October Pieces Of My Mind #3

Lake Kolbottensjön

• Each member of Jrette’s class has been given the task of writing a song. They’ve got ten weeks to do it. Jrette wrote hers in the first week, including guitar chords, and is now writing for the other artists.
• Remember 80s photo comics? Does anybody do that anymore?
• A Shannara TV series? But why? The first novel is remarkably bad.
• Victoria’s Secret is running an ad with the tagline “Obsessed with very sexy”. Being completely oblivious to women’s underwear, I find this silly beyond belief.
• Mulligatawny soup means Chubby Tony soup in Swedish.
• The archaeology journal In Situ Archaeologica has gone Open Access.
• “De-railed”, Sw. urspårat, is a common technical term in Swedish place-name studies. It’s when the users of a place name forget completely about its original meaning and component linguistic elements, and start pronouncing it in increasingly strange and misunderstood ways. An infamous example is Hönsgärde, “Chicken Enclosure”, a hamlet between Stockholm and Uppsala, which was originally named Hidkinskialf, “Hidkin’s Ledge”.
• Junior’s old buddy used to be this androgynous elfin child. Met him again today and found him to be tall, square-jawed and broad of shoulder. Still super pretty though.
• Reading Carl Fredric Broocman’s 1760 book on Östergötland. Super impressed, huge amounts of info there. It’s in full on Google Books.
• My dad is still running around happily and ably re-doing people’s kitchens and bathrooms thanks to recent advances in stroke care. This post is a joint ad for his carpentry firm and Hjärnfonden, the Swedish Brain Foundation.
• In 1747 James Lind famously performed the first medical experiment with a placebo control wing, demonstrating that lemon juice is a quick and effective cure for scurvy. This was however already widely known, just not studied in this important new rigorous manner. And also, Europeans had known since the Middle Ages that Scurvygrass, Cochlearia officinalis, has the same property. This insight goes back so far that we know of no older name for the plant in several North European languages.
• I give some money to a hostel for the homeless in my home town around this time every year.
• Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children has a pretty big cast of characters. I wish I were reading it on the Kindle so I could search the text.
• The earliest mention of tarring and feathering as a punishment is from 12th century England. It’s in Scandinavian Medieval law codes too, Frostathingsloven and Bjärköarätten.
• Saturday morning: woke at seven to solid darkness and rain. Spirit buoyed by tea and the news of Mueller’s first indictments.
• Like almost all Swedes my age, I have large vaccination scars on my left thigh and left shoulder. Also, my upper front teeth are unnaturally even. My body is full of bioarchaeological evidence for social healthcare practises about AD 1980.
• The “Alouette” song is nothing but a long string of graphic violent threats against larks.
• Hey young folks. Just admit that your half-socks are ridiculously impractical, OK?
• Movie: Bladerunner 2049. Super pretty, plot confused but not offensively stupid. Grade: OK.
• How hard would it be for replicants to discover independently of Deckard that they are fertile? Duh.

Second bloom, October rose