The lilacs are blooming in the dooryards again. White and pinkish and light purple and deep purple, bushes and hedges and even what could rightly be called trees, the air so perfumed it almost sticks to your insides when you breathe in deeply. I've never seen a place that has such a blessing of lilacs as Stockholm.

The Swedish word for the day is syrener, which means lilacs of course, an easy word to remember if one associates it with the original sirens.

- by Francis S.

Last week I assigned a story that involved five reporters in five cities (Buenos Aires, Istanbul, London, New York and Tokyo, to be precise), and I asked them to take polaroid pictures as part of the assignment: I wanted the photos to look like they were taken by the same photographer, and all polaroid photos have that same strange underwater look, the colors a bit thick and not quite right, the depth murky. I love the way polaroids look.

But, it turns out that almost no one had polaroid cameras, and they couldn't even find people to borrow them from. Worse, they couldn't even find a polaroid camera to buy.

The polaroid camera is apparently an endangered species, collateral damage from the digital picture boom, no doubt.

Sad, that. I had no idea.

The Swedish word for the day is försvunnit. It means lost.

- by Francis S.

I'm not a meme kind of guy. The problem, though, is that the latest meme-ish stuff requires that the person pass it on. Which is what bustroll did to me. So, being that I have a fear of being a disappointment to anyone, I feel obligated. But, hey, this one is about books, so it's not all bad.

1. Number of books I own: A very rough estimate would put it at about 700, looking at my bookshelves.

3. The last book you bought: Mother of Sorrows, by Richard McCann. Bought a mere half hour ago. I had to order it from Akademibokhandeln, and it just came in over the weekend. Interestingly, it was cheaper to buy it there than it would be to order it online, although I ordered it from the bookstore to encourage them to buy more copies of it.

3. Last book you read: Small Island by Andrea Levy. The 10-word review - bittersweet, sharp, but dislikes some of her characters too much.

4. Five books that mean a lot to you:

The Diary of Anne Frank. I read it when I was in the fifth grade, and it shook me to the core and opened my eyes to the profound good and evil that exists in this sad little world. I have been unable to make myself read it since.

Rubyfruit Jungle. My sister brought this home from university when I was 14 or 15. It changed my life in that I realized that being gay was, in fact, a very good thing indeed. I did a book report on it for Mr. O'Neill's freshman English class. I don't remember him batting an eyelash... probably because unbeknownst to me at the time, his daughter, also an English teacher at our high school, had left her husband and shacked up with yet another English teacher at school, who happened to be a woman. Again, I haven't read it since.

Maurice. Just because I like it. It's one of those books I re-read every year or so. I suppose you could say it's my favorite fairy tale, complete with happy ending.

A Voice through a Cloud. Denton Welch is vastly unappreciated. He fascinates me. I wish I could write like him.

Bartlett's Book of Familiar Quotations. My life would be miserable without reference books, and Bartlett's is just kind of an oddball entity, kitsch somehow but engrossing - I can't just pick it up, find what I want and then put it down; I end up reading it for hours.

And I'm supposed to pass this on, so whoever wants it, take it and run.

The Swedish word for the day is böcker. It means books.

- by Francis S.

Ten things I learned from BloggForum 2.0:

1. Emma is unflappable in the face of bizarre heckling from the audience.
2. If I hear one more discussion that devolves into "what the hell is a blog," I will scream.
3. Erik Stattin is my Swedish blog hero (actually, I did not learn this, it was just reaffirmed).
4. Even if you are a bad moderator, poor at steering the conversation and crowd control, failing to get at the core of what you want to get at, your panel members will step up to the plate and make up for your shortcomings. I am eternally grateful to all of you: Sanna, Anna, Malte, and Risto.
5. Stefan Geens had as much trouble as I did sleeping on Friday night, worried as I was about just freezing, being up there and suddenly not being able to stutter even a single word.
6. Stephanie has moved 38 times in her life.
7. Steffanie really does know more than just about anybody about all the coolest high-tech blog stuff around. Don't let her tell you otherwise.
8. People are still interested in all this stuff.
9. Mark Comerford is actually a welder.
10. Some stuff about blogs, but I forget what it was.

The Swedish word for the day is lättnad. It means relief.

- by Francis S.

The Swedish city of Helsingborg lies across the Oresund sound from Danish Helsingør with its castle Kronborg, which Shakespeare famously transposed into Elsinore, home of Hamlet, Gertrude and a host of other dysfunctional Danes. The only time I'd been to Helsingborg before was for the wedding of the coach and his charming wife.

Until today.

It was gray and clammy, but the lilacs were in bloom. And, quite coincidentally, I was taken to lunch to the very same place in which the wedding supper was held nearly four years ago. It hadn't changed a bit, all pale painted wooden rafters and many-paned windows and a view of the beach and changing rooms far out in the water, built at a time when men and women wore heavy woollen bathing suits: cold bath houses, the Swedes call them.

It made me long for my friends, living an ocean away, in Boston. Who, in a cosmic and mind-boggling coincidence, were in fact married four year ago this very day. Cue theme music from The Twilight Zone.

The Swedish word for the day is Skåne, which is the southern most county of Sweden, usually translated as Scania. The local accent - Skånska they call it - is thick with gargly Danish vowels and difficult for my poor ears to understand, accustomed as they are to the Stockholm way of speaking.

- by Francis S.

Last call for Bloggforum 2.0 is over. And here I was going to write that you could still sign up. But, there's no more space, apparently.

The whole event looks to be pretty interesting, and it's free. Political types, newspaper types, poets, librarians, graphic designers, magazine publishers, some just plain interesting people, and me. It's quite a crew. Especially my great mix of a panel - now that I've met them all and had coffee with each of them, one by one, I feel proprietary about them. But then, I know they'll be thoughtful, maybe a bit provocative, full of insight.

The Swedish word of the day is makalös. It means peerless, or as A., the TV producer would say: fucking fantastic. (I hope I'm not jinxing us, here...) Interestingly, we used to have more or less the same word in English at one time: makeles.

- by Francis S.

It isn't difficult to make your own curry.

First, you'll want to make some ghee. It sounds so exotic, ghee, but it's only clarified butter - it won't burn as quickly as ordinary butter when you pour it onto a hot skillet. But, it's better to start with a skillet that's only just warm, rather than hot. As the ghee heats up, drop in some three bay leaves, a stick of cinnamon, maybe half a teaspoon of black cardamom seeds and another half a teaspoon of caraway. While the spices let loose a glorious noseful of savory perfume, you should, feeling like a witch as you do it, fill a generous mortar and pestle with half a yellow onion chopped fine, a tablespoon of tomato paste, a tablespoon of turmeric, a half teaspoon of dried coriander powder, a couple tablespoons of fresh peeled and grated ginger, topping it off with a generous squeeze of lemon. Forcefully, but not without finesse, muddle it all into a lumpy wet paste that you quickly add to the spices toasting in the pan - make sure you haven't let them burn, the bay leaves should merely be a toasty brown around the edges.

The paste will hiss and pop when you dump it into the pan, but stir it quickly with a wooden spoon and you'll suddenly have an entirely different smell than you had when you merely toasted a few spices in butter: less exotic and nutty, more solid and oily and satisfying.

It should only take a few minutes before it's ready for you to dump in 5-7 chicken breast halves that you've cut into bite-sized pieces. As the chicken cooks, the turmeric turning the pink of raw chicken into the yellow of the curry powder your mother surely used when she dumped a couple spoonfuls into a white sauce, poured it onto porkchops and called it curried pork, you're ready to dump in some cream and the generous pinch of saffron and the quarter cup of hot water the saffron's been soaking in since you started the whole process. All you need now are the cashews that you've chopped into a gritty dust, and a goodly time for the whole thing to burble away until the sauce thickens a bit and you're sure the chicken has gotten tender.

"Oh," your guests will say when you serve it, golden and hot, and they'll soak up the sauce with the bread you fried yourself in an iron skillet. "May we have some more?"

Sadly, there won't be any leftovers.

The Swedish word for the day is kryddor. It means spices.

- by Francis S.

Move to Sweden and you will find that, contrary to what you may have been taught, the difference between animal and vegetable is frighteningly narrow. Swedes are like some vast bouquet of heliotrope, twisting and turning their faces into the sun whenever it appears, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to do so sometimes. Even sleep is affected by the sun, which pries its way into the apartment with sharp fingers, waking me up so that I think it's surely 8 a.m. as I stumble to the refrigerator for water, only to see that the kitchen clock says it's only 4:30 a.m.

The sun rules my life.

I am a plant.

I am one with the earth.

I need to buy some seriously thick and dark curtains because the Venetian blinds just aren't up to the job.

The Swedish word for the day is stråle. It means ray.

- by Francis S.

Is it that America has become particularly enamored of scare TV in the past years, programs where both the innocent and the guilty and the very guilty are threatened by abstract forces beyond their ken, from Lost to CSI Somewhere, Anywhere to Numb3rs to The 4400 to 24? Or is it just that these are the shows that get imported to Sweden? Or is it all just a figment of my paranoid imagination?

The Swedish word for the day is rädslan. It means the fear.

- by Francis S.

It's a great big slumber party at our house: A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer have moved in for a couple of months. Their apartment is going through an upgrade. Apartment, version 2.0, will come complete with a terrace and a sleeping loft.

They arrived yesterday, with bags and photographic equipment and Cat No. 1 and Cat No. 2, who proceeded to case out the place for a good eight hours, the little one periodically meowing far louder than her size would suggest when she realized that she didn't know where she was and the big one wasn't within smelling distance.

We have big plans to walk to work together (well, without the cats, of course), hit the gym together, make lots of good food, and A. has already talked about booking a massage therapist to come and give us all a spa day.

The Swedish word for the day is paradis. It means paradise, as if you couldn't figure that one out for yourselves.

- by Francis S.

Our former badboy boarder is now the father of a baby girl. Name: to be determined.

Does having a child mean that you yourself have to grow up?

The Swedish word for the day is pappaledighet. It means paternity leave, a status highly encouraged by the government and increasingly popular with fathers, if the number of guys pushing prams with babies around Djurgården during lunchtime is any indication.

- by Francis S.

I'll never forget when a friend of mine - with whom I've since lost touch - told me about a three-way situation he found himself in with a lecherous couple on a sofa at the end of a drunken party somewhere in Washington, DC.

"It was all fine, the guy was really hot, and I was really going at it, but then all of a sudden I could smell her, and it was like static on a radio, and my dick just wilted," he said. Take it from me, when told with the proper sound effects and jerky movements, it is quite the effective story.

Now, a Swedish researcher has confirmed it: We great big homo types react very differently than non-great big homo types to certain, um, odors.

The word for the day is fräck. It means cheeky.

- by Francis S.

For a 9-year-old in 1970, the height of coolness was having the big box of crayola crayons - 64 colors, with an actual crayon sharpener embedded in the back of the box. Or at least I thought it was the height of coolness, perhaps because during the last year in which crayons were part of the required school supplies that my mother bought for me, she would only pay for the box with 48 crayons.

The names for the colors ranged from the simply descriptive (orange red, very no-nonsense) to the antique (burnt sienna, a color name that Michelangelo Buonarotti would recognize, more or less) to the inscrutable (bittersweet, which I seem to recall was a kind of barf brown).

As I walked to work this morning, surveying the leaves that are at last making their joint appearance thanks to several days of rain, I thought: spring green. An evocative name, the best in the box. With a name like that, it could be no other color than it is.

The Swedish word for the day is pensel. It is a false cognate, and means paintbrush. Blyertspenna is the Swedish word for pencil.

- by Francis S.

The chef came over yesterday evening, taking over our kitchen. With the husband as sous chef, the two of them roasted eggplant and peppers, sauted pine nuts, wrapped salmon in jamon serrano and generally made tasty mayhem. I'm not really a team player when it comes to cooking, so I set the table and waited for them to finish, the rest of the guests sipping whiskey or rioja or breast-milk (well, not sipping, more like sucking - you can't really sip if you're only two months old) and wandering around the apartment, parking themselves here and there.

At last it was ready, and A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer, C.'s son, plus the captain and his wife and their two little sons, the husband, the chef and I all found our places in the dining room. In between bites, we took turns walking the baby, first clockwise and then counter clockwise, around and around the perimeter of the guests sitting at the table, or running around like mad with the two-year-old through the rest of the apartment.

All we did was talk food, since the chef is soon to have her own TV show and, pen and paper in hand, was asking what kitchen utensils we thought were cool, what food had we always had trouble preparing, what was our favorite kind of cuisine.

Talking food, eating food. It was a meta meal, after a fashion.

"Hysteriskt gott!" said the captain. (Which means something like insanely good.)

"That'd be a perfect name for the show," the chef said.

- by Francis S.

Mache dich, mein Herze rein. Make my heart pure.

Actually, I'd settle for clean hands and underarms.

Funny how we take soap for granted; the ancient Greeks didn't use it, they rubbed themselves with oil and scraped the oil off with wooden scrapers; the Romans did likewise, although they are more famous for soaking themselves into cleanliness and, if you were, say, Caesar Augustus, into godliness as well. It wasn't until the very end of the Roman empire that someone decided that the bizarre conconction of animal fat boiled with lye was actually good for keeping a body clean.

How come there is no all-natural soap called "lard & lye" available at your local grocers?

The Swedish verb for the day is att duscha. It means to take a shower.

- by Francis S.

Son of Bloggforum is coming soon to a theater near you. That is, if you live near Stockholm University. And, well, it's not really a theater, either, more of an auditorium.

I've agreed to moderate a panel, in Swedish, on how to read and write blogs (the reading part is easy, but how to write a blog is another thing altogether, I suppose). Stefan Geens said to me: "It's much easier to moderate than to be on the panel. All you have to do is ask the questions." Thank god I have a brilliant panel to work with: Anna, Malte, Risto and Sanna.

Go, team!

The Swedish word for the day is nervös. It doesn't take me to tell you that it means nervous.

- by Francis S.

I wonder when I'll grow up and out of my inability to sleep properly on a Sunday night: Unless my week is unusually calm, I invariably spend an uneasy night and if I have anything at all of importance to do first thing Monday morning, the night will be sweaty and greasy and full of my teeth and stomach grinding queasily in unison. It's just like the night before a big test, except I'm 44.

The Swedish word for the day is igen. It means again.

- by Francis S.

Happy International Workers' Day.

Sadly, being that it's on a Sunday this year, I won't get the day off.

I've always found it funny that the U.S. is pretty much the only country in the world not celebrating, on account of the day being a bit too godlessly communistic in nature.

The Swedish word for the day is fånigt. It means ridiculous or silly.

- by Francis S.

When I was a boy, Saturday lunch was tea - Constant Comment, which tasted of cloves and orange peel - poured from a white porcelain teapot with blue stripes, a wedding present given to my parents, the little china cups that had no handles had long since been broken except for one. My father had tongue sandwiches, and the rest of us had Dutch cheese on rye bread with caraway seeds, or maybe bread that my mother had just spent the morning making. Occasionally, afterwards I would watch the Children's Film Festival with Kukla, Fran and Ollie to see the foreign films that made up most of the program, disturbing stop-action animations from Hungary and badly dubbed short features from Russia or Japan or somewhere else exotic and foreign. I always had the most peculiar feeling in a sensitive organ, peculiar to me and me alone, that rests somewhere between my heart and my adam's apple. I felt a great sorrow for the children in the films - the films were nearly always unbearably sad - and I longed to be these children.

The Swedish word for the day is lördagar. It means Saturdays.

- by Francis S.

At noon today, there were pale girls in their bathing suits, laughing and kicking their feet in the water on a dock by the Djurgården canal. The air was maybe 12 degrees celsius, god only knows how cold the water was. It's barely spring yet, the trees are still only thinking about turning green, but girls are in their bathing suits.

I don't understand Swedes.

The Swedish verb for the day is att promenera. It means to take a walk.

- by Francis S.

In 1941, Herbert Matter was the designer for a book - The Crafty Linotyper or the Ballet of the ABCs - that seems to have been a coloratura display of the lost art of typesetting a book with hot type: all flourishes, mannerism, tics, clever references and play. The book is a bit thin on content, though, as far as I can tell by reading about it (as opposed to actually reading it). But the flourishes and play are the real content anyway, the storyline is just a framework for showing off. It all seems so innocent, so Algonquin Hotel Manhattanish. As if people in 1941 were any more innocent than they are now.

Kind of like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: a collection of bits and set-pieces, all flourishes, mannerism, tics, clever references and play. The meaning lies in the bits, as opposed to being found in the plot. Exactly my kind of movie.

The Swedish word for the day is regissör. It means director.

- by Francis S.

Seen from an ocean away, things look awfully grim for gays and lesbians in the U.S. these days. From Alabama trying to ban books mentioning homosexuality from all public libraries, to Justice Sunday [sic] with its goal of ridding the country of "activist judges" (As Bill Maher said to Jay Leno: "'Activist judges' is a code word for gay."), to the Pentagon reiterating its stance that it will prosecute soldiers engaging in sodomy (despite the Supreme Court having struck down sodomy laws), to the barrage of mean-spirited referenda "protecting" heteosexual marriage passed on top of "Defense of Marriage" laws already existing in many of these states (most links courtesy the excellent Queerday).

It's difficult to interpret this tidal wave of activity seeking to denigrate gays and lesbians as anything but loathing. As Patricia Todd told an Alabama House committee on Wednesday during a public hearing on the above-mentioned bill: "I feel you all hate us."

I've never before believed that homosexuals have had to face anything near the fear, hatred and discrimination that African-Americans have had to face, but I'm beginning to have second thoughts.

Why aren't there any non-gay groups that deplore discrimination - churches above all - rising up against those who are sowing such divisive hatred and spite?

Now is the time for massive demonstrations of civil disobedience.

Yeah, I know, there are already plenty of people doing this; and yeah, it's easy for me to say this living here in Europe, where gay rights trends are moving in the opposite direction; but it seems that things are deteriorating so rapidly, and I feel so utterly helpless in the face of such power aimed at crushing a group of people.

(I was going to write about going to the Spring concert at Danderyd Gymnasium to hear the son of C., the fashion photographer, singing Irish songs in a choir, but I've gotten myself so worked up about this other issue.)

The Swedish word for the day is förtvivlan. It means desperation.

- by Francis S.

Lars. Anders. Johan. Three common Swedish names that the husband mixes up frequently, referring to Lars as Anders, or Anders as Johan. How is this even possible? I just don't understand and no one has been able to adequately explain it to me.

"They're just the same kind of name," the husband responds when I ask how he can mix them up. It's like mixing up the names Tom, Greg and Steve, I tell him. It makes no sense.

"But what about when people don't look like what their name actually is?" A., the TV producer has also thrown back at me when I've asked her about this apparently common Swedish phenomenon of mixing up names that sound nothing alike phonetically.

Apparently, an Åke looks one way, and a Marcus looks another way; an Åsa looks nothing like an Anja. In fact, some Swedish babies will go without names for weeks (even months, I've heard) until the parents decide on a name that really fits the baby, rather like a tailor-made suit. Although there don't seem to be very many babies whose personalities scream "Ragnhild" or "Hjördis" these days.

I've decided that this somehow has to do with the fact that the pool of Swedish given names seems to be pretty small, so people have cultural associations with many names.

Or maybe Swedes are just funny about names.

(It was Monica who got me going by writing about this, from the Swedish perspective of course.)

The second Swedish word for the day is ansikte. It means face.

- by Francis S.

In the latest blogging popularity contest (link in Swedish, but I think you can get the gist without knowing a word), I received two more votes than Margot Wallström, Swedish EU Commissioner and the woman who could be described as brand manager for the European Union. Whatever that may be. Not a job I would want, that's for sure.

Scary, aint it? Especially since Margot Wallström's blog is actually quite good in that it is personal enough that it feels as if she writes it herself. And there are plenty of comments, many negative. It feels true, somehow. And what she has to say could affect people's lives, well, at lot more than what I have to say at any rate.

The Swedish word for the day is förresten. It means furthermore.

- by Francis S.

She stood, dancing in her vaguely gypsy slash square-dancing sort of adult little girl dress, holding a blue velvet and silver pump in her hand as if it were a mic, singing along zig-zaggedly to her own song, while the extremely drunk guy in the pink sweatshirt who I could've sworn was gay (oh, no, the husband told me), was bouncing against some girl with her hair in her eyes and letters drawn in magic marker all up her arm, the guys in the living room were playing Grand Theft Auto or something, and her former manager, (our own former badboy boarder), was making the rounds and full of the jitters about soon becoming a father, his girlfriend tall and calm and beautiful and about as pregnant as one can be, in the background. I, being oh-so-grown-up sitting in my corner, was watching it all as if it were a show, the husband next to me gossiping with the video director and the woman who did the makeup, empty plates of Lebanese salad in front of us, the long-awaited new CD playing fiercely above and below and around us, the rest of the guests crammed onto the balcony, smoking.

This is what a party is like.

The Swedish word for the day is lansering. It means launch or release.

- by Francis S.

On Tuesday, I arrived home to find a mysterious package lying between the two sets of double doors leading into the apartment; someone had pushed it through the mail slot.

Actually, it wasn't so mysterious. It was a bag from Akademibokhandeln containing a book, The Shadow of the Wind, and having just discussed the book with C., the fashion photographer, I knew it was from him, which a phonecall confirmed. He had seen an English copy of the book and had bought it for me; a true friend, C.

It isn't a particularly profound book, and while it's translated from the Spanish - the book has been a huge success in Spain - I doubt that even in the original is the language terribly compelling. It's a convoluted love story that curls in and in and in on itself. It's a love letter to Barcelona as well as a love story.

That is what gets me, the way it evokes the city, even if the translation uses the Castilian instead of the Catalan names for the streets. Carrer Ferran, Carrer Balmes, Carrer Escudellers, Carrer Princesa, the main post office on Via Laietana, Santa Maria del Mar, Barceloneta, Els Encants flea market, Parc Guëll, Plaza de San Felipe Neri, Mompou and Puig i Cadafalch. It's all there in the book, and it hits me like cold water. I lived in Barcelona once.

Do you have a city that is tied up with all the most difficult and painful and wonderful things you know and feel about yourself, a place that just in and of itself fills you with great yearning and makes your pulse quicken, that you love like no other, and hate like no other?

I have Barcelona.

(The book is making me crazy, but in a good way.)

The Swedish word for the day is längtan. It means longing.

- by Francis S.

A week ago, I spent a long day of endless meetings in Amsterdam, where from the window of the cab to and from the airport I could see that things were starting to turn green. I was jealous, knowing that we are weeks behind. But today, walking past Diplomatstaden, I saw a whole lawn of crocuses.

Spring is here, all sticky fingers and rough manners.

The Swedish phrase for the day is passar mig bra. It means works for me.

- by Francis S.

"Filipin, filipin, filipin," I thought to myself as the husband and I walked from Odenplan down to Dansens hus. We were on our way to meet A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer, plus the pop star and a whole host of other people. It was to be a Japanese dance performance, but all I was thinking about was making sure I would say "filipin" before A. could say it to me.

Imagine my disappointment when I was told that A. was home sick with a headache and would be missing the performance. Except, a few minutes later, she came running out of nowhere, screaming the first syllable of "filipin" before I could get the word out myself, me grabbing her so that half of her glass of wine spilled down the front of my overcoat, the whole lobby trying not to stare at us.

"Cheater," the husband said to her.

"There is no cheating in filipin," she said loudly, triumphant.

It would be difficult to adequately describe how very pleased she was with herself. It almost made up for losing the game.

It did not make up for the bad Japanese "dancing," however. When the sound had reached a certain decibel, the walls shaking, I had thought I was going to spit up. But I didn't.

Dinner afterwards did make up for it. There's something to be said for a place jam-packed with people, waiters like ants on important errands scurrying through the crowd, the tension delicious, likewise the food. A much better show than the dance.

The Swedish word for the day is fusk. It means cheat.

- by Francis S.

In low-slung cities, where the apartment buildings rarely reach higher than seven storeys, there is undoubtedly a style of stairway preferred by the many architects that have built them.

In Stockholm, the steps themselves are almost invariably of grey limestone - small children are fascinated by the fossil nautiloids petrified in swarms on the surface of the stone - and curve their way gently in a half-oval up the back of the building in rather grand fashion. In Barcelona, I remember that the stairs tended to be open and rose in a kind of cut-rate Piranesian fashion to the rooftops, more terrifying than elegant.

What are your stairways like?

The Swedish word for the day is steg. It means step.

- by Francis S.

Daisy Fellowes, socialite and heiress to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, described her three daughters, Princess Emmeline Isabelle Edmée Séverine de Broglie, Princess Isabelle de Broglie and Princess Jacqueline de Broglie: "The eldest is like her father, only more masculine. The second is like me, only without the guts. And the last is by some horrible little man called Lischmann."

Her aunt, the Princesse de Polignac (who overcame, with the benefit of lots of money, the handicap of being given the unfortunate name Winnaretta Singer), on Virginia Woolf: "...to look at [her] you'd never think she ravished half the virgins in Paris."

Could someone who knows Todd Haynes please let him know that he needs to do his first sweeping costume historical biopic extravaganza on the whole Singer family? (I haven't even mentioned the paterfamilias, who lived his later life in France and England on account of he never made it into New York society due to his tendency to have more than one wife, simultaneously and often without knowledge of each other's existance. He had 22 acknowledged children.)

Correction: Feb. 25, 2006 - It seems that I've gotten it all wrong. Singer had 24 children and not 22, Daisy Fellowes had four daughters and not three, and it was Virginia Woolf who made the comment about Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, that "...to look at [her] you'd never think she ravished half the virgins in Paris..." and not the other way around. Thanks to Professor Sylvia Kahan for pointing this out.

The Swedish verb for the day is att hälsa. It means to say hello to.

- by Francis S.

Among the awful things that the cynical, arrogant and Bible-thumping Bush Administration is guilty of, and they are legion, undoubtedly the most immoral is its unrepentent use of torture.

It's not just immoral, it's stupid. Any information obtained by torture is likely to be highly inaccurate, and rather than intimidating anyone it gives people reason to hate us and strike back with any means possible; plus, it encourages the rest of the world to treat our own military and mercenaries (who now make up a huge part of the occupation of Iraq) in the most horrendous fashion.

And it just keeps going on and on - with more secretly held prisoners that no one seems to be accountable to anyone for:

"A former senior intelligence official said the main reason for the secrecy was to prevent information about where the prisoners were being held from being publicly disclosed. Such a disclosure, the official said, would almost certainly cause host governments to force the C.I.A. to shut down the detention operations being carried out on their soil."

There are so many things about the story that bother me, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

The Swedish word for the day is avsky. It means disgust.

- by Francis S.

There is a peculiar little Swedish game wherein if one cracks open an almond and finds two nutmeats inside, one eats one of the nutmeats and gives the other nutmeat away. The next time the two people who've eaten the two nuts from the same shell meet again, whoever says filipin first, wins. (Filipin somehow refers to the Philippines I think, although I have no idea what this has to do with the game.)

Aren't Swedes just the cutest darn things? It seems so very 19th century, somehow.

A., the TV producer, decided she wanted to play with me, to hell with bothering to find a nutshell with two nutmeats inside.

"I'm gonna beat you," she growled at me as we made our way on Friday with the husband and C., the fashion photographer, to relive our weeks in Thailand by eating at Sabai Sabai (if you say the name fast over and over, it sounds in Swedish as if you're saying bajs bajs bajs bajs which, hee hee, means poo poo poo poo. Needless to say, my 8-year-old anally fixated grey-haired self loves the name.)

So, all weekend, while the husband was working 24 hours straight on a music video for the R&B star's new single, I kept reminding myself to say "filipin" as soon as I see A.

Don't let me forget, okay?

I guess, by default, the Swedish word for the day is bajs, and you already know what it means.

- by Francis S.

Requiescat in pace, Karol Wojtyla.

Which is more than you ever wished for me. I would like to be able to say "you weren't my pope" but sadly, I had no choice. You were everybody's pope, and you used your position, to the very end, to allow the Roman Catholic Church to promulgate hatred toward me. You were supposed to intercede with God on my behalf (because of course it takes an intermediary for this kind of thing), but instead you said I should expect people to hurt me physically. You, more than any other person in my lifetime, have been able to turn hearts against me and I hold you accountable.

Do I sound angry? I'm seething. But I grit my teeth, and wish you peace, knowing full well that the next pope will be just as bad. Dostoevsky sure had it right: If Christ came back today, the Roman Catholic Church (not to mention any number of other churches) would do everything in its power to see that he was crucified.

The Swedish word for the day is helvete. It means hell.

-by Francis S.

Stephanie has made a list of all the Swedish words and phrases for the day from this site, without my asking or even knowing about it!

I personally think that there is nothing wrong with having an obsession with making lists - listomania is definitely a good thing.

What Stephanie hath joined together, let no man (or woman) put asunder.

The Swedish word for the day is tacksam. It means grateful.

- by Francis S.

Today, as the number 4 comes crashing down on top of the number 3 in the 1970s vintage radio alarm clock that is my life, I've been pondering my existence and other deep shit. I've come to the conclusion that the key to my having a satisfying life is to be happy at whatever geographic coordinates I find myself at during each and every moment, as opposed to wishing that I were somewhere else out of regret or anticipation.

In practice this means sitting outside and squinting in the chilly sun as the ferry I am taking makes its way through the icy Stockholm archipelago, instead of sitting inside reading with a scowl until I make it to my destination much sooner than the boat's captain said we would arrive. The water is all ice floes, big and small, with only periodic stretches of open water held impossibly still by the ice so that the reflection is nearly flawless of the sky and the black outlines of stone and trees that are the islands. It is, in fact, so beautiful that I nearly miss my stop altogether and come running out just as the ferry is about to pull away from the jetty.

It also means that when I decide to leave my husband behind at his insistence, alone and sick and grumpy, I should enjoy the company - A., the TV producer, C., the fashion photographer, various random and not so random teenagers - and shouldn't spend the weekend worrying about him even when I call and he sounds awful and I know he isn't eating properly and I decide to go home early but discover that the only boat of the day has already left and that I'll just have to take the first boat the next day.

Of course this be-happy-at-your-geographic-coordinates advice only works provided you are not stuck in some kind of hell that you have never had nor ever will have any chance to change without superhuman effort of some sort, which come to think of it, is a major part of just about everyone's life, on and off.

On second thought, this all sounds like some annoying and nasty Panglossian gloss on life. What's wrong with wishing you were still in bed as you wait for the bus on a rainy March morning, huh? Fuck it all.

So, tell me 44 is a good number, a special number, a great age to be.

I hate birthdays.

The Swedish phrase for the day has been supplanted by a Finnish phrase for the day that is in fact mostly in English: management by perkele. It means management by fat sick bastard. Or maybe management by fucking asshole. Take your pick.

- by Francis S.

I've been waiting for this book, Mother of Sorrows, for ten years or so.

It will only make me cry, no doubt. But in a good way.

In the meantime, we're off to Birds Island for the first visit of the year on this long Easter weekend. Apparently there is still enough ice to go walking on the waters of the Baltic, provided one wears a special device with plastic lines and metal spikes that can be whipped out in case the ice breaks and one falls through into the freezing sea. Of course, I'm already wondering why I would want to participate in any activity in which one needs to know what to do in case one falls through ice and into a freezing sea.

The Swedish word for the day rör ej. It means don't touch.

- by Francis S.

Man about Leith, the redoubtable Peter of Nakedblog (naked as in naked truth as opposed to naked bodies) sponsored the actual prize for the Bloggie award that I got: a boxed DVD set of episodes from the Australian high-brow historical and all-round classy drama series "Prisoner Cell Block H."

Unfortunately, it is available only in a version with that damn region 1 coding for the U.S. market.

Instead he's given me an Amazon.com certificate worth 40 dollars.

But what should I get with the low-production values, the camp and high-drama of "Prisoner Cell Block H" so I can at least keep to the spirit of the prize as Peter intended?

You decide.

The Swedish word for the day is Skärtorsdagen. It means Maundy Thursday. Interestingly enough, most Swedes seem to at least know the name for this day despite their overwhelmingly secular attitudes, whereas I'd reckon that in God-fearing America maybe 2-3 percent of the population could tell you that today is Maundy Thursday.

- by Francis S.

I used to worship at the altar of the subway - dimly lit, with plenty of rats and filth, it all seemed so very gothic. But I've made a full conversion and I've been washed in the blood of the No. 42 bus.

Washed in the slush kicked up by the No. 42 bus, actually, to be more accurate. But, you get the idea.

I can't really account for the change, except to say that suddenly the subway seems so limiting and stuffy, even if you do get to ride on actual trains when you take the subway.

But on the big buses, the No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 buses, the kind with a fold in the middle, there's a section in the very back where the passengers sit as if on three sofas arranged in a U. The living room, I call it. Let's sit in the living room, I say to the husband whenever we take the No. 2. He hates it when I say that.

Yesterday, we sat in the living room of the No. 2 bus with the policeman, the priest and one of the priest's sisters and another friend - we were on our way home and they, lucky dogs, were on their way to see Eddie Izzard wearing spike heels and eye shadow and rambling gloriously on and on. At least with any luck, he would be wearing the heels and makeup. We had just eaten way too much meat in celebration of the priest's birthday (she's 37, at least I think she's 37) at some steak restaurant, and we were feeling all full of iron and muscle.

As soon as we had taken our seats, congenially facing each other and three total strangers, the friend of the priest said to everyone: "Hi, my name is E. and I'm an alcoholic."

"Hi, E.," we all sang out, especially the strangers.

Who says that Swedes are shy people with no sense of humor?

Hail to the bus. And the bus driver.

The Swedish word for the day is begrepp. It means concept or notion.

- by Francis S.

"Hey, angelface! Glad you could make it."

O, how we've missed him. It's been years.

Give us a kiss, Aaron.

The Swedish phrase for the day is välkommen tillbaka, which means welcome back. Not to be confused with välkommen åter, which literally translates to welcome back, but is used more to mean come back soon.

- by Francis S.

The funny thing about growing up in the '60s and '70s as a girly-boy in the Great Midwestern States of America, you develop a love-hate relationship with being picked first, and beauty contests.

On the one hand, you hate the whole idea of the two most popular boys - the two most handsome and gregarious and athletically gifted boys, real boy's boys - being singled out nearly every day to be team captains and then asked to choose, in turns, which other less handsome and less gregarious and less athletically gifted boys will be on their respective teams, until there are only a handful left and it's down to the dregs and you, being anything but a boy's boy, are invariably the second-to-last to be chosen. The penultimate girly-boy, that's you.

On the other hand, once a year you eagerly watch as some 50 bathing suit- and evening dress-clad girls who want to bring peace to the world with their ferocious smiles are winnowed down to one Miss America, who stands weeping in her high heels, your mother wincing in the next room at your intense interest in things so very unmanly.

So, more than 30 years later, it's hard not to take pleasure in being picked first and winning that beauty contest. But I worry about gloating.

I can't be sure that I'm being altogether logical here, being that I'm pleasingly drunk. But I guess you get the gist of what I'm saying.

The Swedish phrase for the day is min man fyller år idag, which means today is my husband's birthday. The sancerre was delightful.

- by Francis S.

So, while I've got your attention, I thought I'd follow in the footsteps of arch-blogger and current lifetime achievement Bloggie 2005 winner Tom Coates and put in a few plugs for some excellent reads culled from the Bloggies 2005: Mike, Siobhan, Genia, Toddy, P.A., Joey, David, et al and of course, the inimitable Zed.

Over and out.

Swedish word of the day to come later, I promise.

- by Francis S.

Hot damn! Validation.

- by Francis S., where the "S" stands for "Speechless"

One of the worst tortures I have ever undergone was the week I did thirty interviews at a conference in Cannes and had to sit in the editing room listening to myself say the same inane things over and over as the producer edited my pieces into webcasts. I was trying to pull together written pieces to go with the webcasts, and I had to sit in that same room.

All of which is just to make the point that I can't stand the sound of my voice.

Despite this, I've done a podcast with Steffanie over at Broken English, extolling the virtures of slightly-off-the-beaten-path areas of Stockholm to visit. Mosebacke torg is the first stop. According to me, it's charming (I called it charming three times. Three times! This is why I try to stick to writing. It's much easier to avoid repeating yourself and sounding fatuous.)

It's chatty, it's meandering, it's all over the place.

It's way too much Francis and not enough Steffanie at Mosebacke, on Broken English.

The Swedish word for the day is besvärad. It means self-conscious.

- by Francis S.

The Scandinavia of my imagination is something like the paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi - the light cold and pure and blue, everything really just a set of vast and elegantly minimal rooms opening onto each other, lonely in a way that aches but is quickly remedied by a kiss on the back of the neck - you really must see the actual paintings to understand fully what I mean. It's a vision that I coddle a bit and encourage in myself, and really, I do live in an apartment that is a set of minimal rooms opening onto each other, and on a Saturday in winter, the light is just as cold and pure and blue. I first hit on this feeling of delicious northern loneliness when I was 15, looking from an airplane down into a wilderness of black-green pinetrees against the snow outside Gander in Newfoundland.

Sometimes, I think to myself, this life must surely be just a dream. However did I get here?

The Swedish word for the day is konstnär. It means artist.

- by Francis S.

I gave her Cakes and I gave her Ale,
And I gave her Sack and sherry,
I kist her once and I kist her twice,
and we were wond'rous merry.
I have her Beads and bracelets fine,
And I gave her Gold down derry,
I thought she was afear'd till she stroak'd my Beard,
and we were wond'rous merry.
Merry my hearts, merry my Cocks, merry my sprights,
merry merry merry my hey down derry,
I kist her once and I kist her twice,
and we were wond'rous merry.

Today is the 346th birthday of Henry Purcell, who seemed to know all the cool or important people of London at the end of the 17th century - Dryden, Pepys, Aphra Behn. Naturally, he makes me feel inadequate, being that when he was my age, he had been dead for eight years but had already managed to write more than 700 pieces of music.

The Swedish phrase for the day is sakta men säkert. It means slowly but surely.

- by Francis S.

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.