionally learn Swedish as a second language and the upper classes in the west of Finland speak Swedish as a first language) and some big cultural differences (Finland is not a Scandinavian country, for instance; the language is related to Estonian and Hungarian, outside the Indo-European language group in fact), Sweden and Finland have a most interesting love-hate relationship. Some Swedes would say Finland is on the bottom of the Nordic hierarchy, despite its having more famous architects, artists and classical composers than Sweden.

Iceland is just plain weird, an anomoly. Iceland seems to be a last remnant of the Vikings, a kind of parallel Nordic world with cute little hairy horses and Björk. Iceland sits alone on the side in the Nordic hierarchy, unclassifiable.

Sweden is really the alpha dog, although no one in Sweden would say this out loud.

I wonder what people in the other Nordic countries think, and do they resent Sweden for thinking of itself as the U.S. of the north? Or do they really not give a shit what Sweden thinks...

The Swedish word for the day is kartan. It means the map.

- by Francis S.

"Do you feel left out if you don't participate in the latest meme or web survey to make the rounds? How compelled are you to follow the pack and do what everyone else is doing?"

If Jimmy Jones down the block jumped over a cliff, would you jump over a cliff, too?

Apparently, I would jump over that cliff.

And so I have gotten my own semi-personal blogger code, courtesy of Ron:

B2 d- t- k+ s+ u- f i o++ x- e- l c+

- by Francis S.

Uh-oh. Comments are gone again, and I managed to leave up for some 12 hours or more a nasty and annoying HTML error before coming home from the office (I aso managed to leave my keys at the office as well and had to run back and knock on the door until someone let me in. At least I didn't accidentally set the alarm off.)

I guess it wasn't the best of days yesterday.

The Swedish word for the day is jobbigt. It's hard to get the real meaning across with just one word, it's such an oft-used and well-worn Swedish expression - it means something along the lines of difficult and pain in the ass and not much fun.

- by Francis S.

And I always thought Scandinavia was so very anti-clerical, so downright atheistic slash agnostic, so down on religion.

But obviously Scandinavians are not so down on religion that they don't have a magazine about getting confirmed in the, uh, church. It has lots of fashion spreads with 13-year-old Britney lookalike nymphets provocatively posed in white dresses, plus party tips and plenty of advertising to give kids good ideas for what kinds of very expensive presents to ask for when they get confirmed.

No mention of God though, as far as I can tell with my bad Danish.

Now this is an idea whose time has come. Why didn't I think of it?

- by Francis S.

Damn. Go away for a day and a half, all hell breaks loose.

I've gotten links to the My Way Blog Awards (go to the link only if you want to read the categories) from some of my very favorite folks who I think are definitely A-list bloggers, no matter what anyone else thinks. And then the stupid form doesn't work because naturally I didn't read the fine print about the form accepting only 50 responses in total (I hadn't expected much of a response anyway, to be honest).

So, I guess this means that the ballots are closed, whether I like it or not... although if you still want to nominate someone, just send me an e-mail.

I'll announce the winners by the end of next week. There are definitely some front runners, but as I've said from the beginning, I make the rules. Which means there could be some very interesting results.

Now, I just need to get the fucking i-Mac to work at home with the new service provider so I can have some server space which will allow me to, at long-last, post some graphics here for the award winners (not that I'm about to start posting lots of graphics, I'm a word-lover and don't like to clutter up the space with a lot of interesting and funny photos and pictures, and cool graphic elements.)

The Swedish phrase for the day is jävla dum. It means fucking stupid.

- by Francis S.

Amsterdam, here I come.

Too bad it's only for a day.

Amsterdam is such a marvelous place, not because of the "coffee" shops or because it's Europe's answer to San Francisco, homosexuality-wise. It just is lovely on such a human scale - all those step-gabled houses with huge windows on the canals, and the people are so blunt, so warm, so friendly.


My grandparents or great-grandparents or great-great grandparents - it depends on which side how far back you have to go - are Dutch on both my mother's and my father's side. I remember how startling it was after I'd been to the Netherlands the first time, realizing that what I had always thought was a rural brogue in my grandmothers' speech was in fact a faint Dutch accent, although both of them had been born and lived their whole lives in Iowa.

I was also startled by how familiar the interaction between people was - this was how my parents relate to people, this easygoing forthrightness. Ethnic recognition. I wonder if genes play any role in this at all, or is it purely stubborn socialization passed down through the generations that makes me feel so at home in the Netherlands?

The Swedish words for the day are farmor and mormor. They both mean grandmother - although the former refers to a paternal grandmother and the latter to a maternal grandmother.

- by Francis S.

I think I've been reading too much of The Lord of the Rings.

I feel a little embarrassed to be re-reading it (I'm on page 150 or so of the last book). I started just because I kept making plans to go see the movie but we could never get tickets.

I read all three books once back when I was 14 or so - well, more or less. I got bogged down when Frodo and Sam were stuck in those dreary marshes and skipped the second half of The Two Towers.

Last night the husband brought home barbecued spareribs. Which are not my favorite, but I used to like them well enough. However, as my teeth ripped into the stringy flesh on the bones, I kept thinking of various fictional critters from those books ripping into the flesh of various other fictional critters and I found I could barely eat it. It felt so primitive, and not in any free-your-mind back-to-nature kind of way. And here I always thought those books were kind of, well, adolescent. But they sure have some kind of power over me.

It was almost enough to make me a vegetarian.

Almost.

- by Francis S.

Oh, and don't forget to send in your nominations to the My Way Blog Awards.

If you're having trouble with the form, just e-mail your nominations complete with URL directly to me (yes, you will lose your anonymity, but do you really care?) in the following categories - see the form for a full description.

My nominee for the Best Sylvia Plath Impersonation 2001 is...
My nominee for the Best Porn Star Potential 2001 is...
My nominee for the Best i-Mom 2001 is...
My nominee for the Weakest Link 2001 is...
My nominee for Best in Show 2001 is...

Thank you for your good citizenship.

- by Francis S.

Men are standing on snowy roofs everywhere in Stockholm, tapping and ridding them of snow and lethal icicles - yesterday a 14-year-old boy was killed on Drottninggatan by a hunk of ice (sorry, the link is in Swedish). It's strange that I grew up in Chicago and I never remember having to be scared of icicles, but here it seems everyone lives in fear of them.

Can you imagine being killed by an icicle, having to tell your friends and family, being interviewed by the news? "Oh, yes, it really hurt," you tell them. "It came out of nowhere. No, it's not funny, it killed me for Chrissakes."

(I was woken from my feverish sleep this morning by a workman ringing the bell and coming in to knock the icicles from the scaffolding outside the kitchen window. Apparently, we could've been killed every time we walked into the courtyard of the apartment to throw out our trash or do the laundry.)

The Swedish word for the day is, of course, istapp. It means icicle.

- by Francis S.

I am a subway person, as opposed to a bus person. It seems odd to me, because most of all I prefer to walk, so you'd think I would want to be above ground where I could see everything go by. But I hate buses. And more, I am entranced by trains. In partic ular, I am fascinated by train stations, especially those built during the Belle Epoque, the robber barons' answer to a cathedral. The marble-floored waiting rooms with soaring ceilings, and the wrought iron and glass covering the platform where the trains leave. The cold and the smell of departure and arrival, a sort of intoxicating mix of tobacco and perfume, oil and sweat and leather.

An airport feels hardly different from a shopping mall, and all airports are virtually interchangeable. But a train station, a real train station like Union Station in Washington, D.C. or the Central Station in Antwerp, has its own pulse and countenance.

I remember when I was 13 or so, I used to take the Chicago and Northwestern train from Highland Park to Evanston once a week to my piano lesson at Northwestern University. I would buy two bars of cadbury chocolate (with hazelnuts) at Kip's delicatessen. Then, feeling very grown up, I would board the train, slowly consuming one chocolate bar tiny bite by tiny bite, saving the other for the trip home. I could never read or write for long, because I felt impelled to look out the window at the same scenery going by each week, imagining all those lives going on behind all the windows in the houses and offices, entranced by old brick factories and secret paths through small and nameless woods.

The actual process of getting there was more important than the getting there itself.

I haven't changed much since then, not when it comes to trains and train stations at least.

The Swedish phrase for the day is pendeltåg. It means commuter train.

- by Francis S.

It's the end of the Christmas season, at last. Epiphany. The twelfth day of Christmas, and my true love gave to me some peeled carrots not half an hour ago.

Tomorrow, it's back to the old hamster wheel. I know I'll be fine once I return to the 500 e-mails that await me, the deadlines that I allowed reporters to extend, the extra sources I still need to track down, the re-reshuffling yet again of staff, and the extra meeting I need to set up for Thursday's one-day trip to Amsterdam for an editorial meeting.

I've got one of those sweaty, greasy, stomach-grinding, teeth-clenching nights ahead of me, I just know it.

It's strange how difficult it is to not worry about things that it really does no good to worry about in the first place. It's not as if I could do anything about any of this now.

I think I'm getting a cold.

- by Francis S.

We just had breakfast - bran flakes with filmjölk, which is some kind of vaguely yoghurt-like dairy product peculiar to Scandinavia I think, and boiled eggs with kalles kaviar.

How do I explain kalles kaviar? The ingredients claim that it contains choice fish roe, preservatives, sugar, vegetable oil and tomato paste. It comes in a blue tube, not unlike a huge tube of toothpaste, and on the cover is a picture of the Swedish Ur-boy, blonde and blue-eyed Kalle.

As for the taste, think fish eggs with a dash of sugar.

I like it with a boiled egg. And if I'm really hungry at the office because I've forgotten to eat lunch, I'll have some on a piece of knäcke bread.

Something tells me that most of you Americans would not find it terribly palatable. For Swedes, however, it's the kind of thing they search out in a foreign place when they're feeling homesick.

It is, in fact, not unlike peanut butter, in that no one seems to see the appeal outside of the country of origin.

It is also a topic that makes the Swedes not want to be part of the EU; it seems that someone somewhere (most likely someone in France) has complained that it is not caviar and must be renamed, or not sold in Europe, or something along those lines.

Absolute heresy.

The Swedish word for the day is frukost. It means breakfast.

- by Francis S.

p.s. The polls are still open for nominations for the My Way Blog Awards. It's too late to vote early, but not too late to vote often.

One of the great things about Sweden is that everyone gets five weeks of vacation by law. My company gives us six weeks, and as someone who has reached the grand old age of 40, I also get an extra week according to the union rules that our company abides by. That's seven weeks of vacation. Nearly two months a year.

I just love the social welfare state, it's fabulous.

So, since I get seven weeks of vacation, I've taken the last two weeks off. Which means I now have those same back-to-school jitters I used to get after Christmas vacation when I was a kid, and it's only Saturday early afternoon.

To think, just last week I was complaining to the husband about not being able to relive the enchanted Christmases of my childhood. What a fool I was.

- by Francis S.

Just as a reminder, the My Way Blog Awards are still open for nominations. Vote early and vote often.

If you're of a different bent, so to speak, perhaps you prefer the pornolized name - My "Bust-a-Cunt" Way Blog "Ball Buster" Awards. (Hats off to Simon for the link.)

- by Francis S.

Okay, 'fess up.

Who put a link to this site on Metafilter? It wasn't me... I think I've browsed around there once or twice at the most, but suddenly I find the Metafilter URL in my referral logs, and now of course I'm curious as to what was linked but I can't find it amidst all those endless comments on each post, and a search did no good either.

The Swedish word for the day is förvirrad. It means confused.

- by Francis S.

I've noticed that people are starting to give out awards and such for blogging in 2001. And I thought to myself, no one gives out the awards I would give out, why not make up my own?

So here they are, the My Way Blog Awards. Vote early and often. The results will be posted whenever I get enough responses to make it worth posting.

- by Francis S.

According to my friend the priest, one of the most hated little rhymes- with- a- moral told by generations of Swedish mothers to their children is: Det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder. It means there is no bad weather, only bad clothing. Me, I find it cute, but I suppose it's not hard to find the annoying smugness underneath. And if my mother had said it to me when I was a kid, I would loathe it too. Why is it that a mother's advice can be so off-putting?

- by Francis S.

Tinka's got a new site. With comments, at long last. Yay, Tinka.

- by Francis S.

So I decided that it would be better for my marriage if I actually helped my husband in his quest to Clean The Entire Apartment and Rid It of Useless Flotsam and Jetsam (especially the mess under the bed).

So among other sundry tasks I ended up sorting old photos - it seems that the part of my physical life I brought to Sweden with me was mostly books and old photos - and I was going to write something profound here about how I love and hate photos. I love to look at them, but I worry that my memory of any one situation becomes replaced by the photograph if there is a photograph taken. (Perhaps I am still too fascinated, as I was in my early 20s, with Susan Sontag's On Photography).

So then my intentions were totally derailed when the neighbors invited us down for a celebratory glass of champagne (we have created a monster in our neighbor, L., Sweden's Woman Chef of 1999 - she is now addicted to Louis Roederer champagne because we fed it to her on New Years Day and now she can't get enough). I am now completely tipsy and in no kind of mood for anything (is that some kind of weird double negative?).

So how did we manage to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes in an hour?

Oh, my poor sad blackened lungs.

The Swedish phrase for the day is ingen aning. It means no idea.

- by Francis S.