The New Cure For Winter Swedish Jetlag

Well I just spent two weeks in NYC and FLA visiting friends and relatives. Pictures soon. Great to see everyone again especially Mc, Kyle, Lee and my little nieces. They are the cutest things ever.

Now that I am back in Sweden I am JETLAGGED as a mf. I swear jetlag is like the bad part of being on drugs (not that I would know what that's like).

As a frequent trans-Atlantic traveler, I am often a victim of this disease. In the past I would just pop a few valiums (melatonin is a joke) but in Sweden there is no such thing as a connection, so finally I got around to looking up a cure on the Internet.

It said to stand outside in the sunlight. Gee. The author of that little gem obviously never spent a winter in Stockholm because I will have to wait until March to get some sunshine around here.

So it's off to the liquor store for me. Passing out is the Swedish Wintertime cure for jetlag.

This Week on a Very Special Swedish Sloth

We here at Swedish Sloth HQ are really inspired by all your thoughtful comments over the past couple of years. In fact, so much so, that we have decided to give back to the thriving community that has arisen around this blog.

Without people like Dipshit the Finno-Ugaric language specialist from Nowhere, Iowa, where would we be today? Not number #1 draw on the international imaginary jetset chat show circuit, that I can tell you. Probably still dreaming about fucking my sister. Shit my sister reads this blog, so maybe I shouldn't say that. If it didn't happen before I turned 15 it's probably not going to happen.

So, where were we? Ahem, we were so inspired by the blah blah blah thriving community around here that we are going to add a section called Ask The Swedish Sloth.

Go ahead, ask away! Don't be shy... Ask The Swedish Sloth. Keep in mind I'll be in Tuscany for the next three weeks and won't read your questions until I get back.

But that probably doesn't matter as hardly anyone ever comments. Most people don't even try. Ricky are you out there? Erik Gray? Drop me a line. I'm sure you must have some questions. 15 people a day read this blog (before they figure out its not what they expected and leave). Surely 15 people can't all be wrong, all the time. Can they?

Swedish versus British Nightclubs

Thanks to my wonderful sister in San Diego who sent me this 'educational' Powerpoint presentation. This one shows the difference between a night out clubbing in Sweden and a night out clubbing in England. And the winner is... ugh, I'm gonna go with Sweden.
Download the File

Happy Swedish Anniversary

Leaving American soil has always been one of the great pleasures in my life. I feel the whole country is based on a shared hallucination of madmen. I am pretty sure I would feel the same about any country I grew up in. I hate the feeling of culture dragging me down to my slow spiritual death. That's why to stay fresh you have to move.

I have never understood religious people and people who keep the customs of their ancestors. These people deserver to be mocked. If doing drugs is illegal then so should be ethnic folk dancing. If you think about while high it will make sense.

Well it's been almost a year in Sweden for me and Linda. Moving to another country is never easy and never cheap. It is however extremely fun and exciting, and that's why I do it so often. I have lived in four countries for more than a year and hopefully I'm just warming up.

What America lacks in an educated voting population it more than makes up for in great pizza, entertainingly bad media, and creme donuts. In short, the USA is a great place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there. The same is true for England which I also lived in for a year. Basically living in a country where you speak the language is a real downer. It's harder to hate what you cannot fully comprehend.

Yes after one year in Sweden I have the (very) basics of the language down, a job I like, good friends, and I know where all the best pubs are. What remains is to find a better flat and find a tennis partner so I can get back into that sport I love. Oh yeah and some positive temperature outside would be a nice change. Right now it's sunny and freezing. I like it warm and partly cloudy.

89 Days of Freezing

Today it was the 89th day in a row of below zero degrees Celsius temperature in Stockholm. That seems like enough, but it doesn't look like the streak will end anytime soon. It's no wonder the Swedes took gold in hockey. This country was built for it.

I just spent five days in London and it was fantastic. I love that city more every time I go. Thanks to Dafydd, Chris, Bryan, Kerry, Kevin, Svenja, and of course my old man for hanging out and helping me have so much fun.

Indubitably London

That's me, Slothlock Stockholmes, in 221b Baker Street sitting by the fire in my Deerstalker hat and smoking a pipe at the Sherlock Holmes museum. For legal reasons, of course, you can't see the hyperdermic for my daily cocaine injections. When in Rome, do as the Romans I say. Whenever it works to my advantage, anyway.

Seriously, London is probably the biggest and best major city I've ever seen. I say this a lot but its really true. Really, it's as cool as Paris, only much bigger. No city I've ever seen can match its size, diversity, character, and style. The more I go there the more I like it. If you add together all the time from my different trips there, I've spent over two years of my life in London! And every time I go back I check out something different and maybe redo one or two things as well.

As I get older I love museums more and more. Why do people even take kids to museums? Even non-sentient Republican mouthpiece Condoleeza Recently agrees that torture is a bad idea in theory if not practice (healthy doses of hairy man ass notwithstanding).

But surely children are not a threat to national security. They should not be tortured by museum visits unless there are at least two dinosaurs for every Renaissance painting. I'd like to see that in the next Geneva Convention really, but I digress.

This trip I saw the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Museum of London in the Barbican, The Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street, a kickass Edward Munch exhibition at the Royal Academy of the Arts, the Tate Britain for the third time, and probably a few others I can't remember because I was too hungover.

My mate Dafydd kindly took me to five new places in six hours inclduding Foyles Bookstore, 2 Victorian pubs, a pan-Asian restaurant, and the 12 Bar Club to see a very intimate (not to mention drunken) evening of Welsh pop music with Euros Childs ex of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.



The rest of the time I spent in the pubs eating healthy british food like mince pies, fish and chips, and unfortunately on my last day whitebait in Greenich for a final farewell pub visit with Svenja and friends. Whitebait, for those who don't know, is whole deep fried baby herring. It may be okay in very small doses, but a whole plate of it for lunch on an empty stomach is not a good idea. I was burping up this crap for the rest of the day and I kept thinking about all the little fish heads and tails and I was thought I was going to hurl a river of ale and little fishes all over the airplane.

And finally, I just want to thank the people of Britain for making London so cool. You are certainly not as bad as the rest of the world say you are.

Drinkin' at the Ritz

After staying with the lovely and talented pride of Germany, Svenja, for a few drunken days I'm now staying at the Ritz Hotel by Green Park. I know that makes me sound like a posh twat but I'm sleeping on a sofa bed. Personally, I would rather stay somewhere else, but I can't afford 100 pounds a night for my own room somewhere else. You see I'm crashing with the parents who are also in town. This is the irony of my life - I can't afford the Holiday Inn so I stay at the Ritz. The room is of course comped by my dad's company. You gotta love that. Half the reason the wealthy are wealthy is because they never pay for anything. That is just weird how life works.

Anyway, I've been out drinking for a few days now, and recently finished a review of the new Babyshambles album on Pax Acidus... and since you were obviously really bored if you were looking here for some entertainment you can read that instead. Love from Sloth. And if you're still bored after that you can see if you can break my new record of three bottles of wine in two hours... it's harder than it sounds. No puking though or you forfeit.

http://www.paxacidus.com/down-in-albion-pax.php

Don Ho is Still Alive

Last Night Linda and I went to see the Legendary Don Ho perform at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. There was a mediocre dinner and then the show. The room held about 300 people and was about 80% full. I wasn’t expecting much, perhaps a few famous songs from his past and a few corny jokes.

He was fucking hilarious. First of all, he was drunk and kept drinking throughout the entire show. He sat at some sort of “piano/desk” which had the strange appearance of being an altar. He worse sunglasseses although the room was very dark and had white hair. A woman sitting next to me at out table said he was now 75 years old.

Almost every song he sang he made the audience sing along, starting with "Tiny Bubbles". It was of course, completely awful. Audiences come to these things to be entertained by a legend so they can go home and tell people they saw Don Ho, not so they can sing ackwardky mouth along the words of Tiny Bubbles.

After the song Don admitted that he “Totally hated that song”. The humor and jokes were either self-debasing, marijuana-based, or else completely off the wall. It was fucking surreal. Does anyone really want/expect Don Ho to tell 15 marijuana jokes in a row? Not me. He kept referring to it in the Hawaian word, which is pakalolo or something similar. Then he would tell stories about how much his good friend Willy Nelson smokes pakalolo from dawn til dusk and how he is completely normal.

Now I have thought a lot of things about Willy Nelson, none of them are that he is completely normal. I mean he’s a 70 year old hippie who plays country music. What is so normal about that? Most 70 year olds I have met do not travel the country in greasy long hair, evading their taxes, smoking grass, and singing songs about ugly women they fucked because they were too high and/or stoned to tell so at the time.

Before the end of the show, Don Ho played Tiny Bubbles again and had many musical guests, some of which were originals from the Don Ho show back in the 70’s which I watched a little kid. At the end he reminded everyone to “Tell everyone you know I’m still alive.”

Don Ho is still alive. If anything, its the rest of us who are probably dead.

More Sun to Come

18 days in Waikiki so far. What's the best part? Total relaxation.

I have been working on my second novel, The Living Dead Don't Get a Holiday, lately and surpassed 60,000 words. I don't think I'm going to finish it on this vacation like I thought I might.

I have just finished a short story as well. It's not fantastic but I am trying to write one every quarter. It's something non-pornographic, non-druggy, and short. I think that might help me get published.

I am remaining upbeat on my chances of selling my first book, The Ultimate Space Hit in England where the language and ideas might be embraced more than in America. I have been getting some good feedback on that one. Of course I get some emails like this too...

Username: Donovan
UserEmail: helmdon@hotmail.com
Comments: YOU SUCK YOU STUPID, UGLY FAG.

Oh well you can't please everyone. And you shouldn't try to either. Sometimes I do feel like a stupid, ugly fag, but thankfully not very often. I guess some people don't get it. I hate it when people write like that and I can't tell which article or story I wrote that made them feel bad enough to write an email like to me. So I could write more like that. Eliciting an emotional response is one of the greatest compliments to a writer.

I have been reading some great books on this trip, some of which are: Kerouac's Dharma Bums, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Paul Auster's City of Glass, some short works of Mark Twain including The Mysterious Stranger which is currently my favorite short story of all time, and an amazing book on the history of coffee called The Devil's Cup by Stewart Lee Allen. Pick up any of them if you need a read recommendation.

So what's ahead for the final 10 days in Oahu? More sun, more mai tais, more boat rides, a dinner show with Don Ho, a luau with a roasted pig, more moped rides around the islands, more hikes, and that's about it.

I have also figured out what the Japanese hipsters do. It was just as I thought. They just strut around and eat and then strut around some more and go home. Japan needs more new beat literary drunks like Pax Acidus if they want to be taken seriously. Seriously though, I have always liked to be in places where white people were in the minority. Oahu definitely counts as such a place and I will be sad when we leave.

One huge surprise was the great Hawaiian food. We have been eating kalua pig, lau lau, and poi at a nice diner outside of the tourist area. Poi is fantastic stuff, its a purple goo made from the taro root. Any food that is purple can't be all bad.

Wai? Because we love you!

Linda and I are in Waikiki. Just the name itself sounds so exotic. People say it is like a cross between Tokyo and Miami Beach. I think that’s an accurate description.

We are staying in a penthouse suite on the 44th floor of the Island Colony about 4 blocks from the beach. Our room has a double bed, a sofa bed couch, a kitchenette, a lanai, and a small bathroom. The key is of course the lanai where we spend most of our time and from whence I write this edition of Swedish Sloth.

Ideas flood my head. I am getting vain in my mid 30’s. I think maybe if I post pictures of naked Swedish girls at the top of my posts I might get more readers. I think I will try that. But not now. I am filled with peace. I am drinking a mai-tai and munching occasionally on some macadamia nuts. Blonde on Blonde is on the stereo. It’s almost 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside now at 8:00 pm.

Waikiki is different. In my Jungian mind I have identified three major distinct archetypes strolling the shores around here not counting the individuals:

1. The Japanese Hipster
2. The Fat American Tourist
3. The Surfer

Almost everyone can be put in one of these 3 categories. I am hopefully one of the individuals and not one of the Fat American Tourists. Truthfully, I have never fit into a category in my life except maybe the Dipsomaniacal Sloth category. Fuck me. I like to think I belong on the fringe. I feel like more like an artist than an alcoholic.

The Japanese Hipsters are the best. I want to hang out with them so badly. They walk around mostly at night with their fancy coifs and their designer threads. There is almost always one boy and one girl. Occassioanlly they travel in groups. They look like dolls, they are so thin and perfect looking. The boys are dressed in fashionable clothes with trimmed goatees and smart sunglasses. The girls are equally decked out in flower pattern French cut dresses and high heels, although they look a little confused as to the point of it all. The boys seem more sure they are doing the right thing.

But where do they go and what do they do? I want to follow one around and find out. That is my mission for the next week. I don’t think they go out drinking… my guess is that they just prance around for a few hours and then go home and go to bed. Me I don’t see the point of going out without stopping by at least one pub. I must be old-fashioned.

Sweden? The idea behind this blog is not to extol the virtues of the Hawaiian Islands but rather to explain the perspectives of an American moving to Sweden. And that’s not an original idea, as it’s already being done quite well by Francis Strand. But of course perspective is perspective. I am not a gay American man married to a Swedish man. I am the American living embodiment of Sloth living with a Swedish woman. And Sloth is a sin, according to that prick we refer to as the Judeao-Christian God.

Being gay is not even a sin according to any Bible passage I've ever read. It's just the gay self-negating hypocritical preachers who gay bash. Sodom was a city of vice, but it never mentions actual butt-fucking in the Bible. In all the Bible School classes I was forced into attending as a child, I have never read one thing about not being gay in the Ten Commandments. Sloth however is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Oh, how I long for the day when I can no longer separate myself from the sin in which I live.

Long live Sloth in Hawaii!

Bye Bye North America

Today is our last day in North America. I feel the Mayor of Seattle should be calling me and urging me not to go... that I am too valuable to the community. But of course that is ridiculous. I have been drunk since Friday at noon and it's Sunday today. Even poor Linda is hungover and the codeines are out of the bottle and into our mouths. We washed them down with the morning coffee.

Last night we went to George and Dragon with some non-work friends.... thanks for coming out! Ralph, Marky, Derek, Christiana, Richard, Tracy, and Craig. I will miss you all. Don't join the military or anything, even if you lose your jobs.

When you're a struggling writer, a random unsolicited note from a reader can really make even the worst hangover feel like a buzz... check this one out I got today:

"the rex club is the sex club was one of the best short stories i've ever read! seriously, it was phenomenally cool, and i just wanna say well done."
- shahid

Wow. And tomorrow it's a month in Hawaii. Life is good sometimes.

Write as Rain

Well I've been on the sauce again. Not really again, since I never really stopped in the first place. Last night Linda called me an alcoholic when she caught me drinking the Jack Daniels out of the bottle again. I told her it was rock and roll but she reminded me I'm not a musician.

Tonight the Jack Daniels is gone so I bought some Vincent Van Gogh Dutch Chocolate Vodka. It's worth every penny of the 30 bucks it costs. I highly recommend checking it out if you live near any nice liquor stores that might carry it. It beats the other chocolate vodkas out there hands down.

It's funny as a kid I never drank hard alcohol straight. I used to swear it tasted like poison. Now it's what I enjoy most. I guess I really am becoming a fucking writer.

Speaking of writing, I passed a couple milestones this week. For one, I submitted over 200 corrections (typos) of my first novel The Ultimate Space Hit to Wasteland Press (thank you Linda for finding them) and I got back the updated books. I gave it to a friend who read it in two days and told me they LOVED it. That makes me feel so good.

Also, I surpassed 50,000 words on my second novel, The Living Dead Don't Get a Holiday. That one is only really supposed to be about that long... so it feels good to be breezing past that predefined limit. I may end up with another 20,000 words at this point. I hope to finish / edit it in Hawaii next month.

That's right Hawaii. A lot has changed since the last episode. I sold our car for our full asking price, and nearly everything in the apartment is slated to sell next weekend before we head out of here. Linda wants to spend her 30th birthday in Hawaii. Who could fucking blame her? Not me. We don't have a place to stay yet but that's trivial. We are trying to rent a condo but we might end up in some cheap tourist hotels and visit a different island every week.

Oh finally... I was reading the NME and tonight Shaun Ryder and Bez are spinning in the club that was approximately 100 meters from my front door when I lived in London. Just to think of them there... walking down the same street and seeing the same things as I did gives me chills. Bez is a fantastic writer, waster, and dancer. Shaun Ryder is a pure fucking genius. Enough blogging for now. Now its time for the Killers and some more chocolate vodka.

Lazy Twatting Bastard Me

Okay Linda and I are leaving our apartment for the big move in two weeks and we haven't even begun to sell our stuff yet.

We have of course planned our trip to Hawaii very carefully. But now we might decide to go to Peru instead. Peru has all those cool Inca ruins and there are less bloody Americans there. But our main concern is that the drinks might cost too much. Peru is more third world and thus we can expect to get dollar beers wherever we go.

The alcohol price factor reminds me of the weekend trips Kyle and I used to take from our University days in Paris. We had spare Eurail tickets left over from the summer, and very limited funds. Every couple of weeks, we broke out the tattered collection of pages that remained from our Let's Go Europe book and researched where the beer was cheapest. Germany always won. So we would head East for a couple nights of drinking out in the beer halls. We hit Munich three times. In our defense, we also got to Salzberg, Austria once.

The preparation for moving is going extremely badly. If we don't get on the mf right away, we have to THROW EVERYTHING WE OWN AWAY. I guess that's okay. It's what I normally do when I move overseas. Every time I go I think I'm never coming back. This time its probably true.

The good news is, we still have saved up enough money to be alright. Two working people with no kids or Class A drug habits can do quite well in The States. We live downtown Seattle, eat out all the time, own a car, cable tv, broadband Internet access, and all that jazz.

The only question remaining is: What the fuck am I going to do in Stockholm for work besides write this blog and finish my second novel? I don't know. Fuck it. I'll figure something out. Teach English and start a mail order business to make money in the long term. Maybe open a bar.

Every country I have been to so far has a couple things that are amazingly cheap. In Germany its lager and sausages. In France, its bread, wine, and stinky soft cheese. In Spain it's tapas and sangria. In England its pints and chips. I am still trying to find out what's cheap in Sweden. . . I think its knäckebröd (crispy bread) and bulk candy. At least that's better than America, where its fast food and ammunition.

17 days to go. . .

Last American Month

The best parts in life are all in the anticipation and the waiting. Every day feels like Electric Iced Tea Christmas. One of the extra special things this time, because I have left the USA before, is that I know I won't have to come back ever again. And when I do come back, it will be as a tourist.

Everything is pretty much sorted right now for an on-time departure. I have received a PERMANENT residence card in Sweden. I have informed my business partner, Mark, that my last day is February 28th. Linda and I have found temporary lodging in Stockholm. She has also told her boss she is quitting. I got my teeth cleaned and cavities filled... and will hopefully schedule a health check-up imminently while I still have insurance. I even made a list of everything we need to sell before we go.

I had a deep cleaning at the dentist today and 3 cavities filled. It was my first trip to the dentist in years. The pain is still shooting through my mouth as I write this and I cannot wait to go home and pop some codeines and drink a few high balls.

Linda is busy studying the Let's Go Hawaii book in order to plan a vacation in Hawaii before the trip to Stockholm. We both love to lie on the beach, read, and go out at night so we should really have a good time in Waikiki which everyone who has been to Hawaii describes as a cheesy tourist place.

If most Americans hate it, then I am sure I will like it just fine. The rooms are cheap, the flight is cheap, the beach is three blocks away and I can write all morning and drink all evening. What's not to like about that?

People say that Kauai is the most remote and naturally beautiful island, so maybe Linda and I will day trek over there to see a remaining lush paradise that man hasn't destroyed yet.

This weekend is the Super Bowl. Go Eagles. The last time I remember the Eagles in the Super Bowl, I was like 10 years old. Ron Jaworski was the QB. The Eagles lost. My grandfather was upset. I wasn't. I was rooting for the Raiders. I never rooted for the home team. I was always with the visitors.

My grandfather is still alive and kicking it. He can't understand why I would emigrate to Sweden. Most of my friends think its pretty cool.

This year I am rooting for my grandfather's team, The Philadephia Eagles. Pennsylvania people may be farmerish, and small-minded, but New England people are some of the most annoying people in the world.

Still Feeling The Love Hangover

Yes, I partied too hard in Florida. I won't get into specifics, as this is not Pax Acidus, my sex, drugs, and rock and roll website. This is supposed to be a more normal website, where I can tell everyone my real name, Samuoz Yrral, and get over my fascination with being an underground literary superhero.

But its true so I have to say it. I blew my brain with too much blow and alcohol. I stopped doing it on the 4th night about 3 a.m. on the day I was leaving. I thought it was a good idea to stop because my nose started bleeding and I could no longer control my bladder. They got good shit down there. I am glad I don't live there. I wouldn't last too long. To add to the damage I probably drank about 100 beers and a bottle of rum. We had a whole keg Sierria Nevada pale ale. We finished it.

If any of my friends are reading this, I apologize for calling all of you. For those who don't know... I have a super bad habit of calling people on the phone at 3 a.m. when I am super fucked up and leaving insane messages on their voice mail. I think I got this bad habit from Matt, who has done 10 times as much as me if not more. I just have a hard time finding a peer group otherwise.

For those of you I do call... Linda, Daffyd, Lance, Mark, Matt, Ralph, etc, its only because I love you and I wanted you there. I am not just trying to ruin the REM patterns. I hate it when people call me at 3 a.m. when I am sleeping so don't try it unless you are in the area and have some to share.

For those of you I love who I don't call... its not because I don't love you, its because I don't have your number and I am too wasted to go through the 411 process. I think that's enough slothiness for today. I am not really even the Swedish Sloth yet...

Welcome to Swedish Sloth!

Well the time has come again to leave America...

Linda and I promised each other that we would leave no matter what after two years... and it's been almost two years. Two good years in Seattle, my favorite city in the country of my birth.

What's not to like about Seattle? There is the ocean, the snow capped mountains, the volcanoes, the restaurants, the bars, the friends, the book stores, the coffee shops, the BC green buds, the thick flavorful micro brews, the pattering rain, the skiing, the tennis courts. It's easily the best city in the USA. Easily. What about Manhattan? Well as McCutcheon rightly points out that's not really America. Like London is not England. Like Johnny Cash is not Country Music. It's the exception that makes the rule. And the rule is that America is the land of ignorant hicks who shoot first and ask questions later. America is strip malls and chain restaurants with bad food. America is the Red States. And George Bush is the rightful King.

Wait... I haven't even left yet. One more month to go. I am not even in Seattle right now. This is what you call the pre-game warm up. I am in South Florida in Boca Raton visiting my brother for his 30th birthday bash and especially to see my 3 beautiful nieces again. Linda isn't here. She is at home working and entertaining her lovely, delightfully moody sister Pia who is visiting from London.

My parents are down here as well. It seems like a weird act of Fate that brought us all here together at the same time. I only made plans to come here last week. Got a cheap flight on Orbitz. Last night after I flew in, we all went out to dinners at some posh French place in town called Vielle Maison. I had the jumbo shrimp and crab cocktail, 12 oz filet mignon chateaubriand, and numerous drinks until I spilled my rum cappuccino all over myself while I was trying to make some dumb point about how evil Bush is and how America is doomed whether we win the war or not.

My parents, who are Bush voting, bourgeois, Christians, thankfully put up with me and paid for the dinner without reminding me I am a failure at everything seen as important in my society.