Uh, this is the 21st century, isn't it?

Does anyone with a grain of intellect in 2006 believe anymore that women are inferior to men?

Because really, no matter how you cut it, any objections to the Rt. Reverend Katherine Jefferts Schori as Primate of the Episcopal Church in the United States boil down to a belief that women are second rate and only worthy of being spiritual handmaids, and not ecclesiastical leaders. But obviously, according to an article in the Guardian, there are people out there who think this:

The Rev Martyn Minns, a British-born conservative evangelical who has been active in opposing the church's leadership over its support for homosexual clergy, particularly its election three years ago of the gay bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, issued a statement saying: "It is sad. She will bring into sharp relief the difference between being an Episcopalian and being an Anglican. It is not clear how she can do anything other than lead the Episcopal church in walking apart from the rest of the communion. She has my prayers."

Wow. I guess I'm glad for once to be an American Episcopalian and not a British Anglican. And I was shocked to see that the Anglican church still hasn't resolved the conflict over the appointment of women as bishops.

Just as bad, but less surprising, is that the Roman Catholic Church has been bullying and threatening the Anglican church to sever ties with it if women are appointed as bishops.

Uh, did I miss something, but wasn't the Anglican church formed because some king didn't want the Pope telling him what to do?

This whole thing makes my blood pressure go up. It's bad enough that gays get bashed by "christians," but hell, I expect it. Can we really still be arguing about whether it's appropriate for women to be bishops?

Feh.

The Swedish word for the day is kyrkan. It means the church.

- by Francis S.

It's time to make amends. Because I've been sadly shirking my duties. I was interviewed awhile back on Schlockholm, and I failed to put in a link. Tsk, tsk.

And now I've been, uh, probed again, this time by Nathaniel of the blog film experience, with a bunch of movie questions, natch.

The hardest part was when he asked me who would play me in a movie of my life. Not only was the husband stumped when I asked him, but after I called up A., the TV producer, she couldn't come up with anyone either. It was her fiance, C., the fashion photographer, who finally hit on the right person: John Malkovich.

So, who would play you in the movie of your life?

The Swedish word for the day is frågetecken. It means question mark.

- by Francis S.

The difference between men and women:

Merck had originally hoped to get the vaccine approved for use in boys. But although women have routinely allowed swabs to be taken of their vaginal cells, the company found that men rebelled against the use of emery boards to collect cells from their penises. Researchers eventually discovered that jeweler's-grade emery paper effectively removed cells without alarming men and were able to complete their studies.

("U.S. Approves Use of Vaccine for Cervical Cancer", New York Times, March 9, 2006.)

The Swedish word for the day is gynekolog. It means gynecologist.

- by Francis S.

Who would have guessed it? The biggest threat to U.S. citizens isn't the war in Iraq, terrorism and security breaches, or even high [sic] taxes. It is hosts of crazy people burning the flag and great big homos who want to get married. At least according to George W. Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who have been spouting off on measures on each of these issues that will be voted on in the U.S. Senate this week. In speaking of the proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution to restrict marriage and the rights of marriage to heterosexuals, Frist was quoted in the Hartford Courant as saying: "[Marriage], more than any other [institution], concerns the well-being of our future, of our children, of the states that my colleagues and I represent - indeed of this country."

The Swedish word for the day is skamlös. It means shameless.

- by Francis S.

I used to despair at trying to explain the phenomenon of the Eurovision Song Contest to Americans, it just seemed to defy description.

But my new friend, the children's book author, reminded me that this is no longer true.

"American Idol," he said.

Now why didn't I think of that? Because really, if you imagine it in terms of countries instead of people brimming over with insecurity, delusions of grandeur and a warped sense of self-worth and what is worthy of attention, trying their best to manufacture something that can be sold to the greatest number of people possible, well, there you have Eurovision.

To my surprise, this year the contest was won by a joke: Finland's, uh, "heavy metal band," Lordi. As we sat with A. the TV producer, her sister, C. the fashion photographer, the former football player and A.'s parents, everyone thought that it was sort of nice that Finland won, but they hated the song, everyone except the minor royal who thought it was all great.

I was, after the fact, disappointed not in the Finnish song, but that a much funnier joke, Iceland's "Silvia Night," didn't qualify for the finals. Especially after the actress playing the part of Silvia referred to Sweden's slightly scary born-again Christian contestant as ugly, old and a fucking bitch.

The Swedish word for the day is schlager. There is no real translation in English, but it is a word no doubt stolen from the German, and is a certain type of cheesy pop song that occasionally transcends its kitschness so far as to become indelibly printed on the culture.

- by Francis S.

I called my beloved little brother the other day to confirm the rumor that he and his wife had bought an apartment on the Upper West Side, and in the background, amid the noise of the baby and the household, I could hear a police siren: a slow long wail, as opposed to the more rapid quacking of the police sirens here.

Swedes love the way police sirens in the U.S. sound. Someone, I don't remember who, once said to me: "When you go there and hear them in person they sound exactly the way they do on TV!"

Yes, I said, they certainly do.

Aren't Swedes just the cutest things?

The Swedish word for the day is hörselskadad. It means hearing impaired.

- by Francis S.

Is euthanasia a good thing? As with all complicated issues, the answer is finely shaded with grey. And let's be realistic, how much is life really worth, should no expense be spared to keep someone alive? Is it really worth more than 9000 Swedish crowns to revive our ancient (that would be nearly four years old) iBook?

Only a fool would say yes.

Pollice verso: Death it is.

The Swedish word for the day is dödshjälp, which means euthanasia.

- by Francis S.

If you set aside the people behind technology (the telephone, television and computers, automobiles and airplanes) and medical researchers (the discoverers of antibiotics, any number of vaccinations, and birth control), I would argue that the person who has had the most effect on our lives is Sigmund Freud.

Can you believe he was born as long as 150 years ago, one of the great fathers of modernism? It's easier for me to think of it this way: He didn't die until 1939, so my parents actually could have met him when they were small children, if they hadn't been living on small farms in the middle of nowhere at the time. Or if Freud had been hanging around the Christian Reformed Church in Sully, Iowa instead of 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, London.

The Swedish word for the day is psykoanalytiker. It means, of course, psychoanalyst.

- by Francis S.

Spring has been so cold and graceless this year, it wasn't until this past weekend that we made it out to Birds Island for the first time for the season. It was windy and raw on the island, but here and there little purple anemones had bravely sprung up in the woods, about the only sign of spring that I could see.

When I walked out to the end of the island on Monday morning, I came upon the smoking remains of a bonfire from the night before, a celebration of Valborg, one of those witchy pagan holidays that Swedes have kept right alongside the more familiar Christianized and political ones that the rest of Europe also celebrates.

Back in town, it was just as windy and raw, and there had been a big gathering of kids just outside our apartment on Odenplan, a group called Reclaim the City. I'm not altogether sure who they want to take it back from and who they then want to give it to, but they are supposedly against motor traffic, violence, racism and other bad things, but also apparently believe that windows need to be smashed in order to redistribute sporting goods to needy athletes. Which they did at Sergels Torg and not at Odenplan, for which I am thankful.

But really, why ever did I think that Stockholm was a laughably safe place to live? It seems that Odenplan is a magnet for the more, um, energetic Swedes in Stockholm.

The Swedish word for the day is kravaller . It means riots .

- by Francis S.

In the middle of grating ginger for dinner, I was startled by shouting out in the courtyard. I dried my hands and walked into the dining room and looked down. There, sitting with their backs against the wall, were some 30 young men in orange jackets, sweatshirts and t-shirts, along with some 15 policemen pacing back and forth, occasionally brandishing a billyclub or asking one of the young men to stand up to be frisked.

I ran to the library to look outside to the front of the building, where traffic was stopped by a swarm of 30 policemen and several orange-shirted men being roughly escorted into two of the five police cars that were blocking the street.

Just as I was returning to the dining room windows, the phone rang.

"What's going on? I'm stuck in traffic on Odengatan and there are all these police outside your building!" a friend said, breathing hard into the phone.

I told her the hell if I knew, but that there were 30 guys in orange being held by the police in the courtyard. Wait, no, I told her, they've brought more guys in. It looks like about 50 guys.

An hour and a half later, after the last of the orange-shirted guys had been marched into a bus (where they would be brought to the edge of the suburbs out in the middle of nowhere and left to walk back into town, which would likely take a good hour, according to my friend the policeman), the drama was over.

It turns out the guys in the orange shirts were hooligans, although they were amazingly quiet for hooligans. At least that's as far as I could make out, there was nothing in the paper or on TV about it that I've seen, despite all the people taking photos. But someone told me they heard there'd been hooligans at St. Eriksplan, which isn't so far away.

What I want to know is, why did the police decide to herd them into our courtyard, huh?

The Swedish word for the day is lugn och ro. It means peace and quiet.

- by Francis S.

So a group of, uh, religious personalities (that's like TV personalities, except instead of being famous for being famous, they are famous for not only knowing God personally, but for letting the rest of us know what God thinks) have decided to boldly come out against gay marriage. They call themselves the "religious coalition for marriage," which I don't understand, because they are obviously not for but against marriage, except in certain cases.

Interestingly, one of the persons behind this is everyone's favorite Pennsylvania Republican Senator whose surname, curiously, is also the word for that frothy mixture of lubricant and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

All I can think is: Poor God. She must be awfully sick of having these smug bullies throwing her name around all the time for the most ludicrous of things.

The Swedish word for the day is arsle. It means asshole.

- by Francis S.

Authoress Marie Corelli, 19th century lipstick lesbian and the Gilded Age's answer to Dan Brown, once wrote: "Let me be mad...mad with the madness of Absinthe, the wildest, most luxurious madness in the world."

A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer arrived back from a week in Spain with a bottle of poisonous green absinthe for me and the husband.

Apparently, all that ranting about absinthe being a dangerous drink that will unhinge you is just a bunch of hooey.

How terribly disappointing.

The Swedish word for the day is sprit. It means alcohol or spirits.

- by Francis S.

It wasn't until we were out in the hallway getting our coats to leave the party that I realized that the person we were making small talk with and who'd called a cab for us was Anakin Skywalker's mother.

The force was with us as the cabbie made his way through Kungsholmen, Stora Essingen and back to Vasastan to leave us breathless and pleasantly tipsy outside our apartment at Odenplan.

The Swedish phrase for the day is Stjärnornas Krig. It means Star Wars.

- by Francis S.

As we sat in the dining room - me and the husband, A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer and a few others - guzzling wine and laughing and eating filet mignon, potato gratin and salad prepared by L., the chef, (the ultimate luxury is having someone come and fix a glorious meal for you), someone started telling the story of her recent amorous escapade with an electrician who came to work on her apartment and how put out she was when he just up and left as soon as his, uh, work was done.

The husband left the room and came back shortly, brandishing two pairs of handcuffs. "You should've used these to handcuff him to the bed, then he couldn't have left," he said. He had gotten them long ago for a photo shoot, he explained. "They're actually real!"

The dinner quickly degenerated into an orgy of handcuff jokes and storytelling and the men in the party rolling around on the dining room floor, trying desperately to slide their handcuffed hands from behind their backs, over their asses and their feet so that the cuffs were in front instead of in back.

Sadly, I couldn't even get my hands past my ass. In fact, my skinny husband was the only one who succeeded.

"Remember the one about when our friend the policeman as a joke handcuffed his wife the priest one morning before work and then couldn't find the key, and she nearly had to go to a meeting with her boss or the bishop or someone, with handcuffs on?" the husband said.

Oh, yeah, I remember that. That's my favorite handcuff story.

The Swedish word for the day is handklovar. It means, of course, handcuffs.

- by Francis S.

Time for the annual change to the biography column at the left.

The Swedish phrase for the day is tiden går. It means time passes.

- by Francis S.

As I sat in the dentist's chair at 8:15 this morning, the left side of my mouth not quite numb enough to prevent me from feeling the dentist's drill and nearly flying out of the chair and seriously injuring the dentist, but managing to restrain myself to a pathetic whimper, the kind you make when your mouth is full of dental instruments and your eyes are tearing, I thought to myself how interesting it is that torture seems to be all the rage on American TV these days, and how curious a mirror television is, held up to American culture.

Of course, by all the rage, I mean one episode of a TV show that we saw a couple of weeks ago: A character whose backstory is that of a former Iraqi military officer forced to torture a fellow Iraqi officer by his American captors, tortures another character in a situation in which TV viewers are nudged into thinking that the torture is probably a good thing under the circumstances.

Isn't TV wacky?

Anyway, it gets my conspiracy-theory juices flowing, making me wonder if the producers of "Lost" have been hanging out with Alberto Gonzales, the latest in a long line of nutcase- uh, I mean, outstanding Republican U.S. Attorneys General that would include John Ashcroft and Ed Meese (who famously said in the 1980s: "I don't know of any authoritative figures that there are hungry children. I've heard a lot of anecdotal stuff, but I haven't heard any authoritative figures...I think some people are going to soup kitchens voluntarily. I know we've had considerable information that people go to soup kitchens because the food is free and that that's easier than paying for it...I think that they have money.")

Actually, it doesn't really get me thinking conspiracies, it gets me thinking that there really is no excuse for torture. That's why they call it torture.

My mouth is still kind of sore.

The Swedish word for the day is häftapparat. It means stapler.

- by Francis S.

Woe is me.

Five days ago, they closed a Stockholm institution, the Lydmar Hotel. Kinda funky, definitely hip in its way, nice lunches, great for afternoon drinks, and we put up my family there when they came for our wedding.

According to the husband, the bank that owns the building wanted the space for offices, or something like that. Which is typical bank behavior, actually.

Why wasn't I notified?

The Swedish phrase for the day is vad trist. It means, more or less, how depressing.

- by Francis S.

It is amazing how a little 12-pound human package that basically drinks, sleeps, shits, cries and smiles can create so much work while simultaneously making you fall profoundly and hopelessly in love. And I got the worst case of uncle-tourettes, saying my two-month-old nephew's name over and over (Owie, Owie, Owie!) just because it cracks me up, and repeatedly telling his parents that he is going to grow up to be a cowboy (on account of his initials are O.K.) while doing that really annoying thing where you point your fingers as if they were guns and then blowing away the pretend smoke.

In between perseverating on my nephew's name, feeding the boy countless bottles of breast-milk (those breast pumps are pretty scary devices) changing a diaper (I only had to do that once when I was babysitting alone), eating dinner at two very fancy schmancy restaurants, freaking out while sitting in Washington Square Park and eating a falafel from Mamoun's (it was altogether too much like some creepy drug-induced flashback to my college days at NYU), going to the doctor so Owen could get his first vaccinations (which was a big deal due to his hemophilia, but which came out fine), attending a naming ceremony at the gay synagogue that my beloved little brother and his wife belong to (why they belong to a gay synagogue is a story for another time), watching the Oscars at an apartment on the upper east side somewhere because my brother doesn't own a TV (we left before seeing Brokeback Mountain lose to Crash) and taking Owen for his first big art experience, the Met, through which he dutifully slept while my brother and I checked out room after room of Greek urns and drinking cups, (while being checked out ourselves by countless fellow artgoers who obviously had decided that Owen Has Two Daddies), I managed to have drinks and dinner and more drinks with the marvelous Mr. Justin Kerr Sheckler, who instantly became a friend (it was a case of extreme like at first sight), and having a brief coffee in Union Square with Eric, who is not only a high-quality individual, but wonderfully like his writing (I somehow never got around to telling him he really should try to write for money) and has scary stories about Danes.

New York has definitely not lost the ability to boggle the mind (You can get any food you want delivered just about anytime you want it!) The only bad thing about the whole trip was that in my mad rush to get to the airport (after an afternoon of walking around and last-minute shopping, we arrived home ten minutes before the car was due, and I hadn't packed yet), I somehow managed to leave my phone at my brother's.

The Swedish word for the day is parenteser. It means parentheses.

- by Francis S.

How many times do you think one can play Bach's English Suite No. 2 in A minor on the piano before one has completely squandered the good will of the neighbor who slipped the note under the door saying "I'm always so happy when I hear you playing the piano when I walk past your door," not to mention the goodwill of the neighbors above, below and next door?

It's a lovely thing, the suite, but forcing it on everyone within hearing distance once a day for a month is probably cruel and unusual punishment. And whoever wrote that note is no doubt wondering whatever possessed her to write it, and sending a wide range of colorful curses in my general direction.

The Swedish word for the day is besatt. It means obsessed.

- by Francis S.

Sometimes, no matter how hard I try to suppress it, the testosterone just gets the better of me.

So I end up doing things like watching my first hockey game in, uh, 35 years.

But we won.

"I love it when you say 'we' when you talk about Sweden," A., the TV producer said, as she jumped up and down and screamed, along with the husband and C., the fashion photographer and me.

We won!

You have no idea what it means when a little inconsequential country like Sweden manages to kick some hockey butt in front of the whole world.

I think surely 6 million out of Sweden's 9 million inhabitants must have been watching and cheering just like us.

Goddammit, we won!

And then, as I was walking home from the office today, who should come down Sveavägen but the whole winning team, complete with loudspeakers announcing that it was them, their faces grinning from the bus window, the people on the street clapping and shouting "hurrah!"

(Okay, I admit it. I'm a hockey opportunist jump-on-the-bandwagon kind of guy. But hey, we won. Maybe I should watch more often?)

The Swedish word for the day is guld. It means gold.

Addenda: I was reminded by my local hockey expert that good sports always mention the competition, in this case, the Finnish team, who played an excellent game, at least as far as I could tell.

- by Francis S.

One week and five hours from now, I'll be in the air on my way to Manhattan to meet the newest member of the family.

I haven't been to New York in nearly a decade. I guess it's changed a bit.

I can't wait.

The Swedish word for the day is lillebror, which had been the Swedish word for the day before. It means little brother.

- by Francis S.

Correction: The Internet is seething mass of information and misinformation, and it seems I've done my part on the misinformation front.

Remember back, oh, 11 months ago when I wrote about the crazy family of Isaac Merritt Singer? It seems that I got it all wrong. Singer had 24 children instead of 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.

How do I know that I was perpetrating a pack of lies and calumny? Because I got an e-mail telling me so from Sylvia Kahan, pianist, professor and author of Music's Modern Muse: A life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac.

I asked Professor Kahan how the hell she happened on my falsehoods, and she replied that she periodically does a web search on "Winnaretta."

So, the moral of the story is, on the one hand, you can't trust the internet and we all do our part to make sure bad information is a gift that keeps on giving; on the other hand, there's a lot of room for self-correction and when you do lie, Professor Sylvia Kahan will definitely find you.

Now, if only we all had a Sylvia Kahan to keep us on our toes. I think she's the bee's knees.

The Swedish word for the day is förtänksam, which is the closest translation I can find to the English word circumspect. If you take the word apart, it literally translates to something like thinking aheadful, more or less, and seems to be more accurately translated as prudent.

- by Francis S.

The husband and I had lunch with the priest last week at a peculiar restaurant with three counters for three different types of semi-hemi-demi fast food. "Pinnar eller bestick?" the girl behind the counter asked, and I held up the line for a minute, unable to decide whether to go for chopsticks or regular utensils (there, you've got your Swedish phrase for the day). Which was stupid, because wooden chopsticks always work so much better than plastic forks and knives for eating just about anything.

We sat down to our little cardboard cartons of food and dug in, and the conversation meandered onto the subject of funerals.

"The most horrible are the ones where it's just me, the organist and the funeral director in the back or outside smoking cigarettes," the priest said.

The husband and I were taken aback. Do they even have a funeral for someone if no one comes?

"Yes," she said, and sighed. "All the time. I just had one yesterday. It's unbearably sad. Instead of speaking to the people who have come, I speak to the person who has died. It's one of the worst parts of my job. And I think I couldn't stand it if I didn't believe in God."

We sat silently for just a second or two, among the clatter all around us. And then we moved nimbly on to the topic of the husband's trip to Spain, or the book I was reading, I don't actually remember what it was.

by Francis S.

It's time for the second annual Satin Pajama Awards, given out by the folks at Fistful of Euros. Last year, I won for best writing. This year, among other things, I am nominated for a lifetime achievement award. I guess that means that four and a half years of blogging means I'm ancient , if you're counting in blog years. Holy mother, sisters, cousins and aunts of god.

I stand among some of many of my other favorites: Stefan, Jill, Zoe, P.A., Curiosa, Veronica and especially Mig, who is definitely the most unappreciated of bloggers.

The Swedish word for the day is populär. It means popular, surprisingly.

- by Francis S.

Don't be afraid, be ready! (via the illustrious Mig.)

The Swedish word of the day is rådjurshagel, which is how my Swedish-English dictionary translates the word buckshot, although I'm skeptical about how accurate that may be.

Francis S.

Sometimes, melancholy is a good thing.

Depression, grief, heartbreak, these are never good things, but melancholy is something else altogether.

There's something heartrending but terribly satifying about seeing a movie where people betray true love, and themselves, and the objects of their love, and that moment where they realize the terrible thing they have done and the regret is almost too much to bear. Like when Timothy Bottoms comes back to Cloris Leachman at the end of Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show, and first she curses and throws things, and then, she breaks down and comforts him, holding his hand, and he can't even look at her, his eyes the saddest brown eyes in the whole world.

Shamelessly manipulative. But to every thing there is a season and a time, and there is definitely a time to be shamelessly, but oh so wonderfully manipulated. Just lay it on thick, and let me wallow in the melancholy.

Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that Larry McMurtry wrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. I think Heath Ledger must have the second saddest brown eyes in the whole world.

The Swedish word for the day is cowboy. I don't think you need me to translate that for you.

by Francis S.

I should have known: The voiceless palatal-velar fricative, voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative, voiceless postalveolar and velar fricative, voiceless coarticulated velar and palatoalveolar fricative are unique to the Swedish language.

In other words, no other recorded language uses this weird sound - spelled with an sk, sj or sometimes even skj - which to my best reckoning is like trying to say an English sh and w at the same time. It is, undoubtedly, the most difficult thing to approximate when you start learning to speak Swedish. And plenty of people never master it, I suppose, opting for a plain old sh, which is more or less how upper class ladies (at least they would describe themselves as ladies) from Stockholm's upper class neighborhood pronounce it.

I've long gotten over the voiceless palatal-velar fricative, though. Strangely, it's the vowels that still get me sometimes - being consistent with my long and short vowels (or is that vowels before long and short consonants?).

The Swedish phrase for the day is sjuttiosju sjösjuka sjömän sköttes av sju sköna sjuksköterskor, which means 77 seasick sailors were nursed by seven fair nurses.

- by Francis S.

The kind of earwax you have is controlled by the ATP-binding cassette C11 gene, according to Japanese researchers.

Who would've guessed? And here I always thought the ATP-binding cassette C11 gene was so innocuous.

And who knew there were two types of earwax?

And who starts to feel a little queasy just contemplating the whole earwax phenomenon?

The Swedish word for the day is forskning. It means research.

- by Francis S.

Happy New Year.

The Swedish word for the day is hundåret, which means a dog of a year, say Hanna and Ban~ken. As opposed to hundens år, which means the year of the dog.

- by Francis S.

If anyone asks me if I believe in ghosts, I tell them it's not that I believe in them, it's more that I just don't not believe in them.

But the truth is that my heart, the irrational part of myself, most definitely believes in them, no matter how skeptical the rest of me is. I remember when I was nine or ten, I would play the piano and wonder if the ghost of Bach was listening, and if he was insulted. Or if I played well enough would he appear and tell me how good I was (he never showed up, definitely a testament to my poor fingering, overuse of the damper pedal and tendency to play so fast that the notes would get all tangled up in knots and I'd have to start over again, which drove my father mad).

Just last weekend, when the husband was in Gothenburg over Saturday night, as I finally turned out the light and pulled the covers up tight to my chin, feeling very alone in bed, I wasn't worried about someone breaking into this vast apartment, I was actually worried that I would open my eyes to find a nasty spirit floating above me. Or something like that.

Not that I've ever actually seen a nasty spirit floating above me, or for that matter, a spirit of any kind above, below or beside me.

The problem is that no matter how hard I try, I can't will myself to really not believe, no matter what I say about not believing and not not believing.

I think it's time that I just give in and tell people, well, I've never seen any but yes, I suppose that I believe in ghosts.

Do you?

The Swedish word for the day is Spökslottet, which is the name of a mansion not far from Odenplan, and means the ghost castle.

- by Francis S.

Miscellaneous item No. 1: Walking to work in a heavy pair of work boots, my ankles and shins aching from the extra weight on my feet, I was suddenly wafted back to junior high school when it took a couple of days for my feet to get accustomed to my winter boots, and the day Deborah Newman threw one of my boots into the girls' locker room after school in a mad fit of 7th grade flirting. Sadly, it's been more than a week and my ankles and shins haven't adjusted.

Miscellaneous item No. 2: Yet another friend has jumped onto the blogwagon: Billy. Like me, he's having to face up to the fact that the only hairstyle available to him for the rest of his life involves the shortest setting on an electric razor. Stop by and leave a comment.

Miscellaneous item No. 3: The food was great, but the more I think about it, the more I find it disturbing that I ate at a trendy restaurant called "Döden i Grytan" - which means "Death in the pot" - along with the husband and P., another fashion photographer and I., the former backup singer to David Byrne. The fact that the name is Biblical in origin only makes it worse.

Miscellaneous item No. 4: Does having a black chandelier put you at a 6 on the Kinsey scale?

The Swedish verb for the day is att banta, which means to diet, which is something I've decided I really must do, after looking at holiday pictures.

- by Francis S.

The Swedish phrase for the day is så lyckades Birgit Nilsson hålla sin död hemlig. It means how Birgit Nilsson succeeded in keeping her death a secret.

I knew Birgit Nilsson was one of the world's great opera singers, but I didn't know she was actually able to manipulate things from the grave - obviously, she's not just a fabulous soprano, she's also a zombie.

(Cue magic fire music.)

- by Francis S.

Can there be anything more harrowing than parenthood?

Not that I can figure.

The thing is, when my little brother and his wife brought Owen home from the hospital to start his life in the big bad outside world, the doctors and nurses told them to watch out because he seemed a little jaundiced. And then, after a couple of days, he had become even more so, and the pediatrician said that he better go back in the hospital. And it turns out that Owen, poor little baby, is a rather severe hemophiliac. Which is quite treatable. But that is poor solace.

My brother told me they cried, they felt guilty, and then they had to face it; a three-step process that no doubt will be repeated for the rest of their lives. And me, I just felt sick and all I could think of was Owen, and of something my sister wrote to me, about how becoming a parent changes your life not in the way you think, but more in that you become so very vulnerable just because your children are so vulnerable. I can only imagine, since I lay awake all night thinking about my brother and his suffering for his son, and worrying about Owen, who is so very little, so very vulnerable.

But, the first reaction in my family is to be stoic. When my brother called to tell me all of this, he sounded a bit hoarse, but his voice was steady.

"The doctor said he can never be a boxer," he said.

We laughed.

The Swedish word for the day is blödarsjuka. It means hemophilia.

- by Francis S.

My beloved little brother and his wife, the rebel, are the proud parents of Owen, who arrived propitiously, two weeks early and with all tax advantages, on Dec. 31 at 9:30 p.m. in Manhattan while all of us in Stockholm were drunkenly swigging champagne at 4:30 a.m. here, a good four and a half hours into 2006.

Welcome to the wide world, baby boy.

The Swedish word for the day is farbror, which is what you call a paternal uncle; morbror is a maternal uncle.

- by Francis S.

Somewhere in the far north of Sweden, between Kalix and Boden, lies a lake ringed with hills, an abandoned sanatorium on one side, train tracks on the other, in a deep forest of pine trees heavy with snow.

If you are going to ice fish here, you come down a long road and park next to the sanatorium, which supposedly was sold to some Norwegians for 200,000 kronor a couple of years ago for them to turn into a spa, although there is some debate as to whether this is true; regardless, it remains empty.

From there, you walk past the sanitorium and beside the huge yellow villa - all verandas and fretwork and bay windows - and on down to the frozen water, where someone has made a path on the ice.

After a good half a kilometer's walk, you end up at a little shelter with a roaring fire burning beside it, and three guys drilling holes out on the ice, waiting for you to come and fish.

They give you a fishing reel and a couple of nasty pink maggots for you to spear on a hook and then plunge into the hole they've drilled for you. And you stand and fish, and it's minus 20 degrees celsius, though it doesn't feel it, and one of them talks to you with the thickest northern accent you've ever encountered (the worst is that somehow L becomes an R, which no one seems to believe me when I tell them, it took me a good 15 minutes to convince A., the TV producer, that this might possibly be true).

Then, suddenly, the former football star pukes violently, and the husband is complaining that his feet have frozen dangerously, and half of the group leaves in a hurry.

But you remain on the ice, failing to catch a fish but watching the northern winter sky, a curious pale eggshell blue that is at that moment the most beautiful color you've ever seen, but delicate, and the train goes past in the distance, and the trees are black green under all that white, and you think that winter could hardly be more romantic and how much you like the cold and ice and snow.

On the way back, you stop in and have coffee and cake and cookies and cloudberries at the house of a friend of the family who set the whole fishing thing up, and someone calls and asks about the football player, and when you get back in the car to go to Kalix, A. tells you that all of Kalix and Boden and Töre will be talking for decades about the time when the football star and the Spaniard - the husband, that would be - and the rest of the Stockholmers went fishing on the lake.

The Swedish word for the day is årsskiftet. It means the turning of the year.

- by Francis S.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is on my ass, and I don't know what I've done to deserve the persecution. After the frantic buying of presents, the days of frantic packing at work because we're moving offices, on top of trying to get all my work done to get ready for the long holiday, I'm actually enjoying myself at the office Christmas party strategically planned the day before we get up at the crack of ass to take a jet plane up to the far northern reaches of Sweden. I'm on my, oh, fifth beer or so, thinking about whether to dance a little before I leave, when the husband calls.

"The Christmas tree has fallen, and all the ornaments are smashed and the water has ruined the dining room floor," he tells me. "I just got home." It's 10:30 p.m., how could he have just gotten home? He was supposed to have been finished hours ago.

I'm leaving now, I told him. And so I left, thinking to myself on the No. 4 bus that he was just joking.

But no, when I get home, it's all shards of colored glass and pine needles, it's after 11:00, we haven't even wrapped the presents, done the laundry or packed.

A sadness settled deep into my chest, but I didn't say anything.

Now, it's 6:45 a.m., I've got a headache and in about 15 minutes we leave for a place even darker than here to celebrate, and I'm silently begging the Ghost to be gentle, because I'm feeling about as fragile as one of those ancient ornaments lying in the trash bin under the kitchen sink right now.

So, well, Merry Christmas, eh?

The Swedish word for the day, which usually pops up this time of year, is Jul. It means Christmas.

- by Francis S.

While it is not true, contrary to popular opinion, that polar bears prowl the streets of Stockholm, it is true that Swedes eat reindeer. Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolf, cooked in a delicious stew with chantarelle mushrooms and cream, served with lingonberries and potatoes. Quite tasty, and oh, so seasonal. Which is what A., the TV producer fixed last night for me and the husband, preparing us for our upcoming Christmas trip to the far north of Sweden. Except the husband didn't come, he was in a foul mood and chose to stay home. So the three of us, A., me and C., the fashion photographer sat and yakked it up about Christianity, soccer and Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize speech, which was quite a hit over here.

Then, after we'd cleared away the dishes, A. cried, "I've got to show you something!"

It was a comic book. Rocky. Not Rocket J. Squirrel, but a daily strip that runs in the No. 1 Swedish newspaper, a thinly veiled autobiographical strip starring a slacker dog and his slacker rat, crocodile and other strange animal friends and enemies. It is, without a doubt, damn funny.

"Read this!" she said.

It was a strip in which Rocky was on an airplane going to Malaysia to meet his girlfriend (slackers who become popular comic strip artists may still be slackers, but they have plenty of money to fly first class) and behind him a TV personality appears, exclaiming about the champagne and signing autographs, to which Rocky says she can sign his ass. Then an even more annoying TV personality shows up.

It was, well, sort of funny to see the TV personality as a silicon-enhanced bimbo dog, but...

"No, no, you don't understand, that really happened, I was on that plane on the way to Malaysia! I was there! That was when we were doing the show in Kuala Lumpur!"

When she read it, A. was at first horrified that she would appear in the next frame, but then when she didn't appear, she was terribly disappointed.

"I could have been immortalized as a Rocky comic character! Damn, how come he didn't put me in, too?"

The Swedish word for the day is tecknad serie. It means comic strip.

- by Francis S.

Librarians are apparently the latest threat to American security. At least that's the current thinking going around the FBI these days:

"While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from [the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review's] failure to let us use the tools given to us." This comes from an anonymous FBI e-mail that the Electronic Privacy Information Center sued to get, and then handed over to the New York Times.

I guess patriotic Americans everywhere now need to be on the lookout for radical militant librarians. I wonder if old Mrs. Conten qualifies, the librarian at the tiny library in Franklin, Michigan who gave my brothers and sister and I each a present when we moved away when I was in the second grade.

I'm sure the Department of Homeland Security has a form for reporting on suspicious radical militant librarian behavior. If it doesn't, perhaps someone should suggest creating one.

The Swedish word for the day is bibliotekarie, which is a bear of a word to pronounce for some reason (it sounds something like bib-lee-oh-teck-CAR-ee-eh, that last syllable a schwa that almost disappears). It means librarian, of course.

- by Francis S.

Poor Condoleezza Rice. It looks like the White House has left her out to dry. No one on this side of the Atlantic seems to be very convinced by all her awkwardly presented but very carefully crafted statements about the U.S. being against torture. Of course she's awkward! Because while she blathers on, Dick Cheney is lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from the ban on torture that John McCain is sponsoring in the Senate.

Exactly how stupid does the White House think we are?

As usual, I can't possibly express the depth of my disgust.

The Swedish word for the day is bekymmer. It means worry.

- by Francis S.

Living in this land of extremes brings out the biology in me. Meaning that when the sun goes down at 14:51, I want to go down with it, just curl up in my nice cozy bed and sleep until it rises again at 8:30.

Winter must've been hell here before electric lights. I guess everyone spent most of their time sleeping.

The Swedish phrase for the day is sparka honom på smalbenen! It means kick him in the shins!

- by Francis S.

There's nothing revolutionary about love, or family. Even gay families. Yet there are so few of us, and so many who would stop or dismantle us, that our family is a marvel, a tribute to love's persistence. To love's permanence. To tomorrow.

Aaron and Keith have adopted their son, they are officially and legally fathers, incontestably in 21 states (incontestably that is with a bit of contortion and hoop-jumping, of course). I wonder if this means they won't be travelling as a family to the remaining 29 states?

We drank a toast to them with Bellini cocktails in the Blue Hall, Sweden's most beautiful people in a mad swirl around us. "To Aaron and Keith and Jeremiah," we said, our glasses touching briefly. "To love."

Now it's your turn. Go ahead, drink a toast to Aaron and Keith and Jeremiah.

The Swedish words for the day are familj, which means family and värderingar, which means values. I've never actually heard anyone use these two words in the same sentence here.

- by Francis S.

For those of you who, like all of us here in Sweden, missed out yesterday on Thanksgiving: a carbonated replacement.

(According to the Village Voice, it's not very tasty, surprisingly.)


The Swedish word for the day is annandag, and means the day after, as in the day after Thanksgiving.

- by Francis S.

Moments after we'd dragged ourselves home from the controversial great big extravaganza party fashion show anniversary event thing in the Blue Hall, where they hold the Nobel Prize dinner, we couldn't resist reliving the whole experience for the benefit of our guests visiting from the other side of the Atlantic.

"How was it?!?" crowed the soon-to-be massage therapist.

All the beautiful people of Stockholm and me, I said, rushing to get out of my too-tight suit, the husband ahead of me, shedding clothes down the back hall as he went.

Then I tried to describe why a runway show is so dizzyingly, eye-wateringly, breathtakingly electric, and I couldn't explain why I found it so compelling. (Of course I found it thrilling no doubt because, well, it's the only runway show I've ever seen.)

So the husband demonstrated, first with the sashaying walk of the best of the six-foot tall girls in their six-inch sandals and then with the cold throwaway looks of the chiseled boys, parading up and down the living and dining rooms, his compact frame and four-day beard making it look all too ridiculous and causing us to roll around on the sofa laughing helplessly.

But it really is fabulous, I said. My favorite part was seeing I., long since retired from modelling, up on the stage and the only one of the 50 or so models comfortable enough to really laugh on the catwalk.

As for the reception, the husband and C., the fashion photographer and A., the TV producer were all in their element: the fashion mafia of Sweden. Of course there was a liberal sprinkling of B celebrities, wives of rich men, and minor royalty, but really the place was mostly a swarm of fashionistas.

Which made me wonder, as I sometimes do when life seems like a dream I'll wake up from: How did I get here?

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

- by Francis S.

Every time I think I'm getting my writing momentum back, I backslide. And there's been so much to write about: Some 800 people from all over Sweden, dressed to the nines, hair so very worked up you could cut your cheeks walking through the crowd if you weren't careful and my own husband standing up in front of them for three hours handing out awards and working through a long script of patter, changing clothes three times and looking so very mod and so very handsome and making it impossible for me to stop smiling out of sheer pride that he's my husband. The totally unrelated party afterwards at Lydmar, us feeling terribly out of place in our suits among a bunch of arty bohemian-type Londoners and New Yorkers. There was the lamb that the husband spent three hours cutting up (no head or innards, thank God.) The baby grand piano that we bought so that I can play Brahms intermezzos and Chopin waltzes and Bach preludes and Scarlatti sonatas to my heart's content. The guests who are arriving tomorrow from America. And friends suddenly starting their own blogs.

So much happening, so little time to write.

The Swedish word for the day is upptagen. It means busy.

- by Francis S.

Living here in this chilly and dark Swedish-speaking paradise, I sometimes miss the latest cultural hoo-ha in America. For instance, it was only a couple of weeks ago that I got an e-mail from my favorite Finn that casually dropped the phrase "eats, shoots & leaves," which briefly flummoxed me. But I was promptly distracted by something inconsequential and forgot about it.

Until yesterday, when I came across the phrase again. This time I found out that it was a book of rants by some grammar fascist and it came out a year ago at least. Far more interesting, I ended up reading a review of the book by Louis Menand from the New Yorker, in which he points out many errors made by the grammar fascist, and notes that Americans are more rigid about punctuation than the British. Which isn't surprising: I suspect that the colonized (hard to think of the U.S. as the colonized), in an attempt to counteract their sense of inferiority to the mother country (this would be England, which America still feels inferior to when it comes to anything cultural), tend to point to rules with nasty wagging fingers, and do their best to codify, mummify and worship the language (or other cultural elements, artefacts, what have you), sometimes stupidly, sometimes not so stupidly.

But what I liked best about the review was that it careened all over the place, and ended up talking about the importance of the voice in writing, the difficulty of describing what voice is, and the fear that writers have of losing it. He also mentioned the disappointment of readers meeting a favorite writer, whose actual voice just can't live up to the writing.

All of which made me wonder about this day and age where people like you and I have our own written voices with our own tiny audiences, some of whom inevitably we end up meeting.

Exactly how disappointed must people be when they meet me in the flesh?

The Swedish phrase for the day is hemskt besviken. It means horribly disappointed.

- by Francis S.

Paris is burning, I thought to myself on the No. 42 bus on my way to work.

It was a great movie, Paris is Burning. Periodically, I would look for it, but my research always came down to "not available." When I saw it the first time - I think it was in Rochester, New York - it cut to the bone somehow, inspiring such a complex tangle of feelings: delight, sorrow, anger, frustration. And it instilled in me tremendous respect for the bravery of drag queens.

But, oddly coincidental, it seems with Paris really burning, at long last things have changed and you can now see Paris is Burning on DVD at last.

I'm gonna buy me one.

The Swedish word for the day is djärv. It means bold, audacious, daring.

- by Francis S.

I used to think that mainline protestant churches in the U.S., once they'd lost significant power over people's lives, finally became what they should have been all along: benificent institutions existing to actually make people's lives better. I have even been known to defend these so-called Christian denominations.

Then they go and make me look stupid.

The United Methodist Church, a church with a tagline - "Open hearts. Open Minds. Open doors." - just voted to reinstate a minister who was suspended for not allowing a gay man to become a member because the man was gay and had no desire to change.

I guess I'm not welcome by the Methodists.

Apparently "open doors" refers strictly to exit doors in the Methodist church. I have no idea what the "open hearts" and "open minds" could possibly be referring to, however.

It's almost enough to shake my faith. It's also definitely enough to make me wonder if I've been wrong in thinking that churches have lost much of their power: It's hard not to feel that right-wing churches are doing a damn good job of turning the U.S. into some kind of bizarre theocracy, wherein religion has risen to play a major role in deciding public policy.

What I want to know is, what would a state church look like in the U.S.?

The Swedish word for the day is stängd. It means closed.

- by Francis S.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," the husband said casually over dinner with A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer. "I bought a lamb."

Not some lamb, or even lamb. A lamb.

"It's organic," he said. "It's coming next weekend. You guys get half and we'll keep the other half. Although we need to get someone to cut it up for us, or maybe we can do it ourselves."

No, I said, we can not cut it up ourselves.

A. protested, saying they had no room for it.

I myself was thinking about a freezer full of lamb brains, stomach, kidneys, liver and pancreas. Somehow, the idea of making my own haggis has never appealed to me, and I've never particularly liked leg of lamb, it's a bit too woolly for my taste. But I could see visions of lambchops and tagines dancing in the husband's head. Which immediately brought to mind a dancing lamb's head. Surely they won't give us the head...

Ecce agnus, goddamit?

I guess I'm living under delusions of gastronomic grandeur: I'm a meat sissy, when push comes to shove.

The Swedish word for the day is tjänst. It means service.

- by Francis S.

Each night, after dinner, my father went downstairs to his workbench to build birdhouses, which he fashioned from scraps of wood left over from pine-paneling our basement. He was a connoisseur of birdhouses, my mother said.

.

Those are the first sentences of Mother of Sorrows. It's a string of pearls, that book. Read it, and tell Richard McCann how much you love it.

The Swedish word for the day is hjärtat. It means the heart.

- by Francis S.

When I was a little kid, it was always the college kids who were protesting things: the Vietnam War, mostly. Of course, I did a bit of protesting myself when I was in college and afterwards - about issues like abortion rights, gay rights, that kind of stuff.

It's strange how things have changed.

Now it seems that it's old people doing the protesting: My 71-year-old parents are driving down from Chicago to Fort Benning, Georgia in November to protest against the School of the Americas, the States' own training school for, um, "enemy combatants."

When I grow up, I want to be just like my parents.

Well, maybe not just like them. But I have such admiration for the way they live out their beliefs: They spend most of their time helping people who need help. Tutoring poor kids. Volunteering at a shelter. Building a Habitat for Humanity house (actually, my dad is in charge of his second house). Teaching teachers what it means to be sensitive about gay issues in school.

If people ask me what's good about America, I should tell them: my parents.

The Swedish noun for the day is en troende. It means a believer.

- by Francis S.

Whoa. Researchers are apparently concerned that sex in space could cause conflicts on a mission to Mars.

I wonder how they ever came to such a conclusion.

Apparently crews in space stations "often pair up in 'bachelor marriages' that last the length of their stay" the article from New Scientist contends. Medical anthropologist Lawrence Palinkas says "if there are instances of sexual conflict or infidelity, that may lead to a breakdown in crew functioning."

On the other hand, sex or masturbation could help alleviate boredom and anxiety on the long, lonely journeys through space, according to Carol Rinkleib Ellison, a pyschologist.

"Bachelor marriages," masturbation, sexual conflict?

I thought space travel was all about being macho and outwitting devious computers, saving the planet and eating freeze-dried ice cream from a straw.

Where do I sign up?

The Swedish word for the day is rymdskepp. It means spaceship.

- by Francis S.

So I'm back from Budapest and I've got stage fright.

The problem is, I got my name in the paper, and now I'm scared to write anything, um, pointed about Swedish travel habits, on account of the thousands of Swedes that are suddenly reading this.

Do I dare mention that Swedes, who are a well-travelled people on the whole, are surprisingly squeamish about dirt (and sometimes don't seem to realize that what may at first glance look like dirt is merely age), and are unnecessarily picky about their food and wine (even though most actually don't really know a good wine from a bad one... not that I know any better myself)?

Still, they are hellbent on having a good time, and usually succeed. I can't come close to keeping up with the drinking and dancing into the wee hours, three days in a row. Especially when I'm suffering from the tail end of a nasty flu.

Sadly, the old Turkish baths in Budapest that I wanted to go to were being renovated, so I ended up going to the Gellert baths to cure my aching lungs.

(Coming back into Stockholm on the airport train, I noticed that they've changed the message that comes on over the loudspeakers as the train approachs Centralstation - it was a welcome from, god help us, Swedish personality and grade B-celebrity, boxer and "politician" Paolo Roberto. Strange, that.)

The Swedish word for the day is kändisar. It means celebrities.

- by Francis S.

Off to Budapest, to the Turkish baths. Back on Monday.

The Swedish word for the day is Östeuropa. It means Eastern Europe.

- by Francis S.

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.