My Brother, Midsummer And Farewell To A Good Friend

Much has happend and is still happening. My brother from New York has arrived with his girlfriend. Havent seen him in over one year. My dad is on his way. My mother is already here. Its the closest Ive been to seeing my whole family together in over two years.
On the other side, Pascal a very very good friend has now left Sweden for his home country of France. I wish him all the best with his new job. We will meet again very soon, whether in Sweden or in France - take care in the meantime;)
Midsummer has also passed. The whole weekend was filled with cherrished moments of good hearted people, nature, tranquility and kindness. It was the perfect oportunity for me to express how much a certain person means to me.

Life and Virtue

Reading my friend Bon Vivants last post I realize how important it is to develop ones taste.

Definition of a Bon Vivant

A person with refined taste, especially one who enjoys superb food and drink.

I would extend this concept to other aspects of life, not only in terms of food and drink. I find similarities with what Voltaire expresses at the end of his classic text Candide:

"...let us cultivate our garden."

To 'cultivate our garden to serve our life purposes and goals' is something you find expressed in Yoga chakrass all over the world. It does have importance, since the word culture also means 'to grow (or cultivate)', 'way of life', 'art', and so on.

A good example of 'a way of life' in relation to 'life purpose' is Cicero's academic skepticism. As perplexing as it may seem it does still pursue moral excellence (or virtue) arguing that as many sides as possible of an argument must be viewed - in order to make an efficient case. This requires flexibility - of being able to shift ones point of view, if necessary.

What I have noticed is that those people I have come to like the most and who I most of the time consider my friends express this quality in some way or another. Those who dont I usually take pity of, or try to understand by shifting my point of view to resemble theres (as to hint at how underlining reasons and factors may or may not have contributed to this persons 'way of life').

Other Bloggers

You may have noticed the 'next blog' button on the upper right corner. After clicking on it at least 10 times I have seen blogs concerning/titled:

• Bermuda (http://bermuda123.blogspot.com/)
• How to post pictures (http://wh85pics.blogspot.com/)
• A musing page (http://chowtentbookojargon.blogspot.com/)
• Everything about plastic surgery (http://find241info.blogspot.com/)
• A Devil Cornar (http://clausof.blogspot.com/)
• The Holmes Blog (http://theholmesblog.blogspot.com/)
• Shopping-Directory (http://shopping-directory.blogspot.com/)
• Katie Morgan (http://katiemorganrules.blogspot.com/)
• Genealogy (http://bestgenealogyresources.blogspot.com/)
• Since I'm so bad at keeping in touch.... (http://fellbehindabit.blogspot.com/)

Interesting to see all the diverse topics and people who show up.

Panopticum or Eyes of Laura

I promised myself not to blog anything of todays events, except Björns party but I must. Need to get this out of my system.

The day started with me checking what things I had to do for my studies and so on. Later Im on my way to take the buss heading towards the place where a big party will take part.

Suddenly the train Im riding slows down. It crawls into the next station and stops. 2 minutes pass, 5 minutes, then a voice is heard telling the passengers that the train in front of ours is experiencing difficulties and it may take some time for us to continue. I know I have to catch this buss in time, the next one will pass 2 hours later - which is far to late.

I manage go grab a citybuss to the train station where the next train is which will take me to the buss I need. When I arrive I see to my dismay that the arriving train is shutting down and a voice tells people to get out of the train - malfunction this time also!

Theres no way Ill make it. I decide to call the people holding the party and I tell them Im not coming.

Next incident, apart from Björns mini party (which i decided to go to to compensate the evening) is the trip to Stureplan. Björn has been talking about a place on stureplan all night and has finally convinced people to go. I join simply because a good friend is going. Stureplan is infamous for its snobby, tightass, show-off people, but I decide its ok this time (I hang around Söder to much anyways, a much cooler place).

Hm, this is where i should stop blogging. But no, Ill tell you exactly what I think - Stureplan sucks so hard!!! Waiting outside in a queue which at the beginning is straight but then starts breaking up. Where you see people shouting at the guards ''hey, its me you remember me bla bla bla...''. To make the story short: Some short-assed guys that have been trying to get passed me after the queue broke up from I-dont-know-what-*******-country tell me to move aside or they'll fight me or some stupid thing like that, are put down to earth (I tell them they are ridicolous if they want to fight in a queue - morons!), secondly ...
Ah forget it...no point in recounting stupidities of moronic guys and girls. I just get so disgusted when I see people sink so low - pushing, elbowing eachother, and blowing smoke in eachothers faces - for what? I just wish they could see themselves, like from a security cameras viewpoint.

Back home, I need something different - far, far, away from the idiotic people I met tonight. I start looking at obscure webpages (from milkandcookies.com yet again).

Check this out, its a cool webpage featuring security cameras that you can control (just log in with the information you see on the page). http://www.eyesoflaura.org/

Cool Dance Moves

Learn some new dance moves with Napoleon Dynamite.
If you havent seen the movie Napoleon Dynamite do so!

http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/30682/

SNL Quote

That show was delightful. No. No. It was brilliant. No, no, no, no. There is no word to describe its perfection, so I am forced to make one up. And I'm going to do so right now. Scrumtrilescent.

-Will Ferrell as James Lipton
SNL parody of "Inside the Actor's Studio"

Animal Facts and BBQ

Just back from a BBQ evening with some friends out in Stora Skuggan. At the spot we usually have our BBQ's was a guy who already had made a fire. There was no problem from his side that we joined in and after 30 minutes he got more talkative. The guy (Peter) was here observing a Catowl in the forest and has been observing birds at these areas since 1996. On the other side of this gathering we had Andreas who had just come back from a trip to Indonesia. Andreas was talking about the flora and fauna of these islands including as an example the komodo dragons who apparently grow as big as 3 meters and can poison their prey with their bites (since their teeth are full of rotten meat that has become toxic). It was a nice evening full of animal facts, a gathering in the woods and a nice BBQ. On my way back I could see some of the usual inhabitants of this green area - horses, cows, goats and rabbits...no komodo dragons in sight.

Dont Worry Be A Happy Hedonist

Yup, as I suspected Im a hedonist regardless of my Catholic upbringing.
My score from a philosophy quiz (found by Bon Vivant, also she an hedonist):

Hedonism 70% Existentialism 60% Utilitarianism 60% Kantianism 60% Strong Egoism 60% Justice (Fairness) 55% Apathy 25% Divine Command 15% Nihilism 10% What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03) created with QuizFarm.com

May the force be with you...you'll need it

Stumbled across a video clip on milkandcookies.com that is interesting. It refers to several video clips (derived from the original one) hosted on ebaumsworld.com that show a kid acting out some cool starwars moves.

There is a whole story about this kid and how the video surfaced. Here I am only giving my views on this whole incident, not trying in anyway to ridicule the kid or any other person involved.

I think the video and all that surround it serves as a very good example of how important it is with honesty and integrity.

We have all been fascinated by the thought of becoming heroes - powerfull, important, different. A means of escaping, a means of acting out. In this video we see a 15yr old kid doing exactly that. Of course it looks funny, maybe even ridiculous, seeing this kid 'fighting' on screen.

Adding the 'special effects' (done by someone else afterwards) just makes it even more laughable one would think, but it can also be seen as adding seriousness to the performance.

I have to admit that I did laugh while seeing these video clips, but at the same time I wanted to know how this kids life was - if he was an outsider, with problems, with a need to escape from a harsh reality, or a way of releasing tensions ,or being creative. There are a multitude of alternatives that belong more to the private realm of this kid than on the public arena of the internet.

What is positive is that one guy was kind enough to send the kid an ipod which people had donated money for in an act of appreciation and kindness.

People like that are in my eyes extremely important. Without them we would be left with only hard feelings, dismay and contempt.

Morbid Angel or Just My Boss

Hm, we have all heard about crazy bosses, executives and so on. My boss can be added to that long list of people who randomly suddenly switch between sanity and insanity.

Today I finally found time to meet an old friend over a nice dark staropramen in one of my favorite rock pubs. We talked about work, studies and music - in this case the band Morbid Angel and one of their kick ass concerts which I saw in Puerto Rico. I remember how the stage was so small that you could easily climb it, and how the singer David Vincent got pissed of at something and left the stage momentarily while the band played on with lead guitarist Trey Azagthoth in trance playing a wicked guitar that was awsome! I also remember how the manager came out telling the drummer Pete Sandoval to quit fucking playing on - the response being ''fuck you, these kids love us!' That was cool!

After sharing these memories with my friend I went to buy an electrical guitar I had been eyeing for quite some time. To my dismay all guitars I wanted had been sold out. I sat down with a couple of substitutes - testing them in the rehearsal room.

All of a sudden my mobile starts ringing. Im in the middle of testing the distortion on a marshall rack amplifier with this nice Eagle vintage guitar. Its my boss. Shes hysterical, and wants to know why she hasnt recieved the material she asked for.

I tell her Ive handed the material to a co-worker and that she should have recieved it. She doesnt understand and keeps bitching on. I just tell her Ill pass by the office and show her where it is.

On my way to the office Im thinking of a very good Morbid Angel song Chapel of Ghouls. It goes something like this (first stance):

Ghouls attack the church
Crush the holy priest
Turning the cross towards
hell
Writhe in Satan's flames

Cant say im a satanist, but that song really fit with my mood at that moment.