Archive for the ‘Offbeat’ Category

Japanese pineapple popstar bounces back

Miscellaneous, Offbeat: June 3rd, 2009 by PO

Remember the Japanese popstar dressed as a pineapple who was assaulted in Malmö earlier this year. Of course you do.

Well, you’ll be glad to hear that Hideki Kaji made a speedy recovery and the video he was shooting at the time of the attack has seen the light of day. We’ve been meaning to post it for ages. Here it is:

Thrillseeker parachutes onto Turning Torso

Offbeat: December 2nd, 2008 by PO

In this two year old video, Austrian basejumper Felix Baumgartner, 40, aptly nicknamed ‘Fearless Felix’, parachutes from a moving helicopter, lands on top of the famous Turning Torso in Malmö, then basejumps to the ground.

Why? Erm, good question…

Stewardess reaches for hijacker injector

Film, Marketing, Offbeat, Technology: November 24th, 2008 by PO

Recently The Local had a couple of articles cataloguing the proud history of Swedish invention and innovation.

There are two reasons the invention shown in the clip below was not included: 1. It’s not Swedish. 2. It’s patently absurd.

But while the invention may not be Swedish, the company using it to market its services most certainly is.

Allow us to present… The Hijacker Injector. Look and learn as one of stewardesses on a flight takes on a hijacker using this very unique invention. Wonder why it never took off?

Sweden holding onto its pricks

Offbeat, Politics: October 9th, 2008 by PO

Sweden’s Infrastructure Minister Åsa Torstensson had a rude moment at a recent traffic safety conference:

Yes Sweden will absolutely keep the prick system. The prick system has been working very well in Sweden.

The “pricks” to which the minister refers are perhaps better rendered as “points”, as in the sort of points added to the driving licence of a traffic offender.

(Via: Paul Lindquist)

But Torstensson made the classic error, most famously illustrated by the – possibly fictitious – instance of a Swede explaining how to spell a colleague’s name.

His name is Öberg, a zero with two pricks.

Swedish sexy ad ban faces sceptics in Europe

Media, Offbeat, Politics, Sweden abroad: September 8th, 2008 by JS

Britain, we were led to believe at the weekend, is outraged at dastardly foreign attempts to banish busty beauties from the nation’s billboards. The root of their anger was Swedish politicians who, having failed to get sexist ads banned on the home front, scored a win in Brussels.

The Daily Mail, an organ never to miss an opportunity for a bit of Euro-bashing (or, indeed, dredge up images from old Wonderbra ads), was breathless with indignation after a committee of Euro-MPs demanded that EU countries put a stop to any ads that reinforce gender stereotypes. The person behind this controversial plan is none other than Eva-Britt Svensson, a Swedish Left Party MEP and vice chairperson of the European Parliament’s women’s rights committee. The author of the report seems to have swallowed an undergraduate gender studies textbook:

‘Gender stereotyping in advertising straitjackets women, men, girls and boys by restricting individuals to predetermined and artificial roles that are often degrading, humiliating and dumbed down for both sexes.’

So it’s ‘Goobye Boys’ from Wonderbra, but also from yummy Diet Coke builders, Calvin Klein-clad footballers and the rest.

Actually, the chances of any country being forced to ban anything is close to nil (no law has been passed – the European Parliament’s women’s rights committee has just recommended a course of action that governments are free to ignore, as they no doubt will, despite the parliament voting to adopt the report), but if you’ve been in Sweden for the past few years, the proposal had a familiar ring.

The Swedish Council against Sexual Discrimination in Advertising (ERK) has long waged a battle against ads depicting scantily-clad models, as we have reported here and here .

ERK’s rulings have led to accusations that it was trying to act as the ‘thought police’. They have also raised a number of questions: is sexy advertising always sexist? Why should advertisers be expected to be more politically correct than the consumers they target? Whatever happened to free speech? And besides, surely the whole business should be self-regulating: consumers won’t buy products if the ads are offensive? The controversial nature of ERK’s work also has the self-defeating side-effect that the ads it censures are guaranteed lots of free publicity in the tabloids.

ERK’s rulings don’t have the force of law, but earlier this year an official committee proposed going one step further and banning all material “with a commercial aim” that could be “construed as offensive to women or men.”

Equality minister Nyamko Sabuni refused to adopt the report’s findings, saying: “I don’t want to infringe on fundamental human freedoms and rights for a law the efficacy of which I question. This is not the way to win the fight for gender equity.” Defeated on home soil, it looks like Svensson is seeing whether the battle can be won elsewhere. She probably shouldn’t hold her breath – in the UK, at least, even the left-wing papers are subjecting the idea to ridicule.

Charlie Brooker in the Guardian wonders what effects non-sexist ads might have:

I can scarcely picture what kind of patronising hell we’d be creating for ourselves there. And what if it worked? What if all our ads were suddenly filled with ladylike men eating chocolates and butch ladettes swigging beer, and these images proved so influential that everyone started behaving that way in real life, until these brave new anti-stereotypes had become stale old actual stereotypes, so we had to start all over again by subverting our old subversions?

Equally cutting is an article by Claire Beale, editor of ad-industry magazine Campaign. Calling the report “fatuous bureaucratic meddling,” she describes it as “the legislative equivalent of one of those We Love the 70s programmes, a real trip down time warp lane.”
Ads are never going to be subtle, she continues:

Does advertising deal in stereotypes? Of course. When you’ve only got 30 seconds or a glance to make an impact on a broad group of people you don’t have time to invent a new language. You tap into common themes, ideas and images to create an instant connection.

Svensson’s poorly-presented arguments might leave an open goal for her opponents, but the failure to pass a similar law in Stockholm must beg the question: if rules like this haven’t worked in politically correct Sweden, how on earth could they be made to work elsewhere?

There is some good news for those who think advertising is sexist, though – things have improved over the past 50 years, as these ads show.

Unmasking a Swede’s Berlin Wall love affair

Film, Offbeat, Sweden abroad: May 29th, 2008 by DL

The Local was caught off guard this week when several overseas media outlets ran a story on a Swedish woman being married to the Berlin Wall.

Our surprise, however, was not that we were scooped (after all, Aftonbladet ran a story on Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer back in 2002 and Svenska Dagbladet mentioned her in a piece about the Berlin Biennal art festival earlier this month).

Rather, we were curious to know why the story suddenly popped up just now.

Our best guess is that a film about the wall shown at the festival featured Ms. Berliner-Mauer, and caught the eye of the British tabloid press.

Anyone else have a better (or more interesting) theory?

Swedish conscripts shooting in the nude

Miscellaneous, National, Offbeat: May 12th, 2008 by DL

Here is the controversial video featuring Swedish conscripts firing rocket launchers in the nude, courtesy of YouTube.

Please note that some viewers may find the video offensive.

To read more about the story, see these stories from The Local:

Commander tried to suppress film of naked shooting (May 12, 2008)

Naked soldiers film condemned (May 31, 2006)

One has to wonder what sort of field mission would require training in firing shoulder-mounted artillery while naked.

Any guesses?

What would Bergman think?

Film, Media, Offbeat, Society, Sweden abroad: February 25th, 2008 by DL

In Be Kind Rewind, a new film starring Jack Black, the zany actor brings a new word to the lexicon of film: to Swede.

According to the film’s website:

Sweding is re-making something from scratch using whatever you can get your hands on.

Hmmm…not sure what to make of that.

For more background, you can also check out this YouTube clip:

The question we have is how Swedes themselves feel about having been made into a verb, and whether or not the act of ‘Sweding’ is at all reflective of Swedes or Swedish culture.

Sweden gets biblical…?

Books, Media, Offbeat, Society: February 15th, 2008 by DL

Back in the day, great novels were sometimes published over several months through installments appearing in popular periodicals. Swedish publisher Förlaget Illuminated has revived the trend with one of the most well-read books of all time.

The Wall Street Journal this week spilled some ink on the company’s serial publication of the Bible. Among other places, glossy, photo-enhanced books of the Bible started appearing last spring in places one usually doesn’t go hunting for spiritual guidance: news stand Pressbyrån.

According to WSJ,

The Swedish-language Bible marries the standard text to glossy magazine-style design. Full-color pages are illustrated with a striking combination of news and dramatized photographs: a homeless child wrapped in a sweater on the streets of Bogotá, Colombia, illustrates the book of Job; a man who drowned trying to enter Europe, for Deuteronomy; and models posing in stylized scenes convey joy or despair. Bible passages are pulled out as captions.

What is one to make of the decision to hawk the Bible along side titles like Cosmopolitan, Elle, and weekly news magazines?

Of course, Sweden has always had a unique relationship with Christianity, even before attaining the status of one of the world’s most secularized countries. After all, the daughter of the great King Gustav II who died fighting for Protestantism in the Thirty Years’ War, Queen Christina, eventually abdicated her post and fled to Rome to convert to Catholicism.

She was the first (only?) Swede–and woman–to get a final resting place among the Popes buried at St. Peter’s.

According a bishop quoted in the piece, Swedes–just like everyone else–apparently still have some of life’s ‘big questions’ left to figure out.

Although Sweden is one of the most secularized countries in the world, we are seeing a growing interest in existential questions across the Western world, of which [Bible Illuminated] is a part,” says Antje Jackelén, the bishop of Lund, in southern Sweden. “As people travel, as they are presented with a growing multiculturalism at home, they are thinking harder about what it means to be from a culture that is formed by Christianity.

Video: World’s biggest elk

Offbeat, Society, Tourism: November 27th, 2007 by PO

Somewhere in the wilds of northern Sweden lurks the biggest elk in the world. See what’s inside possibly the most impressive wooden animal since the Trojan horse:

Swedish TV presenter vomits during live broadcast

Media, Offbeat: September 24th, 2007 by PR

A truly heroic performance from TV4 presenter Eva Nazemson. Do not watch during lunch.

When nature takes over…

Offbeat: September 20th, 2007 by PO

Extreme weather! Has to be seen to be believed.

Petrol stations for women?

Offbeat: September 10th, 2007 by PO

Zoe Williams in The Guardian is none too impressed by the supposedly sophisticated Swedes who run Preem.

The Swedish oil distribution company Preem has designed a petrol station aimed specifically at women. I know, very weird – women don’t like to drive! It’s like designing a Tour de France for fish.

Faces stuffed with Swedish pie in Illinois

Offbeat, Sweden abroad: June 21st, 2007 by PO

There can be few people in this world who love a lingonberry pie as much as Martin Cedillo from Illinois:

Cedillo, of Wayne, had his face so deep into the pie that when he came up for air there was purpleish filling between his eyebrows. When he looked satisfied that his pan was clean, he stood up and shouted “I love lingonberries!”

The Daily Herald reports that he had to fight off some stiff opposition before emerging as winner of the Swedish Days pie-eating contest:

Nobody got sick, but Jessica Barbeau, who works at Jitterbug’s in Geneva, said she came close, but it was worth it.

“I wanted to puke, but I kept going,” she said. “I wanted to beat them all. I just kept going.”

UK evangelist claims to heal Swedes

Offbeat, Society: June 18th, 2007 by PO

Is Sweden a good place for evangelical Christian healing?

For a ‘post-Christian’ nation with a declining Church, and the highest suicide rate in Europe, it might seem an unlikely place for miracle stories.

It actually doesn’t take a miracle worker to figure out that Sweden in fact does not have anything like the highest suicide rate in Europe. Statistics will usually do the trick. But we digress.

UK evangelist Paul Bennison has just been in Sweden to do the work the medical professional thought impossible:

Two people suffering from long-term strokes got out of their wheelchairs and walked out of the churches; a not-yet-Christian young woman (Linda), suffering from chronic neck and upper back pain felt ‘water running down my back’ as I prayed for her, and as Heidi prophesied, every time we said the name ‘Jesus’ she felt electric shocks pass through her.

Disclaimer: No electrodes were used during the performing of these miracles.

Sweden loses longest dandelion title

Offbeat: June 13th, 2007 by PO

The big news today is that Sweden’s record for the world’s longest dandelion has been shattered by neighbouring Norway.

Bjorn Magne of Klove found the giant weed, which measured 42 inches, while on a hike through the forest with his mother.

For fourteen years the record stood but 11-year-old Magne has raised the bar for weed-hunters everywhere.

American deejay calls basketball team ‘diaper-headed hos’

Miscellaneous, Newsbites, Offbeat: April 13th, 2007 by CW

According to an article on Thursday in newspaper Dagens Nyheter, American radio deejay Don Imus is in hot water after having made racist remarks on his MSNBC radio show ‘Imus in the Morning’. At an NCAA women’s basketball championship between the University of Tennessee and Rutgers University, Imus described Rutger’s team – mainly comprised of African Americans – as a bunch of “nappy-headed hos.”

Dagens Nyheter translated “nappy-headed” as “diaper-headed” (blöjhövdade), which would be a rather juvenile insult, but hardly worth the uproar it’s caused in the US (which has subsequently led to Imus being canned by NBC). While a “nappy” in British English would refer to something covering a baby’s bum, according to Merriam Webster, in American English it describes the “kinky” or “fuzzy” hair characteristic of black people. In the 1950s, it was used as a derogatory term.

Imus deserves to lose his job, and Dagens Nyheter ought to get a better dictionary.

Made in Sweden: Saddam Hussein’s bullet-proof windows

National, Newsbites, Offbeat: February 26th, 2007 by PO

Newspaper Borås Tidning revealed at the weekend that a Gothenburg firm was given the task in 1990 of supplying bullet-proof windows for one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces in Baghdad.

With Skanska responsible for the construction, the palace was to be an all Swedish affair.

A local army regiment in Borås was charged with testing the reinforced glass.

Heavy weapons were hauled in to a secret testing zone and the windows were pummeled with all manner of heavy ammunition.

Finally, in the autumn of 1990, the mixture of glass and plastic was deemed satisfactory and testing was completed.

Shortly after Iraq had invaded Kuwait, a team of fitters was sent to Baghdad to mount the bulky 6 x 4 metre panes.

But it was all in vain. The Gulf War broke out in January 1991 and the palace that Skanska built was bombed into a smouldering ruin.

The Swedish testers of Saddam Hussein’s bulletproof glass had made the same mistake as the dictator himself: they failed to factor in an aerial bombardment.

The Swenska tjej – it’s the grej!

Media, Offbeat: February 2nd, 2007 by PR

For all students of Swenglish, here’s Swedish comedian Henrik Schyffert’s glorious contribution to the tongue, from comedy show Veckans nyheter.

“The Swenska tjej likes the killar to wisa känslor och städa the badrum. They thinks its manligt for Swenska men to be like a tant. But it’s konstigt because then the tjejgänget go to Grekland and then they want to ligga with the…”

Well, you can see the rest here: