The Squeee

Wishing everyone a Merry Yule/Christmas/Hanukkah and a Happy New Year - or, as we say in Swedish, God Jul och Gott Nytt År! Hope you have a great holiday, regardless of denomination. :) In Sweden, we had our Christmas celebrations yesterday, but it's still a time to see the family and enjoy the season. Hopefully the snow sticks around until tomorrow!

December 23 is to Swedes what December 24 is to everyone who celebrate Christmas on the 25th: it's The Day Before. We have our julfirande on the 24th, so the day before it's done in places like the UK. As a Swede living in Britain, treating the 24th as, well, the 23rd is treated back home, is very strange indeed. If I work for a British company and spend Christmas in the UK, I have to book the day off if it falls on a weekday, because otherwise, you're expected to work. How can I be at work when I'm supposed to be celebrating Christmas?! Anyway, more about a Swedish Christmas tomorrow. Today, we light the fourth and final candle in the Advent chandelier, eat the penultimate chocolate in the calendar, watch the penultimate episode of the TV calendar, and prepare for tomorrow. This generally means starting to prepare food. I meant to write this post earlier in the day, but I was busy preparing food, see. ;)

I recently realised that there are certain times of year when I miss Sweden more than others, namely December. "But we have things leading up to Christmas here too!" said the Squeeze, not at all understanding there's a big difference. Yes, I can certainly light candles for Advent here too, that's not an issue. I can also make the same kind of home-made candy, and most of the Christmas food I like I can make in Britain too. But it's still not the same. Not just because it's warmer here and less chance of snow. Things like waiting for someone to burn down the big straw goat in Gävle (newspapers today report someone did this last night!), Twelfth Night, and ... Lucia . Lucia is something we all grow up with and is a tradition that you won't find outside Sweden, unless you go to the embassy or something. I can't just dress up and have my own one-person Lucia procession, because it just doesn't work. You have to be there, in Sweden, and I'm no...

Greetings, new recruits! I'm Armitage Army [insert faux military rank here] Traxy, and this is my blog. Howdy! I'm posting this a few days ahead of the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , and this is written especially for newly hatched Richard Armitage fans who are now scouring the web trying to find information about that guy who plays Thorin Oakenshield , because he's such a brilliant actor. You know, this guy. Basically, I'd like to welcome you to the Dark Side, where so many of us have been for years. Here, have a cookie! No doubt you now require more information about the actor Richard Armitage and I'd like you to know that yes, he really is a great actor, and he's been around for years. As has his fanbase, nicknamed by someone's husband once upon a time as the Armitage Army. (Please don't ask him about this if you ever meet him. Everyone does it, it's really old.) You're a bit late in joining the party, but the party...

Do you know what day they hand out the Nobel Prizes? Most Swedes will be able to tell you: 10 December, the Nobel Day - Nobeldagen . The Peace Prize is given out in Norway, but the rest (as far as I know) are given out in Stockholm. In the evening, the Nobel party (Nobelfesten) is televised, and people do enjoy watching the winners, the royal family, politicians and a bunch of others arrive at the City Hall in Stockholm. TV commentators will talk about who's who, who's wearing what, what the people who have just arrived and are now being shown to their seats are going to eat, and so on.

If all goes well, I anticipate there being a whole host of Swedish Ways posts this month, leading up to Christmas. Or jul (Yule) as we call it, because we're all Pagan Vikings at heart! :D Which is funny, because Christmas tends to be a fairly big deal in Sweden, despite it being an extremely secular society where you're generally seen as a little bit of a weirdo if you attend church regularly. Unless you're a pensioner, perhaps, or your parents forced you to do Confirmation studies when you were 14, despite your heartfelt assurances that it would be a waste of everyone's time. Churches seemed to be very popular in Germany, though. This one's from Schönwald-im-Schwarzwald.

Yesterday, it was the name day of everyone called Anders. There's a saying in Sweden, "Om Anders braskar så slaskar jul", roughly "If Anders is cold, Christmas will be wet", but in archaic language. It works the other way around too. If Anders[' name day] is cold or freezing, Christmas will be mild and rainy, but if it's mild and rainy on 30 November, Christmas will be cold and frosty - maybe even snowy if you're lucky. (Doesn't really work as well if you live in the northern part of the country, where you're probably pretty much guaranteed a snowy landscape from November onwards. Or maybe that's just a prejudice from us southerners.) Oh baby, it's cold outside. If I remember it correctly, it's nothing but a myth, but we still like to say it. Here, the day was fairly cold, starting with having to scrape frost off cars in the morning. Still not very cold, though, it was around -1°C when I left the house in the morning. If...

Back in the 1600s, Sweden was a much bigger country than it is now, and we were at war a lot. We even went all the way down Germany and besieged places like Koblenz (colour me surprised!). As school children, we learn of all this, and we can't not remember the story of how King Gustav II Adolf (wider known in English as Gustavus Adolphus Magnus , apparently) met his maker. It goes something like this (bearing in mind it was 20 years ago now):

All Hallows Eve, All Saint's Day, or as we call it in Sweden: Alla helgons dag or Allhelgonadagen falls this weekend. Technically, I think it's All Saint's Eve followed by All Saint's Day, but the Saturday is a red letter day in the calendar. The object is to pay hommage to the dead. [ Source ] It's not the excitement of the Mexican Festival of the Dead, nor does it really have anything to do with actual saints - Sweden's a Lutheran Protestant country, so we traditionally don't really "do" saints. No, instead, it's the time of year when people visit the graves of their loved ones, light a candle and perhaps lay a fresh wreath by the tombstone. It sure lights up the graveyards at night!

BEHOLD!!! :D Things that make a simple fangirl very happy: finding out that Warner Bros have recently (earlier this month), finally, after all these years, decided to make the 1993/1994 sci-fi TV show Time Trax available on DVD. The most disappointing thing thing is that it's only series one. C'mon WB, you only ever made two - would it have killed you to release them both at the same time as a box set? :(

Everyone hates Joffrey. If you watch Game of Thrones in particular, or perhaps if you're just reading the books on which the TV series is based, you're likely to have taken a sort of anti-shine to that little bastard. As well you should, because Joffrey is not a nice person and is completely devoid of any redeeming features. In fact, he's the epitome of a complete dick, git, douchebag, jerkwad, and so on. But the actor that plays him is the complete opposite, I only just discovered, and because he's made us all hate Joffrey so much, he's obviously rather convincing as an actor! Okay, I didn't expect the actor to be a complete and utter little shit in real life just because he plays one on telly, but you know, it's nice to know that he seems to be a really nice guy in real life.

I've often wondered why in Jane Austen the interesting new acquaintances of the heroine's age are often men rather than women. If the women are bad, they are petty, malicious, proud and inconstant. If the women are good, they are giggly, unintellectual, sometimes sensible, never really deep or profound. (We're not talking about the heroines themselves). Perhaps Jane Austen preferred the company of men? (We seem to see quotes from her letters favourable things about the gentlemen she met). Was she trying to tell us something by having the heroines be friendlier (in a platonic sense) to men than women? Look at Pride and Prejudice . Miss Bingley is a petty malicious slanderer who thinks she's greater than the less well-off Elizabeth. Charlotte Lucas is sensible but then marries the idiotic Mr Collins. Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a vulgar, arrogant interfering old woman. The only exception is Mrs Gardiner, but she's Lizzie's aunt, so that doesn't count. The ge...

More hot dwarves. Sorry, I meant to say "more Thorin Oakenshield". Sorry, I mean Richard Armitage!! *happysigh* Ehh ... okay, well, just look at this: It does have a tremendous amount of Thorin/Richard in it. Very pleased! And of course, now it's less than three months to go! :D

Hello. If you have ever considered submitting a guest review or any other kind of post, to my humble haunt here, now is a great time to get your hands dirty! I'm going to be offline for a few weeks, but I'd still like there to be some posts while I'm gone, if possible. I'm working on writing reviews myself, and so far I've managed to cover six out of nine posts (or twelve, preferably), but if you ever wanted to contribute, now would be a good time, as it gives me time to focus on a bunch of stuff I'll need to sort out in the week ahead. If you have anything you'd like to write, you can email the finished post(s) to blog(at)traxy.co.uk before Friday 21 September, and I'll let you know what date it'll be scheduled for, which will be early- to mid-October. If you've never contributed before, a short blurb about yourself would be great so that you're more than just Random Name. See Guest Posts for examples of previous guest posts. :) Thank...

Look, he's even wearing a cravat! :D Happy 65th birthday, Sam Neill! May you have a great birthday weekend, with lots of wine, spring flowers and warm breezes through the vinyards. :)

Holy moly, it's been a year already! Or rather, it's been three. I can't believe I've managed to post regularly on a blog for three years now. Uh-MAY-zing! :) Thank you for reading this blog, and thank you for leaving a comment now and then, if you do. (Lurking is fine, not like I don't do that myself!) I started this blog to have an outlet for all my pent-up fangirliness, and I think I've succeeded in that. Now, I just like to have reviews of films I've seen so that I pay more attention to what's happening. Writing them down also means I remember whether or not I've seen or read something, and maybe, just maybe, it will be useful to anyone out there who loves to watch films just to be entertained and is wondering whether to watch the latest Twilight flick or Tropic Thunder . Or a Jane Eyre adaptation. Things to look forward to for the rest of 2012: The first part of The Hobbit - which is now a trilogy . Not sure I like that or not yet, consi...

What day is it today? It's Armitage Day! Wishing everyone a fantastic day, regardless of where in the world you are, which also of course goes for the birthday boy himself! Happy birthday, Richard Armitage! Hope your 42nd* year will be as epic as the number implies! :D And don't get swooped up by some big ol' tornado now, y'hear? ;) * The same way as the 1800s is the "19th Century", meaning if he's 41, he's on his 42nd year. That's right, isn't it?

I did another one of these " People that remind me of Richard Armitage " posts before, and I thought it was time to do another one, seeing as how I was reminded of this guy when we saw The Dark Knight Rises recently. (Review to follow once I get back from Sweden?) Well, here's the man in question: Josh Stewart .

Here's what we're going ga-ga over today on Facebook! A new picture (from Entertainment Weekly, I believe) of Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit . [Source: RichardArmitageNet.com ] Hawt dang. Like a friend of mine commented: I really didn't think he was going to be hot as a Tolkien-dwarf but omg, he is hotness no matter what he looks like ♥ I concur! And at the same time note that he seems to be sporting his very own beard and not that fake fuzz we've seen previously. A little over five months to go now! :D

The news has been out for about a week and a half, but I didn't see it until just now. Starlings , the new drama/comedy show on Sky1 (starring Brendan Coyle and Lesley Sharp) that I absolutely adore, has been renewed and a second series will be out some time in 2013. HAPPYFACE! :D