When I moved to Sweden some six years ago, I was surprised to find that cell phones were ubiquitous. They weren't nearly as popular in the States at that time. In fact, people were still using pagers. (Does anyone use pagers anymore?)

Then, after a couple of months on the job here, I was offered a free cell phone at work. Stupidly, I balked at the thought of being always reachable. But only for a month or so. Within half a year of arriving in this country, I had joined the rest of Swedish society, from 10-year-olds to the most ancient of great-great grandmothers.

What I liked best about the phone was that I could program it to play my very own song as the ring tone. I sat, punching in buttons until I got a nice approximation of the opening phrase of Domenico Scarlatti's Sonata in g minor, K. 450, the keypad substituting poorly for a keyboard: creativity reduced down about as far as it will go. But better than nothing.

Since that first phone, I've programmed the same tune into two succeeding phones. But with everyone younger than 35 having more or less real music as their ring tones, and everyone over 35 eschewing ring tones for the much more polite vibrate signal, which can only be felt by the person holding the phone, I know I'm on the wrong side whichever way you look by keeping this quirky little ring tone. Even if it does somehow makes people la-la-la along with it more than any other tune I've ever heard coming from a cell phone.

(I think my favorite thing about it is that I always fumble with the phone and never get it on the first ring, so it repeats the little phrase, just as it is repeated in the original music, a stupid private joke that pleases me, for no reason at all.)

So, now that my trusty 68i seems to be in need of a trade-in, the question is: Will I still be able to program twinkly, tinny, electronic-y Scarlatti into whatever phone I can get these days?

The Swedish phrase for the day is lämna ett meddelande. It means leave a message.

- by Francis S.

On Wednesday, an early birthday present from my parents arrived for the husband: a DVD of La Mala Educación. Which I couldn't resist watching late last night by myself while the husband slept, staying up until 2:30 in the morning.

After a third viewing of the movie, I have concluded that the one thing that would get me into drag would be a sequined dress by Gaultier that mimics and exaggerates and adores and mocks the naked body, all the way down to gloves with red-sequin fingernails. If I could have that dress, and Gael Garcia Bernal's face, of course.

The Swedish word for the day is kvinnlig. It means feminine.

- by Francis S.

A typical Saturday night: We went to see Closer, a sort of diet version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf where the profound cynicism has been reduced to egocentric guilt and the expressions of despair are about as deep as a summer puddle after a five-minute thundershower. But it was entertaining nonetheless, if only to see Julia Roberts' eyes gone dead as black pools of ink.

Afterwards, over takeout sushi and beers in our dining room, N. regaled us with tales of how she has to keep her mobile phone on at all times as a sort of hotline from the Vatican, on account of she does the website for the Catholic Church here in Sweden. She gets constant updates on the health of the current pontiff and in fact, has to be ready at any time to rush in to work to put up a special webpage in case the longest-reigning pope in recent memory at last finds out if in the afterlife God has some special horrific and painful punishment for those who go out of their way to promote homophobia and hatred.

Then N.'s boyfriend, the distant royal, told us how he was bitten once by a rat that crawled up his trousers as he stood outside a club at four in the morning, having just come from a costume party.

The low point of the evening was, no doubt, when I insisted that, in Star Wars Episode CDXXVII: The Attacking Clones Return to Strike Back Menacingly, the character played by Natalie Portman is called "Princess Amidala." A., the TV producer, hotly disputed this, saying the character was "Queen Amidala." Not surprisingly, I now owe her a bottle of Louis Roederer.

After everyone had left and the husband had gone to bed, I sat in the library in the dark in front of the bow window and watched the moon appear and disappear behind thin wedges of cloud while the snow came down dancing - it's snowed almost every day for the past week and a half. And I thought to myself how sitting inside a warm apartment and watching the snow is the only thing in my adult life that gives me that same feeling of safety I used to get as a child when sitting in the back seat of the car during a long drive through the black night on a lonely Iowa country highway, my father driving steadily, silently, my mother sleeping next to him or just watching the road without saying a word.

The Swedish word for the day, at the request of A., the TV producer, is oj. It has been the Swedish word of the day before. It's a simple exclamation of surprise.

- by Francis S.

At dinner last night with the pilot and his wife, we somehow got on the topic of Swedish. Or rather the lack of it, in that the husband and I still speak only English when we're together.

Somehow, we didn't manage to explain that neither of us has the patience to use Swedish with one another. Except, curiously enough, when we're mad at each other. Then the Swedish comes thick and fast.

Instead, the husband revealed an entirely new reason that he has never mentioned before. "I don't like the way he sounds when he speaks Swedish, he sounds so soft," he said, a little shamefully and not addressing me directly.

Meaning that I sound like a great big Swedish homo, I suppose.

"You sound so much more tough when you speak English," he said, looking at me, hopeful.

Ha ha, I mused to myself, little does he know. All Americans must sound tough to him if he thinks I sound tough, because I am about as tough-sounding as cream cheese. Low-fat cream cheese.

The Swedish phrase for the day is och vilket språk använder ni i sängkammaren?, which means and what language do you use in bed?

- by Francis S.

I wrote a brief for a story today, asking the writer to include an either/or sidebar about the person being interviewed - you know the kind, where people reveal deep and profound things about themselves by responding to whether they prefer vanilla or chocolate, Monopoly or Candyland, Jerri Blank or Condoleezza Rice, echinoderms or crustaceans, Diana or Camilla.

Don't make it too American, either, I wrote, because most of the readers are in Europe.

What I meant was that I didn't want any choices like, say, "Waco, Texas or Fayetteville, North Carolina?" (The answer: Is hell a third option in this particular case?)

Then I got to thinking, what kind of choices wouldn't fly in the old U.S. of A.: Humanism or atheism? Flag or mother? "Gitmo" or countries that will do your torturing for you and avoid messy scandals?

Am I missing anything here?

And what about Sweden, what wouldn't fly here?

The Swedish word for the day is eller. It means or.

- by Francis S.

I haven't worked as a waiter in 20 years. But, I still have waiter dreams. Like last night, when I dreamt I was serving three tables full of people - girls ordering vodka and frangelico, and a guy ordering some strange drink with caraway seeds and eggs - and I couldn't get the drinks out fast enough, and then the bowls for the soup were strangely shaped like fish with knobs sticking out in peculiar places, and they were dirty and I had to clean them before I could pour the soup in them, and then the soup itself was all lumpy and full of bones and I knew everyone was going to be mad at me.

It exhausts me just to write this.

Where do these dreams come from?

The Swedish phrase for the day, taken from a show at Kulturhuset that I read about in today's Dagens Nyheter, is lilla fittan på prärien. It means the little cunt on the prairie.

- by Francis S.

The Christian right has it all wrong. The biggest threat to the heterosexual lifestyle is not the widespread practice of numberless girly-men like myself marrying each other, it's the widespread practice of numberless girly-men convincing their straight counterparts that depilation is a good thing.

"Doesn't everyone shave their balls? Hairy balls are disgusting!" said our badboy boarder, sitting next to his very pregnant girlfriend.

Inwardly, I sighed. Who would ever have imagined that gay porn and its rank after rank of hairless bodies, copied duly and dully by gay men everywhere, would end up being de rigeur not just for your average metrosexual, but for your average urban joe. Then again, the whole idea behind shaved balls is to make your dick look bigger, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I long for the days when hair was fetishized by all self-respecting great big homo types. It seems, well, so much more adult.

The Swedish word for the day is vax. I've no doubt you have already guessed that it means wax.

- by Francis S.

Swedes have an interesting attitude about fame: It's not a good thing, more or less. (Not unlike being a boss, which is also nothing to aspire to in Sweden. It all has to do with that damn jante-law thing wherein no one is better than anyone else, supposedly.)

As an American, it comes as a shock to see popular rockstars, TV actresses, duchesses, best-selling novelists or beloved comedians walking on the streets of Stockholm, rather pointedly being left alone by passers-by, not a single papparazzi in sight. Me, I can barely stop myself from jumping up and down and pointing and yelling "Look, look, it's whatsizname! Hey, I loved your latest movie/song/book/scandal! Look everybody, it's whatsername!"

But I just pass on by silently.

To be honest, the whole anti-fame thing is one of the things I love about Sweden. Of course, there are downsides. Like today when I came out of the office and the ex-football player was standing there.

"Hey," he said, as shocked to see me as I was to see him, smiling at me as we hugged a hello.

He's just someone I've met in my life here, and in part because of the whole Swedish attitude about public figures, I don't really think of him as someone famous. Mostly, at least. There is a horrible small American part of me that was secretly wondering if my little boss could see me just then, because he is the sole person in my office who might think somehow that it was worth it to treat me with a little bit more respect on account of my knowing someone like the ex-football player.

Then again, maybe not.

What is more, I've become Swedish enough that I had a little inner battle with myself before writing this - too many people I know read this, and I hate to admit that I ever even contemplate such things.

The Swedish word for the day is verkligen. It means for real.

- by Francis S.

I'm nothing if not inconsistent as I sigh to myself that at last, Stockholm has a good thick coating of snow, nearly a foot. Despite my whining about spring being far away, I'm quite childish in that I still like my winters to be snowy. So much so that I'll even go out of my way as I walk home at 6 p.m. just to meander through Humlegården, the park that surrounds the royal library, to be cast under the spell of lamps shining in the dark under the various allees of linden trees that criss-cross the way, and the white fields.

The Swedish word for the day is lämplig. It means appropriate.

- by Francis S.

If you let it, preparing food can be a kind of rite, a connection to all the people who ever prepared and ate food before you.

You should start by taking the corn husks from the bag - cutting the knotted piece of cornhusk that was used to tie the back shut - then pick through them and choose 12 that seem large enough or maybe just please you for no particular reason. It seems a bit cruel to have to weigh them down with a heavy pot on top when you soak them in hot water, as if you were drowning them. But they are corn husks after all, and quite dead ones at that.

While the husks soak, you prepare the mole, first melting a spoonful of pork lard - you think of your grandmother when you unwrap the block of lard - then slowly adding spices to the frying pan: four ancho chile peppers, leaving the seeds to give the sauce a little bite, a generous spoonful of cumin, a less generous spoonful of dried coriander powder, caraway seeds. Let the smell go to your head, but not so that you forget to add a good squeeze of tomato paste from the tube, stirring, stirring, stirring with your wooden spoon, before you had a nice handful of chopped cherry tomatoes. Then, as it turns to a lovely paste, you add a clove of minced garlic before you drop in two or three chicken breasts that have been cut into small bite-sized pieces, coating them with the paste until they are cooked through. And at last, you add the final touch, a small square of rich bittersweet chocolate, resisting the urge to eat it by itself, instead letting it melt around the chicken until it's turned the sauce a non-descript reddish-brown color. The color is nothing spectacular, but the aroma is sublime.

On the other counter, once you've beaten 4-5 tablespoons more of pork lard - thinking again of your grandmother - for five minutes by itself in a mixer, you slowly add 2 cups or so of masa harina from Quaker Oats (this is cheating because real tamales are made with hand-made corn flour) as the lard mixes in the mixer, until the two form a coarsebut even meal, then just as slowly you add a cup of chicken broth or so until, beating and beating and beating it in the mixer, adding more and more air, the dough is finished. Marvel at the soft consistency, but be gentle with it.

Now all you have to do is spread the dough on the cornhusks that you've removed from the hot water and dried off. One at a time, spread the dough on a corn husk, then press a small handful of the chicken mole into the dough and add a bit of fresh cheese on top, then fold the cornhusk shut and steam the packets in a steamer lined with more corn husks, reading a book - perhaps Under the Volcano - at the kitchen table with one eye so that you can with the other eye carefully watch that the water doesn't boil away. Let the tamales steam until they are cooked through and tender, at least 45 minutes.

When you've set in front of your husband a plate of black beans cooked in chorizo, rice, and a salad of lettuce, avocado, red pepper and tomatoes, and a tamale or two, you have earned the right to sit and open up your own tamale, peeling away the corn husk and smiling at the impression it has left on the perfectly cooked dough.

As you take that first bite, remember all the cooks who have cooked tamales before you - perhaps even in Aztec kitchens - and it will taste all that much better.

The Swedish word for the day is vana. It means habit.

- by Francis S.

The third Mr. Marilyn Monroe has died. I never cared much for the few plays of his that I've seen. But, he was one the guys who stood up to Joe McCarthy, and that counts for a lot. Even more, he was married to Norma Jean Baker, and that's really something.

The Swedish phrase for the day is Men pappa, du vet att jag vet att det finns ingen jultomte!. Which is what a little boy walking behind me with his father said this morning: but Dad, you know that I know that there is no such thing as Santa Claus!

-by Francis S.

On the train back from Västerås today, the woman sitting in front of me - probably 70 - carefully set herself down and delicately patted her hair, as if every strand weren't already carefully shellacked into place, instantly bringing back memories of my mother when I was boy, when she would go and get her hair set.

Does anyone other than 70-year-old women in purple overcoats get their hair set anymore? What does it mean, anyway, to get your hair set?

The Swedish word for the day is hänsyn. It means consideration.

- by Francis S.

Damn the policeman! He was over here yesterday with the priest and their daughter, Signe, and he played this Jimmy Durante song for me and now I can't get it out of my head.

"I'll never forget the day I read a book.
It was contagious. Seventy pages.
There were pictures here and there, so it wasn't hard to bear,
the day I read a book.
It's a shame I don't recall the name of the book.
It wasn't a history, I know because it had no plot.
It wasn't a mystery, because nobody there got shot..."

I wonder if there's a modern-day equivalent of Jimmy Durante, with his peculiar endearing and innocent charm? I suppose he wouldn't be photogenic enough for today's tastes.

The Swedish word for the day is näsan. It means the nose.

- by Francis S.

Seen from the No. 42 bus at 6:38 p.m.: two women tanking up their car at the gas station on the corner of Kungstensgatan and Birger Jarlsgatan (I think I read somewhere that it's the oldest gas station in Stockholm); one is dressed in a bathrobe and slippers and appears to be wearing nothing underneath as she stands chatting with the other, who is dressed in typical parka, jeans and boots.

The weather is unseasonably warm, but it is only about 4 degrees celsius, tops. And it's not like there was a sauna nearby, either.

Swedes. Sometimes, they're just unfathomable.

The Swedish word for the day is bensinmack. It means filling station.

- by Francis S.

Worst Swedish translation of a movie title: Måndag Hela Veckan - which means Monday the Whole Week - for the movie Groundhog Day.

To be fair, I guess it was hard to come up with something that would make sense to the average Swede because oddly enough, groundhog day is not mentioned on any Swedish calendars.

Now, off to watch my favorite holiday movie ever.

(Isn't Bill Murray great? Even Andie McDowell is only slightly annoying and wooden... plus Chris Elliott plays a straight role, ooo-ee!)

- by Francis S.

When travelling to far-flung places, Paul Bowles is perhaps not your best choice for reading material. It's easy to become suspicious of even the generous and trustworthy Thai people or the horrendously poor Cambodians if you're spending your evenings reading short stories that feature hapless westerners faced with strange cultures that they invariably fail to understand or worse, misread so direly that it is their undoing. A father willingly seduced by his son or a French professor tricked into letting himself be captured by Bedouins who cut out his tongue and turn him into a pathetic clownlike figure, for example.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell it is not.

And yet, it can add a, um, frisson of peculiar pleasure to your beach reading.

- by Francis S.

I feel like Sally Field: "You like me!" It's all on account of a Satin Pajama Award for best writing, my second blog award since I started this whole writing project. Thanks, David Weman and the rest of the folks at Fistful of Euros. And kudoses to Mike M., who won two awards, and to Torill, who won one, and to those - Mig and Zoe and Des and Mr. H, Stefan, for instance - who should've won as well. Plus new interesting reads direct from Paris.

And now, a shameless plug for myself. You should know that the Bloggies - the oldest blog awards - are still open for voting in case you wanted to vote for me as Best Great Big Homo Type. Or for anyone else for that matter.

The Swedish phrase for the day is svag is. It means thin ice.

- by Francis S.

Talking on the phone today with the former punk rockstar, who has been homebound for over a week suffering with a flu that won't seem to go away, she told me that she has had it with television. The only thing on anymore are these horrible reality shows, she told me.

"Pretty soon there's going to be a new kind of psychological syndrome and a whole group of people suffering from it," she said. "People traumatized by being on a docusoap."

The Swedish word for the day psykiskt störd. It means mentally ill.

- by Francis S.

Flags on buses, in front of government buildings, atop random apartment buildings, on the corner outside the office. In a land where people are skeptical about displays of patriotism, this sudden waving of flags all over the place could only be some kind of vaguely political holiday, I decided.

When I checked my calendar after I arrived at work, I saw that, yes, it was a vaguely political holiday: the name day of the king.

"My father has the same name day as the king," K., my co-worker said. "When I was little and the old king died, I asked my father why he couldn't become king, since he had the same name day."

I like the idea of having a kind of second birthday, celebrating on the saint's day of whatever saint you share your name with, which is more or less what a name day is (although many Swedish names aren't tied to any saint, but still have a day assigned to them). It's kind of charming. A remnant of old religious practice and a time when the church held sway over people's day-to-day lives. Sort of like all Swedish bank holidays, which are with one exception - midsummer - nominally Christian holidays in a decidedly secular country.

As opposed to in the States, where all bank holidays with one exception - Christmas - are decidedly non-Christian, but the country seems to be anything but secular.

Please, give me religious remnants in the form of holidays and name days, as opposed to religious remnants in the form of laws enshrining religious beliefs, religious doctrine posted in public government spaces and children being forced to recite daily a belief in "God."

Uh, maybe remnants is the wrong word.

The Swedish word for the day is makt. It means power.

- by Francis S.

A Drunkard cannot meet a Cork
Without a Revery -
And so encountering a Fly
This January Day
Jamaicas of Remembrance stir
That send me reeling in -
The moderate drinker of Delight
Does not deserve the spring -
Of juleps, part are the Jug
And more are in the joy -
Your connoisseur in Liquours
Consults the Bumble Bee -

Poem No. 1628 by Emily Dickinson

There is nothing powerful enough to conjure up spring here, still so far away from Stockholm in January.

The Swedish word for the day is dröm. It means dream.

- by Francis S.

Is it shameful to still have a Christmas tree standing in your dining room on January 26?

We've removed all the ornaments and lights, we just haven't been able to muster the energy to drag the thing out of the apartment.

I'm reminded somehow of a sketch from the original Saturday Night Live, in which Lily Tomlin plays a crazy woman - with a fully-decorated Christmas tree in her living room in July - visited by salesman Garrett Morris. I think Lily Tomlin was the 1970s answer to Amy Sedaris. Or vice versa.

Whatever happened to Lily Tomlin?

The Swedish phrase for the day is svårt att få tag på någon. It means difficult to get a hold of somebody.

- by Francis S.

Apparently, Ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel are more likely to jaywalk than other Israelis, research shows.

I wonder if this is true of all orthodox types, regardless of choice of deity?

I suppose this means that they are more likely to get hit by cars, which probably makes them happy because it means less time in this vale of tears and more time sipping kosher lattés with assorted cherubim, seraphim and even the big guy himself. Still, I can't help thinking it was merely an oversight of Moses, who somehow failed to get that all-important 11th commandment: Thou Shalt Not Cross the Street Wherever the Hell Thou Wilt."

The Swedish word for the day is gamla testamentet. It means the Old Testament.

- by Francis S.

Poor Nikolai Nolan - he's exceeded his bandwidth no doubt due to traffic for this year's rounds of the Bloggies, so it's impossible to get onto the site at the moment. But if you could, you would notice that I'm nominated in the GLBT category - my third nomination in three years.

Fuck modesty. I'm proud, popularity contest or no.

Now, will there be a scandal as we've come to expect from past experience? We can always hope.

[post script: I neglected to say in the original post that for some reason, the usual suspects are missing this year from the category - they've moved out of the gay ghetto and into the "lifetime achievement" part of town. But, I am up against Mike, the fabulous Troubled Diva himself.]

- by Francis S.

Who says transvestism isn't natural? Apparently, if you're a male giant Australian cuttlefish, it's not just a way of life, but one of the best methods for getting the female giant Australian cuttlefish of your dreams. Plus - a major side benefit - you may attract other males!

- by Francis S.

"Do you want some cheesecake?" the husband called out from the kitchen yesterday morning as I dragged myself out of bed.

Sure, I said.

Somehow, the night before we never got around to dessert: instead A., the producer and C., the fashion photographer, had slept in front of the television - Miller's Crossing, one of my favorite period pieces - the husband had gotten up and crawled into bed and me, at 10 p.m., I was checking my e-mails and listening to the snores of three different people.

"Not bad," the husband said in the morning as he finished off his piece of cheesecake - made by A. with lingonberry jam and a gingerbread crust - and gulped down a cup of coffee, dashing off to Gothenburg for a weekend of work.

No wonder he has problems with his digestion.

The second Swedish word for the day is ont i magen. It means stomach ache.

- by Francis S.

Okay, so I blew it on the self-promotion for the Queeries. I've been given another chance to shill myself: the Satin Pajama Awards, from A Fistful of Euros. Voting starts tomorrow.

Remember when I had my own awards, back when I was new to the game?

The Swedish word for the day is självupptagen. It means, surprisingly, self-absorbed.

- by Francis S.

First Susan Sontag dies, now I learn that Victoria de los Angeles has died as well.

Her name alone was splendid, if a bit over the top in a biblical kind of way. Of course, I should admit that I've only ever owned a recording of her singing what some would say is the operatic equivalent of pop, Heitor Villa-Lobos' "Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5." But who can argue against eight cellos and a soprano called Victory of the Angels, singing like a bird, literally? It is, in fact, sublime.

-by Francis S.

I stand corrected by my brother, who obviously has a far better memory for these things than I do. It was on this date in 1958 in El Paso, Texas that a small red-haired squalling baby at last showed her face to the world.

Happy birthday again, Bethie. Sorry I fucked up yesterday. And thank goodness you don't visit this site very often.

The Swedish word for the day is jävlar. It translates literally as devils, but it's a good Swedish equivalent to dammit.

- by Francis S.

On this date in 1958 in El Paso Texas, a small red-haired squalling baby at last showed her face to the world, the first child of a couple of gawky 23-year-olds, the husband conscripted into the army and hating every minute of it, the wife working as a nurse in a local hospital and disturbed by the extreme poverty all around them.

Happy birthday, Bethie.

The Swedish word for the day is storasyster. It means big sister.

- by Francis S.

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

Of course, maybe if I'd actually mentioned that I was nominated for an award - Queerday's new prize for news and blogs, the Queeries - it could have helped my chances, but it just feels too shamelessly self-promotional.

Or I could put up photos of pouty young naked guys.

Congratulations to those who did win.

- by Francis S.

The temples in the jungle outside Siem Reap - Angkor Wat is just the biggest of them, but it's become a kind of synecdoche for the whole vast complex - were built by the great Khmer empire between the 9th and 12th centuries A.D. Historians speculate that perhaps a million people lived in the area at that time, far more than Cordóba's mere 100,000 inhabitants, the largest city in Europe at that time (and part of a Muslim empire, incidentally).

Bayon, with 37 towers and four tremendous smiling faces on each tower. Ta Prohm, fantastical, banyan trees like a vegetable version of an octopus slowly trying to grip and grow their way through the temple. And Angkor Wat itself, surrounded by manmade lakes and endless walls, a huge stone walkway leading from the gate into the temple itself, with its elaborate carvings and dizzyingly steep steps: the reward is watching the sun set, but the payment is the terrible climb down.

I was prepared, so seeing these three didn't quite take my breath away as when I wandered the first time in the Medina of Fez during Aïd al Kebir, or gazed at the impossible architecture of the unfinished church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, two places that photographs cannot possibly capture in any way. Not unlike the temples in the jungle outside Siem Reap that they call Angkor Wat.

The Swedish word for the day is färdig. It means finished.

- by Francis S.

The city of Siem Reap in the Kingdom of Cambodia lies some 170 kilometers and six hours from the border town of Poipet down a road that is mostly vast holes and dust and dirt that turns everything nearby into a dull red during the dry season.

A murky river divides the center of town, lined with elaborately carved stone streetlights and the dilapidated and tired remnants of French Indochina: It's easy to imagine the dismay of a low-level French diplomatic functionary assigned to remote Siem Reap in the 1930s. But now a billboard shows a picture of a new shopping center to be built to replace a whole block of buildings and not far away, vast luxury hotels are under construction along a new road that leads to the airport. Siem Reap is hardly remote any longer.

Still, one feels decadent and spoiled and like a not-so-distant cousin to the 1930s French colonial functionary to be sipping cocktails at the FCC Angkor on New Year's Eve beside a hundred other Europeans and Americans sitting and standing and dancing amidst blocks of outrageously expensive ice dripping like fountains into the swimming pool below the veranda with its ceiling fans and immaculate white linen and black wood.

"Happy New Year!" we said, toasting one another. In the sky, high above us, a soft flame floated past - it was a fire balloon - the first of what became an elegant procession of maybe fifty of them, serenely disappearing into the distance.

We lasted as long as 1:00 a.m. before trudging back to our tired old hotel to sink into the tired old - but clean - sheets on the tired old beds.

The Swedish word for the day is tjänsteman. It means civil servant.

- by Francis S.

The guide told us it was important not to stop or talk to anyone. "Very dangerous," he said. We made our way in single file behind him through the crowds outside the border crossing at Poipet. But despite the guide's warnings, A. stopped and gave away a handful of candies to the children who surrounded us like birds, all fluttering fingers and cries and pleading.

When the children began to fight viciously in the dust over the candy, A. caught up to me. "It breaks my heart," she said.

That's why it's not good to give them things, I told her. It's better to give to organizations that you know can help, I said, trying to convince myself that it was true, holding tightly to my bag, ashamed somehow of myself.

In truth, I was nearly overcome with the raw desperation common to such towns that sit on the border of two countries that vary so greatly in wealth.

We'd gotten our visas to enter Cambodia at a tired café in Aranyaprathat in Thailand from officials sitting at tables in the back where they sipped coca-cola, stamping the papers we filled out and taking our pictures and our passports, coming back an hour later with the passports that now contained visas that would get us into Cambodia.

So, we stood in line first to leave Thailand, frantically filling out more papers, dripping with sweat and watching with foolish envy the townspeople of Aranyaprathat and Poipet on bicycles or walking or weighed down with baskets hanging from a yoke or wheeling pushcarts of fruit or what looked to be trash, shoed and shoeless, with and without hats, smiling and frowning, all of them crossing the border as if they were crossing any ordinary street, no one stopping them or saying a word.

Once the border officials let us through from Thailand, we entered a strange place between the two cities in which there stood a tremendous hotel and casino, vaguely sinister and unexplained, no one going in or out.

Then, having at last faced a final set of officials in Cambodia and gotten a few last thumping stamps administered to our passports, we were free to walk as we wished in Poipet, as if one would want to promenade through such a place that conjures up secret rot and the selling of souls to random demons in exchange for a little hope destined to be dashed.

What it really meant was following the guide to an empty hotel where we waited for a car to come to take us to Siem Reap and the great Khmer temples in the jungles of the Kingdom of Cambodia.

The Swedish word for the day is gränsen, which means the border.

- by Francis S.

... and I come home only to find that Susan Sontag died more than a week ago.

(When I was a pretentious 26-year-old, I secretly wanted to write an essay called "On On Photography by Susan Sontag by Francis Strand." It was always one of my favorite books, On Photography.)

- by Francis S.

Home at last, blissfully calm Koh Chang and filthy teeming and utterly fascinating Bangkok left behind after an arduous but uneventful flight (why was there a stopover in Lahore only on the return trip?).

We never made it to Vietnam, but tales of Cambodia to come.

The Swedish word for the day is suck, which doesn't mean suck but sigh. Suger means not sugar but suck. Socker means sugar, and I better stop there or this could go on and on.

- by Francis S.

Hours and hours on the worst road I've ever been on, incredible poverty, a surreal colonial New Year's at the FCC club in Siem Reap, the first day of 2005 spent watching the sun set from high atop the temple of Angkor Wat.

It seems unbelievable that on the other side of Thailand, there's so much devastation.

This is it until we get back to Sweden on January 16.

The Swedish phrase for the day is helt otroligt. It means totally unbelievable.

by Francis S.

"People, look east, the time is near
of the crowning of the year..."

So, east we go. Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia call.

Back in three weeks, although I may check in if we hit on any WiFi hotspots.

The Swedish word for the day is bortrest. It means gone travelling.

- by Francis S.

The latest item in the Amazon database: blogs, complete with a "People who visit this page also visit" section, which in my case includes A-listers Ernie and Tom Coates, plus some folks on the list at left, and some folks who should be on the list at left but aren't.

Go ahead, find yourself. (Click on the "site information" button after the URLs listed in the search results.)

Now I'm off to go write a review of Torill Mortenson's "Thinking With My Fingers," where I first read about this whole Amazon phenomenon.

The Swedish word for the day is sökmotor, which means search engine.

- by Francis S.

Sunrise in Stockholm, Dec. 21, 2004: 8:44 a.m.
Sunset in Stockholm, Dec. 21, 2004: 2:48 p.m.

This is as dark as it gets.

Tilt, little planet, tilt.

The Swedish word for the day is vintersolstånd. It means winter solstice.

- by Francis S.

"Thinking opera is great is kind of like thinking heavy metal is great," the R&B star said as we swilled beers and lolled about on the sofa in front of a roaring fire, exhausted from a day of Christmas baking.

I understood immediately what she meant.

Foolishly, I tried to prove otherwise, that anyone would find certain music sublime no matter what their taste. Naturally, I failed utterly by insisting on playing a soprano aria from Bach's Christmas Oratorio. Then dug the hole deeper with a little Mozart.

"I hate it when their voices go 'uhahuhahuhah,'" said the husband, imitating a wobbly-voiced vibrato-afflicted tenor with the worst case of the shakes.

Dammit, I thought to myself, they're not overwhelmed. It's true. Heavy metal is the rock equivalent of opera.

Then I bit into a saffron bun and put the Flaming Lips back in the CD player.

The Swedish word for the day is U-sväng. It means U-turn.

- by Francis S.

Beside my bed lies a pile of books on the floor: The Stories of Paul Bowles, Homage to Catalonia, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, The Leopard, The Catcher in the Rye, Love in a Dark Time, Foucault's Pendulum, The Piano Teacher. Some are presents, some I bought here and some in the States. Some are already read, some I can't seem to make any headway into, some are meant for browsing. Each of them has the stub of a boarding pass as a bookmark: Houston to Austin Aug 17, Stockholm to Chicago Nov 27, Stockholm to Turku July 1. Et cetera.

What do you use for bookmarks?

The Swedish word for the day is förlag. It means publishing house.

- by Francis S.

During lunch, I wandered through an exhibition of Andy Warhol paintings with my friend the former punk star. Her boyfriend used to work at the museum, Liljevalchs Konsthall, so she had gotten us free tickets.

As we wandered from room to room - her favorites were the toy paintings, mine were the piss paintings - her 7-year-old son called on the phone.

"What song is this," he said, and he la-la'd his way through a short melody.

She didn't hear it properly the first time, but even after he told her it was the song played during the end credits of The Incredible Hulk and sang it again, she had no idea what it could be.

What do you do when it turns out that your mother doesn't know everything? Move on to the next thing, I suppose.

We sat drinking cappucinos in the basement of the museum, surrounded by Warhol photos.

"There's a picture of Joe D'Alessandro naked here somewhere," my friend said, and sure enough, she found it. She may not know every tune sung under the sun, but she sure knows where to find the important stuff.

The Swedish word for the day is 60-talet. It means the '60s.

- by Francis S.

The New York Times says bloggers can get six figure advances for books these days.

The Swedish phrases for the day are jag väntar på and säg till and ring mig bara. They mean I'm waiting and let me know and just call me.

- by Francis S.

I forgot that today was Lucia until I saw that the paths of the two parks I pass on my way to work, Humlegården and Karlaplan, were lined with blazing tins of sterno every three meters or so. It's a magnificent sight to see. Then we got saffron buns and gingerbread with blue cheese at the office, along with some mulled wine.

Still, I can't help thinking that it's strange that the Swedes have latched onto a Sicilian saint who was typically painted during the Renaissance offering her eyeballs on a plate to the viewer, a heartwarming and Christmassy vision if there ever was one.

I think it mostly has to do with her name, which is associated with light. Lux aeterna luceat eis, wouldn't you agree?

The Swedish phrase for the day is det stämmer. It means that's right.

- by Francis S.

Tangerines are the very smell and taste of midwinter to me.

In the morning, in the soft sultry chamber, sit in the window peeling tangerines, three or four. Peel them gently; do not bruise them, as you watch soldiers pour past and past the corner and over the canal towards the watched Rhine. Separate each plump little pregnant crescent. If you find the Kiss, the secret section, save it for Al.

...

After you have put the pieces of tangerine on the paper on the hot radiator, it is best to forget about them. Al comes home, you go to a long noon dinner in the brown dining-room, afterwards maybe you have a little nip of quetsch from the bottle on the armoire. Finally he goes. You are sorry, but -

On the radiator the sections of tangerines have grown even plumper, hot and full. You carry them to the window, pull it open, and leave them for a few minutes on the packed snow of the sill. They are ready.

from Serve It Forth by M.F.K. Fisher

And...

At the end of the meal, Archer gave me a piece of his own bar of chocolate, and then began to skin pigs of tangerine very skillfully and hand them to me on his outstretched palm, as one offers a lump of sugar to a horse. I thought for one moment of bending down my head and licking the pigs up in imitation of a horse; then I saw how mad it would look.

We threw the brilliant tangerine peel into the snow, which immediately seemed to dim and darken its colour.

from "When I Was Thirteen" by Denton Welch

The Swedish word for the day is smaksinne. It means sense of taste.

- by Francis S.

America, land of the orthodox and home of the duped: A recent Newsweek poll shows that a whopping 40 percent of the Americans polled favor teaching creation "science" instead of evolution in public schools.

Okay, so this news is five days old, but still.

I can't possibly express how disturbing I find this. Can the U.S. really be so backward? Is there any future for such a country?

I am ashamed.

The Swedish word for the day is ofattbar. It means incomrehensible.

- by Francis S.

Who ever thought that cherries in liqueur and covered in chocolate was a good thing? Why do confectioners bother to put them in boxes of chocolate, bearing a disturbing resemblance to my idea of what eyeballs in cough syrup must be like, sitting uneaten in their gold wrappers until one day, sick of seeing them languish in a little bowl on top of the sugar canister, I am forced to eat them, one by one?

The Swedish word for the day is besserwisser. It is stolen directly from German, I have no doubt, and means know it all.

- by Francis S.

At 5 a.m. this morning, an apartment a mere block or so away from here just, well, blew up (link in Swedish). We never heard a thing.

Strangely, the man who lived in the apartment had just been released from jail - he'd been there for allegedly stealing from his employer: He took rare books from the Royal Library, Sweden's answer to the Library of Congress.

Our current guest living in the spare bedroom, the crazy music producer who is a firm believer in all kinds of conspiracies, thinks the guy was done in by the people he sold the books to.

"That's what happens when you start dealing with those kind of people," the crazy music producer said. "In a way, you gotta admire them. They just blew the guy up, nice and clean."

There's something Jasper Ffordeian about the whole thing. I guess you just can't trust thugs. Librarians, either, for that matter.

The Swedish word for the day is sprängämne. It means explosives.

- by Francis S.

On Saturday, the husband had invited a hunter over for dinner. I don't think I will ever be likely to actually pick up a gun and shoot something, but I've never been against other people hunting, although in Sweden it seems to be associated with the upper classes rather than with men like my mother's brothers, who hunt and are good old boys to the core and of the hardworking farmer class.

So the hunter came, with a hunk of deer, which he cooked and we ate: great big unwieldy slabs of venison, with black currant jelly, and mushroom sauce with port and cream, and brussels sprouts, and lots of red wine. I felt manly, even though I hadn't shot dinner myself. Manly, and then uncommonly full.

But what do you do with the leftovers? Bambi tetrazzini doesn't seem right, somehow.

The Swedish word for the day is viltkött, which means game.

- by Francis S.

Someone has decided that the little statue of an adolescent girl on Karlavägen must have been cold. They've given her a coat. I have no picture, but you'll just have to take my word for it that she looks all warm and snug now. Giving statues clothes is apparently a Stockholm thing.

(Walking to work has endowed me with a statue fetish, it seems. I guess it makes sense, since I must walk past some 15 statues during the 30-minute walk.)

The Swedish words for the day are halsduk and vantar. They mean scarf and mittens.

- by Francis S.

Every Friday is clinking green bag day in Sweden. Green being the color of bags used by the state liquor monopoly, the clinking being the bottles in the bag. And I've certainly done my part today, joining what looks to be about 25 percent of the adult population.

Now, off to a dinner party.

The Swedish word for the day is vinet. It means the wine.

- by Francis S.

Getting myself into the Christmas spirit means having reindeer and chantarelle mushroom lasagne for lunch. (It's just like celebrating Easter with a traditional seafood and bunny rabbit paella.)

But the real meaning of the season came to me some four hours later as I waited for the No. 42 bus.

The small girl wreaking havoc next to me began to sing, to the tune of "Jingle Bells," something that sounded suspiciously like djungel bajs (which would be jungle poo). Then she switched to "Deck the Halls" but all I caught was the word fröken, which means miss and is what small children call their female teachers, further confirming my growing suspicion that she was singing Swedish versions of all those charming traditional Christmas carols we sang as children: "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells" and "Deck the Halls with Gasoline" and "We Three Kings of Orient Are, Smoking on a Rubber Cigar" and "Joy to the World, the Teacher's Dead."

Then her mother told her to shut up.

The Swedish phrase for the day is fy på dig! Which is what the little girl's mother said when the little girl pushed her sister into the bicycle racks after her mother told her to shut up. It means shame on you!

- by Francis S.

Truman Capote was a peculiar character, with his carefully cultivated bitchiness, his social striving and success and failure, and his superb writing - In Cold Blood continues to have a huge influence on everything from reporting to books to television.

Someone has unearthed a full manuscript of Capote's long-lost first novel, now available to anyone willing to pay an estimated $60,000-$80,000 to Sotheby's.

The Swedish word for the day is brott. It means crime.

- by Francis S.

Well what do you know. I was going to surprise the husband before he arrived home by hanging the advent star - no Swedish home is complete without one at this time of year - but the window is so high that I couldn't reach it when standing on a chair. I ended up dragging the desk from the study, cussing the whole way, hammering a nail in the woodwork, cussing some more because I kept dropping the damn star on account of it didn't want to stay put on the little metal thingamajig that the lightbulb dangles from and that keeps the star together.

In the end, I think I scared it into staying in place.

Merry Fucking Christmas.

(Have I mentioned we're going to Thailand for three weeks, leaving on Christmas day? Have I also mentioned that, cussing aside, I've always been sentimental about yuletide, even when I was really too young to actually be sentimental about anything? I do like Christmas, I do.)

The Swedish phrase for the day is lägg av. It means cut it out already, will ya!

- by Francis S.

It's a new year, liturgically speaking: out with the old Jesus, in with the new.

From Rosh Hoshana to Chinese New Year, it's fascinating how many times one can mark the passing of 365 (more or less) days if one wants to. We celebrated by riding nine hours in a plane from Chicago to Stockholm.

Amazingly, reading the Chicago Tribune every morning turned out to be more exhausting than a nine-hour plane ride could ever be. It was a daily overload of bad and worse news, numbing in its awfulness.

"You have to pick your battles," my mother replied when I asked her how to handle it.

The war on "terror"? Creationism getting equal time with evolution in textbooks? Sex education that doesn't mention birth control or sex outside marriage? Taxes that favor the rich? A right-wing Supreme Court?

My devoutly religious parents have chosen to tackle poverty and fight for the right for same-sex marriage. Which meant the husband and I were exhibit A at an adult Sunday school class on how to effectively respond to people who oppose the right of gays and lesbians to marry other gays and lesbians.

It turns out that Jesus said nothing about homosexuality, that Paul's problem with homosexuality stands right alongside his problem with women, and that "church tradition" when it comes to marriage has changed so much over the centuries that it isn't really a tradition. There is no consistency in any shape or form. Yet, everyone in Sunday school seemed to agree that despite the fact that there's no sound basis to argue against gay marriage in either scriptural or ecclesiastical terms, you're not going to be able to quote the bible to convince someone who thinks gay marriage is the road to eternal damnation. The only thing that changes hearts and minds is an actual experience to the contrary.

It's gonna be a long fight.

Later that week, my dear sister-in-law asked if it's better to live in Sweden or the U.S. It's no contest, not really.

The Swedish word for the day is på hemväg. It means homeward bound.

- by Francis S.

Over the river and through the woods, and onto the highway and into the airplane and across the Atlantic, and out of the airplane and onto the highway, and over the river and through the woods, to grandmother's house we go. To paraphrase a song Mrs. Uhlenhope used to make us fourth-graders sing at this time of year back at Indian Trail Elementary School in 1970.

(Although it's not grandmother's house, it's more my parents' house, at least to me. But my nieces and nephews consider it grandmother's house, no doubt.)

The U.S. beckons with one finger, as always, friendly seeming until you realize that it's not beckoning, it's telling you to fuck off.

Chicago, here we come.

The Swedish word for the day tranbär. It means cranberry.

- by Francis S.

I'll know I'm old when the first snow of the year fails to thrill me. Even if the first snow of the year is a slushy, sticky, bone-chilling and wet mess. Beautiful and thrilling, though.

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

- by Francis S.

It feels peculiar to sit in a room with 130 other people listening to speakers talking about why right-wing bloggers outnumber left-wing bloggers in Sweden (the left is more consensus-driven and averse to the individualism that characterizes blogs? The left dominates the media already so it already has an outlet that voices its opinions?) or what it will take for blogs to become a full-fledged medium comparable to existing media (a disaster wherein other media are unavailable and people naturally turn to blogs for information?).

It feels peculiar because, well, I'm just used to seeing these kind of conversations on a computer screen and not in real life.

Which is not to say it wasn't a very good thing, because it was great, in fact.

What really made it seminal, though, was that there were about 130 people there and that members of the "mainstream media" were there covering it.(Yep, mainstream media still calls the shots.)

It feels nice to have been in the vanguard.

But my 43-year-old grey-haired white self couldn't help wondering: Who were all those grey-haired 60-year-old white guys sitting in the second row?

Then afterwards, the initial awkward greeting of people whom you feel as if you know already from reading what they write, but you don't really, which slides into something more comfortable and well-oiled after a couple of beers, and you even end up feeling a bit frustrated because you don't get quite enough time to talk as much as you'd like with all these interesting people around you. In fact, I completely lost track of the time.

Well done, Stefan. Erik.

(Now, can someone tell me what Steffanie is saying about speculation that I didn't really exist, that I was a woman, that I wasn't an American? My grasp of German is a couple of notches below tenuous, and I can't help wondering what exactly she and Martin are talking about, other than julmust.)

The Swedish verb for the day is att anta. It means to assume.

- by Francis S.

There's nothing like a good genderfuck. It's bracing, like a shot of vodka or a naked roll in the snow straight out of a sauna. It makes me laugh for sheer joy (link courtesy Pontus).

Or, as in the case of the person I occasionally see on the No. 42 bus - genetically a man, no doubt, but wearing discreetly masculine women's clothes - it impresses me like nothing else. It is about the bravest and truest act I can imagine.

The Swedish phrase for the day is hur stark som helst. It means as strong as can be.

- by Francis S.

I'm not a meta kind of guy, although I am occasionally a sucker for metablogging. I'm interested in it mostly when people get cranky and start in on the bitch-slapping, which seems to be happening for the first time in the Swedish blogosphere as far as I can tell. Although for all I know, this happens all the time because I don't read nearly as many blogs in Swedish as I should.

What's happened is that Observer, a Swedish company that monitors media (press-clipping service, etc.) has announced it has begun monitoring blogs. A short item on this appeared yesterday in the Swedish national newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Included was a list of the ten blogs Observer monitors, because they are "the most important," which is not explained further, leaving the public - that is, the Swedish blogosphere, mostly - to speculate on the criteria for what makes a blog, er, important.

There are no women on the list, and the majority of those on the list are "right-wing" in their politics according to Observer and many of these have ties to think tanks. But Erik Stattin was No. 1 on the list, so by my accounting they got at least one thing right.

Nothing creates a round of feisty sniping and introspection like publishing a list of the popular kids. (Sorry, most of the links are in Swedish. If you want to know what they say, just e-mail me and I'll do my best to translate.)

All of which has gotten me all hot and bothered.

Well, not really. But I must be the least influential Swedish blogger with the most technorati source-authority (um, I don't think that's a real term, source-authority. Or maybe it is by now.)

Sniping aside, what this really means is that the Swedish blogosphere has passed a new milestone: it is literally worth being paid attention to, and I'm talking money here.

Long live the Swedish blogosphere.

The Swedish word for the day is uppmärksamhet. It means attention.

- by Francis S.

Silver lining to the recent George v. John (link courtesy daysleeper) debacle: The dollar is so weak right now - barely seven Swedish crowns to the dollar - the husband and I will no doubt be seized by fits of shopping when we hit The New World. Capitalist pigs, the two of us.

Thanks, George.

The Swedish word for the day is grinig. It means whiny.

- by Francis S.

Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got a shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today
Any shock they should try to stem
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them.

from "Anything Goes" by Cole Porter

Actually, anything doesn't go, contrary to Cole Porter's assertion. If Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock today, no doubt they would be greeted with open arms by a coven of televangelists with camera crews.

One of the things that I like so much about Sweden is the matter-of-fact way sex is treated in the culture: It's a natural part of life, nothing to be fearful of or snicker about or repress. American culture, still weighed down by the centuries-old influence of Puritans, acts as if sex is something dirty and only really useful for either a) making babies or b) selling just about everything. Apparently, it's so frightening that it shouldn't be researched. And students need strict reinforcement on what marriage is about (the only state in which sex should occur).

The Swedish word for the day is pryd. It means prudish.

- by Francis S.

The yearly drama of dwindling daylight was kicked into full gear last weekend with the changing of the clocks back one hour. The sun is moving further and further south, its obligatory daily visits shorter and shorter as if we were a disagreeable family of second-cousins it can't altogether avoid but is loathe to spend time with.

It's only the beginning of November, but it's already dark by 4 p.m., and all I want to do is curl up and take a nap.

The Swedish word for the day is sömntablett. It means sleeping pill.

- by Francis S.

This is how conspiracy theories get started: American forces successfully attack terrorist breeding ground; blue-state dissident school children's anti-Americanism dealt a blow as war plane strafes Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School in New Jersey.

Michael Dupuis, president of the township school board says: "I feel confident that the military has done and is doing everything it can to safeguard against any occurrences of this nature."

It appears that Bush isn't wasting any time on punishing the half of the country that didn't vote for him... um, I mean, reaching out across party lines.

(It would be funny, if it weren't so pathetically inept and frightening. Homeland security at its best.)

The Swedish word for the day is metafor, which means of course, metaphor.

- by Francis S.

There must be reasons why Osama bin Laden has so generously pointed to Sweden as the type of country that has not been a target of Al-Qaeda.

Well, of course. Stefan knows.

- by Francis S.

What is it about this day that makes everyone seem to view it as apocalyptic?

Bush evokes a visceral disgust in me, but it's not like I didn't feel the same about his father, or about Ronald Reagan. Because really, if I think about it, Ronald Reagan was the one who started it all. He started the headlong rush backwards in the direction of rewarding the rich for being rich, blaming the poor for being poor, getting the government out of the business of making people's lives better and into the business of enforcing a morality straight out of evangelical fundamentalist Christianity, convincing people that we should let corporate America do whatever it wants because it won't in fact screw everyone over with low wages and bad or non-existant benefits while ripping off the public and giving astronomical bonuses to those at the top who have been behind the cheating.

The current administration just behaves in a way that is a logical extension of this original thinking, playing out this irresponsible and infantile selfishness in a more global fashion.

Do I sound bitter?

The fact is, the United States gets what it deserves. (Too bad the rest of the world has no say in what is bound to affect it as well.)

Happy election 2004.

There is no Swedish word for the day.

- by Francis S.

Sweden, which was pretty poverty-stricken until the 20th century, never really went for rococo excess. Partly, no doubt, because they just didn't have the money for all that ormolu. So, the country's answer to spas like Bath and Baden-Baden was a place like Loka Brunn, which is decidedly unpretentious and a bit humble, even if it once was the playground for people like Sweden's party king, Gustav III and Christine Nilsson, a long-forgotten opera singer who sang at the opening of the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1883 (although she lives on in dubious glory as the model for the heroine of The Phantom of the Opera).

And us, of course.

We were there for a wedding, and for the first time I had my doubts about the Swedish practice of having a toastmaster run things (even though, in my experience, it sure takes the pressure off the wedding couple): We were harrassed belligerantly throughout dinner by a man banging on a pot with a spoon, reminding us that there would be another speech "in three minutes." I wondered if someone had slipped a couple of pounds of anabolic steroids into the guy's champagne. It was like slipping into a warm bath when we at last made our way to the dancefloor and let loose, dancing until we were soaked to the skin.

We arrived home the next day to the big news in Sweden: "the cake man" who after getting laid off, gave his co-workers cannabis-laced cheesecake as a special farewell, only he neglected to inform them that what they were eating was going to make them hungrier and start wondering about the deep meaning of the pattern in the rug. The other big news is that apparently American citizens in the Nordic countries and around the Baltic are in danger of a terror attack, or at least this is what the U.S. government is saying. Which everyone here seems suspicious about. And I'm not talking suspicious about terrorists here.

The Swedish word for the day is skämt. It means joke.

- by Francis S.

Göran Rosenberg, a relatively prominent journalist here in Sweden, currently has an interesting three-part TV series on the political state of the States.

This week, he interviewed a laborer who was a union leader, first finding out that the guy thought homosexuality and gay marriage were evil. Later, he asked him which candidate would better represent his interests as a worker, and the guy said that this was what made him undecided on how he would vote.

Unfortunately, Göran Rosenberg didn't ask the question that I wanted to know the answer to: Which affects your life more, your job and related job issues - healthcare, retirement, etc. - or two men getting married somewhere? Does the fact that two men get married have any impact on your life, in fact? I don't understand how people could actually vote so strongly against their own self-interest.

The worst part of the show, however, is that the camera crew seems to be a security threat everywhere it goes, with everyone from police to highway tollbooth workers suspiciously demanding that they turn off their cameras. The heavy security reminds us that the new rules for getting into the U.S. mean that I will not be able to go through passport control with the husband, he's going to have to undergo the whole picture-taking and fingerprinting bit by himself. And we've got a November 20 trip to Chicago on the books.

"If they treat you like that, why bother? It's not as great a place as it thinks it is. It really makes me not want to go," he said.

Of course he will go, but I'm already dreading that part of the journey where I follow the green line and he follows the blue.

The Swedish verb for the day is att uppskatta. It means to appreciate.

- by Francis S.

Ever wondered why there are never any openings for ragpickers these days, no "ragpicker" section in the help-wanted ads, no ragpicker training courses you can sign up for?

Actually, I always wondered why there was any market at all for rags, back in the days of Nell Trent: What the hell did they do with them?

It turns out that up until the late 19th century, most paper made in Europe was produced using pulp from linen and cotton rags. In the year 1800, Britain alone used a total of 24 million lbs. of rags in paper production. It wasn't until the 1880s that wood pulp became a primary source for paper.

This explains why no one seems to pick rags anymore.

Now, what about costermongers...?

The Swedish verb for the day is att syssla. It means to work with as in an occupation.

- by Francis S.

I'm not going to miss this: a forum on blogs here in Stockholm on Nov. 15, coordinated by Erik Stattin and Stefan Geens, two of my favorite writers in the Swedish blogosphere.

- by Francis S.

"Did you see the bird downstairs?" the husband asked me last night when he arrived home.

Yes, I had seen it.

Someone had painted a picture of a magpie in the entrance of our building. A magpie perched on a balcony.

A host of painters and carpenters are restoring the entrance and stairwell to some semblance of what it probably was when the building was built, in 1902. Along with the magpie, there is faux grey marble and the woodwork - all the double doors of the apartments, plus the door to the elevator and miscellaneous flourishes here and there - is being painted to look like, well, wood.

It all sounds kind of tacky, doesn't it? I've never been much of a fan of full-out restoration, I much prefer the slovenly charm of New Orleans to the fussy preserved perfection of Georgetown in D.C. I think it's perfectly fine for a place to look its age, not unlike human beings.

But I like all this elaborate painting in the hallways of our building. It isn't too much, it suits, in fact.

The Swedish word for the day is trapphuset, of course. It means stairwell.

- by Francis S.

When I was 13, I read Sentimental Tommy, a rather peculiar book by J.M. Barrie, whose most famous creation is Peter Pan. My mother was a great fan of another book of Barrie's, The Little Minister.

Sentimental Tommy rather unnerved my 13-year-old self, but I was forever changed by one of the characters declaring that you can't trust a man who breathes through his mouth when he sleeps.

I had to get over the claustrophobic sense of not getting enough air - could it be that my nostrils are too small? - but I immediately trained myself to be a man who breathes through his nose when he sleeps, something I do to this day. Just so anyone doesn't get any ideas that I'm not to be trusted.

The Swedish word for the day is trovärdig, which means of course trustworthy or credible.

- by Francis S.

We know the how's of so many things, but the why's are a different story.

For instance, we know how to bomb a country until it is uninhabitable, but we don't know why leaves change color in the autumn.

The Swedish word for the day is kolsyra. It means carbon dioxide.

- by Francis S.

Sitting on the No. 4 bus, I wondered what it is that prevents Valhallavägen from being a nice street - it has beautiful apartment houses lining one side, rank after rank of linden trees in the middle, and the Royal Technical College and the Stadium on the other side, but it somehow is too traffic-filled and the proportions are all wrong, making it a place to avoid.

We had just stopped where Odengatan intersects with Vallhallavägen when 50 pregnant women got on the bus, giggling and forcing the rest of the occupants to all give up their seats, a massive game of musical chairs in a moving bus with people not knowing whether to grumble or laugh along with the women.

Actually, it was only one pregnant woman, and no one got up to give her a seat.

But, I thought, wouldn't it have been funny if it had been 50 pregnant women instead of just one?

And then I got off the bus.

The Swedish word for the day is ändhållplats. It means the end of the line.

- by Francis S.

While watching a TV program about overweight children on Swedish television last night, an American researcher on nutrition recommended watching less TV to help keep kids thinner (adults too, although he didn't specify). Which didn't make us get off our fat asses.

Then, we watched a show about self-recognition. Apparently, the ability to recognize ourselves - via a test with secret dots and mirrors - begins somewhere when we're 18 months to two years old.

But far more interesting was another test done with mirrors. Children aged 9-11 were rewarded after a test by being told they could take one piece of candy from a dish, which happened to be in an empty room. About 30 percent of the kids took more than one piece. But, if the bowl of candy was placed in front of a great big mirror, the number of children taking extra candy dropped to only 10 percent.

It seems that seeing ourselves about to do something we're not supposed to do is enough to stop us. It's as if we're our own mothers, frowning and giving ourselves the eye.

But wait, it gets worse. The program went on to say that having a big mirror in a room in the office where people are supposed to take a coffee break prevents lingering.

What it all comes down to is that our own reflections seem to be as effective as Judaism and Catholicism at inducing guilt.

This could explain why in this apartment with 45 doors, there are only two little mirrors. I guess I'm not very good at dealing with guilt.

The Swedish word for the day is nolltolerans. It means zero tolerance.

- by Francis S.

They came on Thursday just to make my acquaintance, the women from the Spanish Embassy. Instead of eating dinner we nibbled on manchego and chorizo and drank way too many glasses of wine, the husband constantly getting up to heap logs on the fire to keep it at a roar.

The evening was a comfortable blur of Spanish and Swedish and English all spoken in mad running dashes, and the woman who has known the husband since he was a little boy asked: "Don't you want to have children?"

This is a question the husband and I often get.

I told her that the thing is, if we wanted to have a child, it would take vast amounts of perseverance and patience and scrutiny by others, on account of we're a couple of queer guys. If all it took were a fuck, well, we'd have been fathers some time ago. Despite the fact that I'd decided years ago my life could be entirely fulfilling without becoming a father, contrary to what I had always thought. I was cured of certain romantic notions by spending a week with a six-week-old baby. The amount of work that little eight-pound animal required was mind-boggling. I decided then that I just needed to use up my paternal energy on my nieces and nephews, and live my life with all the freedoms I got in return for not being responsible to someone who would extend my existence by passing on my genes, whom I would love unconditionally, whom would hopefully take some responsibility for me when and if I became old and doddering.

"So what are you going to do since you won't have anyone to remember you after you die?" asked the woman who had known the husband since he was a little boy.

Well, write a book maybe, I said.

"Of course!" she said, and she laughed. "With children who knows how they'll turn out. This way, you'll have much more control over what you leave behind!"

The Swedish verb for the day is att ärva. It means to inherit.

- by Francis S.

Picture this: As I'm on my way to lunch with the ex-punk star, she stops me mid-sentence and points to an island off the island in the middle of the city we happen to be walking on.

"Are those herons?" she asked me.

They were, three of them roosting on a branch overhanging the water, looking gloomy under the yellowing and drooping leaves.

Then today, on the very same island outside of a house (if you squint and look in the left side of the picture you can see a white blob that is in fact the house I'm talking about) that is beautiful but surely haunted, a murder of crows stood in my path, scratching their way awkwardly across the road before taking off to circle in the air and for all the world acting like a premonition of all the Hallowe'ens to come.

Maybe Daphne du Maurier was onto something.

The birds are taking over.

The Swedish word for the day is skräckfilm. It means horror movie.

- by Francis S.

There are 45 doors in this apartment - front doors and balcony doors and closet doors and pantry doors and double doors (10 sets), each and every one of them painted white.

That's a lot of doors to hide behind.

N., the former Wallpaper editor, who arrived last night, has only one door to deal with in the room she's staying in, however. It's the only room in the entire apartment with only one door.

The Swedish word for the day is hemlig. It means secret.

- by Francis S.

Do you think that the Roman soldiers who crossed the Rubicon with Julius Caesar in 49 B.C. realized they were witnessing something that would be remembered 2000 years later? Or what about the audience at the Globe theater in London in 1599 watching Shakespeare's Julius Caesar for the first time?

It makes me wonder whether I've witnessed anything that will be remembered 2000 years from now. I have my doubts. I'm not sure whether I've even been an eyewitness to any of the more minor pivotal events of my lifetime.

There was the 1987 March on Washington, in which I remember strutting past the White House and chanting "2-4-6-8, Ronnie thinks his son is straight." Then there was the time when I happened to be looking out my office window overlooking Connecticut Ave. in Washington, and I saw Gorbachev's motorcade stop amidst a huge crowd of people, an impromptu security nightmare no doubt, and Gorbachev shake the hands of all those adoring Washingtonians.

Could Stephen Spinella's performance in Angels in America, (when the angel came down, it was heart-stopping), or Mark Morris dancing with great wit in Dido and Aeneas be treasured past my own lifetime and memory?

What are the grand and defining moments of our age anyway?

The Swedish word for the day is sekel. It means century.

- by Francis S.

It hasn't been proven yet in humans (apparently there's a problem in finding volunteer subjects), but scientists have suspected for awhile now that if you're willing to half-starve yourself and swear off sugar, you could live to be very, very old. They're not entirely sure why this is.

But I don't get it. Doesn't half-starving mean, well, half-dead? And frankly, who wants to live in a world without rhubarb pie?

The Swedish word for the day is efterrätt. It means dessert.

- by Francis S.

"The world's his oyster, with an R in every month." (My favorite line of Cary Grant's in The Philadelphia Story, because it's so goofy and because I didn't understand it when I first saw it when I was 13 or so.)

One of the consolations of the return of months with an R, is eating mussels (steamed in wine with garlic, thyme and butter) and french fries.

The Swedish word for the day is citat. It means quote.

- by Francis S.

Firewood. As of Friday, we've got a great big stack of it, maybe even a cord (one of those measures I've always wondered about that turns out to be a pile 4 by 4 by 8 feet, which sounds much more exact than it could possibly be). We've been burning it as if it were freezing and the furnace was on the blink, sitting on the living room sofa and staring aimlessly into the fire, telling each other how lovely it is to have a fireplace at last and getting up periodically to poke and prod and fan the flames.

Think, I said to the husband, of what it must've been like in this apartment all winter when they had to keep fires going in seven tile stoves (now long gone).

"That's what they had maids for," he said.

I wonder if they used wood, or coal, I said.

"Wood I think," he said.

I'm not so sure about that, but whatever they used, it must've taken a lot more than a cord of wood. Where do you think they kept it all?

(Which brings me to a stupid thing I loved to irritate my brothers and sister with when we were young, repeating to them endlessly "there's something nasty in the woodshed, there's something nasty in the woodshed" for no reason, no reason at all.)

The Swedish word for the day should be ved, which means wood, but it's not. Instead, it's eventuellt, which although it looks like it should mean eventually, does not. It means possibly, more or less.

- by Francis S.