The Squeee

Heard the name James Stewart mentioned on TV recently and thought I'd look him up. And indeed, they had eyecandy back in the day too! REALLY! This guy could give quite a few modern heartthrobs a run for their money. and

Here's for picking more Swedish classics! :D In the 1960s and 1970s, many old houses were demolished to give room for new (and, let's face it, ugly) housing developments. This 1967 song by Anna-Lena Löfgren is called Lyckliga gatan ("The Happy Street") and is about how the street where she grew up has been destroyed in order to become a part of the concrete jungle. It's a very emotional song, and I love the song for its message about wanting to preserve the environment. The video features old postcards from around Sweden, according to the person who put it together, and he also says that much of what is depicted no longer exists. :( Swedish lyrics first, followed by an English translation.

It's a bit early in the year to decide on the weirdest celebrity crushes of 2013, isn't it? Every year, Heat magazine makes a list of unconventional-looking men and ask women to vote for who they think is the "weirdest crush". I came across the longlist earlier this year, and was absolutely puzzled as to why many of those men were on the list. I mean, Hugh Bonneville?! Lord Grantham is a dish! What's weird about him?! Anyway. I voted for a few, although I don't remember exactly who they were, but now, the top ten have been revealed. I snaffled the list from Virgin Media .

Want to read Jane Eyre -related books? Why not join in the 2013 Books of Eyre Challenge , hosted by Amber at The Musings of ALMYBNENR ? :) I think it sounds like a splendid idea. The challenge runs all year long, and you can set your own level of participation: Orphan: 5 books Student: 10 books Teacher/Governess: 15 books Mr./Mrs. Rochester: 20 books Last year, I reviewed five of these kind of books, and I have at least two that needs reviewing at the moment. As I have made it a life mission of sorts to read as many Jane Eyre spin-offs as possible (the whole thing about needing to have ISBN number is brilliant - I might just have to borrow that description), I was going to say I won't be taking part, but maybe I actually should. I mean, why not? I'm doing it already, but under the banner of Everything Eyre . Maybe then I'll get around to finish reading the ones I'm reading at the moment, not to mention actually reviewing those that are waiting to be reviewe...

"How can this possibly be unexpected?!" you cry. Well, all right, calm down. I've not seen him in anything until not that long ago, when I watched Rebecca , so you know, chill. No wonder he got to be Mr Darcy, Maxim de Winter and Heathcliff! And just because the same page where I found the image above also had a picture of him with a cat: Mrreow.

I've mentioned on occasion being an ABBA fan. I'm also a fan of Agnetha Fältskog's songs before and during the ABBA years. There are so many great songs I could share, but if I was to settle for just the one, it would be Är du som han? ("Are you like him?") from 1975. It's oddly relevant to all fellow fangirls out there, because surely everyone has wondered, at some point or other, how the object of our admiration (say, Richard Armitage), the unknown, measures up to the known, i.e. our respecive significant others ... Original Swedish lyrics first, but scroll down for an English translation!

The problem with these posts is that it's not always very easy to come up with ideas for them. However, sometimes you get inspired by any number of the "LOOKS LIKE" posts on the IMDb message boards. I'll fully admit this is what sparked this particular post, so thanks to whoever suggested it! If Liam Neeson and Eric Bana had a love child, this is what he'd look like:

Seeing as how it's Holocaust Memorial Day, I thought it would be fitting to write about our visit to KZ-Dedenkstätte Dachau outside Munich in Germany. Seeing as how we were driving around Germany, for the most part, and happened to be close to a former concentration camp, it felt as if we owed history to visit and pay our respects. To actually read the post, please click on to Visiting Dachau Concentration Camp . I posed it on Notepad Narnia , which is my [utterly sporadic and often far too] personal blog, because it didn't feel quite right to post the full story here. This blog is meant to be cheerful and lighthearted, but I still wanted to post something about it, because it's important, especially in these troubled times. Just having watched a TV programme about a holocaust survivor has something to do with it as well. It meant I wanted to post about it straight away, rather than some other day.

Apparently, I haven't done a Musical Interlude since August 2010 ?! That can't be right. I'm sure I've posted music videos since then. o.O Anyway, I just wanted to share an awesome old song again. This time, it's Cat Stevens: Can't Keep It In from 1972. It just makes me happy, in much the same way that bricks don't. Also: SO MUCH GREAT MUSIC CAME OUT OF THE SEVENTIES!!!

For three years, a bunch of bloggers have set aside a week in March to blog about Richard Armitage in an event we call FanstRAvaganza . For me, it normally works out as having an idea and then getting in completely over my head. So this year, true to form, I've gone in off the deep end and I haven't even brought a swimming cozzie. Because I said I'd organise it. Waaaahhh! If you're interested in taking part, feel free to fill out this form to let me know. Don't worry, it's not an RSVP or anything, it's just a way of expressing an interest, even if it might not appear that way. If you change your mind later and don't want to do it, it's fine, honest. It's just to give me a general idea of what people want of “F4“ and if it's going to attract 5, 50 or 500 people. 500 is a bit pie-in-the-sky, admittedly, but just in case. Better to be aware of that now than in mid-March.

I decided to have a look through my old files, as I knew I had put together some silly Wheel of Time-related things years and years ago. It was last updated in 2005 according to the old HTML file, but probably pre-dates that. So, to celebrate the release of the final book TODAY, let's have a Randland giggle. Slightly updated to reflect Robert Jordan's passing and that the series will actually finish with the release of A Memory of Light . You know you're a Wheel of Time addict when ... "How come you aren't giving over all your creative energies to wotmania! I'm shocked!" - Mike Mackert, founder of wotmania (which apparently closed down in 2009 - I'm great at keeping up ...)

I decided to have a look through my old files, as I knew I had put together some silly Wheel of Time-related things years and years ago. It was last updated in 2005, but probably pre-dates that. So, to celebrate the release of the final book, and counting down to it, let's have a Randland giggle. A whole bunch of reasons why being an Aes Sedai in real life would rock "How come you aren't giving over all your creative energies to wotmania! I'm shocked!" - Mike Mackert, founder of wotmania (which apparently closed down in 2009 - I'm great at keeping up ...)

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):