jesus was killed in an accident right near my home while i was away! i didn't even know he lived around here!

my fish died. r.i.p. black googly-eyed goldfish. i feel better knowing you are with jesus in heaven.

i'm home.

when dad picked me up from the airport wednesday (yes, i hear your question, dallas *is* the closest airport to idabel, oklahoma) the first place we went was bass pro shop outdoor world.

now, having lived in maine, i thought i had just about seen it all in terms of outdoor world type places. what's more outdoor world than l.l. bean, right? dude, this store has l.l. bean out-outdoorsed hands down. this place has a pond, a waterfall, *and* an aquarium with the biggest bass in the world. it has a shooting range, a putting green, and north america's most amazing collection of stuffed dead animal carcasses - not just standing there, mind you, but *in action*. i saw a grizzly bear mauling a caribou, wolves bringing down a bison - these were full-on ACTION SCENES. also, there was a stuffed bear lying in a curious limp pose on the ground. i couldn't figure it out until i saw some photos and realised they expected people to dress in camoflage, get a gun off the rack, and pose with the carcass as if they had shot it! ha! so weird. this was all in addition to the many, many insane things they had on sale. little stands to prop you up in a tree so you coud wait all day for a deer to walk by so you could shoot it. little tenty things that looked like hills you could hide in and stalk turkeys and things. and then shoot them when they walked by. URINE. i don't even know why. and plastic dead ducks to teach your dog to...? pick up a dead duck off the ground, i think. after you shoot it. and the place was just packed with maniacs like me and my dad ready to buy it all. freaking lined up to buy it.

i would like to tell you how excited i am by the tasco accudot red dot sight we bought at bass pro shop outdoor world, but it might be a bit psycho for this family oriented blog, so i will save that for another time. suffice it to say it is very cool.

in other news, it is hot here.

it is mildly disturbing to find that people actually turn out to post on a discussion board about moist toilet paper. the whole site is a little weird - i guess marketing any product like that must be. creating that flash intro featuring asses with the words "confident, fresh, and clean" streaming by must have been a fun project for someone.

toilet paper poll

Bob, ohhh Bob. You make the act of vert skating one of the most beautiful performances of creative human expression out of any person alive on this planet. You went absolutely berserk on your final run and found the flow within that separates you from others, and truly deems you the best. Your style is magnificent and the way you read the ramp breathes new life into vert skating. Besides skating to The Clash you make your line of McTwist, to kickflip to fakie on the extension, to switch indy kickflip, to fakie to fakie 540, to switch kickflip to regular, to rewind revert, to half cab f/s blunt, to blunt kickflip to fakie, to switch f/s air, to anything you want because you're invincible, seem like pure magic. It is a joy to watch you skate. Thank you. (dave finger - expn.com)

well, i couldna said it better myself. last night bucky lasek had beautiful runs, all of them. right to the end he was leading with like a 95.5 from his first go and bob burnquist had done really well but had lost his board a couple of times. and he is the last competitor on the last run after bucky just has this brilliant go and i said to mike man he is going to unleash some crazy brazilian skatey shit right now and well WELL like i said i can't say it any better so i will just leave it best said up above. SCORE 98.00

the most annoying thing at the x-games: the commentators saying every 3 minutes that this was the best x-games in the history of the x-games. what the hell else would it be the best x-games in the history of?

weirdest thing? every single competitor had a baby just born or one "in the oven" (and yes, they used that term repeatedly during the broadcast). the most extreme thing about the x-games seemed to the the athletes' sperm counts. and the broadcasters were all so *proud* of it! every time rune g. (man, can he fly) stood up to skate someone would start talking about his "girl" being ready to "pop one out". very creepy display of neanderthalism.

besides the sports commentating, Girl Power seemed to be in full force in philly, though, so that was good.

fraser's blog reminds me of the best book dedication i have ever seen: in the blue day book, which i received in a mystery package yesterday, bradley trevor greive says -

"to my wonderful parents, who never stopped taking me out to see the world even after i was bitten by penguins, twice."

curiously, when i looked this book up on amazon.com, it reported to me that this is the sixteenth most popular book ordered by people in portland, maine. the place where i lived before i lived here. small world.

fraser noted our troubles getting to sweden via discount airline ryanair so i won't take that any further. it wasn't really that bad, and we had no worries getting back. i'd give 'em another go. i could point out that i had more difficulty getting from chicago to philadelphia yesterday on american, who seemed to have adopted the line from thomas wolfe "you can't go home again" as their new company policy.

but on to nicer things. stockholm was lovely. everything was surrounded by water, surely fraser has regaled you all with his facts - the city is made up of thousands of islands, etc and so on... we stayed on a boat, so each day the view from our little porthole window over to the gamla stan "old town" waterfront was as beautiful as any postcard.

we visited skansen on saturday. call us victims of hype, but we saw an ad on the t-bana that quoted national geographic traveler as follows: "if you only have one day in stockholm, spend it at skansen." well, hell. with that recommendation, we hardly felt ready to pass it up when we had the better part of *four* days on our hands. it was pretty cool. we saw baby wild boars.

we fed an apple to an enormous swan that was sleeping on the edge of a lake. it wasn't afraid even when we stood just a few feet away from it. some white faced ducks ate right from fraser's hands. we walked around a park for quite a long time and i think might have been lost for a while although neither of us would admit it.

most of the best things we saw and did were at kulturhuset, which was just an incredibly beautiful building housing some thoughtful and creative endeavors. it is located right in the center of stockholm above the t-centraal train/bus station - there is a large courtyard and fountain below it. there are a couple of cafe and restaurant areas inside with city views to die for, we also saw a very funky exhibit on organizing shoes, if you happen to have 250 identical pairs of black doc marten boots. fraser lost his wallet and then claimed English heritage all on the same day. the thrills, i though they'd never end.

the first days we were there a huge NHL exhibition was taking place, which was a bit surreal. my first day in stockholm i got to see the dallas stars take on the tampa bay lightning in a friendly game of roller hockey as frenzied global teens drank coke and tried out EA's NHL 2001.

similarly, our every attempt to find swedish meatballs was thwarted by another round of burger king, mcdonalds, or pizza hut. we couldn't find traditional swedish food to save our life. anytime we did the place was closed. thankfully we had hearty and delicious breakfasts each morning or i think we might have gone insane. almost every other meal found us sitting on a curb munching something bought from 7-11 or a cafe that was closing as we bought our food. did i mention the rain falling on our heads as we ate?

discounting food issues, however, stockholm was brilliant and would have been great fun had it stopped raining long enough for us to enjoy walking around a bit more. definitely a destination for later, when we have more time.

whoa!

other things i have done in london:

saw intimacy, billed on a tube ad as "the most controversial movie of the year". i don't think it was that, but it had kiwi actress kerri fox, from shallow grave. naked. not only naked but having sex. lots of it.

i went to the london museum of science today.

fraser and i went to the king and i last night and found that we were the only non-americans there. or rather, that he was. the entire auditorium was filled with tanned, pink-lunged people whinging about the two pitiful englishmen trying to enjoy a cigarette in the bar.

later, walking into leicester square fraser pointed to the crowd in front of ben & jerry's and tersely muttered out the corner of his mouth to me "more americans, over there."

"but how can you tell?" i glanced, frowning, embarrassed for my country once again.

"look at the disorganised queuing. and they're all clean shaven, wearing cotten..." he trailed off as we observed the mob.

it is odd, that given the choices available here, you can find most americans lined up at pizza hut, burger king, and kfc, scarfing down dinner before hunting down the only air-conditioned movie theater in the city to watch shrek on a saturday night. if it wasn't for the bloody french guy smoking in the next row back, it'd almost be just like home.

something i did today while fraser was at work.

am off to see the kiwi.

want to buy me something to read on the plane?