March Pieces Of My Mind #2

• Swedish Mail’s money transfer numbers usually have eight digits. My mother’s number has four. This is because the account was originally opened by her grandfather in 1925, shortly after the service started.
• Kipling was quite conservative in many things, but still a recurrent theme in his short stories is a deep sympathy for women who have extra-marital affairs and children.
• I’ve become a 2010s computer user. I catch myself expecting screens to be touch screens.
• Would the scifi story mag Analog sell better if they renamed it Anal Log?
• Certain countries have their own sexual acts. And it struck me that there’s actually one from the folklore of the Stockholm archipelago too. Strömmingstag: fucking on top of your herring nets to improve your future catch.
• The guy whose enthusiastic review is quoted on the jacket blurb for the 1980s Swedish omnibus edition of LeGuin’s Earthsea books is completely unknown to me. Googling, I find that his main claims to fame were as municipal politician and theatre reviewer in Borlänge, pop. 42,000.
• Huh. Game designer and Star Wars novelist Aaron Allston dead at 53 from massive heart failure at gaming convention. )-:
• A good thing about the list you get of everybody who applies for the same job as you in the Swedish public sector is that it’s so easy to forward the list to Hell’s Angels. It only gets tricky when the bidding war starts among the job applicants for whom the Angels are not going to dissuade.
• Jrette and her mother have made a deal. Instead of buying new pants for Jrette, she will wear mom’s pants for a period now until she grows too tall for them.
• “All the while, as he speaks softly and listens attentively, his eyes gleam, and one knows he is thinking of the strange sights he has seen and the odd deeds he has done.” Jack Vance 1964, The Killing Machine
• I really loved the Vertibird.
• Linda Lundberg has just succeeded me as chairperson of the Swedish Skeptics. I’m very pleased. She’s got what it takes and I’m sure she’ll do a better job than I did.
• I turned my keyboard upside down and found abundant forensic evidence that somebody’s been using my computer. This person has crew-cut dark hair and dandruff, and he/she apparently likes to eat cookies at my desk. Hmmm.
• An old Swedish saying has it that young mothers have milk in their breasts and porridge in their heads. My pride forbids me to believe that. My friend Maria is just entering the third trimester. Saturday night she beat four male gaming geeks resoundingly at Shogun, a game she had never played before.
• Geocaching is doing well in Sweden. A new cache showed up near my house this morning. When I got there, three people were already busy searching for it.
• Carouse, from German gar aus, all out, meaning “Bottoms up, the place is closing”.
• Heh. This Atlantis believer calls me “an obviously third-rate archaeologist” for criticising Thor Heyerdahl.
• Re-listened to MGMT’s 2008 debut album. They were the first band I liked who were ten years younger than me. They were hugely hyped at the time. And now they’re in their 30s, respected musicians, third album out last year, not getting the same attention any more.
• Bars are pointless to me. I don’t drink. I find shouted bar conversations a waste of time. I either arrive with a knockout woman who’s coming home with me or she’s waiting for me there, so I needn’t think about the women. Besides, late-90s experience taught me that though good at the chat I’m crap at the bar pickup. Possibly because I never stayed until closing time.
• Google Translate informs me that in English, Sw. Rundkvist translates to “Rundquist”.
• Have you read any of the self-published erotica that David Eddings put out before he made it big with those fantasy novels? I quite like Porn of Prophecy myself.
• Another ugly American usage that must stop: “quantify” for “define / understand rationally”.