They've turned off the water and drained the fountain in Karlaplan, a sure sign that autumn not only isn't going away, but winter will soon be here.

I've always been rather fond of autumn: By virtue of its being the season in which a new school year starts, it seems much more about new beginnings to me than spring, which is supposed to be the season of starting afresh. But spring, my least favorite time of year, is unpredictable and, inevitably, disappointing and raw and rangy and trying way too hard to convince everyone that it is what it isn't: summer.

But autumn doesn't pretend to be anything but what it is: a grand letting go, no longer bothering with keeping up appearances. It's the second-chance season, when you've got a lot more confidence because you're wiser and older and you've no expectations to be dashed, like you had for spring and summer.

The Swedish word for the day is höstlik. It means autumnal.

- by Francis S.

The priest asked me yesterday after dinner: "So, what are you thinking about children these days?"

I told her:

On the No. 42 bus, which seems to be the setting for all the drama in my life these days, I watched a father - long scruffy hair, mutton-chop whiskers, very hip and young - with his two children. They got on the bus, and he stood with the baby in its pram in the middle where there are special slots for strollers and prams, while his daughter, probably four, ran and sat in the back of the bus.

Just as they were nearing their stop, the father called out to the little girl: "I never said you could open that!"

Which didn't come anywhere near stopping her from continuing to open the plastic bag she had in her hand.

I couldn't see what it was she was opening, exactly, but after they got off the bus, I craned my neck and watched as he knelt down in front of her, looking very serious, face to face, saying something about obedience, no doubt. She, however, was not in the least bit serious. She was, in fact, gleeful as only a four-year-old can be.

Looking at them, I felt a pang of envy, so sharp it almost made me cry.

That was what I told the priest I was thinking about children these days.

The question is, do all of you parents romanticize my childless state the way I romanticize parenthood?

The Swedish word for the day is manick. It means thingamajig.

- by Francis S.

Walking past Johannesplan, my ear was caught by faint voices, a choir singing, of all things, "Soon ah will be done with the troubles of the world." Tucked away up behind downtown, the square is really just the churchyard for the vast red brick Church of St. John, from which it was reasonable to assume the sound was coming from.

My hearing is wretched - I'll be quite deaf by the time I make it to 70, if I'm lucky enough to live that long - but I was once a choirboy with a fierce soprano but terrible breath control, and I have no doubt that despite my impending deafness, I can pick out a choir a mile away.

Sure enough, when I poked my head in the door, there was a small group up at the altar, voices clear, the basses singing out "I want to meet my mother" with a faint Swedish accent. Strange, that. But sublime.

Then they moved on to a Mozart litany (or was it vespers?), and I left.

The Swedish word for the day is änglar. It means angels.

- by Francis S.

British composer Edward Jessen on transcribing laughter into musical notation:

Unlike speech, which generally has a decipherable pitch, laughter seemed to be ecstatic, more like the sound of forced air and involuntary pitchless spasms. Therefore, with each example of laughter I resolved to take impressions of the vowels, the speeds, and curvature in the way that a court artist might quickly sketch a villain during a big murder trial - not the deepest likeness, yet not unrecognizable either.

from Cabinet magazine, issue 17

All trills and triplets and glissandi, Jessen has scored vigorous baby giggles, a dirty titter, a rising cackle, a short, disingenuous male chortle and a forced party laugh (among others) so that you, too, can perform them.

The Swedish verb for the day is att le. It means to smile.

- by Francis S.

What is it that Swedes have against normal can openers? Why does the husband insist on using one of those horrible instruments of torture masquerading as can openers, with a sharp point on one end and a vague "hand grip" on the other that requires one to first jab a hole in the can, and then hack one's way viciously, jaggedly round the top (it is so primitive that I can't even find a picture of it!)?

I used to think that people here were unaware that some 135 years ago, someone invented a new kind of can opener wherein the can is punctured by pulling the grips of the opener together, then while holding the grips together, a set of toothed wheels open the can with a twist of the handle.

But then I bought a real can opener, and at some point, the husband actually threw it away, claiming "it didn't work."

I'm off to Munich to cover a conference and hang out in beer gardens drinking, um, beer for a few days.

The Swedish word for the day is uppfinnare. It means inventor.

- by Francis S.

Members of the Army Reserves and the National Guard who inform their commanders that they are gay are routinely converted into active duty status and sent to the Iraq war and other high priority military assignments, according to a spokesperson for an Army command charged with deploying troops.

- The Washington Blade

Wait a second... uh, I thought that soldiers who are known great big homos caused morale problems and ruined unit cohesion? How silly of me, apparently this is true only in non-combat situations! I guess I have a lot to learn about U.S. military tactics.

The Swedish word for the day is dubbelmoralisk. It means hypocritical.

- by Francis S.

Walking home from a dinner of tapas - something I haven't had in years, all swimming in oil and garlic - with the husband along with A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer, we were sucked into a video arcade on Surbrunnsgatan.

Or rather A. dragged us in.

"This is so much fun," she yelled, pointing at a bizarre Japanese contraption that stood in the window. "We have to play. You have to do it!" she said forcefully, ripping off her jacket and sweater and tossing them in a heap on the floor, the rest of us following suit.

So, we took turns in pairs competing against one another, trying to move our feet in time to arrows on a screen, stepping and hopping and tapping front, back and side to horrible synthed-up versions of mostly already horrible songs blaring from the speakers, A. letting loose with joyous shrieks from time to time.

People out on the street watched incredulously through the window, laughing at us making fools of ourselves.

How could something so silly be so incredibly enjoyable?

A. won, natch. Then we left after a couple of rounds, sweating like pigs.

The Swedish word for the day is upplivad. It means exhilirated.

- by Francis S.

Life's most unappreciated pleasures are, undoubtedly, the gaps between things.

The table just before dinner, for instance, cutlery in place, glasses full of some cheap white wine, plates empty, napkins in their rings, a bowl of steaming pasta, the bread cut roughly in a basket, a hunk of parmesan sitting next to a cheese grater, everything intact and waiting to be consumed.

Or the break after the Laudamus Te, the reverberation of the mezzo soprano and the violin dying in the vastness of the church, the roar of the Gratias Agimus Tibi not yet started, the audience holding its breath, someone coughing in a row in the back, a few feet shuffling somewhere, the orchestra ready, the choir waiting for the signal to stand, the tension of those few seconds of anticipation: your senses still vibrating from the previous but anticipating the next is a small ecstasy.

Or travelling, the paradox that the journey is almost more satisfying than the destination itself, because to begin a trip is to end a trip, and the ride beforehand is instead delicious prologue with no expectations to be dashed or sorrow that the time had passed so quickly.

On the train to Västerås this morning, on my way to a day of meetings, I noticed that autumn has just licked a single bough in each of several trees, like locks of hair, turning the leaves a most vivid red. When I ride the train, I can't concentrate on anything but looking out the window, no matter how many times I've seen the same scenery pass.

Hail to the in-between; mind the gap.

The Swedish word for the day is paus. It means pause or intermission.

- by Francis S.

Who would have thought it? The hunter-gatherer instinct runs deep in me.

Today we bought a pair of drawings by Lars Arrhenius, best known for his funny, vaguely sinister "Transport for London - A-Z" map of the London Underground. I'd come upon the drawings at a gallery in my desperation to (unsuccessfully) buy a painting by another lesser-known Swedish artist. The drawings were a consolation prize, a naked man and woman who could be some kind of 21st century European version of ancient Egyption art, all sharp outlines and profiles. At this moment, they are looking at each other behind my back on the wall of the study.

Adam and Eve, I like to think of them.

Despite the husband's conviction that it is a sound investment, I know that art is only worth what people are willing to pay for it, and fashions come and go. It's not like real estate.

But, I like the Adam and Eve as if I'd made them myself, as if they were my flat little paper children.

On second thought, is this more about a frustrated paternal instinct than about hunting and gathering?

Nah.

The Swedish word for the day is skapelseberättelsen. It means the creation story.

- by Francis S.

I always thought that asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects were just plain old asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects. But it turns out they're actually minor planets.

And here, all these years, I was under the impression that earth was a minor planet.

The Swedish word for the day is solsystem. It means solar system.

- by Francis S.

...the federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?

Paul Krugman, the New York Times

This really gets to the kernel of what is wrong with America: Americans have been tricked into thinking that the government shouldn't exist to protect their interests.

The Swedish word for the day is bestörtning. It means dismay.

- by Francis S.

The fact is, I'm an ungrateful bastard, not to mention a terrible music snob.

I should've appreciated the fact that the girlfriend of our former badboy boarder invited me to go hear Luciano Pavarotti sing in Stockholm's big arena. And, well, I did appreciate going with her and getting envious looks from every man we passed - she's maybe an inch taller than I am, but her legs stop somewhere above my waist, and in her spike heels, she towered over me, ravishingly beautiful. (I used to be ashamed of the deep satisfaction I get from those looks of envy when I'm out with someone like the badboy boarder's girlfriend, or A., the TV producer, who was a model in Paris and turns heads wherever she goes; but, long ago, when I was briefly in therapy, my therapist questioned why I should feel guilty about getting satisfaction out feeling that people would think that I was a flaming hetero, and so, with effort, I just let myself enjoy it. No doubt, my sister-in-law would say there's something sexist about this. I don't give a damn. But, I digress.)

As I sat among the crowd, all I could think was that this was not my thing: Luciano, propped up like a doll, eyebrows painted and looking like a fat Dirk Bogarde playing Gustav von Aschenbach, his voice devoid of nuance, the orchestra lacking warmth and humanity (that's what happens when it's amplified in an arena like that), gooey Italian aria after gooey Italian aria belted out like chocolate howitzers rolling down a conveyer belt. And the soprano with him, a good 30-40 years younger than him, wasn't all that much better - too much vibrato and not enough precision for my taste. When I hear someone sing, I want it to be warm and human and full of emotion, but so exact that I can visualize the score in my head, right down to the portimento.

Still, I was touched when the man sitting next to me and his long-haired, baggy-pantsed, pimply teenaged son hugged each other rapturously when Pavarotti announced at the end that he would sing the Brindisi from La Traviata, with the audience singing the chorus.

The Swedish word for the day is uppstoppad. It means stuffed.

- by Francis S.

Whenever Swedes talk about America, they always say that New York is not America. But I always tell them, oh yes, it is in fact. New York is America, and so is Boston and Atlanta and Los Angeles and Chicago and Council Bluffs, Iowa and Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

I used to make one exception to this, even if I no longer believe it to be true exactly: New Orleans, that crazy mish-mash of a drunken beautiful mess of a city. My former mother-in-law's family was originally from New Orleans, and her thick and rich as crème anglaise upper-class southern accent (which her sons, growing up in Atlanta in the 1950s and 1960s never acquired; one deliberately dropped his southern accent completely, the other had a more standard-issue generic Atlanta accent) comes to mind. I've only been to New Orleans once, nearly 20 years ago, but I loved the way the city showed its age, beautiful like an old woman who has never had plastic surgery, as compared to the stiffer charms of a place like Georgetown in Washington, where everything's carefully preserved and renovated to the point of preciousness, kind of like, um, Cher, only 150 years older.

I cannot believe that New Orleans is all but gone. All those poor, poor people.

(Those fortunate enough to make it to Houston to the Astrodome, according to the New York Times, are able to get all they need to fulfil their basic human needs: a T-shirt, a slice of pizza and a Bible. A Bible? I think I'm gonna spit up.)

The Swedish verb for the day is att beklaga. It means to be saddened by or sorry for, as in the emotions one has over the death of someone who meant something to one.

- by Francis S.

Last weekend, as we were preparing for a dinner (it was a 40th birthday party, and birthdays with round numbers like 30 and 40 and 50 are a big deal here) in which we were required to wear white, the rest of the household was preparing for a completely different birthday party, which required them to wear costumes, very Marie Antoinette, with all kinds of lace and ribbons and velvet and brocade.

A., the TV producer and her sister sat at the kitchen table, and for the first time since I was a small boy, I watched the elaborate ritual of applying makeup: brushes and puffs and sticks and powder and lipstick, layers and lines and careful blending.

I was absolutely enthralled.

I think if I were more inclined to liking women, I would be in danger of having a fetish involving watching women with their cosmetics.

The Swedish word for the day is smink. It means makeup.

- by Francis S.

One of the odd things about being born into the world's great tribe of homosexuals is that unlike other tribes, the rest of your family aren't likely to be members.

A second thing is that, technically, there's nothing like skin color or physical characteristics that make one instantly visible as a homosexual. Which is not to say that some people aren't rather easy to peg, given one has any kind of reasonably good gaydar, which any self-respecting homosexualist has.

But, these two facts do mean that those of us who belong to the tribe are, in a way, always searching for the rest of the tribe. As I sat, having dinner on Tuesday with a collection of business people (my clients) at a manor house in the middle of nowhere in the forests of Sweden, I wasn't surprised when the Dutch guy sitting next to me at dinner, during a conversation about racism, divulged matter-of-factly that he was gay. It was said, no doubt, as part of the whole tribe-searching bit that we all go through.

However, in a fit of perversion and, no doubt, cowardice, I did not respond in kind. I felt too exposed in front of people I know only very superficially.

It was a cowardly thing to do. The only way this old world will change is if people are forthcoming about such things, and in full view of whoever happens to be near. And I felt like I was leaving him in the lurch, as I have no doubt he expected me to say "I am gay as well."

I am shamed. I am a schlub and, I suppose, a hypocrite in one way or another.

The Swedish word for the day is mantalsskrivningsförrättningarna, at the request of a certain Christian Bolgen, who thinks it is time that I focus on some of the many peculiar portmanteau words of the Swedish language. It means something like the residential registration (for census purposes) official duties, as far as I can tell.

- by Francis S.

Swedish food is nothing to write home about. It's hard to muster enthusiasm for pickled herring and hard bread.

There are exceptions, of course, such as the sweetest wild strawberries and the earthiest tender new potatoes.

And crayfish.

The crayfish season has just begun. The Swedes honor crayfish by hosting parties where heaping platters of fish are consumed, washed down with beer and schnapps. It's my favorite Swedish food, and I don't even mind the little cuts you get all over your fingers in your greed to open the little bastards up to ruthlessly get at the tails.

Tonight, it's crayfish for us, out in the southern suburbs of Stockholm, close to the water somewhere.

The Swedish word for the day is kräftskiva, which means crayfish party.

- by Francis S.

Excerpt from an unfinishable novel:

...Boodles first met Chumley at the Brooke Boulevard Athletic and Spiritual Club.

He had woken up thinking it was a Wednesday, and rushed in at 7 a.m. to meet his personal trainer, Lorena, only to find that she was raging at a skinny and quivering man with great cow eyes, who was neither pulling on the various chains and weights in proper order, nor saying the appropriate combination of benedictions and confessions.

"There but for the grace of -" Boodles thought, ashamed and hopelessly aroused at the man's pathetic groveling, wondering who the poor bastard was. Then Boodles suddenly remembered, with a queasy feeling, a meeting he was to have later that day with his boss and realized that it was a Tuesday and not a Wednesday.

Up to that moment, Lorena hadn't seen him, but in an eyeblink, it was too late. She had grabbed him by the hair and strapped him into one of the machines, screaming the whole while in a barely coherent fashion that he better start saying his prayers.

"I believe in one God..." Boodles began wretchedly.

He would have to pay extra for this, and come in the next day as well. He couldn't afford to pay for the training as it was - he'd given up heat and hot water in his apartment to cover the cost - and he was way behind on his Mandatory Consumption Quotient on account of he spent all his money on food and, well, Lorena. Worse, he never seemed to get his puffy and pale body into shape, perhaps because he couldn't stop himself from eating to make up for his dead-end job, his inability to form a lasting relationship with a vertebrate or invertebrate of any sort, and the horribleness of Lorena every other day.

Afterwards, Boodles stood in the shower next to Chumley, the two of them trying desperately not to whimper, Boodles rubbing his wrists to try and get some feeling back into his hands, and Chumley wiping at the bloody scrapes on his shins.

"She's real good, Lorena," Chumley said at last, looking at Boodles in the mirrors that were mounted on the walls across from the shower stalls.

"Yeah, sh-sh-she s-s-s-sure is," Boodles said, trying to stop his teeth from chattering.

It was then he saw something in Chumley's eyes, his sad and watery but beautiful eyes, that made Boodles wonder...

The Swedish word for the day is trosbekännelse. It means credo.

- by Francis S.

Someone has stolen the king's sheep (link in Swedish only, sorry).

Not all the sheep, only some 20 are missing, but the 100 or so who are left are traumatized, according to the court shepherdess (how's that for a title - I'd love to be able to tell people when they ask what I do: "Oh, I'm the court shepherdess.")

I met the king's sheep one morning. I was out at 6:30 a.m. posing for a magazine photo with three other unfortunates, pretending to have a picnic with champagne and strawberries, a la Luncheon on the Grass, although we all kept our clothes on. "Pull in your stomach," the photographer yelled at me as I sprawled, propped up on one elbow, an arm outstretched with a champagne glass, a smile pasted rigidly on my face, looking desperately into the eyes of the man sitting on the blanket across from me.

Not long after, the sheep showed up, herded through the meadow by a manic sheepdog, but not herded fast enough that several of them weren't able to invade our picnic and eat one of our pears.

I wonder if the same sheep that were stolen were the ones who ate the pear?

Someone has stolen the sheep of the king. It sounds like the beginning of a nursery rhyme, doesn't it?

The Swedish word for the day is, of course, får, which means sheep.

- by Francis S.

Part of my job is to know the difference between British and American spelling, as well as to root out Britishisms (and sometimes Americanisms, which not so surprisingly I'm rather bad at).

The spelling differences are mostly straightforward - o versus ou, z versus s, er versus re. But however did it happen that the British spell it sceptic and the Americans skeptic? Maybe the Americans were influenced by Swedish: skeptiker is how you say it in Swedish.

- by Francis S.

I've somehow managed to get knocked from my usual happy orbit.

I blame the United States. I can't seem to recover from the recent two weeks in the Great Midwest. I'm all "What happened to my center of gravity?"

America seems more and more foreign. Those awful star-spangled magnetic ribbon things on the back of all the cars, waiters and waitresses telling you their names, the incredible inequity of the suburban idyll of Oak Park pressed up against poverty-stricken Austen in Chicago. The obvious things. And the less obvious things, like girls in the Meijer saying "I love your hair" to each other, as if there could be a good reason for them to actually love each others' hair and making you wonder if they also love their mothers and their nasty little brothers.

I feel so confused by the strange aura of unquestioning self-assurance that Americans have, which is part of their charm. And no doubt has been part of my charm. But have I lost it?

Sweden seems just as foreign, to be honest. Despite my Swedish passport, I'll never be a Swede, I'll always be an outsider. Which I usually find perfectly comfortable. After all, if one is aware from a fairly young age that one is gay, being an outsider is more than even second nature, it's an elemental ingredient of the self, the preferred status.

Just now, though, I feel out of sorts, rudderless and unsure and old and ugly, wondering what in hell my husband sees in me, and paradoxically, in the grip of a powerful desire to become a father.

I hate this shit.

The Swedish word for the day is oväder. It means inclement weather.

- by Francis S.

Going east to west is nearly always easier than going west to east.

We're talking what affects jet-lag, here. I'm not sure whether it's age or something else, but I seem to have more trouble adjusting than I used to when I go from west to east: We started out okay, but then we accidentally took a nap from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. yesterday, and couldn't fall asleep for the night until hours after the sun had risen. And now I'm all queasy and caffienated and head-achey. And I'm not ready for vacation to be over. I still feel stuck somewhere midway between cultures, time zones and intelligence quotients.

It's gonna be a helluva night. I'll be lucky if I get three hours of sleep.

The Swedish word for the day is sömnlös. It means sleepless.

- by Francis S.

Back from the fatherland.

Highlights: a week in a cottage on Lake Michigan (which, along with the other four great lakes, is more or less an inland freshwater sea with waves and everything, for those who don't know) with no fights, a great deck hovering on the bluff above the lake, and lots of red meat; the mind-boggling excess of the Meijer - a combination grocery and cheap department store - that is situated somewhere outside North Muskegon, Michigan; making incessant fart and other jokes with my 12-year-old nephew, who is a total goofball and never shuts up, reminding me curiously of, well, me, when I was a kid; dinner under the trees with the cat doctor at a French-bistro-type place in the old Swedish neighborhood of Chicago; dim sum at Phoenix with half the family, my sister-in-law making sure we get only the good stuff and stay away from the chicken feet.

Mostly, though, the visit was about the very low-key feting of my parents, which was the reason we were there in the first place.

As always, it's a revelation to go to America, and a revelation to come back.

The Swedish phrase for the day is hemma bäst. It means home is best.

Francis S.

Walking through lower Observatorielunden, I saw someone has painted on the roof of one of the buildings of the daycare center at the south end of the park:

"They said 'sit down'. I stood up"

Tomorrow, we're off to the Fatherland on the other side of the Atlantic. We'll be back in August.

The Swedish phrase for the day is femtio-års jubileum. It means fiftieth anniversary, which my parents are celebrating with the whole family for the next weeks. To think, my father was 21, my mother only 20 when they got married, and they're still happily married. It's a tough act to follow, but my brothers and sister and I do our best.

- by Francis S.

As we sat, drinking wine on the veranda at the house on Birds Island, celebrating the birthday of A., the TV producer, the physical therapist told a brief story of a man she knows who has an aphasia in which he is able to speak but unable to really make sense, he can only refer to things in terms of his old work life.

She asked him how his wife was, pointing to the ring on her own finger, trying to give him as much help as possible.

"Oh, my subscription?" he answered.

We laughed, of course. But I'm charmed by the idea of my own husband as a subscription that arrives every evening, eagerly awaited and alternately perused lovingly or consumed voraciously.

My husband the lifetime subscription.

The Swedish verb for the day is att prenumerera, which of course means to subscribe.

- by Francis S.

Aaron asks: "When did you first know?"

I think I probably knew already when I was five, and I couldn't stop myself from looking at an art book of my parents. A photograph of Michelangelo's David made me deliciously out-of-sorts, I wanted to be him and to have him at the same time. No one can tell me that small children aren't sexual beings somehow, which is not to say that adults having sex with children is a good thing.

But it wasn't until I was 14 that I admitted to myself that there was a real future in liking boys. It was all due to reading the book RubyFruit Jungle, which my sister had brought home from the University of Michigan. That book made me see that being gay was, in fact, wonderful and exciting. Not that I went out and announced it to the world. Or to anybody, really. I just said to myself, "This is for me." And despite a bit of dabbling in girls here and there, so to speak, until I was 22 or 23, I've never really looked back.

The Swedish verb for the day is att känna. It means to sense.

- by Francis S.

Tysta gatan - Quiet Street - is no longer my favorite street name in Stockholm; I've switched my affections to Tre liljor - Three Lilies - which is a little square tucked away up at the end of Norrtullsgatan, close to the old northern entrance to the city (both links in Swedish only, sorry). The name comes from an old hostel that used to stand there. The place, a U-shaped street curving round a small park, is called simply Three Lilies, without the appendage of "street" or "alley" or even "square" or "park."

I would love to be able to tell people when they ask, that I live on Three Lilies.

The husband used to take piano lessons in an apartment on Three Lilies from a man who would rap him on the knuckles with a ruler when he made a mistake. Not surprisingly, the husband never got very far with learning the piano.

(That's four Swedish words in one lesson. A bargain at half the price.)

- by Francis S.

When I first read a story in the New York Times claiming that the U.K. is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism, I thought to myself: Is this schadenfreude or fear or hubris talking? I was rather taken aback by the tone of blame, as if Britain got what it deserved for not curtailing civil rights enough, for not having its own "Patriot Act." Can you imagine how the U.S. would have reacted if British newspapers had written anything similar about the U.S. after Sept. 11?

If I were British, I would be profoundly offended.

(The Guardian certainly has taken note of the story from the New York Times, along with many similar stories in many of the biggest U.S. papers. Perhaps not so strangely, reading the Guardian's news blog post about these stories, the vast majority of the 80 plus comments there when I read it seem to be from Americans who seem hellbent on alienating the citizens of the only significant ally the U.S. has in its occupation of Iraq.)

The Swedish word for the day is offentligt. It means publicly.

- by Francis S.

It's Jehovah with his rank upon rank of heavenly aspirants bent on ramming God's will into the various orifices of the Devil's minions - that would be gays and members of the American Civil Liberties Union - so that said orifices can't be used for anything naughty.

Francis Strand, ranting on and on about gay marriage

For those of you who don't get enough of my bitching here, I've now got a story over in this month's issue of Sigla Magazine.

The Swedish word for the day is hundkäx. Which literally means dog biscuit, but is the Swedish name for wild chervil, and looks to me rather similar to Queen Anne's Lace, although a botanist or my mother and sister, who really know their wildflowers, would no doubt disagree.

- by Francis S.

Okay. I'm doing this only because I promised Sinéad. But, it's the last meme I do. I am unavailable for memework in the future. I'm taking the meme-baton and throwing it into the Baltic.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?
A Confederacy of Dunces - only because it would be great fun to do all the voices.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Not really. The first time I read it, when I was 10, I wanted to be the children - either Scout or Jem - in To Kill a Mockingbird - that's the closest I've probably gotten to having a crush on a character.
The last book you bought is?
Robertson Davies: The Deptford Trilogy
What are you currently reading?
Robertson Davies: The Deptford Trilogy. Re-reading it, actually. I read it probably 20 years ago, and saw it in the bookstore and thought I'd see if it still holds up. Which it almost does. I'm surprised he's not more widely read still.
Five books you would take to a deserted island
The Tale of Genji - it's so long, and full of color and adventure and eros and elegance and culture, it evokes a world like nothing else.
The Bible - yeah, okay, so a lot of people choose this one, and not because they're religious but because it's got so many great stories and poetry and wise and crazy things in it.
Ulysses - maybe I will finally finish reading it.
Portrait of a Lady - it's engrossing and bears a lot of re-reading without becoming boring; and Henry James is divine, in a fussy kind of way.
William Trevor: The Collected Stories - to have something full of the milk of human kindness (and evil), and a little less daunting to read.

And, I pass this on to no one.

The Swedish word for the day is varelse. It means being, as in a living creature.

- by Francis S.

Oh, no. Up goes the ratchet.

A.'s little sister and her boyfriend, the ex-football player are here in Sweden just now rather than the U.K. And, we've talked to the friends from London, the photographer and his wife, who are safe. However, we haven't heard back from M., the TV producer.

The Swedish word for the day is attentat. It means attack.

- by Francis S.

Walking along the Djurgården canal, just below the tiny palace of Rosendal, I heard the metalic buzzing of a propeller plane. Looking up, I saw that it was trailing a banner reading: "Grattis H.H Dalai Lama på 70-årsdagen." Which means "Congratulations to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on his 70th birthday."

There you have it, the Swedish phrase for the day.

What I want to know is, who paid for the sign, and was the Dalai Lama there to see it, or was it someone trying to recreate a sort of if- a- tree- falls- in- the- wood- with- no- one- to- hear- it- does- it- still- make- a- sound kind of thing?

- by Francis S.

This morning, on Karlavägen, that glorious street of ancient ladies, I passed a woman wearing little white crocheted gloves. I am old enough to remember the days when my mother still occasionally wore little white gloves, crocheted or plain, and a hat, and underneath, that most peculiar of garments, a girdle. By the time I was 8 or so, such things had gone out of fashion, and I have no doubt my mother gladly put the gloves and the hats and the girdles away in unused drawers and boxes in the back of the closet.

I think any woman who says she isn't a feminist has forgotten that there was a time when you weren't properly dressed if underneath your dress, you weren't wearing a girdle with all its strange and horrible white fastenings.

The Swedish word for the day is trosor. It means panties.

by Francis S.

I don't really remember what it was like when I first got eyeglasses, in the second grade. But it surely must have been like today, when I picked up my new glasses, with a new stronger prescription: Suddenly, the world is so in focus it's making me queasy. I'm born again, and the new me is seasick. (Strangely, my contact lenses, of which I have run out, have not changed in strength, according to Petra the Optician.)

"They're art director glasses," the husband said to me, approval in his voice. Which means that they are thick black plastic and very beatnik. I leave all my fashion decisions up to the husband, since when I moved to Stockholm I lost the ability to distinguish between what is fashionable, what is hopelessly 1993 and what is ridiculous on a man of, um, 44.

Now, can I make it through the walk home without either stumbling or spitting up?

The Swedish word for the day is glasögon. It means eyeglasses.

- by Francis S.

"We were not the first, but I am sure we will not be the last. After us will come many other countries, driven, ladies and gentlemen, by two unstoppable forces: freedom and equality."

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

First Canada joined the illustrious company of the Netherlands and Belgium. Now Spain, of all places.

I think you can safely say that the Catholic Church is reaping the rewards of its collusion with Franco. It just goes to show you that sometimes the church can be a force for good. Unintentionally, of course.

Go, Spain! Go, the gays!

Wait, that's me...

The Swedish words for the day are Kanada and Spanien. They are, of course, what Swedes call Canada and Spain.

- by Francis S.

I wondered how long it would take to come to this: "Military looks to end ban on gay soldiers amid recruiting slump."

When you suddenly can't get anyone else to join up and go get killed in Iraq, it's time to let in The Gays, and let them tell whatever and whoever they want because really they're okay after all.

If you're talking cannon fodder, that is. (I suppose machine gun slash bomb fodder would be more accurate.)

The Swedish word for the day is soldat. It means soldier.

- by Francis S.

Operation Yellow Elephant.

Do your part. Get a College Republican to enlist.

Brought to you by Jesus' own general, JC Christian.

- by Francis S.

Tomorrow, the Swedish year reaches it highest point: Midsummer Eve. The entire nation sits down, mostly in rainy weather somewhere out in the countryside at a country house painted rusty red, chowing down on pickled herring, new potatoes, hard bread and cheese. And schnapps, lots of schnapps, followed by dancing around a kind of Maypole covered in birch leaves and sporting wreaths of flowers. You are supposed to get drunk, and then waltz to accordian music out on a jetty sometime after midnight, the sun waiting just below the horizon and smudging the edge of the sky a rusty orange. You stagger to bed at 2:30 or so, just as the sun is rising.

We're going out to the archipelago, as usual. I hope that through some miracle it doesn't rain. But I suppose it doesn't matter, we'll have fun whether the sun shines or not.

The Swedish phrase for the day is trevlig midsommar. It means happy midsummer.

- by Francis S.

...

Frank's muscular body blocks the sun from my eyes, and I see Nancy standing about ten feet away, examining a rhododendron with the Gorham Buttercup magnifying glass her mother bought her for her birthday. She won't even need to register when she gets married.

Nancy looks up from her sleuthing, glances at me with pity. And more: anger, jealousy, lust. But what she says when she opens her mouth is, "The Countess de Lave has been here. Those are her tracks. See? Only Bugattis have that kind of axle variation on a right turn."

Bullshit, like most of what Nancy says.

Frank is still leaning over me, but his hand is limp. He whispers, "I know, Joe. I know." I breathe him in one more time and he closes the trunk again.

...

You know who got me into this whole weblog thing? It was the extraordinary Jonno D'Addadario, who mostly edits Fleshbot these days, writing rarely in his blog anymore. Anyway, I read Jonno's blog and I was filled with the same peculiar jealous longing I had when I was five years old and looking at a photograph of Michelangelo's statue of David in one of my parents' art books: I wanted to be him and have him. Well, not exactly, more like I wanted to write like Jonno, and I wanted to actually know him as well.

Anyway, the above parody of a Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew novel was written by Jonno's boyfriend, Richard, proprieter of Sturtle. I read it and I thought: I want to write like that, I want to know him.

The question is, how do you keep your writing so fresh, so funny, so always entertaining, Richard?

The Swedish word for the day is avund. It means envy.

- by Francis S.

"There are those extremists who say that if a gay person were on fire you would burn in hell if you spit on them to put out the fire. But we're not like that. We love the human being. It's the lifestyle we disagree with." Rick Bowers, Defend Maryland Marriage, in the New York Times.

Well, of course God thinks spitting on gay people is a good thing! Rick Bowers and the people of Defend Maryland Marriage do it every day. Metaphorically, at least, since they probably don't get as much opportunity as they'd like to do it literally.

Nothing about this article in the New York Times magazine is in the least bit surprising. Including the citations of Sweden as a hotbed of out-of-wedlock births (will a researcher please look at the number of Swedish children living with both parents, whether married or unmarried, and compare it to the same percentage in the States, pretty please?) and a country where, because of its partnership laws, apparently, marriage has been destroyed.

What I want to know is how many people out there think being gay is bad. Do the majority of Marylanders think it's a good thing that the governor of Maryland vetoed a bill that would have given gay people the right to make medical decisions for their partners? (The reason for the veto, according to the New York Times, was that the bill created a new term - "life partner" - that "could lead to the erosion of the sanctity of traditional marriage.")

I've got to hand it to all these "Christians." They do understand that at heart, this is all about accepting homosexuality as something that may not be the norm, but is a normal part of the range of human behavior, something that their sons and daughters might learn is not shameful and the route to damnation but a part of life, and a good part at that. Sadly, some of these "Christians" are willing to do their own children great harm for the cause, as this poor kid has found out.

The Swedish word for the day is vansinnig. It means crazy.

- by Francis S.

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

I don't know exactly why, but I think that might be my favorite line from a story. Flannery O'Connor, full of grace but so very unsparing, must surely guard the gate to heaven. For those who believe in heaven, that is. Me, I'm not so keen on the whole heaven and hell thing.

Now, go amuse yourselves with something odd, literary and vaguely fun.

The Swedish word for the day is tänder. It means teeth.

- by Francis S.

Last night, moments after I had just drifted off to sleep, the husband woke me up.

"She took it off," he said.

By "she" he meant the little cat, by "it" he meant the Elizabethan collar she had been fitted with to compensate for her newly removed female parts. Well, not really to compensate, more to prevent her from gnawing the stitches away so that she'd need to have a second operation to fix the first.

For good and, mostly, for bad, the husband can hear a pin drop out on Odenplan, the big open plaza outside our window. Somehow, in his sleep he'd heard that the little cat was doing something she wasn't supposed to.

I grunted.

Unfortunately, her owners and our current lodgers, A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photogapher, were sleeping way out in the far suburbs somewhere, so we felt an obligation to try and get the collar back on her by ourselves.

Thirty minutes, three puncture wounds and four scratches, one dollop of catfood and a bloody towel later, the score was little cat: two; Francis and the husband: zero.

Looking at my sore hand, I wondered about that ancient Internet axiom - "every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten" - and thought to myself that there are simply not enough people fulfilling their onanistic obligations.

At 2 a.m., we called A., who told us she would be right over.

So, the husband and I sat in our bathrobes in the dining room, with the chairs pulled out this way and that, an empty cat dish, and two sleeping cats.

"There's something wrong with that cat," the husband said.

When A. arrived a half hour later, with C. at her heels, she picked up the little cat, sat on a chair, and slipped the collar on without even the smallest bit of protest, not even the tiniest softest miaow.

"Beyotch," the husband said. "You should call her beyotch."

The Swedish word for the day is kattunge. It means kitten.

- by Francis S.

A favorite scene from last week's graduation party for the daughter of C., the fashion photographer: Two 17-year-old boys sit next to each other, one of them grabs a camera. "Oh, oh, take a picture of us!" he begs the mother of the other boy. They throw their arms around each other's shoulders. "Oh, oh, with a kiss!" the boy says to his best friend's mother taking the photograph. He kisses his best friend on the cheek. "No, on the lips, on the lips!" the mother says. They kiss rapturously on the lips, even though neither of them has the least sexual interest in each other, or any other boys for that matter. At least as far as I can tell.

This is what happens when your mother's best friends are a pair of dykes, and your father's best friends are a couple of great big homos.

This is what gives the Christian right the heebie-jeebies.

This is what I call progress.

The Swedish word for the day is studenten. It's the word the Swedes use to refer to graduation from gymnasium, and all its attendant festivities.

- by Francis S.

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.