I am not good at entertaining myself, and people are not returning my calls. Here are a few ideas I’ve been tossing around as to how I can become more “fun”:

Since I’m working with architecture at the moment, maybe now is the time to start planning that hobbit house that I’ve been dreaming about. I will pass on the round doors though.

Feed evil people to my free-range pet or get more hot sex with 40+ dancers who appreciate cheating on their husbands. Both are OK. Stop watching Californication which cannot be good for anyones constitution.

Photoshop the title covers of self-help books. Possibly subvert hypnosis self-improvement audiotapes to sow the seeds of confusion and future bedlam.

Go on vacation and learn to appreciate sleeping by the pool. Get a horrible tan and spend two weeks peeling my skin in public until I am porous enough to bleed like a sponge.

Accidentally knocking a catholic up, or dress like a retarded rabbit.

Yesterday there was a big party behind Konstfack. A club called Landet celebrated 3 years, a long time in club terms, and had rented a factory with a capacity of 1500 people or so. My brother and Jonas are heading there with their respective clicks of friends. I’m supposed to meet up – first one there is the que placeholder.

Turns out that half ten there are more than 3000 people there. It’s like a very big lemming-fest. I estimate the wait to be at least an hour and a half, in the dark and cold, send Jonas a picture over the phone, and abandon the party-hardy-all-nighty plan, and settle for beer.

The weekend has been spend playing a repetetive flash game that I will not link in fear of addicting you, and catching up on all the podcasts that I’ve been downloading but haven’t bothered with. Particularly fascinating is the videocast that CDC (Center for Disease Control) is putting out. In their series on the history of biological terrorism, none of the spokespeople look into a camera, looking rather as were they recording a radio-show. Or they are mechadroids, with even their pauses and emphasis scripted.

Anyone who believes that the US doesn’t perform clandestine experiments with biological weapons anymore, would you say I am a cynical person?

In a panel on “HIV preventtion among homosexual men of colour” this haircut showed up. It’s recent footage, mind you. Most vidcasts they put out look like something that might have been created for ‘Lost’ or ‘Resident Evil’ – in my mind their esthetic can only refer to movies and dystopic writing.

It’s depressing to see how easily all expressions of human culture, no matter how subversive, are assimilated into the katamari damashii of capitalism. It’s not that the expression is watered down, it’s the ultimate hopelessness of there ever being anything that might challenge it in itself. Something desctructive, infectious, viral and parasitic. We could use a cultural immunodeficiency virus. One of the good things that might come of the pirate movement and the trickle down of extremely complicated technology, is that it might cripple the system that also relies so heavily on it.

How can we destroy the way we relate to our world, not just for the hell of it, but because it’s infuriating to feel that ones language, ones thoughts themselves, are not ones own and all that you can relate intellectually to is the Magna-Retarda of contemporary society.

Oh, and if you’re ever annoyed with me filming you, you actually only draw attention to yourself by flipping me off. Like so:

Being in Stockholm I’m not really taking advantage of the situation. There are so many things to do that one is hard-pressed to choose.

Most of my social life is managed at a distance – every three days I Skype with Anna to see what’s up, and I’m staring into the camera at the top of the screen and imagine that I’m still partaking in whatever hijinx they are up to back in Gothenburg.

I visited over the last weekend, helping Hanna to move her tremendous amount of crap valuable items into her apartment. (the roof is, like, 5 metres high!) Good fun was had, and Saturday was spend being exceptionally drunk and giggling like a school girl, while talking about hard AI and wallet design with Pär and Petter.

One month has passed of my employment, much faster than I had imagined. I am working at the national museum of Architecture in the middle of Stockholm, on a web project about to the history of city planning.

It’s great fun, but I haven’t worked, as in work worked on any long term project since I did that flag burning thing four years ago. I’m not used to it, is all, but it’s progressing.

Here’s a sign of the times – someone demolished a bus-stop using a 17″computer screen. Back in the day, we vandals used stones. It’s like stone-age to technological society in fifteen years time, from a destructive point of view! Progress!

It was a hoot getting the first paycheck. I visited Albrecht in Karlstad, and only wish that when my 30th birthday rolls around I will behave with equal dignity and class. I still own him a present, but since I’ve spend my first paycheck on debts he’s just gonna have to wait until the end of next month.

For the next couple of weeks I hope to explore the city a bit better. Right now I only find two beer halls and one Chinese restaurant. Haven’t seen any exhibitions, and travelling three hours each day just to commute to the suburbs kills my ability to do anything except sleeping and smoking.

So, in order to cheer me up, you should invite me to meet people at least as fun and charming as I am. And even though my sexdrive has driven into a wall, I have been imagining standing behind someone cupping their breasts. I don’t know why that image has stuck with me, but there you go. If you know of someone who would appreciate being cupped, you know where to turn.

And if you want to talk to someone who has had nightmares about programming two days straight, I’m your man as well.

I seldom listen to song lyrics – often it’s just a line that is coherent enough for me to focus on, and of course Tom Waits filters in somewhere whenever he’s gently crooning – but I might be missing out. Anna is all Morrissey Morrissey Morrissey ooh listen to the lyrics and I can’t really empathise with that, but she sent me a song of LCD Soundsystem, All my friends, and it has some really good lines.

Especially fitting since I’m in Stockholm doing something that doesn’t really resemble anything you might call living.

Oh, if the trip and the plan come apart in your hand
You look contorted on yourself your ridiculous prop
You forgot what you meant when you read what you said
And you always knew you were tired, but then
Where are your friends tonight?

Yes, well, ok. I’m in good health, and except that I worry about people in Poland, I’m fucking peachy. Peachy but bored. I just hope that I won’t regret being “bored.” Last time I did we got 2007.

I found a lost pair of mittens when going out of the cinema last friday (I saw Control. Not really worth it) and at first I picked them up and put them in a window. We double-backed the same way looking for anexit, and since they were still there, and my own mittens are but thread, I decided to adopt them.

As it turnes out I either lost my wallet or someone nicked it from me while I was on the bus heading home.

And here I am, without a cigarette in sight and no means of paying for new ones. I’ve eaten eight nine clementines in five six minutes, and will soon hit the bags of almond that my mum has stashed away.

Goddamn karma.

At the moment I’m in a bus on my way back to Stockholm to start work. I’m on a wifi provided by the bus itself – as were it a catapillar of information munching at the tree of web-tubes. This is way cool and I’m squeaking like a small girl inside.

At the moment I’m in a bus on my way back to Stockholm to start work. I’m on a wifi provided by the bus itself – as were it a catapillar of information munching at the tree of web-tubes. This is way cool and I’m squeaking like a small girl inside.

I imagine that designing sex toys gets old – how many different ways of stimulating someone can you come up with? Is there an elbow-orgasmatron somewhere out there? Or a nipple-exploder? It’s all about applying the friction and pression to the same old areas, which is why someone in Japan designed this, a pink blowjob machine:

And even though it might be like shooting paralysed fish in a barrel bucket, here’s some Japaneese TV. Try do discern where in the social hierarchy this show and its’ contenders fit:

The homepage is now officially available.

Let me know if there are any spelling errors, messed up links or if something just bugs you.

monocultured.com

And before you mention it: Yes I will be adding content continuously. By making it available I’m hoping that you’ll hold me to it.

I’m in Stockholm right now, interviewing for a computer job that seems interesting. I’m hoping that I’ll find out for sure tomorrow, allowing me to relax somewhat during christmas. Mom is making a bunch of food, and I still have to scavenge buy some presents.

And on the seventh day they rested, and they saw that it was ok.

The last day was packing day. We were leaving at noon, and so we’re packed and out of the room with time enough to buy five litres of olive oil and cigarettes. I walk to the medina alone at first, hoping to score some cheap smokes, but my face is not one that invites haggling, and either way I don’t know where to start, and I can’t get the price below 25 dinars per carton.

Somewhat depressed I return to the hotel with the oil and ask Christoffer to come along and hold the business end of the shopping stick. With an air of gorgeous nonchalance he leads the way and within a few minutes we exit the medina with three cartons at 18 dinars each. He’s a God of nonchalance. If there ever is a war he might be that guy who will sell you a can of pork in exchange for gasoline that magically will appear because he knows a guy, but even in peacetime talents such as his are handy as hell.

On our way back we run into a man who sells cigarettes from a plastic bag. He asked what we paid for the ones I’m carrying, and I brazenly (and out of character) answer “fifteen”. He is willing to sell us a carton for 13 dinars, and Christoffer immediately jumps on him and offers ten. I end up buying a carton, and we’re soon back at the hotel.

I walk away and get two cans of harisha, the ubiquitous paprika paste, and we file into the bus. We will be at the airport three hours before departure, not counting delays, and as usual everyone is looking out at the cityscape wondering what this was all about and if there isn’t something that we might have overlooked.

Of course there is. During our week in Tunisia we got to know the country only a little, and what we learned was as superficial as doing more harm than good.

Here are a few advice on going to Tunisia:

* If you don’t like tourist traps, be sure to have read up on the country and have an actual interest in historic sites. Staying with the tour guides will leave you discontented and with an acidic fecal aftertaste.

* Tunisia has no food worth mentioning. This was a huge disappointment as we were all looking forward to something interesting. What we got was a bun with egg and tuna; in my case lots of salad. I have never visited a country with such lack of food tradition, and I imagine that Tunisia has simply picked up the food traditions of it’s conquerors, trying not to offend any-ones palate by aiming for the lowest common denominator: You gotta eat something.

* You might as well be wearing a tattoo spelling out “TOURIST” on your forehead for all the good any camouflage will do. Be prepared to get hassled by a lot of people looking to befriend your money – imagine that “ordinary” Tunisians are a rock band that you would like to get to know, but you can’t get close enough because of the guards and bouncers surrounding them. You will mostly run into guards that are annoying assholes because they are making a living off of you. You will become distant and bitter if you don’t remind yourself of the role that you are playing.

* Make notes of your trip. This will make it easier to blog afterwards, and you won’t forget things like the colosseum you visited.

* Consider going to Egypt instead. I hear Kairo is really cool, and they’re bound to have better food. Or, y’know, don’t fly half way around the earth because you’re conscious of the green-house emissions you’re the financial incentive for.

It was good to get away from Gothenburg for a week, and it was wonderful to travel Tunisia with three friendly people. I don’t know if I’m going on a charter again, but it’s a comparatively cheap way to travel (vaccinations not accounted for) and it would have helped to be better prepared. Being able to smoke anywhere is awesome, I just wish that the coughing would let up soon. I’ve halved my consumption to one pack a day, so I should be able to breath normally any day now.

Also, I ran out of hair wax on the last day and would appreciate it if you would buy me another one for christmas: