My boss just told me not to stay so late working, she's worried about me. I didn't enlighten her to the fact that I am not working but surfing.

I think I'm getting way too much of my news - English-language news at least - purely from people's blogs.

It's a micronews world.

And, it's probably not the best way to keep up with what's happening in the world. (And I can't even keep up with all the blogs that I want to keep up with.)

The Swedish word for the day is skamlig. It means shameful.

- by Francis S.

Fadime Sahindal was buried yesterday after a funeral in Uppsala Cathedral attended by thousands, including Crown Princess Victoria and various politicians such as the leader of the Folkpartiet, the Minister for Integration and the Speaker of Parliament. Archbishop Hammar led the service.

Fadime Sahindal wasn't famous. That is, not until she was murdered by her father for shaming the family name by dating the wrong guy. Her murder has caused an uproar in Sweden, adding fire to the debate of what to do about invandrare - immigrants, of which I am one, albeit one that is welcomed. Sahindal's family was Kurdish, although she was raised in Sweden. But obviously her family had held onto some, er, traditions from Turkey.

So Swedes are now asking themselves what they expect from immigrants, which is a difficult question for a country that since World War II has - out of guilt at being neutral during the war and letting the Nazis march through Sweden to get to Norway, I suspect - had strong policies encouraging immigration, particularly from war-torn parts of the world. But economically speaking, Sweden no longer needs these immigrants, which it did until the '90s. So there's a lot of tension around immigrants, yet people don't seem to want to go the way of Denmark. They just seem to want to do the right thing, whatever that may be.

The Swedish phrase for the day is utanför. It means outside.

- by Francis S.

Have I completely lost touch with my Americanness, or does the wording in this description of the Citizen Corps sound, er, Orwellian to you?

The Citizen Corps will harness the power of citizens to help prepare their local communities for the threats of terrorism. The Citizen Corps will be a locally-driven initiative managed by the newly created Citizen Preparedness Councils (Councils), supported at the state level by Governors, and coordinated nationally by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

(link courtesy yami, who sounds just as creeped out by it as I am.)

The Swedish word for the day is farligt. It means dangerous.

- by Francis S.

As we sat at dinner last night with our neighbors, L. the chef and her boyfriend the guitarist, I wondered how to describe the scene in such a way to convey this golden age in all its luxury. To make one long to taste the salad with endive and blood oranges - oh, the food we have on our tables from all the corners of this round earth - to make one yearn to sit on wooden chairs of perfect white geometry and the thinnest of stainless steel, surrounded by candles burning in old rusting filigree cages from Marrakesh. To make one wish to converse effortlessly about God and war and hating to wash the dishes. What it is to sate a refined palate with a refined palette in a candlelit apartment above a narrow street on one of the islands that make up the city of Stockholm.

It all feels so everyday, and yet we are impossibly, embarrassingly rich.

Will all this sound as romantic to someone born today as Gertrude Stein's descriptions of buying food in Paris during the '20s sounds to me?

The Swedish word for the day is svartsjuk. It means jealous.

- by Francis S.

Today's milestone: leading my first meeting in Swedish. With all the new members of my team, no less, some of whom I don't even know. I survived.

Now off to a big party celebrating the company's purchase of another company.

(Sometimes it seems that work is all workplay and no workwork. Which is not to say that these parties are fun, precisely.)

The Swedish word for the day is lederskap. It means leadership.

- by Francis S.

The husband is attending a meeting about telephone services at this very moment. One of his clients got him all hot and bothered about a new telephone operator in Sweden with really cheap rates. The hitch is that you're supposed to sign up for the service and then try to sell it to your friends, who should sell it to their friends and the more you sell the more you make and the cheaper the rates will be.

"My friend isn't even working anymore, all she does is sell telephone services!" the client exclaimed.

Apparently they've never heard of Amway in Sweden. And Swedes are so addicted to mobile phones - not to mention regular phones - and rates are so expensive that they're willing to try anything to lower their payments. My poor innocent husband. I wonder how long it will take for the government to shut the thing down.

I told the husband that under no circumstances is he to agree to or sign anything.

The Swedish word for the day is blåögd. It literally translates to blue-eyed, but it means naive.

- by Francis S.

Yes, Peter, it is very, very cool to smoke. And it is especially cool in America because people are so smugly self-righteous about not smoking. I remember visiting my sister in Minneapolis right after I moved back from Barcelona (you can smoke even in department stores there!) and before I moved to Stockholm (you can't smoke in department stores, but at least no one seems to think that smokers make Jesus weep). I was sitting on a 15-foot-long bench in a park and at the other end was a woman who gave me a sour look.

"Can you please move, the smoke is really irritating me," she said.

Uh-huh. The smoke was bothering her outside, 15 feet away.

I repeat, smoking cigarettes is way cool.

The Swedish word for the day is lögnare. It means liar.

- by Francis S.

When I was in the third grade, my teacher, Mrs. Provus, read Pippi Longstocking aloud to us in her whisky-and-cigarette tenor voice, a couple pages every day until we finished. I liked the book well enough, and I even read it myself when I was in the fourth grade. But it was never one of my favorites. And in Sweden, the Pippi Longstocking books are not the favorite Astrid Lindgren books either. The husband, for instance, prefers Bröderna Lejonhjärta, a story which has been described to me as the tale of a boy who sacrifices his life for his younger brother. It apparently makes children weep uncontrollably. No wonder it's so popular here, but nearly unknown elsewhere. I guess I should try and read it.

Sweden's most beloved author died today. Her death is above-the-fold front-page news. I take that back, a huge picture of her is the onlything above the fold. In every newspaper in Sweden.

So, remember that awful Pippi Longstocking song from the movie? Or maybe you're too young to remember. Anyway, it sounds a lot better in Swedish:

Här kommer Pippi Långstrump,
tjolahopp tjolahej tjolahoppsan-sa
Här kommer Pippi Långstrump,
ja här kommer faktisk jag.

Har du sett min apa,
min söta fina lilla apa.
Har du sett Herr Nilson,
ja han  heter faktisk så.
Har du sett min villa,
min Villa Villekullavilla
Vill å vill du veta,
varför villan heter så ?

Jo, för där bor ju Pippi Långstrump
tjolahopp tjolahej tjolahoppsan-sa
där bor ju Pippi Långstrump,
ja, där bor faktisk jag.

Det är inta illa,
Jag har apa häst och villa,
En kappsäck full med pengar
Är det också bra att ha.
Kom nu, alle vänner,
Varenda kotte som jag känner,
Nu skal vi leva loppan,
Tjolahej tjolahoppsan-sa

Här kommer Pippi Långstrump,
tjolahopp tjolahej tjolahoppsan-sa
Här kommer Pippi Långstrump,
ja här kommer faktisk jag.

- by Francis S.

I've been paranoid about writing about food ever since I read a nasty diatribe from a prominent member of the Ex-Ex-Weblogger Ministeries, complaining about how blogging has become too precious and full of breakfast, lunch and dinner menus. It's sometimes difficult to hold back on talking gastronomy, since preparing a suitable meal is my chief therapy these days. It's hard not to mention last night's chicken fricasseed in a classic vinegar, onion and cream sauce, and the lime mousse for dessert - oh so buttery and tart.

The friends from London are in town again. Dinner was a success. We ended up talking about Egypt and how Sharm al-Sheikh was a sleepy one-road village ten years ago and now there are 90 huge resorts being built there.

"Isn't it great?" the Egyptians said to my husband and C., the photographer, when they were there last year on a photo shoot.

No, C. and the husband thought, it is not great. But for the Egyptians, it's the surest way to protect their territory in the Sinai against their worries about Israeli agression: If they build it up, it will be a lot harder to destroy. And no doubt, it brings in cash to the country as well.

"It's like Thailand," said N., the Wallpaper* editor. "It's horrible now, all built up. Did you know Ao Nang is just awful now?"

Which was a little sad to hear. The husband and I became engaged on a beach near Ao Nang. I would hardly have called it unspoiled - there was a huge new resort being built on one of the beaches - but it certainly felt removed a bit from civilization. It was easy to find a beach where one could feel alone, visited only by a woman arriving in an afternoon boat laden with bottled water and freshly cut pineapple, carefully prepared in such a way it could be eaten by hand without getting all sticky. And the funky little hotel we stayed at - cheap but full of charm, with small bougainvillea-covered courtyards with odd sets of steps going here and there, a cafe overlooking the beach - is no longer about the only thing on the road, according to N. (or little, from looking at the website.)

Yet, despite it sounding much less attractive to go there, I would think that places like Thailand or Egypt mostly benefit from tourism, despite the obvious problems caused by hordes of pasty-white garbage-strewing, mai-tai swilling, suntan lotion-slathered Europeans and Americans. So, complaining about these countries becoming spoiled is, well, the opinion of the spoiled and privileged.

The Swedish word for the day is stranden. It means the beach.

- by Francis S.

Isn't it odd that the queer contingent is the only minority group with its own category in the Bloggies, that is, unless you consider Europeans as a minority group. It seems that the gay ghetto is the only segregated neighborhood on the Web. (I know, I know - I hate the term "gay ghetto" too, it's so very Tales of the City; but it worked really well for my little metaphor so I just bit the bullet and used it anyway.)

Is this a good or a bad thing?

- by Francis S.

Last night's party was, as expected, a combination of the two. That is, with some awful tedious and/or embarrassing parts, and with some awfully fun parts. There were the usual endless speeches, the usual singing routine by five of the birthday girl's best friends singing along with their own words to some bad Swedish pop song, the usual guests raucously drunk and insulting the hired help before the main course had been served. There were games intended to humiliate the honoree (everyone had a green "yes" card and a red "no" card at their place, and were asked at one point to vote on whether a series of things were true about the birthday girl - everything from whether she'd lived in Australia, to whether she owned a dildo.)

Did I have a good time? Better than I expected.

Was I glad that we were the first to leave, about 45 minutes after the dancing started? Oh, yes.

The Swedish phrase for the day is vi ses. It means see you later or we'll be in touch, more or less.

- by Francis S.

Damnation. The husband and I have another Swedish 30th birthday party extravaganza to attend. At least we don't have to pay 500 crowns just to attend, which is the usual arrangement for these things. And, it's only a sit-down dinner for 80 people somewhere out in Lidingö, in the near suburbs.

The last 30th birthday party we went to was 500 kilometers away and we had to stay at an expensive hotel with a hundred other partygoers. Worse, after I had gone up to bed - I can't keep up with the Swedes when it comes to vodka tonics and bottomless bottles of red wine and I hate the way that once you're married, Swedish etiquette dictates that you can't sit together and I always end up next to some 75-year-old widow who lived in New Jersey sometime in the '60s and has all sorts of frightening anecdotes about America - the husband had gotten into a big row at 4 a.m. with one of the birthday boy's friends who had made a drunken speech that included a phrase along the lines of "we used to be tough when we were young but now we go out and eat shrimp and act all gay." The husband was very displeased at the implication that there is something wrong with eating shrimp and with being gay. Apparently, when he pointed this out to the inebriated speechgiver, things heated up a bit followed by a calamitous chill that stopped the festivities cold.

The next morning, there was an air of discomfort everywhere, stinking up the place. But I was happy, and very proud of the husband.

The Swedish word for the day is hård. It means tough.

- by Francis S.

It's time for A Night at the Opera - the ticket is a Christmas present from A., the former model. We're going alone, since the husband doesn't particularly care for opera. Best of all, it's perhaps my favorite - certainly the one I know best: The Magic Flute. Utterly idiotic storyline, boundlessly sublime music.

An interesting bit of opera trivia about the Swedish Royal Opera - it was founded by Gustav III, who is the subject of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera; the plot of that opera originally was about the murder of the King at a masked ball, although due to political unrest in Europe at the time of the opera's composition, the libretto was changed so that it takes place in colonial America instead of Sweden. Which is interesting that people seemed to think it was fine to have it take place in a backwater second-tier wannabe country. Oh how times have changed.

The Swedish word for the day is sångare. It means singer.

- by Francis S.

So the boss asked me last weekend at dinner, "Why did you get married by a priest?"

Which is an interesting question. The husband, who was raised in a cult that masquerades as a scary quasi-Christian denomination, is very down on organized religion of any sort.

Me, I was raised by deeply religious parents who are nonetheless probably further to the left than I am on the political spectrum. Which isn't to say they're Marxists, but they're pretty damned liberal for Americans. My parents also allowed my brothers and sister and I a certain amount of dissent: while we all had to go to communicants' class, for example, none of us caved in and actually joined the church. Despite this personal ambivalence, the right kind of church feels pretty comfortable to me - one light on the theology, heavy on the spiritualism and strict about having only top-notch music. In fact, not too many churches fit the bill. And yet, I kind of like church and I would even consider myself a non-Jew for Jesus... he was a good guy but I wouldn't say he was any more divine than the rest of us, even if he did have some good ideas and a great marketing machine.

So, I got married by a priest because I wanted my marriage to not just be about the legalities of being a couple - and I'm not knocking them, the legalities are necessary - but I wanted the marriage to be about declaring one's love publicly in a profound ritual that has lasted over time because the words are fraught with meaning and they are beautiful, patriarchy or no patriarchy. I have no doubt that for a homosexualist like myself, such a marriage ceremony also takes on fresh meaning when it occurs between two men.

And so, in front of 130 people, we got married by a priest who oversaw the ritual and despite having known us for only a short time, gave it great depth and feeling, setting the tone for the wedding itself, and for the marriage. Everyone seemed drunk with joy, and I don't think it was merely my own happiness.

As for the husband, well, he wanted to get married by a priest simply to show respect to my parents. But he's never regretted it, not ever.

The Swedish word for the day is, of course, äktenskap. It means marriage.

- by Francis S.

K., the husband and I had dinner with my boss, the CEO, last night, a dinner that lasted until 3:30 a.m. and feels as if it consisted of about a pack too many cigarettes.

We talked about religion - "why did you get married by a priest" asked my boss - and the world, inevitably lapsing into a discussion about war, with an eventual segue into the topic of life. It was at this point that the husband made the observation that a life of 90 years consists of 30,000 days.

How is it that 30,000 days sounds so damned short?

The Swedish word for the day is samtal. It means conversation.

- by Francis S.

welcome to the My Way Blog Awards™ for 2001

If I’d known so many people were going to vote, I never would have created these damn My Way Blog Awards™. But, create them I did, and I felt obligated to tally up the votes, even if almost no one offered any bribes or cast brown-nosing votes for, well, me (I did get voted Weakest Link as a defensive move though).

There were some clear winners in terms of favorite category, as opposed to favorite nominees: People were most fond of voting for Best Porn Star Potential, proving that we are all obsessed with sex. Which is why I created the category to begin with. (Oh, and there was a clear winner in that category, too.)

People definitely had a least favorite category as well – Weakest Link. As Jackie of Surblimity put it “That’s mean, I can’t vote for that.” Apparently plenty of other people thought it was mean as well – less than half of all voters nominated a blog in this category. I guess we can all just get along. Or something like that. Of course some people didn’t have any trouble pointing out, er, the shortcomings of some bloggers: “Whinge, whinge, whinge, please try saying something interesting. Please?” or “He's not as funny as he thinks he is. And he hardly ever updates. Oh, and his site is ugly-looking.” Or how about “Ewww... look at the feeble attempt at video humor on the 3rd of Jan!!” or “How can we miss you if you won’t go away?” There was also a lament for the long absence of The Everlasting Blogstalker by someone who voted for him “not because I don't love him, but because he hasn’t posted in over two months. Maybe this would wake him up.”

There were some other unusual weather phenomena that rose to the surface. For instance, some people had very strong feelings for one member of a couple while having very strong feelings against the other member. And then, wham, the next voter had the opposite feelings - for the very same couple.

Interestingly enough, in most of the categories there was a clear people’s choice and I felt no need to do any ballot-tampering. In most of the categories. However, I did feel the need to add a few additional categories to cover some, er, poverty in thinking when it came to the original creation of the awards.

So, without further ado, may we have the envelope please…

My Way Blog Award™ best sylvia plath impersonation

So Sylvia Plath was a little neurotic – she was still a great writer. Apparently her closest latter-day incarnation in the blogging world is Jeff the Tin Man of Tinmanic. He's neurotic all right, but he’s a lot tougher than old Sylvia. I'd give him a testimonial - a heart-shaped watch on a chain of popcorn - if I could. Hurray for the Tinman.

My Way Blog Award™ "izzy fosco" ted hughes memorial prize

A corollary award that goes hand in hand with the Sylvia Plath Award, this prize is awarded to the blogger who has caused the most neurosis, as opposed to the blogger who is neurotic him or herself. I think Izzy Fosco would like this to be awarded to Melinda of Reality Sandwiches. I’m not sure that she’s actually caused much drama, and she is definitely neurotic herself. But, like Ted Hughes, she is a survivor. And who knows, she may become poet laureate of the U.K. one of these days. She’s certainly an excellent writer. And she makes a mean tofurkey.

My Way Blog Award™ best i-mom

I originally vowed to tamper with the ballots in this category, but then my own Mommy Dearest of choice actually received the most votes in this category. Now that’s what I call noetic justice. Congratulations, Aaron, Sacramento’s own 8leggeddj, you are not just my favorite, but everyone’s favorite I-Mom. As one voter put it, “He's as warm as a tray of freshly baked cookies.” (And, well, he did get at least one nomination as Best Porn Star Potential, so maybe he’s a mom in a rentboy’s body.)

My Way Blog Award™ best i-dad

All those religious right organizations have undertaken lots of very scientific research that shows that two parents are best, one of each sex of course. So I thought I’d better add an i-Pop category, just to be on the side of God. So, make room for Daddy, I mean Tinka (she may not have gotten the most i-Mom votes, but as Rasmus said, "she would hate me for doing this. Besides, she does have certain Momish qualitites. She will hate me even more for that." She was definitely a contender, competing against the likes of the only real celebrity nomination, Rupaul, who definitely sounds like he would make a great mom slash dad.)

My Way Blog Award™ best porn star potential

Okay, Jonno, you win hands down. And you didn’t even have to give me a marker for that courtesy fuck you promised. You, in fact, received the most votes of all for any category. Apparently everyone wants a lot more, uh, explicit writing on your part and definitely more pictures of the graphic sort. “Mmmm. Hump-a-licious,” according to one voter. Now get out there and live up to your award, you cyberstud, you.


The “Fluffer” certificates of merit are awarded by the judges to those porn aspirants who deserve special mention for individual performances that have helped to increase our appreciation of the important role sex plays in making the Internet profitable.

My Way Blog Award™ "fluffer" certificate of merit

Yami of Green/Gabbro wins a “Fluffer” certificate of merit for her frank discussions of her hair fetish and her constant inadvertent references to scroti. Keep up the obsessions, yami.

My Way Blog Award™ "fluffer" certificate of merit

Nancy of the World of Jill Matrix wins a “Fluffer” certificate of merit for her product endorsement of, uh, Swiff. Despite the controversy behind the actual product (is it nice or nasty?), her stunning nude testimonial is the kind of thing we need to see more of.

My Way Blog Award™ "fluffer" certificate of merit

Finally, Tek of dubliminal.net wins a “Fluffer” certificate of merit for the graphic and unexpurgated posting of his private parts.

My Way Blog Award™ weakest link

Hmm. No one could agree on which single person is not holding his or her weight, is past his or her sell-by date, is far beyond his or her 15 minutes of fame. So I wrote the names on little pieces of paper, put them in a hat, closed my eyes and randomly chose the winner. Oddly enough,the winner doesn’t seem to have a blog that I’m aware of, but he does have trouble with pretzels that make him choke, faint and hit his head, resulting in huge bruises below the eye. Let’s just leave it at that.

My Way Blog Award™ best in show

I love this category. This is where I found at least one completely new blog – a.fire.inside - that I’ve since found rather addictive. Plus, a few of the winners in other categories – Jonno, Tinmanic, Melinda, Tinka, and Nancy, to name a few - made appearances here. And some of my regular addictions also made appearances – David of Swish Cottage and Peter of secret kings, for example. But the bloggers who got the most votes were those bi-coastal, bi-polar but not bi-sexual (at least not that I've noticed) wonders of the blogging world, Choire and Philo. They have such nice, shiny coats and a spring in their walk, their tails are always held high and they almost never bite… they are the Best in Show.

Francis Strand, Chief Judge, My Way Blog Awards™

I guess it's possible to have too much rhythm. Or in my buddy K.'s case, too much circadian rhythm. Her internal clock is refusing to adjust to Stockholm. Of course, this won't stop us from going out for beers after work tonight and getting sloshed.

It's us. It's what we do when she comes into town.

(I think the Swedish romance with alcohol is rubbing off on me. I guess I need to work a lot harder at absorbing the language and to ease up on absorbing some of the more interesting cultural habits.)

The Swedish word for the day is bakis. It means hung over. I hope this is not a self-fulfilling prophecy.

- by Francis S.

It is now almost definite that our company offices will move out of the building we are in now, a 17th century mansion in front of the royal palace, a prime spot with a superb view in the middle of Gamla Stan, Stockholm's old town.

It depresses me to think of leaving this spot, it's such a pleasure to walk here each day, the city spread out in front of me as I walk down the mosebacke steps on the bluffs of Södermalm, the southern island of the city.

The Swedish word for the day is otrevligt. It means unpleasant.

- by Francis S.

My good old buddy old pal K. is here yet again from the States; she just can't seem to stay out of Sweden.

She's already regaled me with stories about having to remove her boots for a security check at Logan Airport in Boston (they took them into a separate room where she couldn't see them being interrogated:

Good cop: "I just wanna make things easy for ya, ya look like a decent, God-fearing pair of boots - ya can tell me if ya been cramming explosives up ya little boot butts, I promise we can work out a nice cushy deal for ya, maybe even get ya a new pair of heels that actually don't look slutty like the ones ya got now...

Bad cop: "If yer don't play nice with us, we're gonna separate yer body from yer pathetic sole(s) so even the focking devil won't recognize yer, yer dried up piece of cow stomach...)

She did get her boots back eventually. The security workers apparently also made some poor Indian woman remove her sandals until someone higher up on the security food chain reminded them that sandals are not a security risk.

The Swedish word for the day is säkerhet. It means safety.

- by Francis S.

(In case you've been wondering, I haven't forgotten the My Way Blog Awards™. The judges are in conference as we speak, and the winners will be announced by the end of the weekend.)

- by Francis S.

I used to think that Lorrie Moore was too glib for her own good, too prone to pun. But then I read 'People Like That Are the Only People Here" in the New Yorker, and I changed my mind. The story, of a woman dealing with the horror of her baby having cancer, is full of desperate dark humor, and the whole thing cuts like a knife so that one can only believe that it must be based on experience. The story is brilliant and hurts like hell. What made me think of it was reading this wonderfully written description of parents dealing with their newborn baby's tenuous grasp on life. I don't think there can be much that could cause more pain than the death of one's child, and I suppose the fear of a child dying is a worry that lurks somewhere in the back of all parents' minds. I'm not sure that if it happened to me, that I wouldn't buckle under the sorrow.

The Swedish word for the day is sjukhuset. It means the hospital.

- by Francis S.

Wow. No one corrected my repeated misspelling of the word "hierarchy" in a post below. Everyone is too, too kind. And me, I'm a nasty schoolmarm bitch when it comes to proper grammar and spelling.

I thought it looked kind of strange.

- by Francis S.

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.

Yikes. A google seach on "Learn Swedish" turns up, gulp, this page as the No. 1 site.

Not that there are, uh, even a hundred people each day looking to Learn Swedish on the Web, but I suppose those that do find this site must surely be disappointed.

Still, the name is very self-explanatory.

- by Francis S.

I am a lazy sonuvabitch. I piddle around on the Internet (piddle is one of my mother's words, and should always be intoned with a mixture of disgust, disappointment and just a scoche of anger) while the husband is working hard, filling in with plaster the cracks in between the tiles in the kakelugn - tile stove - in our bedroom. (We have three of those nice old Swedish tile stoves in our apartment. They are all white, but the one in the dining room is quite plain and round with a somewhat intricate cornice at the top; the one in the bedroom is also round, but the details and the cornice at the top are picked out in a sort of faded wine color; the one in the living room is much bigger, rectangular and with lots more detail, picked out in green and pink, especially the elaborate cornice at the top.)

A profound difference between the husband and I is my ability to be a layabout, while he needs to be doing something constructive for at least a good part of the day, otherwise he feels bad.

Still, I suppose some people would say that Internet-piddling doesn't belong in the general category of layingabout behavior.

I'm not sure where I stand on this.

- by Francis S.

It was a snowy and glittering welcome to the new year, with plenty of glasses of Louis Roederer champagne and a party full of beautiful Swedish people - former models, actresses, television personalities, famous fashion photographers, (well, here in Sweden at least) - plus the hoi polloi (me), all of us dressed to the nines. The physics behind A.'s red pumps was completely beyond me. I think that A. could stand, not to mention walk, on shoes with such teeny-tiny toothpick-thin 5-inch heels, simply because she doesn't know it is mathematically impossible. Me, I was dressed in a ruffled tuxedo shirt of some shiny dark blue synthetic material and my black suit with the long coat, the husband was dressed in a ''Manchester'' - courderoy - suit of dark green. Oh, such victims of fashion we are.

Unfortunately, we only got to savor the whole fabulous event until about 5 minutes past midnight because my poor dear husband was overcome by a migraine. We left in a rush and were forced to take the subway (not an empty cab to be found in all of Stockholm), me dragging him past hundreds of partygoers tottering in their best out in the snowy streets, a glass of champagne in one hand and firecrackers in the other, the whole city a noisy burst of sparks, block after block. The subway itself was filled with drunken 16 year olds, trying their best of prove to the world that they can be as adult as the adults, ignoring the adults around them trying to act like they think 16 year olds act. And of course, there we sat, me trying to comfort the husband, who didn't want me to leave the party simply because of him.

"But I won't have any fun without you," I said. "I'll just be worrying all night."

Still, it was fun while it lasted. And, the husband has recovered after a good 16 hours of sleep.

The Swedish phrase for the day is tack och lov. The closest translation would be thank god.

- by Francis S.

Time to fast away the old year passes and hail the new, lads and lasses.

But before moving on to 2002, there's a lot of frantic preparation in store for tonight's feast. Lamb and chicken tagines to top off with honey and orange blossom water, coriander potato cakes to fry, merguëz sausages to wrap in pastry and bake, couscous salad with melon, black beans, rucola and chevre to prepare, chocolate truffles to roll. We're off to A.'s apartment to help get everything ready. Happy Moroccan New Year.

The Swedish phrase for the day is god fortsättning. It means happy new year, more or less.

- by Francis S.

A conspiracy is afoot and I smell a rat. I mean, a cat. Two of them to be precise, brought over by A. the ex-model and her boyfriend the photographer who came to dinner last night.

You see, the husband has been hot to get a cat for well on a year now. Me, my parents were raised on farms where animals belonged outside. We had a dog once when I was a little boy, but I think my parents have passed on to me their general indifference when it comes to pets.

Not that I'm immune to the charms of a cat. When I lived in Barcelona, my flatmate had a scrawny little cat, Pepa, who seemed to think I was her knight in less-than-shining armor, come to save her from the dreariness of her life in a cold Spanish apartment with an undeniably crazy owner (well, crazy but lovable). From the first day I arrived, Pepa slept most of the night with me, getting up early in the morning to go sleep with her owner, E., but then returning after an hour or so. And when she slept, she had to be touching me, even if it was just the very tip of her paw.

As for the current conspiracy, I think the husband connived with A. in order to show me how awfully nice it would be to have cats running around our own apartment, curiouser and curiouser as they padded and sniffed their way through everything, or curling up next to us on the sofa as we drank red wine and smoked cigarettes and yammered on about the Moroccan food planned for the new year's party at A. and her boyfriend's apartment. (They went home at 1: 00 or so, cats and all.)

In fact, the idea of having cats at home did rather grow on me, although I'm not a big one for changing litter or vacuuming cat hair, and I definitely am not very tolerant when it comes to nasty little kitty claws ripping apart dining room chairs.

Still, I suppose I should be happy that a cat or two didn't appear under the Christmas tree this year.

The Swedish word for the day is lurad. It means tricked.

- by Francis S.

I moved to Sweden three years ago this very day.

The time has raced by at rocket speed.

At I.'s dinner party last night, the English mathematician living in Germany - he's lived there for 14 years - said to me, "you don't miss home yet, do you."

He was right, I haven't every really missed the States. And I'd always figured that if I don't miss it by now, I'll never miss it.

But maybe I've been wrong.

"I wonder if part of my being happy has to do with not knowing the language, that when I really start to use Swedish relatively exclusively, I'll lose part of myself," I said to him.

"Oh, no," he replied. "It makes you hold on to the language even more."

Which didn't really answer the question I was asking, which was not about losing the language but about losing myself. But the subject changed when someone asked another question, and I never ended up probing deeper into it.

- by Francis S., faux philosopher

Last night we had dinner at the apartment of I., the sister of A.'s boyfriend, the photographer (how's that for a tortured line of possessives? Can you figure out who is related to who?).

I. has a new boyfriend, an Englishman living in Germany who works for a big German publishing company. He seemed curiously young - I suspect though he's 50 or so, he's never been married - and charmingly broke numerous Swedish rules of etiquette: not standing properly in line to get his food at the buffet table, not paying attention to the various toasts, talking over people and talking too much, not formally saying goodbye to everyone as they left in a slow trickle.

He is a mathemetician and believes that at some point it will be possible to reduce our selves to some kind of code or equation that could be looked at or stopped at any given millisecond, and that this code or equation is uniquely us and exists forever and is our soul.

I understood, I think, his reduction of our selves, but I wonder.

"Do you believe that our souls are something more than this?" I asked.

Being a mathemetician, he seemed to believe that such a code is wonder enough to fit his definition of a soul, because it is unique and because it exists forever.

I find it unsatisfying to be at heart an equation and very humanly wish my soul to be something much more.

The Swedish word for the day is Gud. It means God.

- by Francis S.

Any Stockholmer worth her or his salt loves Sweden best in summertime, when the sun never quite sets, when ferry rides through the rocky but green islands of the Stockholm archipelago are lit with gold.

Me, I love it best now, when the sky is dim and grey, and all the old yellow buildings of Stockholm are frosted with a layer of snow that just keeps getting thicker and thicker, and lights twinkle and bank and flame behind windows under the snow, candles and Christmas stars and kitchen lights.

It is the romantic perfect winter of my imagination, and it is glorious when the train stops mid-ride over the icy black water between Gamla Stan and Södermalm, and on one side are the old buildings of Kornhamnstorg, a huge Christmas tree with plain white lights in the middle of the square, and on the other side are the bluffs of Södermalm, capped with twinkling towers and church steeples and cupolas.

- by Francis S.

The two-sentence review of "Fellowship of the Ring":

Don't you just hate it when despite having great material to work with, i.e. actors and fabulous natural (if a bit too computer-enhanced) scenery, a director is still reduced to telling you what to feel by laying on the music thick and heavy, and worse, music by enya - enya for chrissakes!!!!! Although to be fair, maybe it has something to do with trying to take a sprawling and unwieldy book and forcing it into the shape of a movie - to paraphrase one of Ian Holm's lines in the movie, ''it feels like too little butter spread over too much bread.''

I know I sound like some kind of heretic criticizing the film, but I didn't like it much.

The Swedish word for the day is besviken. It means disappointed.

- by Francis S.

Christmas hasn't been a disappointment or a frustration this year. I coasted just enough on the residual thrill from my childhood that the season still imparts without expecting too much from it. There was a moment of longing to be with my parents and brothers and sister, an instinctual longing to relive those Christmases of my childhood that cannot possibly be relived, but it passed quickly.

And the Swedish Christmas celebration was more pleasing than I remember it. The present-giving, the watching of Kalle Anka - Donald Duck - on television (which the whole of Sweden watches at 3:00 p.m. on Christmas eve... a relatively new tradition carried on from the days when there was only one television channel, state-run of course, and the Disney movies weren't shown in Sweden for some reason, or so I am told) and the food. I suppose all that cold fish is beginning to grow on me.

- by Francis S.

Christmas on the Plains

a very short story by Francis Strand

He had the generosity of the unfaithful, whispering over the phone, promising endlessly that he would be there.

"Yes," he said.

He leaned into the phone, his eyes hungry, his lips opening and closing, hanging onto the cigarette as if to a rosary.

"Yes, I promise," he sighed.

He was not listening, but instead hearing only the children singing as if down to dirty shepherds, singing from high above and behind a scrim. Children who were really just on the radio.

He had decided a week earlier that he most certainly would go, no matter the difficulties it posed for him. But as soon as he promised, he knew it was impossible.

* * *

When the family sat down to eat, they wished that he hadn't come home after all. It was awkward, and he was pointedly answering questions they hadn't even thought to ask. Questions they would never have imagined could have the answers he was giving them. He insisted on smoking even as they ate.

"Shall we open the presents now?" the mother managed to interject finally.

He nodded, and they all stood up. She pulled a clean cloth from the kitchen drawer and covered the meal they had barely touched in their astonishment and discomfort, covered it with a white cloth until they would come back to finish the sweet potatoes, the stuffing, the oily green olives, after the tumult of the presents.

"Shall we?"

And they all walked numbly into the front parlor, the tree suddenly pathetic, the tinsel and lights and glass balls an insult to its dying there in front of them.

* * *

"Hark," they sang, "the herald angels-"

And although they prided themselves on the simple fact that they were a musical family, it was all most of them could do to pull their own part, whether soprano, alto or bass. Except him, of course. He couldn't sing a note.

They didn't even bother to join hands around the tree.

"I'm so tired," the mother said, and they all agreed.

Carolyn, the oldest, sat up with him long after the rest of the family had gone to bed, and they drank first one scotch and water, and then another, and another, as he lied to her about this and that. He knew she didn't believe a word, would never believe a word he said, but he couldn't stop himself.

* * *

After they had all gone back, back to their own homes, it all seemed so bleak to the mother, who loved the holidays with such desperation, who worked so hard to make it a pleasure for everyone. As she broke down and wept, she thought her heart would break, and she could not console herself.

- copyright 2001 Francis Strand

p.s. The Swedish word phrase for the day is en riktig god jul. It means a very merry Christmas.

How appropriate that Peter, proprieter of secret kings, one of the first blogs I started reading regularly, should be visitor number 3,000 at this site. And, believe it or not Aaron, Sacramento's famous 8-legged dj, is yet again almost the 3000th visitor for at least the second time in his life (you were 3001, Aaron).

The Swedish word for the day is pristagare. It means prize winner, of which there are none today, unfortunately, because I have no prizes to hand out. I'm rotten when it comes to prizes and presents (in fact, I should be out Christmas shopping this very minute).

- by Francis S.

"Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion" was on ZTV here in Sweden last night, and I'd forgotten the whole "I'm the Mary and you're the Rhoda" shtick, which I really relate to, and which probably really dates me.

I remember watching that show every Saturday night - or was it Friday? - from the time I was about 9 years old until I was 14. By that time, the old Saturday-night lineup - first "All in the Family," then "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," then "The Bob Newhart Show" and finally "The Carol Burnett Show" - had lost its shine and the original "Saturday Night Live" had become the thing to watch, which I did as I babysat for the same family every Saturday, their strange children asleep in their beds upstairs and me downstairs leafing through The Joy of Sex, worried that the parents would come home and catch me drooling over the bad seventies-style drawings of not very attractive men with beards and/or long hair having sex with women who looked like Jane Fonda (in her "Klute" shag-hairstyle days) in a wide range of positions, from the prosaic to the obscure. (They also had a rather peculiar book that I remember quite well - Transcendental Meditation for Tiny Tots - all about warm fuzzies and cold pricklies and just as oh-so-seventies as The Joy of Sex, but much more confusing. Worse, when I tried to find a link for it, there was only one source listed, a scary Christian site entitled "Combat Tactics against Satanism and the Occult: Guerilla Warfare for Young Adults." I couldn't be bothered to read the 25-page article to find out exactly where they mention this obscure book from my adolescence.)

Me, I wouldn't exactly say I'm the Rhoda, but the husband is definitely the Mary in our relationship.

The Swedish word for the day is 70-talet. It means the '70s

- by Francis S.

The Swedes are not a skeptical people. They have an endearingly childlike willingness to participate. They believe in joining in on reindeer games.

Take an office party, just as an example. An office party could start off with everyone drinking vodka cocktails, followed by an office choir singing traditional Swedish and American Christmas carols. Then, everyone could sit down and a toastmaster would present the evening. Then two old guys from the office could get up and play electric guitars and sing songs about the company, but to the tune of "Alice's Restaurant." And everyone, but everyone happily joins in on the choruses, and starts to clap along.

If it were America, everyone would be looking around to see if anyone else was clapping. As for singing along, well, social singing is a lost art in America I fear.

But I digress. At this fictitious office party, everyone could then be asked to participate in a game wherein a table is brought out on which are set 60 presents, which is the same number of guests at the fictitious office party. They are then asked to play a game wherein they roll a die that is passed along the table (or in the case of this particular fictitious office party, there are six dice planted around the big u-shaped table at which everyone is sitting) and when they get a six, they may go up and pick a present, or if they have one already, they may exchange with someone who has a better-looking present.

I can't imagine the people at the public relations firm I worked at in the States playing this game.

The Swedes, however, love it. They are laughing and running and whooping and frantically grabbing presents all over the place. They dive into it with gusto.

Of course, at this fictitious party they do a lot of adult-type things as well, mainly, once the food and games are over, they push aside the tables and get drunk and dance under the twinkling Christmas lights strung up around the room, paper stars in the window, candles all around. This continues until 2 a.m., the winter's first storm raging outside and making everyone feel snug and safe and helping them forget they have to be at work early the next morning.

The only disappointing thing about the party is if they forget to sing "Hej, tomtegubbar," especially since it is about the only drinking song one knows.

The Swedish phrase for the day is att ha roligt. It means to have fun.

- by Francis S.

One of my favorite drinks is fläderblom saft. It sounds very Shakespearian in translation - elder flower juice - although it's not really juice, it's actually a drink made from water mixed with a syrup made of elder blossoms, lemon, sugar and probably a few other sundry items I'm not aware of.

It tastes rather like white grape juice, but with undertones I don't know how to describe: It reminds me of the juices I've drunk in fever dreams when I was a little boy. A strange, marvelous taste, slightly off but in a pleasing way.

I suppose I like it in great part because it is so terribly poetic - to drink flowers.

- by Francis S.

Laurel just asked why I find Swedish so difficult to learn, and how am I learning it.

I started responding then and there, but I realized the answer deserved more of a prominent spot in my little scheme of things here.

In typical Francis fashion, I start with the second question. So, Laurel, here is how I am learning Swedish:

First, I've taken three classes, of which the last one was an extra-intensive course over two weeks last summer. My last teacher was an excellent pedagogue - she normally teaches 10 year olds - and I not only learned a lot, I got over a major hurdle and became much more comfortable in conversation, although I have backslid over the last couple of months, to my great displeasure. But not enough displeasure to actually do something about it.

Of course I learn in other ways, too - watching the news and other television, reading the newspaper - Dagens Nyheter - I even read Det Osynliga Barnet (The Invisible Child), a book of children's stories by Tove Jansson, looking up every last damn word I didn't know.

But what makes it hard are three things: fear, pride and laziness.

Fear of sounding like a five-year-old child, of being misunderstood, of not being able to be myself with people - show my sense of humor, for instance. I fear losing myself somehow, and I fear misunderstanding other people. I fear that I am too old to be learning a second language.

The pride, well, I guess the fear and pride are more or less the same thing. I foolishly want my Swedish to be perfect, which it will never be. Oh, I am proud that I can pronounce the difficult sounds, the -sj- and -stj- and -sk- and -skj- properly, and my pure vowels and soft -r- don't give away that I am American. At least not most of the time. But it isn't nearly enough.

The laziness, well, it's easy to get along with English here, people always want to practice their English and in Stockholm, their English is overwhelmingly excellent (it's hard not to compare my Swedish to everyone's English, and the comparison is so unflattering on my part that it hurts). The language at my company is English, and I speak English at home with my husband, which isn't likely to change soon because it is our language, though we do have some embarrassing Swedish endearments that I'm not going to go into here. And, in fact, I think part of my charm to him is that I do speak English - it's part of what he loves about me.

It's not all pain and suffering and failure, though. I think what I need now is another conversation class, which I expect will get me past another hurdle and truly start to try and speak Swedish every chance I get. I've already begun the switch at work - half of my meetings are now in Swedish - and I expect that'll take another six months or so to feel truly comfortable with it at the office.

I just wish I weren't ashamed of it, that I didn't feel like it is a terrible shortcoming and a failure. And I wish I weren't so annoyingly full of self-pity.

So, there you have it. I'm sure I've forgotten something, and if I remember it, I'll be sure to let you know, don't you worry.

- by Francis S.

I went yesterday to finally see the Lucia program - children singing in a Lucia procession followed by a concert of songs appropriate to St. Lucia day and to Christmas - and I sat with my friend C., the photographer, on one side and a little old lady on the other side. I guess the little old lady heard me speaking in English with C., because at one point she turned to me and said in English, "You know we sang the same songs when I was a little girl, with the same little routines."

Which made me think that there must be at least 70 years' worth of schoolchildren who have had the same anticipation and excitement each year; 6 year olds who can't wait to dress up as gingerbread men (for the song about gingerbread land), 7 year olds who can't wait to graduate from being gingerbread men into being the mice for the "hejsan, hoppsan, falderejderal" song, 8 year olds who can't wait to be able to hold a live candle instead of a small battery-operated electric one.

I was disappointed that there wasn't a stjärngosse in sight - not even one little boy in a pointy hat singing with the girls. But my disappointment was quelled when, about a third of the way into the program, they brought out a whole choir of 7-year-old boys, all dressed in little red and white hats and outfits. Someone had wised up and realized that the best way to get the boys to sing was to create a choir especially for them - but oh, the poor woman who has to lead a rehearsal of a choir of some 20 little boys.

They were a bit squirmy, and took a lot more guidance than the girls to get them into a straight line, but they sang as best they could, then holding hands and forming four circles and dancing round the stage. All except one little boy who just squirmed, to the great irritation of the little boy next to him who kept trying to get him to stop, imploring the teacher with his eyes, a look of exasperation on his face.

Me, I would've been that little boy trying to quiet the other boy. I surely must've been a bit of a prig. I suppose I was an unsufferable child when it came to these kinds of things. It makes me squirm just to think about it now.

The Swedish phrase for the day is levande ljus. The literal translation would be living light, but the actual meaning is a candle.

- by Francis S.

I am a little kid at heart. That is, when given the chance and in the right circumstances, I revert back to my childhood habits. For instance, last week on Wednesday, the team I am responsible for at work went out for an afternoon and evening of, uh, teambuilding. Which consisted of a session of chocolate tasting (lots of little bite-sized niblet-y things on a plate: chocolate- caramel tartlets, chocolate- passionfruit tartlets, mocha mousse, gingerbread ice cream, saffron creme brulée, you get the picture), then a session at the laser dome, wherein the boys teamed up against the girls (yeah, right, they kicked our sad little boy asses) in one of those weird black smoky maze things, each armed with a "laser gun" and garbed in a vest that marked off how often we were shot and where. Then we had a nice dinner afterwards at a nearby very mysigt, i.e. cozy, restaurant.

One of the things that fascinates me (and drives me crazy) about Sweden - or at least about my company - is the assumption employees make that the main role of an employer is to keep them happy at any cost. So, I spend an enormous amount of energy on this. Hence the night of fun. Still, it was fun.

But, back to the little kid bit. Which was that when I played this stupid but extraordinarily entertaining shoot-em up game at the laser dome (I'm a closet wannabe warrior, I guess), I was running all over the place like an ass, a real maniac, and while I shot more people than anyone else, I was also shot more than anyone else and ended up with the lowest score, which I had predicted to everyone before we began and which they all found very amusing. I had no strategy, I just ran and shot, ran and shot. I would be dead in about two seconds in a real war.

I was in fact acting just how I remember acting as a little kid whenever there was some big party in the neighborhood or with my relatives (a bit of trivia - I have nearly 80 first cousins) or at church: I just ran around and around and around, yelling and laughing and exhausting myself, hour after hour, pausing only for an occasional cookie or a glass of kool-aid, only to fall asleep within five seconds in the car on the way home.

Oh, it was fun.

The Swedish word for the day is barndom. It means childhood.

- by Francis S.

It's a hell hole out there, trying to elbow your way through the crowds on Skånegatan and Götgatsbacken, not to mention inside Coctail and Granit.

And to think I used to like Christmas shopping.

The Swedish word for the day is julklapp. It means Christmas present.

- by Francis S.

This 5.818- degrees- of- separation thing is interesting. But I wonder what formula is used for figuring out the recommended reading?

- by Francis S.

Yesterday, I was quite negligent in marking the fact that it was Lucia - the feast day of Saint Lucy - which is the first important day in the Christmas season in Sweden. So, here is another Swedish lesson.

4. Lucia. For those who have children, the day usually starts with them getting up very early and celebrating the event at school with a lussetåg (which literally means a Lucia train), or procession led by a girl representing Lucia, wearing a long white gown with a red sash, and on her head a garland of green leaves as well as lighted candles. Behind her are additional girls dressed in white and with garlands in their hair, but with candles in their hands rather than on their heads, as well as boys - stjärngosse, or star boy - in white but without the sashes, and tall pointy dunce hats with stars on them, not unlike the hat Mickey Mouse wears in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." The whole procession sings:

Natten går tunga fjät
rund gård och stuva;
kring jord, som sol förlät,
skuggorna ruva.
Då i vårt mörka hus,
stiger med tända ljus,
Sankta Lucia, Sankta Lucia.

(which translates to:

The night goes with weighty step
round yard and (stove i.e. house, hearth?)
round earth, the sun departs
leave the woods brooding
There in our dark house,
appears with lighted candles
Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia.)

These processions are also held in churches and various other public places. The ritual is quite beautiful, and Swedes are great singers so the music is often superb: vibrato-free clear and pure and high children's voices singing in three- or four-part harmony. They also sing other songs, such as Staffansvisa - St. Stephen's song. And of course you need to eat Lussekatter, which are saffron pastries in the (very abstract) shape of a cat. It seems a little odd that this Lutheran country celebrates the feast day of an Italian saint who was martyred by having her eyes poked out, poor thing. I think it must surely have something to do with Lucia meaning, well, "light" - lux in Latin - and that the feast day is close to the winter solstice when the light finally starts to come back, slowly but surely, to this dark part of the world.

I will see a live lussetåg on Sunday (which is unusual, it's supposed to be on Dec. 13), when my friend the photographer's daughter will be singing at a whole long Lucia program - she could have been the Lucia, but she was busy taking a test or something when they were making the choice. Damn.

- by Francis S.

Extracts from a recent exchange of e-mails between me and my buddy K. on my own sad hopes and dreams about the bathroom being finished at last(I've rearranged the order for your reading pleasure):

----- Original Message -----
From: "Francis Strand"
To: "K."
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2001 11:42 AM
Subject: RE: it's friday

Tell her I said "hej" and have fun!

(The tiles and mirror are now in the WC, and the toilet and lights are
supposed to be in when I get home... it looks fanfuckingtastic!)

-----Original Message-----
From: K.
Sent: den 14 December 2001 17:50
To: Francis Strand
Subject: Re: it's friday


I just had to laugh. and laugh and laugh and laugh at your "the toilet and
lights are supposed to be in when I get home."

Poor Francis. So trusting. So innocent.

Well, you just go ahead and enjoy that toilet and those lights this weekend!

-----Original Message-----
From: Francis Strand
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2001 11:45 AM
To: K.
Subject: Re: it's friday


Oh, shite. I AM such a pathetic idiot, aren't I.

Addendum added at 11.26 p.m.: Sadly, K. was all too right to laugh. Lights, yes; toilet, no. The contractor wins this round, yet again.

- by Francis S.

Me and God sing on Christmas evening.
Holy christmas. Sacred choir. Honey!
Joseph drives on Christmas noon.
All you want for Christmas are my snowy carpets.
Rudolf was a merry reindeer.

This Christmas Carol generator site features pure poetry.

- by Francis S.

One of my favorite words in Swedish, kissnödig, doesn't readily translate into one nice, neat word. It requires a whole phrase: in need of a WC.

Isn't Swedish great?

- by Francis S.

Peter, my favorite secret king, was just writing about the Paris of his imagination, the movie "Amelie från Montmartre" (or whatever the name of it is if you don't live in Sweden), and whether U.S. citizens are as immediately recognizeable as the French, even before they open their mouths.

Let me start from the back and move my way forwards.

1) People from the U.S. We are loud and we like to talk, so you never really get a chance to see anyone before he or she has started to speak. This means it's very hard to say whether the language and accent give us away. But we do have distinctive traits. For instance, we seem to take up about 10 feet of personal space on either side of us which not only shoves all the oxygen out of small rooms but tends to smack unsuspecting people in the face if they get too near. Not that we mean to smack people in the face with our personal space, it just kind of happens. Oh, and we love hyperbole: ''I love your hair." or "I would die for a coke." My husband loves these expressions.

2) "Amelie från Montmartre." As I mentioned before, I haven't seen the movie, but the pictures of Audrey Tatou look just like the pictures of Melinda to me. Uh, if Audrey had purple hair.

3) Paris of the imagination. Peter, the real thing is, in fact, every bit as lovely as you imagine. Block after block, arrondisement after arrondisement of heart-stopping beauty. It is somehow like New York, I suppose because both cities don't understand why anyone would live anywhere else. And both cities have convinced the rest of the world that they are superior to every other city. And they're right, of course.

The Swedish word for the day is oehört. It means tremendously.

- by Francis S.

I read a couple of days ago at realitysandwiches about The Mayfly Project. The idea behind this (likely) meme is to sum up your 2001 in a manner similar to the oft-cited description of the life of a mayfly: Born. Eat. Shag. Die.

The rule is only 20 words.

Naturally, I had to put my own hifalutin twist on it, which is not exactly in the spirit of the thing while yet sticking to the 20-word rule. (This could explain that there is some genetic reason behind my 8-year-old nephew's inclination to always add some unnecessary complication to things in an effort to be funny. He usually succeeds. Me, I wish I was as funny and creative as he is.)

Here is my take on the year:

2001: A Shakespearian tragedy

At home, it's double, double toilet trouble;
At work, job satisfaction's just about burst its bubble.

- by Francis S.

On this dim and misty morning, the lights of the city obscured by the wet, I was just a couple of narrow old cobble-stoned streets from the office when a woman some 20 meters in front of me called out "Har du sett en hund?"

I didn't understand her. First I said, "Vad sade du?" (Which literally means what did you say and is the Swedish equivalent of excuse me when one hasn't caught what someone else has just said.)

But when she repeated it and I still didn't understand, I had to say "I'm sorry...?" (Which to my ears that seem to refuse to understand anything other than English, sounds remarkably like "Vad sade du" - which is pronounced something like vahsahroo. "Vahsahroo" - "I'm sorry," do you, uh, hear what I mean?)

And as she said, "Have you seen a dog?" I realized what she had asked me.

"No, sorry," I said.

Sometimes it seems like the road ahead is so long, that I am failing utterly at learning this language.

- by Francis S.