A Mixed Bag

Disclaimer: The board game Dominion is not an ordinary game to me. It's one of my longest obsessions to date and this is not a "review" - it's more of a place for me to ramble on about this wonderful world of a game without having to direct my "recommendation" anywhere in particular.  First: The starkest beauty with this game is that within the space of Dominion, there is room for such a surprising amount of different "subgames" if you will. The basic rules, as I hope you are aware of already, are very simple. You are each turn able to play a card from your deck (via your hand of five cards) and buy a new card to your deck from the kingdom and the object is to make your deck as efficient as possible in reaching a state that will win the game - what that state is may change from game to game, but regardless of specifics, it's always about amassing victory points in some form.  The kingdom is where the beauty, and the complexity, is to be found b...

I believe it was C.S Lewis (1898-1963, 16 years old at the start of WW I) who first caught my attention to what I'm going to speak about here. Late in his life he got tired of lecturing at Oxford. "Why would you listen to me? I am a dinosaur. The world I used to live in, isn't here anymore and the new one in its place has nearly nothing to do with the one which has gone to pass" he lamented to the students (as I'm paraphrasing it). He thought about a time from the 19th century and before where everyone revered the classics and the great thinkers of Western civilisation. Where latin and greek still were relevant subjects to study and when the technology.. couldn't kill the whole world instantly with the push of a button. C.S Lewis was part of the last generation who witnessed both these worlds, he was born and grew up in the old one and he died in the new. He and his compatriots is what I would call the most interesting generation that ever will exist, especial...

Perhaps my biggest gripe with Christian mythology  is the absence and the lack of space for the Trickster archetype. The trickster is a divine character whose biggest trait is that it misbehaves. It's morally neutral but for different reasons it cannot stop to act out annoying, irritating, infuriating stuff. One of the great examples of this is Loke from Norse mythology. He is not one of the gods ("good" dudes) but he is related to them, he is not a proper giant ("bad" dudes) but joins them in the end and through the stories he just messes stuff up. Sometimes because he is frustrated with one of the asgods, sometimes purely because the fun of shits and giggles and sometimes again because misbehavings and mischiefs just pops out of him like apples out of an apple tree. Emil in Astrid Lindgrens stories is also a cute example, but in the children's books genre and scale - a kindhearted boy that simply can't stop doing mischievous acts - even if he desperat...

Max Lundgren is according to me the best children's book writer Sweden has produced (Astrid Lindgren? who?) and especially his most famous book in this regard:  Åshöjdens BK is somewhat of a masterpiece. In that book the story circling around soccer is merely functioning as a greater setting and a vehicle for a much deeper story about the power tensions in a small society going through major upheavals. The child may majorly interest oneself in all the sports happenings, which is still cared for and well crafted, but the slightly hidden "actual" story gets under the skin in a way the child only truly can reflect on afterwards. In this way the author, who had (diseased 2005) the heart to the left politically, can do some political and societal commentary without being tacky or on the nose in any bothersome way. In any case Lundgren made complex and real characters regardless if they were supposed to be villains (like  The Blueberry king ), if they propagated the o...

Once in Duckburg I one time overheard a conversation where someone boldly stated that Norway (or any other country really) didn't exist. He claimed that what actually existed was a piece of landmass on a distinct planet in a particular galaxy, but everything else - like borders, a distinct culture or anything else was just a piece of imagination floating around in peoples heads. Norway was "play pretend", only the earth mass itself of the "Norway game" could be considered actually real. Naturally people got quite upset, especially the Norwegian ducks around and I don't remember much of the continuation of the conversation - but the claim has stuck with me since. I don't think I agree with it, at least not entirely. I can see what the "Norway-skeptic" meant by his claim. There is a distinction between our words and names for things and what actually takes place in existence proper and can be said to be real. This is a philosophical debate as old...

(All books under this tag have been read in Swedish, if not stated otherwise)  My relationship to this book before reading consisted of vague memories of the Disney film made in 1954 - I remembered the mystically composed Captain Nemo, the desperate desire to escape from Sailor Ned and of course the disastrous Octopus attack. Other than that, I was rather blind to what the book would entail when I went into it. I knew Verne a bit since before, was aware that he was kinda like the OG science fiction writer and had one of his other work - 80 days around the world  - under my belt since high school but not much else did I know about this particular work.  The story then follows professor Arronax and his compatriots Conseil and Ned  which embark on an expedition with the mission to capture the strange new sea monster that has been terrorizing the seas of the world since some time ago. When the expedition encounters the monster, the three friends suddenly fall...

Disclaimer: This text is a somewhat messy first try to sketch out an image, a metaphor that has begun to be the basis for how I see life as the Anarchist I still am. There are a lot more aspects of it to explore than the strict economical one, so the topic shall return, but as of now this is as clear I can make it outside my own head. Hopefully further texts and references to this particular idea will help to make the concept fully understandable.  When I fully became an anarchist an image came to me. Life, existence and our human societies are filled with different types of boxes. A box in this sense can be defined as a code of conduct, a rules set or more or less well defined ideals to live up to. These boxes exist for the purpose to define what something is and to be able to exist within one or several of them you are obliged to follow the rules set to the tee. If you don't you are, more or less nicely, asked to remove yourself from the box prompto.  Follow the rules o...

During virtually all my life my greatest spiritual enemy has been the Materialist ("Physicalist" might be the better term all things considered, but in my own language there is no such alternative available so I will stick with "materialist" in this particular text). The Materialist has been standing on the side line looking at what I've been doing regarding religion or spirituality and as soon as there were any opportunity they smugly have noted something along the lines of "You know that what you are doing is absolutely bogus, right?". It didn't help that the spirituality of my childhood and young adulthood had the aspiration to reach out and "spread the word" about our religious business - this approach forced me to come in contact with the Materialist on their playing field over and over again and the interactions ended a bit too often with that all my arguments or talking points had ruthlessly been taken down or at least ridiculed in...