I dreamt about

I had a dream this weekend, about me and me son. We were out driving, I don't know where we were going, it didn't seem like we quite knew. I think we were someplace near home, it was all open and flat landscapes, just like central Uppland. After a while we came to a place. Somewhere that tries to be some place, it had a parking lot and some houses. The parking lot was sort of big, in several sections but not in that industrial way like outside a big well planned shopping mall but like near some ancient attraction where the parking spaces are just sprawled about all around in little pieces. People were walking everywhere, it must have been a pretty popular place. Some houses where nearby, several of them pretty big though we were in the countryside. Two cars were just ahead of us and they were revving and playing, going much too fast, there were people everywhere. It was summer or late spring.

Strangely, it didn't turn into a nightmare where I hit the gas to get away from the kids driving too fast.

One of the cars, I think it was a small BMW estate, had pulled ahead, then turned around and came back full throttle. I could imagine him showing off to the rest of us and he wasn't looking at what he should have been looking at. People were milling about. Some young men were loitering and not paying attention to the cars, too cool to care. One of them was just standing in the street and that BMW just ran head on into him. It was a nasty accident though not spectacular. Just real. Except I knew I was dreaming, just waiting for it to turn nightmare-nasty.

In my dream I thought huh? Am I not supposed to wake up now? But it wasn't a real nightmare.

I pulled my car over diagonally behind the run-over kid. The BMW sped away and went off. I hit the warning blinkers and fumbled for my phone, stepping out.

Nobody else was moving. Nobody was doing anything. The driver was gone. The kid's friends melted away into the scenery and nobody else was stepping forward. Frantic, I found myself trying to do the right things, calling for an ambulance and doing what I could for the kid.

My son was awkwardly moving around and I tried to tell him how to act.

In that instant I understood that this wasn't a nightmare about something I did or had to do but a nightmare about my son.

And then I woke myself.

Later the next day, I went to get some movies at the library. I found two movies I knew my son wanted - The drunken angel and A streetcar named Desire, the old one with Brando and Leigh. Yep, that's his taste. But best of all, I found Cyrano, and Axel sounded like he'd really like watching it. For some reason, library movies are in much worse shape than rentals. I don't quite understand why, people must be less careful with them maybe because they're free. Maybe these movies just see more traffic.

After dinner we popped Cyrano into the player and started watching. Cyrano is such a delightful movie. Axel just discovered knowing languages is fun and though he doesn't know any French he does know a bit of Spanish and I'm trying to encourage pretending you know languages just so you can pick up a smattering of it.

"Holy crap he's speaking in verse all the time!"

Delightful. Of course, just then the movie just... ceased. Popped out the disc and sure enough upon inspection it's clear this disc isn't playable. It's so scratched it's a miracle we could even watch the first ten minutes.

We are not to be deterred however, it's Saturday and we're set for a movie. Next we try Streetcar. Inspecting that disc would have been cheating so we didn't and the first ten or fifteen are just fine. We sit there adapting to new manners, new language, another way to condense drama.

Of course, that one didn't work either.

Now we're laughing at the hopelessness of it all. I say we'll check the online rental. We're talking about other times when movies haven't worked for us and we're agreeing that this is worse than all of them, even worse than when Queen of the damned failed in the last ten minutes.

We find 8 1/2 in the rental menu, but there's an Almodovar as well, and Axel really likes those, partly because it's Spanish. So we choose that one - All about my mother. I hadn't seen it, don't know what it's about.

Turns out it's about a kid being killed in a car accident. Freaky, with the dream the night before. Then the film changes. This film turns around so many times, you never really settle into the story. The kid's mother is into theater and one play is in focus for most of the movie. At first we don't notice what play it is.

After a few minutes more Axel suddenly exclaims, holy crap, it's Streetcar.

And it is. It's Blanche and Stella and Stanley. I just sit there taking in this weird situation and it's like the whole dream the night before and the whole evening, everything has just been leading up to this story about Spanish prostitutes.

Nothing else of consequence happens this evening but I will never forget the BMW and Streetcar named Desire. I'm not the one to believe in hidden life messages in dreams but sometimes it's hard to stop your mind from wandering.

Now I just have to figure out what that dream meant.

frustrated

I've had problems with my lower back for about 15 years. I've been to doctors and therapists and they've confidently given me training programmes and told me to quit smoking.

Side note: There *is* a possible connection between a bad back and smoking - smoking hinders the blood flow and if the muscles in the back are a little too weak the smoking can be what breaks the camel's back, so to speak. None of the doctors bothered to explain this so I just thought they were bullshitting me with the standard "quit smoking" formula.

I've had x-ray of spinal discs. I've been more or less handicapped at times. Especially in later years it has been worst in the mornings and I've had to become careful with what beds I sleep in, as some could almost paralyze me. In the mornings after getting up I sometimes get a sharp stabbing pain in the lower back that hurts so much my whole body just shuts down. I just fall to the floor like a ragdoll. Way scary to feel it coming while walking in the stairs.

This new year's, I slept on one of those new air matresses while we were visiting my folks. It's about 2 ft thick and they come with an integrated reversible electric pump, I'm sure they're being sold everywhere.

I slept like a baby and had no back pain when I got up. That has not happened in years, literally.

So last weekend I went and bought one just to see if it was really true and not some freak coincidence. I've slept on it every night since then and ... wow. I'm like a new person. I'm 25 again.

Rumour has it it's similar to sleeping on a waterbed. I'll be shopping for a really good bed shortly. Right now I'm so relieved, and at the same time so frustrated at all the professionals I've paid to help me and who never considered this or asked about it. I thought my bed was as good as they get but evidently I was wrong.

At the same time I'm angry that I've been so ignorant and naive, myself.

More of the same

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

(Note, this is a preliminary version, but I put it up anyway cause I don't have time to fiddle with images right now)

The assault on Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, AZ, has sparked an intense debate in the US, and immense media coverage abroad. The US debate is focused on how some see the violent agitation in US politics to be directly or indirectly responsible for the attack. Outsiders will probably be quick to accept that view and at least from a European or Scandinavian point of view, it's easy to also blame the US (AZ) gun laws.

What I'm missing from the coverage here is the memory of our own experiences of similar events, which is really disturbing considering I'm speaking of two of the defining moments of Swedish history of the past 25 years: the murders of Olof Palme and Anna Lindh.

Yeah. Murders of prominent politicians right on the street, apparently committed by outsiders. Way more prominent than Giffords. Twice. And Swedish political climate is way off from the anti-Obama polemics of present day US politics.

Note: for simplicity's sake, the characterization of the Palme and Lindh cases are vastly simplified in the following. The Palme case especially so, since it is officially unsolved. For the sake of discussion, assume in the following that the Pettersson-Tingström connection is the valid and proven guilty party of the Palme murder. I don't mean to imply that this is the case, I'm just using the possibility to make a point and create a discussion.

Some background: Swedish PM Olof Palme was gunned down in 1986. The man who was tried for the shooting (convicted and then aquitted, since deceased) was a small-time criminal, Christer Pettersson, with lots of links to a guy who is probably the closest you'll get in Sweden to US anti-fed extremists, Lars Tingström: a violent and systematic offender who saw in society a conspiracy against himself specifically, and the government and the left, led by Palme, as the head of the snake. Tingström was convicted of three bombings against government and justice targets, like Pettersson he also died a few years later (both from natural causes, btw).

Anna Lindh was stabbed to death in an apparent spur of the moment attack in a Stockholm department store in 2003. The murderer was Mijailo Mijailović, a 24-year old with mental issues. He simply encountered Lindh and decided to get a knife and attack her. Mijailović stated later that he'd been hearing voices and not sleeping for a period of days leading up to the attack. Mijailović's guilt is beyond doubt, linked by DNA evidence from the murder weapon and his presence documented by cameras, and after a few months in jail he also admitted his guilt.

As far as is known, neither Pettersson-Tingström nor Mijailović acted on behalf of any political group nor did they have views that aligned them to any particular extent with such groups. In the case of Palme, he was a target for right-wing hatred in a way that is quite similar to that aimed at Obama the past few years. Less abundant perhaps, but just as over the top and tasteless. Lindh was not a target in this sense. She was widely assumed to be the next leader of Sweden's biggest party, a well liked and respected political figure at the very top of the political hierarchies of Sweden. At 46, most people in the country assumed she would have gone on to become Sweden's first female PM within the next few years.

Loughner seems to be more insane than political, judging by the incoherent ravings on Youtube. More Mijailović than Pettersson or Tingström.

Enough with the background detail. Each case is different and more so the more you look at them. The point I'm getting at is that there have been two high-profile murders of prominent Swedish politicians, murders not so vastly different from the attack on Gabrielle Giffords. Perhaps the similarities between the cases could teach us all something?

Obviously, gun laws would not have stopped Mijailović - he used a Mora knife. The Smith & Wesson used to kill Palme has not been found but if one continues to assume that the Pettersson-Tingström theory is plausible, they were well enough at home in outlaw territory that they could easily have gotten hold of a weapon regardless of gun control laws. I gather that Loughner should not have been allowed to buy that Glock under the present gun laws of Arizona (though I've seen tatements indicating the opposite as well), this part of gun control obviously failed. Comparing to Mijailović, it's clear to me that nut-cases will be able to get hold of a weapon, but: if Loughner had had to make do with a knife, 5 people who are dead today would probably not have been.

The part that really interests me though, is the moral issue of the rethorics. Let us assume that Tingström indeed did enroll Pettersson in his private crusade against the Palme government. The anti-Palme rethorics of the 80s included leaflets with bull's eye patterns and caricatures that most resembled the pictures of jews favored by Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer. If that doesn't qualify as violent rethorics, I don't know what does. This rethoric appeared on the fringe of the right wing of the established political spectrum of Sweden. Similar to how the Tea party consists of the far end of the established conservatives or the Republican party in the US, actually.

That anti-Palme fringe was never part of daily political debate, but if it had been, what would we have said about guilt? Would it have been a valid point to say that it shared responsibility for the murder of Palme? Of course not. Would it have been disgusting polemics that should have no place in political debate? Certainly. It was, regardless of actual violence.

So, do Palin, Kelly and others who use violent rethorics on either end of the political spectrum share responsibility for Loughner's deed? Equally certainly, of course not. Is it disgusting polemics that anyone with a functional moral compass should stay clear of? Oh yes. Palin for one knows this. The fact that the much talked about cross hairs were promptly removed from her website tells us that she does. The lack of a straightbacked apology for the tasteless symbolics is disturbing, but it's hardly criminal in any sense of the word, nor should it be. Tasteless, foul and stupid - yes. That's the only crime relevant to the cross-hairs.

And for readers in Europe: what happened in Tucson can and will happen in Europe. It has happened in Sweden already, and it didn't take violent agitation or lack of gun control. An assault only takes one nut-case. The assault on Giffords does not prove or even illustrate anything about America being different from Europe - in fact it shows that some things are eerily similar.

Violent and tasteless rethorics has no place in serious political debate and should be left out. How this can be a surprise to anyone is beyond my grasp.

Despite the bible thumping and gun toting, America and Americans are more similar to Europe and Europeans than most of us realize. Under the skin, we're just the same. Even the psychos.

* Now you're at the end of the text and you're thinking I don't know about those cross-hairs not being cross-hairs but surveyor's markers ("purveyor's markers" according to some sources). Wrong. I do know about it. I'm still pondering whether I should write about that or not because I'm simply not sure I can keep that part as respectful as I'd like. As things now stand, I don't think I'll write that second part - for instance, Barefoot & progressive expresses it much better than I could do.

Two, no, three little things that happened not so long ago

First, anyone who missed theBloggess' heroic, fantastic holiday gift drive, check this out and think to yourself, next year I'll do something like that. Here's an article about it in the Washington Post. I also consider her daily bloggings to be among the best there is on the net but mileage may vary.

Second, another kind of serious entry in the media flow: an open letter in response to the statements by Michael Moore. Lashing out is more fun than waiting for things to run their course, and it gives less press. That's not a very good starting point for deciding what's right or wrong, though.

Third, if you're the tech type, you didn't miss this, but maybe there's still someone around who would be as fascinated, awestruck by this as I was and who hasn't seen it yet - so here's that babel fish iPhone app.



Freakin' awesome.

The meteoric rise of inanity

Stupid idiom: "meteoric rise."

Meteors go down. It's what they do. It's all they do. If they don't, they're not meteors, they're just rocks.

I am aware that technically, it is possible for a meteor to be a so-called earth-grazer. This is a one in a many-billions event, and none of you have seen one. So, nyah.

Don't call anything that's moving upwards "meteoric." The word you're looking for may be shining or brilliant, it may be ballistic or rocket-like or just upwards. Anything but meteoric.

Meteors go down.

Leonid meteor. Wikipedia image.

Bruce, pt 2

I'm mildly disappointed by the Promise box. My expectations weren't very high about the actual content, it was to a large extent more paying homage to my own past - but I did expect more after all the talk before-hand. I saw journalists handing out full score reviews left and right, and I just don't think that's fair.

There are some parts to look at when reviewing the whole package that is The Promise, let's take them one by one.

First, it's a remaster of the best record ever. That's a 5/5, how could it possibly be anything else.

Second, it's a double CD with discarded songs from the Darkness sessions. This is where I think journalists didn't quite think, step back and really think. It's a bit magic to hear these recordings. The first time we can hear them in highest possible quality at the very least, and several of them truly never heard before. But hey, guys? These songs seem mostly like... well, discarded stuff to me. Really discarded stuff. Sure, Fire and Because are pretty tight and finished, but they're not really news, and - heresy - I never really liked either of them. They're filler for me. They illustrate perfectly why none of these songs made it onto the Darkness album. Most of the songs are heavily cannibalized for lyrics and often for score as well. As can be seen in the DVD material, the band made several other songs during this period that did eventually make it onto the River, and justifiably, because those songs are all superior to anything on The promise: Sherry darling, The ties that bind, Independence day, and more.

Two other songs are worth mentioning: The "rock" version of Racing, so dubbed by journalists. WTF, "rock"? How can a journalist call this a "rock" version of anything when it's a reject from the album that starts with Badlands and Adam raised a Cain? Second, The Promise. I'm sorry, this may be the best of the songs on its own, but it's also too sentimental, it lacks a point and it lacks musical push. It would have made sense as a single somewhere around the time of Darkness but it suffers heavily in comparison to the collective works that make up Born to run and Darkness and in this context, even The river.

Taken as a new or forgotten Bruce double CD, The Promise is maybe 2 or 3/5. As add on material to Darkness, 4/5.

Third, The making of Darkness DVD. This is awesome. 5/5.

Fourth, The Houston house cut. 4/5 for afficionados. It's a shame there's apparently nothing better to release from the Darkness tour era. The Library of Congress should have intervened. For outsiders, 2-3/5. There are several better full concerts released already.

Fifth, the 2009 DVD. Hmm. A curiosity. I can't imagine why a non-fan would want this.

Finally, more scattered extra material. Not rating that, just noting that it's there.

The box is for fans, and it's a treat. It's no earth-shaker though. It's a boon and I'm glad I have it. I'm gonna leave it at that.

Why? Why?

One of the deepest mysteries of the net, to me, is how all weird page hits happen. Why are there suddenly a dozen page hits from some company's IP range, hits that leave no trace whatsoever except those page hits? On the rare occasions that you find an explanation it's always unromantic and unfantastic and very down to earth - but unexplained, these occurrences are so utterly baffling.