Pieces of Mind
aardvarchaeology | May 4, 2015I keep getting ads for "Game of War". They seem to be mixed up with ad clips for a game likely to be called "Gratuitous Breasts".
Sw. massiv means "solid, unmixed, not hollow". Eng. massive is almost exclusively used to mean "big". For decades I thought this was sloppy / slangy / colloquial. Today I looked it up and learned that though massive can at a pinch mean "solid", its main dictionary sense is "big". I'm Swenglish.
Travelling an overnighter to give a talk. Bringing no luggage. My presentation is on a USB stick and my entertainment is in my phone. The largest item I'm bringing is a…
aardvarchaeology | April 17, 2015 Baptismal font, c. AD 1200, Näs church, Jämtland.
Been wondering about psychopaths. Having empathy of course de-motivates healthy folks from murderous cruelty. But why would absence of empathy motivate murderous cruelty? Are most psychopaths in fact not interested in such acts?
This is pretty neat: I bought a hat in London and wore it for a few days, and now that I'm back in Stockholm, I still have the hat!
Last Monday was the 8th anniversary of me switching from Windows to Linux because of Microsoft's "Genuine Advantage" scam.
Heh. This hatter's web site has "quaffed" for "coiffed" when…
aardvarchaeology | April 1, 2015 At concerts these days people wave their phone flashlights instead of cigarette lighters during the slow numbers.
I broke the rice cooker's handle. Then I fixed it. Jrette smiled and called this macho display. I replied that I wasn't actually using my willie for the work and that breasts wouldn't get in the way.
Me: Can I put the manual for your thermos flask in the recycling? Wife: No, I want to read it first. Me: You never allow me any kinky pleasures.
I just joined the St. Eric Society, also known as the Stockholm Historical Society. Don't know why I haven't done so decades ago.
Charli…
aardvarchaeology | March 19, 2015Oh fuck. I just installed the operating system update/trojan that makes this particular Samsung smartphone model slow.
I wonder how classical liberalism views labour unions. On the one hand, the right to form one is clearly a civil liberty. On the other hand, it can be seen as what Smith called a "conspiracy of businessmen", or in modern parliance, a price cartel.
Jrette approvingly recommends me to check out pics of curvaceous model Denise Bidot. I have to tell her that though Bidot is indeed beautiful, I'm not quite comfortable looking at pics of her in Jrette's company.
Movie: Pride. Heart…
aardvarchaeology | February 28, 2015I thought my pet was a meerkat, but it was in fact a mere cat.
Movie: Wild Tales. A collection of unconnected short wry films about revenge. Grade: pass.
Eagle-eyed Roger Wikell found something that looked like a duplicate entry in my database. A flanged axe found at Vappeby hamlet by someone named Winberg, and a flat axe found at Väppeby hamlet by someone named Vinberg. Turns out they are different axes found by different people, one at Vappeby in Torstuna parish and one at Väppeby in Kalmar parish. Phew!
Reading Stanislaw Lem's 1959 novel Eden. His big point is that aliens, their structures…
aardvarchaeology | February 18, 2015Boomer neighbour calls me and tells me his water meter reads "420". "You're such a stoner" is what I avoid replying.
Every year my employers each send me a piece of paper telling me how much they've told the tax man that I've earned. A few months later, the tax man sends me a piece of paper telling me how much my employers have told me that I've earned. In a quarter century of managing my own money, I've never had any use whatsoever for the first piece of paper. In recent years I've begun sticking it straight into the recycling bin.
When the kids in the Minecraft videos that Jrette watches…
aardvarchaeology | February 2, 2015Me & Jrette just sat in deck chairs and took turns watching comet Lovejoy through hand binoculars. The nucleus is like a big pale fuzzy blob among the stars. Start from the Pleiades, which are gorgeous in simple binoculars, and move about 10 Pleiades diameters in the 4 o'clock direction to find the comet. Last time I saw a comet was in 1996, Hyakutake.
Movie: Birdman. Possibly psychotic former action movie star puts on Broadway play. Grade: pass.
My ex's winter swimming buddy lost her gold chain on the beach yesterday. It was a recent gift from her hubbie and she hadn't told him. I lent…
aardvarchaeology | January 16, 2015
From now on I'm not appending my CV with job applications any more. I'll send a list of my LinkedIn endorsements instead.
We've seen a series of arson attempts on Swedish mosques, almost certainly motivated by xenophobia and racism. A lot of good people are showing their solidarity with the country's Muslims by sticky-taping paper hearts and letters of support to the doors and walls of mosques. I'm conflicted. I condemn arson, xenophobia and racism. But I also oppose collectively organised religion. I don't want the country's mosques or churches burned down. I want them converted to secular…
aardvarchaeology | January 2, 2015 Yay! The new reading chair finally arrived!
Sw. kujon "coward" is cognate with Sp. cojon "testicle". Both go back to Lat. coleus "leather sack". In the Swedish case the cowardly sense comes by way of a word for eunuch.
I never did understand what exe2bin did.
Wife: ”After I've been out running I always feel so good-looking!” Me: ”You mean running improves the accuracy of your eyesight and your powers of objective observation?”
Rossi, the founder of the French ski manufacturer Rossignol, was the son of a gnome and a troll and did much to improve tolerance of gnolls in Alpine sports.…
aardvarchaeology | December 17, 2014 There will be a spring after winter! They're planting bulbs down at the Saltsjöbaden Centrum mall.
Anglophones, why do you say "might" instead of "may" when expressing uncertainty? If you're certain, you say "I'll eat some bread". If uncertain, you sometimes just say "I may eat some bread". But usually you form a needless subjunctive, "I might eat some bread". Sometimes you even use this mode to express certainty! I sometimes wonder if you aim at grammatical optimisation at all. Do you even know that ”may” and ”might” are the same verb?
Some people are angry because they have no voice in…
aardvarchaeology | December 4, 2014This chocolate praline contains something that looks and smells like shampoo. Apparently it's flavoured with elderflower extract.
Jrette prints out song lyrics and fixes them to the outside of the shower cubicle as aids to singing in the shower.
I'm kind of OK with most subcultural dress codes. But I really gotta say: young men wearing oversize baseball caps or stocking caps indoors look like they're in Kindergarten.
I'm confused by the feminism that on one hand condemns the wearing of Hawaii shirts with beach babe cartoons, on the other hand organises proud plus-size burlesque shows. Would…
aardvarchaeology | November 18, 2014No, Kim Stanley Robinson, when two groups of characters meet and tell each other what they've gone through recently under the reader's watchful eye, you shouldn't write that dialogue. Because the reader already knows.
Back when my father-in-law the engineer had just come to Sweden from China and worked as a waiter, he used to have a few hours off in the afternoon. One day he decided to relax with a movie, despite understanding neither the English dialogue nor the Swedish subtitles. He was confused and horrified by what he happened to see: Alien.
Feeling flush after my intense September bout…
aardvarchaeology | October 31, 2014What are the best arguments to keep your home wifi password protected? I think it's a pain in the ass. My retired neighbour makes prophecies of doom involving child pornographers standing around with laptops outside my fence, distributing contraband files and leaving me to do the jail time.
I tell my students that the two most important pieces of information I'll be handing out, the ones they should remember after they've forgotten everything else from Scandy Archaeology 101, are these. 1. Agriculture starts in 3950 BC. 2. From that time and 5000 years on, most Scandies live in post-borne…
aardvarchaeology | October 17, 2014The Relentless Babblings of the Darkmire Soothsayer: "And then there shall come a day when things will be lost and people won't know where things really are and brothers will run away for absolutely no reason at all and fathers won't know where other fathers are or where they once were. And friends will walk about with strange things wrapped around themselves and things will happen on distant hills and parents will look for things and won't find them because of what their children had done the night before. And the sky will do strange and wonderful things that no one knows of and people will…
aardvarchaeology | October 1, 2014Did I just tell the students that "polysemic" refers to people who donate repeatedly to sperm banks? Surely not?
In mid-70s Dungeons & Dragons, players would often bring their characters from one dungeon master and gaming group to another, effectively skipping between worlds. Unheard of in Swedish 80s and 90s gaming.
Annoying: seeing that the next five end-notes in the book I'm reading are just brief citations with no interesting text, making a mental note of this, then forgetting and looking the following end-note up anyway. I wish end-notes would be consistently narrative text or …
aardvarchaeology | September 15, 2014Why you should never get a tattoo: it's a fashion item that can never be upgraded. Imagine being forced to wear 1979 glasses all of your life from age 18 on.
So boring to proofread hyphenation.
Artists referenced in the sleeve notes to Goat's first album: 1. Dan Andersson, 2. Boubacar Traoré.
Jrette has excellent innate inscrutability skills. She tells me she's taken to ignoring boys who demand her attention or some of her Saturday candy. Oh boys and men of the 2020s and 30s, you will be sooo ignored.
Since 1991, we've sent 84 people into my copy of Dungeonquest. Only 31% have survived. This…
aardvarchaeology | September 1, 201414 August marked 200 years of unbroken peace for Sweden. Eight generations. Most of us don't even remember the name of the latest ancestor of ours who survived a war.
Other people get moments of déjà vu. I get moments of dissociation, when Martin Rundkvist seems not to be me.
Neat serendipitous combination of podcasts. I listened to Norm Sherman's excellent reading of Lovecraft's "The Colour Out Of Space" on the Drabblecast. It's about a family killed slowly and horrifically by emanations from a meteorite that hits the ground near their farm. Then Planetary Radio came on with the words "The…
aardvarchaeology | August 15, 2014Another good Swedish word: försoffad, literally "becouched", of people who have grown lazy and passive.
Do the Syndics of Cambridge syn with their dics?
I've started writing an essay collection based on the routines I've developed for party conversations about archaeology with laypeople.
It sometimes makes me nervous to see all the things we design to work only as long as gravity is switched on. Teacups. Doors. Cars. Trains. They're all pretty shoddy engineering.
I woke once in my teens from a tremendous crash and just had the time to see sparks showering from the wall socket next to my desk…
aardvarchaeology | August 1, 2014I wonder how many head shops worldwide are called The Joint Venture.
When friends of my kids cycle to our house, they always leave with their saddles yanked up a good bit. Because apparently other parents don't notice when the kids grow too tall for their bike saddle setting.
Finally figured out how the fuck I can accordion sheets while sleeping. I sweat a lot. The sheet gets glued to me. When I turn over, I'm like a big roller moving the sheet to one side and bunching it up next to me. After rolling over I often end up on top of the damp warm wad of layered fabric, steam ironing it with my…
aardvarchaeology | July 18, 2014 Common Stinkhorn on Landsjö castle islet
This lady in Wyoming sends me a picture of "sacred procreation rocks", one looking like the sideways outline of an erect cock and the other simply with a hole in it. "They were found less than a few thousand feet from each other." In the picture, the cock stone is helpfully pointed at the hole. I wonder if I should send the lady a picture of my procreation stones.
All week we've been met by this nasty stench when landing with the boat on the castle islet. We thought it was a dead fish of which we had found some bits. But yesterday we realised that…