Audience reaction from the film's premiere.

Fade in: A slowly spinning globe, half seen through smoke. A narrator tells us that once the world was big and no man could ever hope in his lifetime to circle it. Now, though, science has made man’s lifetime bigger and the world smaller. Now the farthest corner of the Earth is as close as a pushbutton (o… kay. Nice parable. I guess) and that time has lost all meaning as manmade devices speed many, many times faster than sound itself. Alright, whatever you say, Mr. Narrator…

He continues his dreary monologue while we get to see obvious stock footage of tractors, machinery and other things. “Here at the top of the world, free men are struggling with the elements”, blah, blah, blah… the narration just won’t stop. After a while you start wondering whether you might head into the kitchen without missing anything, maybe brew a cup of coffee, or perhaps redecorate the house… even if you’re living in an apartment.

Anyway, eventually the movie seems to start for real. Some people are testing their radar equipment, barking instructions to a pilot named Mitch MacAfee, who’s flying around, his face fused to a grim expression. The narrator, however, refuses to stop talking. Instead, he begins to describe what’s happening, as if we couldn’t see it for ourselves. A huge shadow passes by Mitch’s plane. He quickly informs the radar testers. The voice recounts as we watch it:

“MacAfee reported instantly the sighting of a UFO, an unidentified flying object. The radar officer replied that it was impossible. According to the radar scope, except for Mitch’s plane there wasn’t a single solitary object of any nature whatsoever.”

It’s like sitting next to an all too loud father who must explain everything to his not-so-bright child.

At long last it appears that someone must’ve gotten as fed up with him as we are, kicking the door open to the recording booth and beating him unconscious or something, for after a few minutes the voice finally shuts up.

A couple of planes are dispatched to investigate Mitch’s claim of a UFO and now one of them has gone missing, so an officer orders MacAfee to his office for a proper scolding.

“Don’t lie, you lying liar!” he screams, showering MacAfee’s bitter face with saliva. “There was nothing on the radar and now a pilot is missing because of your false alarm!” The phone rings and the person on the other end informs the officer that yet another plane has disappeared. He sits down, strokes his chin, ponders. “Perhaps you’re telling the truth after all.”

Fifteen minutes (or something that feels like it) passes while the characters are handling the dialogue, or at least giving it their best efforts. Once again we get to glimpse the giant shadow in the clouds, which is followed by a pretty hilarious crash landing. At least you’re beginning to enjoy the movie, somewhat amusedly, but just at that moment, it seems like the narrator has recovered from whatever ailment that kept him away. Wasting no time, he quickly jumps to his feet, grabs the microphone and starts describing what we are seeing.

The UFO turns out to be… drum roll… a bird! “A bird the size of a battleship,” the narrator informs us. Mitch and his gal, Sally, don’t muse much on why the monstrous creature didn’t turn up on the radar – like everyone else, they’re more concerned that the damn thing seems to be on a strict diet consisting solely of aircrafts and people!

Excerpts from the bird’s menu:

• Monday: Aircrafts and people.
• Tuesday: Aircrafts and people.
• Wednesday: Aircrafts and people.

The list goes on.

And the worst news is that the beast bird seems unkillable. They send all they got against it, which is pretty much stock footage of planes. At ground level, people are listening to the pilots as they die, one after the other.

“No, it’s coming after me!” says the last of them without sounding scared at all. He tries again: “No, nooooo!”

The general turns the radio off and sighs. He doesn’t have time to listen to bad acting. He needs something to end that bird from hell and, naturally, it’s up to Mitch and Sally to think of something.

The Giant Claw is one of the many bad low budget movies that were produced in the 50s, filled with stock footage, bad acting and even worse special effects. Apparently, the actor Morrow (who plays Mitch) didn’t know what the monster looked like until he attended the premiere in his hometown. Each time the thing appeared, the audience roared with laughter, which inspired him to exit the cinema before the movie had ended, embarrassed that someone might recognize him. His future career would be as an actor on TV.

The director (and narrator), Fred F. Sears, managed to squeeze out an additional eight films before his demise, which must be considered quite an achievement considering he died the same year that The Giant Claw debuted. He was only 44 years old. If I were to guess at the cause of his passing, I’d say he probably had an insane idea to watch all his movies in a row and when he got to this one, he laughed himself to death.

Talk about... phoning in his performance. *crickets*

Hello? What did you say? There's someone working on my line and if I answer the phone I'll electrocute him?

Yeah, hi, I'd like to order a plane with extra people. Supersize it!

This is probably what they were doing when writing the script... and shooting the movie... and making the special effects... and editing the film... and...

If you look really carefully, you might see that this is an FX-shot.

I arranged a parachuting party for all my readers yesterday. It was a great success!

No, I ordered ice, not eyes!

Mitch thought he'd brought back a real hottie from the pub last night, but when he awoke he was greeted by this sight...

Stop the presses! New headline: Turkey invades USA!

Please don't force me to watch the movie! Wasn't it enough that I acted in it?

Conan the Barbarian hacked and slashed his way across cinemas in 1982, and it did not take long before a loathsome stench emerged in his wake. It was the reek of a beast that had laid dormant for the past twenty years, the great and powerful monster of Sword-and-sandal (roar!). Hoping to cash in on Conan’s success, these movies came in their hundreds, trying to lure audiences with titles such as Barbarian Master, The Invisible Barbarian and Ator, the Fighting Eagle. Having barely any money to spend on art direction…or a decent script, tolerable actors, and so on, and so on, they tried to compensate for their numerous shortcomings by upping the gore and nudity.

Barbarian Queen may not technically be a sword-and-sandal movie as it’s an American-Argentinian production, but whatever. It certainly looks and feels like most of the Italian movies of the era… the cinematic equivalence of feverishly crawling into the bathroom with gastroenteritis, not knowing whether to sit on the toilet or stick your head in it because it’s running from both ends.

Anyway, our story takes place during the height of the Roman Empire, and men’s biggest pleasure – correction: their only pleasure – appears to be fighting and raping women. We first see a woman picking flowers by a river. She stands up, takes a few steps and walks right into a snare. A couple of men rush forward and starts pulling her clothes off, laughing. Cut to a village. Naturally, everyone in it is leading Disney-happy lives. A man who apparently is the king is preparing for his wedding. He smiles like an all-too eager salesman while strolling next to his buddy, getting well-wishes and good-lucks by every passer-by. His friend tells him a bad joke and they guffaw so exaggeratedly you begin to wonder if they’ve ever laughed before.

Thankfully, this mindless – almost disturbing – bliss soon vanishes, for the Romans have come and they’re not fans of smiles or laughter, always on the lookout for new carefree people to rape and kill. And not always in that order. They so want to rape someone they can’t even contain themselves until the fighting is over. Every now and then a soldier tosses a woman to the ground and start ripping her clothes off, but it doesn’t take long before a barbarian shows up and thrusts something sharp and long deep into the astonished attacker’s body. Kind of makes you wonder what instructions their commander gave them before the battle, or what their overall strategy was.

“Any suggestions on how to take the village, general?”

“Oh, just throw in all we have. Don’t mind formation and such boring formalities. Have fun, rape a little while you’re at it!”

“But…”

“ALL WE HAVE AT THE SAME TIME! And rape a girl or two, for gods’ sake. Before the battle’s over, understand?”

During the battle we see that the barbarian queen, Amathea, is a true warrior, ruthlessly hacking down countless men who don’t dare to swing their swords too fast or hard in fear of hurting the actress. She’s so lethal she only needs to gently kick one person in the stomach to kill two people! It’s somewhat reminiscent of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when the knight dashes through the castle, chopping down wedding guests left and right.

Her talent is not enough to save the day, though. Eventually the Romans win and the few barbarians who aren’t dead are taken as slaves. There are two exceptions: Amathea and her best friend… eh… Estrild?… who apparently had gone to find that flower-picking-snare-stepping girl (who we learn is Amathea’s sister). So how did Amathea escape the Romans? By running into a house and setting it on fire. Yeah. So, the Romans line up outside, waiting for her to emerge from the hellish flames like some wildly flailing, shrieking human torch. It doesn’t happen, however. After a while they sit down and grill some hot dogs, then they realize it was several hours ago since they raped someone last, so they gather the survivors and leave.

How exactly did Amathea survive the fire, you ask? She simply LAY DOWN ON THE FLOOR. So remember kids: If there’s a fire, just lie down on the floor and wait until the building has burned to the ground. Then you can calmly get up and walk away.

Amathea and… Estrild?… head to the river to get themselves cleaned up, when suddenly they hear a horse approaching. The rider is their good friend… uh, that third barbarian woman.

“I thought they captured you!” Amathea says.

“Just one. I killed him,” that third barbarian woman replies and the three laugh heartily, despite the fact that their village has been destroyed and about every single person they’ve ever known has either been killed or raped or both. They become somewhat more grim when they realize that, and decide that they must free the remaining survivors.

What I’ve described thus far is only the first ten minutes of the film, but I think it’s enough in order to understand where the film has set the bar… about three feet underground, so no one can accidentally trip on it.

It could have been an at least decent action movie, had the script, the director, the costumes, the make-up, the choreography, etc. been brought up a few (thousand) notches. After all, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto has a similar set-up, but then, his film has actors that can talk and laugh in a natural way, while those in Barbarian Queen seem like they recently graduated from the porn academy. Actually, that was rather rude. There are a few porn actors who can act (or so I’ve heard, ahem).

The only reason your pulse increases in the action scenes is because you laugh at how poorly made they are. It seems like they just drove to the various locations, threw up the camera somewhere and yelled “Action!” without giving anyone instructions, other than possibly a “Fight each other”. The actors awkwardly wag or poke their obvious prop weapons a little and occasionally someone collapses, even though he or she hasn’t been hit by anything.

Later in the movie they cut between two different fights in a way that almost gave me a seizure. Two are fighting in the water, CUT: two are fighting on land, CUT: water, CUT: land, CUT: water, CUT, CUT, CUT… how it all ends is one of the film’s unintentionally funny highlights. We see Amathea swing her sword, then hear the man’s excessive death rattle, but what they do next is the real masterstroke: They cut to the man’s face and you can clearly see that her sword isn’t even touching his throat, while he’s looking like his grandma is performing a striptease just out of shot. What’s truly genius is that his death rattle continues, although his lips are barely parted and don’t move (see picture below). Cut and… battle over! Perfection.

Ed Wood would have been proud. Or perhaps not. I’m going to try using my psychic ability to contact the other side and ask him what he thinks of this movie.

Testing, testing, one, two three, do you read me? Hello? Ed Wood? Ed Wood, are you there?

No response. Though perhaps the silence is an answer of sorts.

The barbarian king is learning how to laugh. Ha-ha-ha! he tries woodenly, with strongly accentuated H:s.

Before I die... I want to know how that arrow could hit me straight in the forehead when I had that hut just in front of me. Uggghhh... (click picture)

The barbarian king unleashes his war face, but instead of fleeing everyone turns against him, eager to remove that face.

Amathea and... Estrild?... show that you can have fun only minutes after your hometown has burnt to the ground and everyone you ever loved is either dead or enslaved.

He died hardest... by getting the sword thrust into that fragile place between his beard and neck.

Uugggghuuuhuhhhh... I'm dead.

So... if that's what you're usually wearing, what does your bathing suit look like?

Christopher Lambert is forced to watch the movie.

I do love a so-bad-it’s-good cheesy movie. You could divide these films into two categories. You also could not, but whatever. I’m going to do it:

1. Intentionally funny bad movies. The filmmakers know they’re not making high art. They aren’t trying to create the next Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia, or even Big Trouble in Little China. They just want to unleash something braindead and hopefully entertaining upon their audience, sort of like an comatose clown (without the scary sort of make-up). Many of these movies have rather amusing titles, such as Sharktopus, Mothman, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. They can also be tributes to other bad movies, like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a film that’s poorly made on purpose (the actors play bad actors, the editing and cinematography are deliberately awkward, etc.). This kind of bad movies is perfect for boring evenings at home, especially in the company of some friends and/or alcoholic beverages. You’re in the mood for some silly humor, something that doesn’t take itself too seriously and doesn’t demand that you watch each second in order to understand it. Like a movie about a dinocroc fighting a supergator.
2. Unintentionally funny bad movies. These are often made with little money but huge passion, by enthusiasts with big dreams, people who really, really love making films… but who are not so good at it. They lack the skill to tell a story properly, how to build tension in a scene, or even how to shoot a scene.  The dialogue is often abysmal, brought forth by hilariously inadequate actors. I love this kind of movie. The obvious example would be Ed Wood’s classic Plan 9 From Outer Space. There are of course other rather famous examples too, such as Troll 2 and The Room, both of which might appear in this article series. Unintentionally funny bad movies can, however, also be made by capable filmmakers. Perhaps they didn’t set out to create the next 2001 – A Space Odyssey or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but they weren’t planning on making a shitty film… it just happened, somehow. The cast may be well known, or at least consist of a few competent actors who usually deliver great performances, but for whatever reason it just doesn’t work this time. Some modern examples are The Happening and the remake of The Wicker Man.

To me, unintentionally funny bad movies are among the most enjoyable things to watch. They beat most comedies when comparing LPM (Laughs Per Minute). I sometimes laugh so hard it hurts in my abdominal muscles and my jaw – it’s pure workout. The first time I watched my personal favorite among these movies, I laughed pretty much continuously from the first scene until well after it had ended. The amazing thing is that it’s part three in a series of four phenomenally bad movies!

I won’t begin this series with those four movies, though – I’m planning on having a possibly lethal marathon further on (I may die laughing). No, I’m going to start off with some low-fat cheese, if you will, then proceed to the fatter and more delicious ones later.

Allow me to introduce Fortress from the year of our Lord, 1992. It’s a film set in that near future we never seem to get to. We’re informed that the U.S. is overpopulated and that it’s illegal to have more than one child. This is not good news to Karen, who’s baking her second offspring in the oven (not literary). Apparently her first child was stillborn, but rules are rules. Thus, she and her husband, played by the ever so gracious Christopher Lambert, are about to cross the border into Mexico. Naturally, they run knee-deep into trouble.

A particularly sharp-eyed guard discovers her pregnancy, pointing at her and yelling stuff to his colleagues. Christopher rewards his attentiveness by breaking his arm and nose. The alarm howls in unison with the guard as the married couple runs across the bridge towards the promised land. It doesn’t take too long for Christopher to realize that they won’t make it. He tells his wife to keep going while he takes care of the dogs that have been unleashed and are quickly gaining on them. He turns around and tries staring them down. “You’re not that big,” he thinks, then they reach him and shut their jaws around his arms and legs, turning him into a twisting, screaming chew toy on the asphalt. Through the pain, he at least sees that his wife has escaped. He smiles at the guards who come running.

“Go ahead and do your worst!” he hisses defiantly, whereupon they strap him in a chair and force him to watch every single movie he’s starred in.

“Niyyyyaaaaaaaahhhh! NO! Anything but this!” he shrieks.

“Okay, you’re sentenced to 31 years in prison.”

He got off easy.

The prison he’ll be spending the next three decades in is naturally not your typical prison, but a private underground superstructure in the middle of the desert. “Completely escape-proof,” a female voice declares for the prisoners as they approach the establishment, densely packed in a truck. A man stares at the desert landscape through a small window, his eyes so wide open you fear his eyeballs might slip from their sockets. He tells the others he’s been sentenced to 60 days, and as soon as he’s said it, we know he’s not the surviving kind of character.

Before they’re escorted to their cells, they have to shove their heads into a box on the wall and give a blow job to some small machine, which gives them a real cracker in return for their efforts – a small bomb that distributes pain if they cross the yellow lines that are painted on the floors, and explodes if they step over the red lines. Of course it’s not enough just to hear this information. In the following scene, as they’re brought down a corridor, the 60-day man panics.

“I have claustrophobia!” he cries frantically and wide-eyed while tottering about like some beheaded chicken. “I’m not sure why I wasn’t aware of it when we were packed like sardines in that small truck, but I guess the scriptwriter-” He steps toward the yellow line and again we hear the female voice, warning him not to cross it. “The yellow line means pain.” As soon as his foot touches the line he screams and falls to the floor… the interesting thing is that he collapses in the middle of the corridor, so you would think the pain might stop then and there, but no. He realizes that he has landed in the wrong place and, still yelling for all he’s worth, starts crawling back to the yellow line, and then beyond it. Perhaps he’s the kind of person that gets off on pain.

“Don’t cross the red line,” the female voice calmly admonishes. “The red line means death.”

“Death, cool! That might be even more painful!” the 60-day man thinks while determinedly (and still screaming) dragging himself across the line.

“AAAAAHHHH!!!” he howls as he pulls up his shirt to show the audience what’s going on – his stomach is swelling, as if he’s about to birth an alien. He isn’t, though. Instead, a small pop is heard, his stomach explodes and he dies in a rather amusing way.

Then the rest of the movie happens. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s about Christopher Lambert trying to escape from the prison.

Fortress has a pretty cool concept and a few nice sceneries (laser grids instead of boring iron bars, yo!) and scenes. But it has some seriously cheesy stuff as well, like the evil warden having some sort of mumbo jumbo machine that can see what the prisoners are dreaming of. Being so evil, he doesn’t like dreams of a sexual or romantic nature, so he shocks them awake and asks them to please dream of something nicer, like snapping the neck of a kitten, eating a baby or something along those lines. My biggest question is: Why doesn’t he use that machine to see if the prisoners are cooking up some sort of escape plan? Maybe he’s too busy being evil, for he has put his greasy, evil warden fingers on Christopher’s sweet wife and because their second child is illegal, he intends for it to belong to MelTel Corporation (the company that owns the prison) when she has given birth to it!

“Muahahahaha!” he cackles evilly after having told Karen of his evil plans, dressed in bathrobe, a brandy cup in his hand. He tries to twirl his mustache before realizing he doesn’t have one. “Damn, I need a cat to sit in my lap!” he thinks. “A whole basket full of kittens, so I can snap their necks when I’ve finished patting them, just so I can show everyone how truly evil I am.”

Could this have been a better movie? Definitely. Like I said, it has a pretty cool concept. Just skipping cheesy stuff like the dream scanner would’ve improved it. To have an actor with more charisma than Christopher Lambert would’ve been another improvement. It would’ve been really interesting if the warden hadn’t been so utterly evil, perhaps someone who really believes in the system, a red tape sort of man, something like that. Just a thought. Anyway, there was real potential to create a scifi classic. Now it became cheese instead. Unfortunately not the best kind of cheesy movie, the one that leaves you with barely any air in your lungs because you keep laughing it all out, but one that puts a slight grin on your face and occasionally makes you chuckle in amusement.

Christopher looks longingly at his wife.

Welcome to the private pound-you-in-the-ass prison.

I see naked people.

Damnit, I shouldn't have eaten that last burrito!

Looks like someone accidentally filled his man-diapers.

Christopher is shocked to learn they have no mustard to go with all that ketchup.

Hungry? Think I got some packed lunch in here.

Could you scratch my back? It's itching like hell.

Say cheese!

Eye candy!

Christopher shows off his seemingly endless emotional range.

Elias, the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on! (... no, not really)

About a week has passed since you were taken and we still don’t know what has happened to you. We took you to Sofia’s sister because we thought you’d enjoy spending the summer in a place where you could eat all the green grass you wanted to. But had we known that some idiot would snatch you – the very day before we were supposed to bring you back – we would never have moved you there. Actually, we were supposed to bring you home earlier. You probably remember we came to visit you about three weeks ago. Did you wonder why we didn’t let you come with us then? I hope you didn’t think it was because we didn’t care for you anymore. We did it because we cared – it was such a blazingly hot day we were worried you’d get a heatstroke in the car. We decided to return for you when it was a bit cooler. Unfortunately, someone else got there before us.

I’ve barely been able to sleep this week, because every time I close my eyes I start imagining what might have happened to you. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have my imagination, for the past few days and nights it has brought me some very disturbing visions of what you’ve been through, or might still be going through. What also has kept me up at night is the idea that you might’ve thought we wanted that person to take you. I know, it’s stupid, really – you know we’d never let any harm befall you – but I simply can’t rid myself of the thought. And you probably couldn’t understand why, why that stranger climbed over the fence that surrounded the house, went to your pen, opened the door and seized you. How could you? You’ve only known loving and caring people your whole life. You’ve always had Sofia and me.

I must be honest: I wasn’t particularly fond of you in the beginning. You belonged to Sofia and came sort of as part of the deal when we decided to move in together. I didn’t consider a rabbit a suitable domestic animal. You grew on me, though, mostly because you didn’t seem to understand that you were a rabbit. Each night you’d come into the bedroom, jump up on the bed and demand to be patted for minutes, even hours. If I was asleep, you’d either start licking my arm, or squeeze your little head in under my hand, so I had no choice but to pat you for a while. Then you’d hop down to my feet and lie thereabouts. Sometimes you remained until I got up in the morning, but most nights you grew bored after a few hours and went about your business elsewhere in the apartment.

I particularly remember one night when I was very sick and lay in bed, shivering in fever and coughing something fierce. You stayed with me the whole time and you weren’t on your usual spot, but kept by my side and each instant I woke up coughing, you approached me and licked my face, as if to offer consolation. You seemed genuinely worried about me. When I felt better the following night, you were back at your usual place by my feet.

But it wasn’t all sunshine, was it? There were times when you drove me half insane, like the time I discovered you had chewed on the cords to our surround speakers, or when I walked in and saw you sitting in our sofa, feasting on its fabric, or especially when I woke up one night to what sounded like paper being ripped and found you eating my favorite wallpaper. Man, that made me mad as hell! Several times I’ve chased you around the apartment and more often than not, you seemed to get the message. You never took another bite at the sofa again. But you just couldn’t help yourself when it came to the wallpapers, could you? Apparently they were just too delicious, because once we had them fixed, I found you yet again one night – at exactly the same place - ingesting the recently put up wallpaper. After that, we made sure to close the door to our bedroom and every night I heard you come running on the other side and then scraping your little paws at it, as if you actually believed you could push it open. But it wasn’t the wallpaper you longed for, was it? What you really wanted to was to lie in the bed again.

We were going to let you do that when you got back home. I had a plan on how to make you stay away from those wallpapers. Well, guess I’ll never find out if it would’ve worked. Hell, if I got you back now, I’d let you eat all the wallpaper you wanted to. I’d even lift you up to help you finish the whole damn wall. Sure, it’s a nice wallpaper, but a wallpaper can never bring me the kind of joy and peace you did.

I don’t even know if you’re alive. You could be dead, for all I know. Everything points to that. If you are, I hope you didn’t have to suffer. I hope that in your last moments, you knew that Sofia and I had nothing to do with it and that we both still love and hope to find you. We need to find you, whatever has happened, because the not knowing has left both of us pretty devastated. It’s difficult to move on as it is, but not getting closure makes it that much harder. And if someone did hurt you, we’ll do everything we can too see that person get his due.

Then again, you might still be alive. Maybe someone’s taking good care of you. I want to believe that. Perhaps we’ll meet again some day.

Or are you all by yourself, in the wild? I imagine you’d be pretty frightened. You always were scared of strangers – humans as well as other animals – at least until you realized they meant you no harm. You were quite cautious of my parents, until you had to live with them for a week when we moved to our new apartment. You didn’t seem as nervous when you had to stay there the second time when Sofia and I went on vacation earlier this year. Well, if you are alive and out in the woods, I wish you’d return to your pen by Sofia’s sister’s house. Then we’d come and bring you back home in an instant. I’d even buy some wallpaper for you to eat in the car.

It must seem rather silly that I write this. Heck, I don’t know if I’d laugh at it had I never had you as my pet. Like I said, I never did see rabbits as great domestic animals until I met you. Those who read this will probably think I’m mad, but if they’ve ever lost a beloved pet, I think they might have some grasp of what a terrible void that can leave inside. But why am I writing some sort of open letter to a bunny anyway? It’s not like you can read. And even if you could and someone let you see this post, it’s not like you’d understand since I’m not writing in my mother tongue. So why exactly am I writing it in English? Had I used Swedish, I would’ve been able to express myself more eloquently. I would’ve been able to more fully convey all the emotions and thoughts I’ve experienced this past week. I guess the reason is that somehow it feels easier to write in a language that I’m not fluent in, that I must try to vent my feelings in this rather coarse fashion. But that’s not why I’m writing this. The truth is, it’s because this is not intended for you, not really. It’s actually for me.

Like I said, I haven’t been able to sleep well since you disappeared. This past week I’ve felt such anger, frustration, sorrow and hopelessness, and the insomnia certainly isn’t improving my mood. I know it’s part of the grieving process, but I don’t want to linger in this state. I want to go on – need to go on – and perhaps letting it all out in this rather stupid way will help me take that important first step.

I hope you return, or at least that we find out whatever happened to you, but in case that never happens, I hope you’re at peace now. You were a great, furry little friend and you gave me plenty of joy. And some ruined wallpapers, but I forgive you for that.

One thing you can be sure of and that is that I’ll never forget you.

I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble.

Guess I should start by introducing myself. I could give you a long and possibly quite boring tale of my life, but here’s the short version of it:

I was born in 1979 and have kept living since then, mostly here in Sweden. Got a job at IKEA, a partner, some friends and a few interests (such as whiskey, food, interior design) and passions (the biggest ones being writing and films). Big nerd. I’m a night kind of guy, not a big fan of early mornings – usually go to bed at 3am and get up between 10 and 11am.

A few books I love: Coraline, The Emigrants suit (by Moberg), The Devil in the White City, The Difference Engine, The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Harry Potter, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Lord of the Rings, The Maltese Falcon, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Revelation Space, The Road, The Shadow Over Innsmouth and A Song of Ice and Fire.

Some of my favorite movies: The Big Sleep, Blade Runner, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Dark City, Die Hard, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, Hot Fuzz, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, Lawrence of Arabia, The Maltese Falcon, Miller’s Crossing, Oldboy, Predator, Pulp Fiction, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Taxi Driver, The Talented Mr. Ripley, There Will Be Blood, The Thing and Zodiac.

There are a few TV-series I’ve enjoyed as well: Battlestar Galactica, Deadwood, Futurama, Game of Thrones, Grand Designs, Life After People, Mad Men, Planet Earth, Rome, Sherlock, The Sopronos and The Wire.

The idea is that this blog will be mostly about my two passions, writing and films, though I might occasionally (or perhaps often) steer off in other directions. You never know.