The King's Garden

So it's three in the afternoon. People are walking around with light clothes, happy faces and everyone has their sunglasses on. While on our way to sit in a park with the fantastic italian ice cream melting in our hands my friends and I notice a few white and flourescent yellow police motorcycles buzz by. Then the street becomes entirely empty save a motorcade of three black SUVs and more of the white and flourescent cop bikes, now blocking the intersection. My friends and I look at each other as the motorcade rolls on by, cop bikes whizzing around and past it. And what could possibly be so important that three black vehicles need a fleet of police bikes as an escort? We have no idea. The body guards looking out from the windows on the vehicles all look like agents from The Matrix, black sunglasses and all. After a moment the white and flourescent yellow cop bikes blocking the intersection zoom ahead and the traffic floods back into the street and everyone goes back to looking happy in their sunglasses.

Being able to cross the street again we come to the park and sit down in a sort of circle made out granite ledges that people are sitting on. In the middle stands a tower-like sculpture with steps and more people. Some temporary tents that a few construction workers were setting up also stand in middle, which wouldn't be of any consequence exept for the apparent deal that was going down right there, apparently turning very messy. An argument breaks out in the middle of the circle over the contents (or lack of contents) of a backpack.

It wouldn't have been a such a big deal if it hadn't been for the other two groups of young guys sitting on two seperate ledges. The two arguing walk away from the tent area in the middle and we think it's all cool again and everyone can go back to being happy in their sunglasses when one of guys jerks his arm back and smacks the other guy in the face with his elbow. The apparent victim makes a retreat back to his crew while the other makes a go for the nearest trash bin, rummages around and digs out a glass bottle. Everyone else is sitting around in the circle, quite calm in their sunglasses and my friends and I start to discuss that it would be a good idea to make an emergency call then and there. Children are playing and laughing, people are sitting and talking, the construction workers are busy putting up the tents with big aluminum poles, two big groups of young guys are watching a deal go sour and then garbage man ditches the bottle for a nearby pole.

One of my friends makes the call.

"There's a fight in Kungsträdgården", she says while garbage-man takes a swoop at his mark. Ditching the pole he then makes a round to every garbage can and we decide to bounce before he reaches us. Most just sit there and the tent workers seem to go on without noticing what was going on.

"Besides the two that are fighting it's pretty calm, but their friends are right there and it looks like they might join in any time. I don't know, but there are kids playing around here, can't you just send a car?"

"They said it's not serious enough", she says while shaking her head.

Escorting a foreign dignitary with more than a dozen cops to block off rush-hour traffic in the middle of the city is evidently much more important than staving off a possible drug-fueled gang fight in a populated public park. A few minutes later we throw away our sticky paper cups and plastic spoons and notice a white and flourescent yellow motorcycle creep it's way into the park and by that time we only hope that more people have called instead of just looking happy in their sunglasses. Later that night we find out that someone gets stabbed in the park. But apparently it's not serious enough.

Experience shows once again why the swedish police need some stategy changes. I say once again because while Sweden and Stockholm are in many ways wonderful places to live and work, being a relative plethora of social benefits, the legal system and police force are in dire need of lessons in not being jackasses. You could devote an entire blog alone to why the swedish judicial system hasn't left the nineteenth century in their rulings on rape cases. You have to wonder exactly what our tax money is being spent on and what's serious enough.

Crunching ears

The ear is not a good place for toilet paper. And it's definitely not a good idea to stuff wads of toilet paper into your ears and use it as a substitute for earplugs. The reason I know this is because I've been getting up at four, four-thirty in the morning for work for the past week. Add the fact that all my friends I've tried to come into contact with have ignored phone calls and text messages for the past several days and it becomes a very lonely and trying week, topped off with having toilet paper stuck in my right ear.

Today, Friday, has been the only day to sleep in this week since I have to get up so early every other day, including Saturday and Sunday. Having turned off my alarm clock and cell phone last night so as being able to enjoy heavenly sleep undisturbed until I decide to get up, it wasn't very fun to be woken up this morning at eight to the sound of a chainsaw right outside. And it wasn't just regular every day usage, it was a repeated pulse every ten seconds for fourty-five minutes. Not just using it every now and again for awhile, but using it at regular intervals of about ten seconds for fourty-five minutes. It's about as irritating as having having a mosquito buzzing in your ear regularly every ten seconds for fourty five minutes. After waking up at such godforsakenly early hours the past week and having do the same on Saturday and Sunday, I was desperate for a solution, and the regular bright yellow foam earplugs usually lying around the house were mysteriously gone. At that time it was just the natural thing to do, using toilet paper.

After falling asleep again and waking up later, one wad had already fallen out of one ear. The other was still there and apparently had snuck a little further in. After carefully using a q-tip to coax the bugger out I succeeded only in pushing it in a little further. After realizing that it might be really stuck in there the only other option left was to call the local medical center. Being full there, I was referred to the nearest hospital. This wasn't fun since I would have to wait a long time to get to a doctor and by that time the little wad of toilet paper was starting to make a soft crunching noise in my ear, kind of like hearing your teeth crunch down on something hard when you chew. That's what I heard every time I opened my mouth. Crunch crunch. Crunch Crunch.

After registering my visit at the hospital at about 12:45 the nurse said that it would be okay if I left the building for an hour. "Okay", I said. Crunch crunch. Crunch crunch. They would call if it would be any earlier. So I left and ate lunch and came back after two hours. During this time it dawned on me that all of my friends I had tried to contact during the past five days hadn't responded at all, which reminded me of the typical stockholm strategy: They never call anyone, and if you contact them then everyone will say that they're too busy to do anything. Or too poor. Or they are too tired. Or their grandma is coming to visit.

Back at the hospital waiting room I recieved two text messages out of the blue, only to discover that they were sent to the wrong number. It wasn't fun, sitting there in the hospital waiting room with a wad of toilet paper in my right ear on my only free day this week, 260 swedish crowns (about $25 US) poorer because I wanted to get some sleep and the only person to contact me did it because of a wrong number.

Having bearly heard my name called the doctor pulled out the wad in about five seconds. Then he vacuumed out all the small scraps left. Five minutes later, at three-fourtyfive, I left the hospital minus the crunching toilet paper. As I was walking home a little girl with an ice-cream cone said "hi!" to me with an ear-to-ear smile, totally covered in melted ice cream. It was one of those moments where you can't help but smile back and laugh a little. "Hi!", I said back. Thinking of all the problems that the other people sitting there in the hospital waiting room had, a little ball of toilet paper on my only free day this week was quite okay.

I think we're alone now

From the time I was a wee kid up until only a couple of years ago, I would be lying in bed and scared. Sometimes too scared to sleep. Yeah, that scared. A phobia. Something that stiffens the body and contorts the mind into a quivering wreck. Not a phobia of falling asleep, not of shadows, the boogie-man, not a phobia of ants or spiders possibly crawling up into my nose while I'm asleep. It would make me look out the window every now and again, open my eyes just one last time. It got pretty bad sometimes. Other kids were afraid of monsters under their beds. Later, other people my age were afraid of a robber breaking in. I was afraid of aliens. Extraterresterials. Little gray men.

I know a friend who has an almost morbid fear of being in high buildings and flying, not because of the long fall down, but because of being "closer" to the sky. That goes to show that phobias aren't rational at all. What do you call fear of aliens? Xenophobia is already taken. I'm college educated in the social sciences and am sceptical to organized religion. There should be no room for this.

It's just too easy to imagine what would happen. There would be no bright lights, no shaking of the room, no mystical wind blowing sheets of school work around. There would be a feeling of just somehow knowing there's something out there. Just knowing a hunk of unearthly metal is floating silently outside and little gray beings are walking toward the building. Not ET's, not the X-files aliens. Little gray lanky beings with no clothes, big black slanty eyes and warm, dry skin that feels like fine sandpaper when they run their long fingers down your body. The way I thought about it, Mulder got one thing right: you can't move. Can't do anything, really. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If you're lucky you won't remember a thing afterwards.

Even though I don't like scary movies I can watch them. Horror, no problem. Psychological thrillers, even better. Bloody action, oh yeah. Movies about abductions, I'd rather take a shower in lemon juice and then dry myself off with a grater. I tried watching the movie "Signs" by myself at night but it didn't work. Mercifully I could rid myself of this only about two years ago by hard mental work-outs.

Only one question remains: how exactly do you treat fear of aliens otherwise? If you're afraid of spiders, you go through cognitive behavior therapy by coming into close contact with spiders so you don't lie in bed at night afraid that one is going to crawl up your nose when you're asleep.

...but this takes the cake

After a fairly drab Mayday I decided to pay a visit to my favorite humor site and had my day totally turned around. Some things are just too funny to not be shared.