Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Black and white Brompton

Originally uploaded by yhase

Frank and I were just leaving Nordita when I saw it–the most gorgeous bicycle ever! When I say a physical object is gorgeous, I mean that it clearly has much information cleverly packed in its essence.

I was not disappointed. Ulf kindly set down his backpack and demonstrated just how he could fold up his Brompton bicycle into a tiny, portable package to carry on trains or store in a small closet. Flickr has a photo pool for Brompton bike enthusiasts where you can see these amazing bikes folded and unfolded in places like London, Paris, and NYC. I guess I just never noticed them before.

Judging from the expression on Frank’s face, he now wants his own Brompton bike to fold and unfold.

I’m so outraged–suppose I fire a gun into a crowd and kill John Smith. Am I innocent of murder unless the DA can prove that I intended to murder Mr. John Smith?

That’s exactly the kind of reasoning, it seems to me, behind the latest outrage in the NH phone-jamming scandal. James Tobin’s lawyers claim that he’s innocent of telephone “harassment” because–even though maybe he should have known Democrats might feel emotional distress if folks jammed their phone lines on Election Day–Tobin’s real “intent” wasn’t to make anybody feel bad at all.

Anyway, that’s all I’m going to say here but I did just write up the whole story at Blue Hampshire–some of the comments there are from people who were there, talking about what it felt like to get phone-jammed. In better phone-jamming news (thanks to Frank and to Ri and to Bill for all emailing me the link) today’s NY Times has an editorial urging a real (not Gonzales-led) investigation of the phone-jamming.

That time of year…

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

When we found ourselves with no place to stay in Sweden, this lovely peaceful house welcomed us in for a two-week stay. After all the packing and racing around in Cambridge, we stepped into two weeks of tranquility and grace, enhanced by lovely giant breakfasts served every day in the dining room.

Not far away, in Uppsala’s Ångstromlaboratoriet, there was an inspiring hive of physics activity. Frank finished four manuscripts in a record time–I didn’t get quite so much finished, but I’m well underway on a chapter about the early seventies at Princeton University.

We will miss our peaceful Uppsala homebase, but stark busy Stockholm does also look inspiring!

Swedish Kraeftor (crayfish)

Originally uploaded by M_Eriksson

Frank and I went to a great Swedish bring-your-own-crayfish crayfish party tonight. Grad students and postdocs of the Uppsala theoretical physics department organized the whole evening, bringing paper crayfish banners, napkins, caraway-flavored cheese, and many other necessities.

Antti, who (though Finnish) is our guru for all things Swedish, took me yesterday to the huge department store known as Coop (pronounced Cope) where we bought frozen jumbo crayfish cooked Swedish style (lots of salt) but from Spain. I didn’t think I could eat a whole kilogram box of crayfish, but I almost did tonight–that’s because most of the stuff in the frozen box isn’t meat–it’s shell or juice or something not very edible.

Now, it’s not a real Swedish party without Swedish drinking songs. Paradoxically, Swedish laws about drinking drivers are much stricter than the US laws–drinking one tablespoon of wine in Sweden could land you in trouble if a Swedish policeman stops you.

Frank was kind enough to be our non-drinking driver tonight. He’s not much of a drinker although he does like parties–and also he doesn’t like shellfish, so I made him two giant smoked-salmon sandwiches for tonight.

Swedish schnapps glasses are (fortunately) really tiny–maybe one tablespoon capacity? That’s a good thing because the first drinking song always seems to be Helan går. “Helan går” means (roughly) “The whole thing goes.” The idea is that if you don’t drink up your entire (tablespoon) drink in the pause at the end of this song, you won’t get even a half a drink for the next song. That small glass is also a good thing because the number of drinking songs at a dinner is typically 8 or 9.

We brought a bottle of Gallo Turning Leaf white wine, but I also got offered some vodka (wow!) and some Swedish aquavit (whew!) (if this blogppost seems incoherent, that’s your explanation!)

After three or four Swedish drinking songs, Frank and I stood up for our national honor with an American drinking song, of which we two remembered slightly different versions:

Leprosy
Is creeping all over me
There goes my eyeball,
Into my highball.

Leprosy
Is creeping all over me
There goes my ear, dear,
Into my beer, dear.

Leprosy
Is creeping all over me
There goes my chin, dear,
Into my gin, dear…

Thus I hope my American readers will be happy to know that Frank and I gave a good account of our own native culture. And, in sum, a good time was had by all.

More from Shamus Young’s “DM of the Rings”: Gimli and Legolas as D & D warriors.

Aaargh! I can’t believe I read the whole thing! Saving throw against finding anything else so geeky and funny!

“DM of the Rings” is a wonderfully comic rework of Lord of the Rings–images from the movie with cartoon dialog from a bunch of guys playing the story as a D & D game. Just for example…

• Frodo aka “Dave’s character”: Do we all have to be hobbits? My stats are rubbish!
  Aragorn: I’m not a hobbit. I get to be a ranger!
• Sam: Look at those guys! I’m going to need a stepladded just to stab them in the knees.
• Legolas: My character is a man!
  Aragorn: Your character portrait says different-Meow!

Really fun, really silly–and I swear I’ve played D&D with every one of these guys. Heck, I remember when was one of these guys!

Thanks, Akma, for the great link to nerdiferous humor–and happy birthday, Akma!

Old garden chair

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

This beautiful chair was lovingly hand-made from (mostly) vines stripped of their leaves, then molded into shape and dried until they are sturdy enough to be sat on.

Can you see the pattern of coiled vines on the seat, some painted green and others varnished brown?

Long ago, I’m told, this was a garden chair. Now it sits in what I think of as a wonderfully Swedish setting, next to a giant tin bathtub–surrounded by gleaming tile, sturdy plumbing, and a bright-curtained window with a potted plant.

(Another closer view of the vine chair, in case you decide that you’d like to make one yourself.)

What did the White House know and when did they know it? Several million Republican dollars and lots of Department of Justice slow-walking went into an effort to wall off investigation of any higher-ups in the NH phone-jamming scandal.

What’s new is that Representative Paul Hodes (D-NH)–a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee–is asking his own committee to investigate.

And with an overwhelming Democratic majority in the House (233 of 435 members), this request from Hodes is likely to get more traction than a request to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which never went forward.

More on this story at TPM and my post at Daily Kos.

Late afternoon sun glows behind green awning

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Veggie pizza for dinner tonight on an outdoor terrace just east of the river, at the corner of Sysslomansgatan and Skolgatan in Uppsala.

Today’s predicted rainfall never showed up–maybe because today’s predicted cloudy skies glowed blue all day. Still evening is chilly and we were thinking about eating inside the restaurant until Antti said…”But this might be the last time this autumn that we can enjoy a beautiful evening outdoors.”

So we sat outdoors on wooden benches and didn’t repent it.

Even after we finished, the light was so beautiful I tried to capture it for you, shining through the awning that shades the piazza.

Tiny pond, early autumn
Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Swedish September is colder than New England’s but has (until September 21) longer days–and its gardens still glow.

Late English roses, sweet-smelling Nicotiana.

Old-fashioned apple trees dropping small ruddy-streaked fruit.

Local Swedish berries with new shapes and colors and tastes.

I will be in Sweden now until December, so I look forward to living in depth a whole new kind of autumn.