Lena from Palesteena, by Nils Harning

Urryone [everyone] go download the song I did with my Nilsmonster. It's sort of Tin Pan Alley meets Ed Shepp Production Techniques (with supersized bass, courtesy of the crappy earphones which are my only way to monitor the sound). Click here to download either the average quality (128kbps) or high quality (320) mp3:

Lena from Palesteena

Flerp!

E

Songs of Inspiration for People Who Are Hurting

Are you hurting? Good. Because now the hurt is over.

Behold the new EP from saint-at-large Ed Shepp, Songs of Inspiration for People Who Are Hurting.

This revolutionary EP, this seminal moment in the history of music, exists to bring comfort, inspiration and even a smile to the masses of the world who are going through the hardcore ish that life sometimes throws our way. If you're hurting, this EP is for you.

But how do I know if I'm hurting?

Good question. 5589 out of 5590.5 psychotherapists estimate that everything that everyone ever does is because they're hurting. So if you've done something today, odds are you're hurting, and that you're not alone. In double-blind studies at medical research centres all over the globe, listening to this Ed Shepp EP led to FULL REMISSION of hurting symptoms in ~99.47631% of patients diagnosed by world-class psychologists with world-class hurting. That's 99.47632% better results than placebo, psychotherapy and throwing phones.

If you're hurting, this EP will help you deal with your ish. But don't hoard this wonderful gift for yourself, like an investment banker or Madonna. If you know someone who's hurting, play it for them too. Here are a couple examples of who this EP can help:

-- Are your neighbors having loud sex, keeping you up at night and destroying quality knitting time? If they are, it's because they're hurting. Play this the next time they're making all that noise. They'll be smiling, and you'll have spread Peace on Earth.

-- Is your coworker being a dinkus, or do you want him to think that you think that he's being a dinkus and that you're punishing him for it? He's probably hurting. Don't punish him with Celine Dion or Diamanda Galas. Relieve his hurting by playing this EP on repeat.

-- Have you been torturing political prisoners but not been able to get information? Maybe the problem is that they're hurting. Play them this EP repeatedly, and they might finally talk.

-- Is your wife constantly bitching at you to take out the trash, even though if she'd stop painting her nails for a second she could just do it herself and not spoil your communion with The Simpsons? She's hurting. Play this EP at a volume that will drown out her complaining. And feel peace.

There are many more uses for this world-changing EP. Explore the EP and find them yourself. You will most definitely be relieved of your hurting, and you will be bringing positive energy into the world.

Songs of Inspiration for People Who Are Hurting, the new EP by Ed Shepp. Spread the love.

-- Bob Dylan

Download average quality (128kbps) quality links by clicking on the track names below, or download high-quality (320kbps) mp3s by clicking the song icons beneath the track listing.

Songs of Inspiration for People Who Are Hurting

1. Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme)

2. Beautiful

3. I Don't Want to Wait

4. My Heart Will Go On

(download)

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(download)

Happy New Flerp!

Well it's that new time of year, flerps. That time between the colander new year, Chinese new year and my birthday that seems to say: It's still OK to send out your new years greetings and put up your new years posts. Wait too much longer and you just might be a

wet

noodle.

In that spirit, I'm putting up two newish audio glerplets! For a limited time only!

First, we have duh. The new years greeting:

A Happy New Year Blorgp from Ed Shepp

The inspiration behind it: Once, when I was feeling GABAbundant, I was listening to that song I'm Yours. And I really listened to it, and I found the last verse quite moving. It metaphorically expresses something quite nice. I bet it would work well in a new years song. So I grated Auld Lang Syne onto it and made my new year's card for 2011, which like all my cards is now just a piece of audio that I post when the time is right. So there you go. Keep it arbitrary.

Second, here's a single! w00t! Well, here's the abbreviated version of the single you can get on iTunes. Click here to get the full version on iTunes. Do I have to spell it out for you?! Anyway, here's the quick 'n dirty blipversion. It's about one of the hottest trends in fear today, bedbugs.

The Bedbugs Song (quickndirty mix)

So those are the glerplets.

Beep!
E

Julmonster, by Ed Shepp

(Click on the picture to hear the Julmonster commercial.)

Introducing Julmonster, the holiday home fragrance by Ed Shepp. A frenzy of fir, green leaves, spices, leather, woodsmoke and musk, Julmonster is unprecedented, indefatigable and emphatically undeniable. Intense enough to be smelled from outer space, but intimate to enjoy in one’s one home. In small doses.

Julmonster. Experience the ferocity.

…if you dare.

Freedom

I suppose, since I just finished the book last night, that I should put up my thoughts about Jonathan Franzen's Freedom before I read any more reviews of it (Why do I do this? I read/listen to/watch something and then see what other people thought!?!) or let too much time pass. Why am I putting up my thoughts about the book? I guess it's just because I can, because it's not because the book changed my life (maybe that remains to be seen--I did just finish it last night) or that I think it has something extremely important to say that people need to hear (I'm thinking of those nonfiction books that I want people to read. Against Love, for me, falls into this category) or because it will improve the world. I guess I just want to tell people that the book lives up to the hype, and that y'all should read it, just as I would with a superior movie or taco salad or something. So here we are.

Like I just mentioned, I have to do this now, while the book is fresh in my mind. Because I almost feel like I'm in a state similar to mourning. I choose that word deliberately, because most of us who have read about the book are aware that there is a death in it. And that this death may feel like it's too convenient for the story or that it's improbable. Maybe. And maybe the character wasn't as completely fleshed out as the others (maybe not; I'm not a literary critic), but those criticisms didn't bother my enjoyment of the book. And the way the character's death is dealt with in the end is still deeply affecting, and I think that it justifies the entirety of the subplot. Just to lead to the book's final sentence. So there!

Now I'll get into a rehash of what I wrote for the review on linkedin, perhaps with some additions. Keep in mind that, as I said, I'm no literary critic, so if you're expecting a synopsis of the plot and quotes from the book and trenchant analysis and all that gawizzlywozzlyfinoo, then you might want to read the many fine reviews that exist out there in the literary landscape. I'm sure they're there (see that? I may not be a lit critic, and I may be stupid as a pile of doll hair, but at least I can respect the difference between they're, there and their. Recognize, b9itches! Not me---recognize the words!!! There, I saids it.) at the NYTimes and BBC and the Guardian la la la.... All those places. So, well, yeah.

I bought this book a while ago, and let it sit for a week, maybe two, daunted by its 562 pages, and finished some shorter books before even thinking of tackling it. When I started it, though, I was very pleased to find that it reads with the same breathless, page-turning pace as any Stephen King book or trash novel (for the dim bulbs out there, this is a GOOD thing). 300 pages into it I realized that I didn't want the book to end. I wanted it to stretch out to thousands of pages. The story lines and how they're presented--it's so compelling that you don't want the journey to end.

I was surprised to find myself gasping aloud at twists I didn't see coming, becoming excited to see plots begin to intertwine and become clear, and (most surprising of all) to find myself weeping during the last chapter, most especially at the final sentence (although after the final sentence, perhaps bawling is the more appropriate word; I mentioned there's a death; the bawling I felt conspicuously mirrored, although in a milder fashion, the experience I once had upon hearing that someone close to me had passed). The book is, above all, heartbreaking, but not in the sense of an all-consuming tragedy. (It's not Dancer in the Dark, which I confess to not having seen, but which was described to me as the opposite of those films that are nauseatingly sweetness and light and preposterous happiness. Apparently DitD is more preposterous despair. Well, that's how it was described to me.) I could venture to say that the book has a happy ending, in so far as it can, with the nature of the characters and, let's face it, the nature of this life.

I doubt I even have to mention it, but the book is more than heartbreaking--it's brilliantly, virtuosically written. (Is that a word, virtuosically? Well, it should be, if it isn't.) All the characters felt imminently real, as if I knew them well. And I felt like I could also see parts of myself in most of them. A few characters in the book are only briefly sketched out, but those are minor characters. When I think about how the characters are so fully developed, each having hir own psychology and quirks and flaws (if not voice--sure, maybe Franzen doesn't vary their individual voices enough, and yes, one character's autobiography reads just like Franzen's writing, but my though is, "Who cares?! Suspension of disbelief, people." Besides, her autobiographical excursion is long and necessary to the story. I'd rather read it in Franzen's voice. AND a character does note later that Patty, the autobiographer, expresses herself very well. At least Franzen doesn't torture us by writing the characters in dialect. One of the character's has a slight Indian accent. Franzen doesn't write in her accent when he gives her quotes, and thanks flunking cod! I've always found that distracting and annoying, and I'm very glad that Franzen does not do it in this book.), I can't helprecalling a quote from Fernando Pessoa, when in describing a store clerk's suicide, he notes that there are characters in books that are more real to him than the faces he sees every day on the trams or in the streets. Pessoa had characters like the ones in this book in mind. I can tell you that I feel more intimacy with Patty or Walter Berglund than I do with a lot of people I saw every day at work or on the subway. It's Franzen's uncanny ability to describe human feeling and illuminate his characters' inner worlds that makes them spring off the page and make them real to you. Some, I think, have said that his characters are unlikeable. I didn't find that at all. I found them human, complicated, real. There were even a couple I was rooting against, which I think added to the novel's feeling of realism.

I realize that I'm not conveying here the full extent of Franzen's accomplishment in this book. His humor, his incisiveness, etc. I refer you to more competent reviewers for those points.

Now that I've read all 562 pages, I'm a little sad to be finished with it, a sadness I liken to the end of a great holiday (and, of course, which I relate, perhaps too much in the moment, to the grief of bereavement). I have another fiction book waiting to be read, but I may wait a day or two for this experience to wear off before venturing into it. Especially since the other book could almost certainly never compare to Freedom.

On a purely semantic note, I also have to mention that it felt strange, just after I finished the book, to be at "the end of freedom."

In conclusion, if you read nothing else this year, read Freedom. You will not be disappointed.

Beep!
E

Read This Article

An excellent article in Slate, and for once the comments (thus far) are not idiotic!

http://www.slate.com/id/2263912/

Aiiiight, it's out there on the iTunes, y'all. My aromachemical/perfume-inspired album, If I Can't Make A Perfume Then I'll Make An Album. Go buy it here. To support my struggle. And if you don't buy it for me, then buy it for Mark Baratelli, who improvised the piece called Caramel Furanone 3%. Or Nils Harning, (min fästman, by the by) whose voice is used in Harningal (the theoretical aromachemical that bears his name). Here's the link.

Interesting that after I'd sent the album to CDBaby and all, it occurred to me: "....but I CAN make a perfume!" Not meaning that I'm such an amazing and imaginative perfumer that I could make the next Red Delicious or Fergilicious Eau Fraîche (did you see what I did there?), but rather in this sense: Why CAN'T I make a perfume?* Everyone's doing it; the chemicals are available; you don't need a 100-acre factory in New Jersey and 700 billion dollars in an a marketing budget to introduce a fragrance. You don't need Saks or Bloomingdales or TJ Maxx or anything like that. Not when you have facebook and the interwebs. (to go further--why does it even have to be a perfume? It could be a home fragrance, or, rather, "olfactory art." Not unlike the sonic art I've done. I think you see where this is going. I think people saw where this was going years ago, before I did...) But anyway, yeah. I just wanted to point out what I saw as the ironing there.

A shame I finished/lost interest in the project before I could do Cyclopidene, Cyclal C, Indolene, Koavone or Labienoxime 10%, but hey. That's just how it be happen, yo, 'n stuff. Besides, I have a feeling I'll be making more audio pieces dealing with smell anyway. I mean, how could I go through life without ever doing a piece inspired by cis-3-hexanol or Stemone? Glerp. Yes, glerp indeed.

Now go buy the album. For my struggle.

Beep!

*Quick note from a regular 30something to any aspiring anythings: If something's important to you, there are ALWAYS going to be people (sometimes everyone you know) telling you that what you want to go can't be done. That it's crazy, that you're living in a fantasy world. I haven't achieved much, but I can't remember anything that I did achieve that anyone believed in but me. Listen to people when they're ripping your ideas, and know that anyone who's attempted anything heard the same. "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." -Mark Twain. I found that quote at the beginning of a chapter in a book by Michio Kaku. A physicist, not a motivational speaker. So there.

I Know What You Did Last Midsommar!

Click here to get to SAFI's piece from Midsommar in Battery Park 2009.

It’s Midsommar time again, y’allz. So to mark the occasion, Nils and I, as the Swedish American Futurimagineering Institut, are uploading our coverage of last year’s Midsommar celebration in Battery Park, NYC. Enjoy, and glad midsommar!!

(Click here to download an outtake, with Nils singing the midsommar song. The quack quack one.)

-Ed Shepp & Nils Harning

Gendered Fragrances

So I've always thought that the idea of gendered fragrances were stupid. But today I had to go to a wedding event, so I chose my "inoffensive masculine," Equipage by Hermes. (This is in contrast to my offensive, or potentially so, masculines. That is, Yatagan, Halston Z-14, or what's left of it, and perhaps Lauder.) And as I thought about it today, I recalled my view of the past couple decades of gendered fragrances: that the idea behind them was stupid, and that it should be done away with. But then I thought: Wait, maybe not. Maybe gendered fragrances, for the moment, are a good thing. Because they force you to wear certain frags at certain times. Which , of course, force you to NOT wear certain frags, essentially making them taboo.

Example: I could definitely NOT wear the Lauder Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia that I found at at antique (!!!!!) shop recently; and I couldn't wear my Spellbound by Lauder either. I'd be forced to wear Equipage or Bel Ami or something like that. And I thought: Is that such a bad thing?? Maybe it's a good thing. In that, at least, if I wore a "women's" fragrance, it would still be transgressive. And if society had abolished the idea of gendered fragrances, there wouldn't be any transgression. If there are gendered frags, at least you can still raise an eyebrow by wearing against type (if you're a man; if you're a woman wearing a masculine, I genuinely don't think anyone would actually notice). And that's something. They say that when there's a repressive "moral" environs in your society (think 198os; now think Madonna), then you can really easily draw attention to yourself by violating said moral code.

So maybe the idea of gendered fragrances, for the moment, isn't such a bad thing.

Sure, it's a half-baked idea, but what would you expect??? I'm not a professor paid to come up with bullshit! If I were, this entry would be a HELLUVA lot longer and include a LOT more bigger words. And probably some Shakespearean quotes too! So there! Anyway, make of it what you will. It was just a passing thought that occurred to me while listening to David Sedaris today.

Flerp!

E

The Aromachemicals Series

I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't mention the nascent collection of soundpieces that's been spilling out of my brain onto my computer. I'm referring to it as The Aromachemicals Series, and it looks like it may grow into an album, which would allow me to use a title that I thought up some time ago: If I Can't Make a Perfume, Then I'll Make an Album! We'll see how it develops.

So I've been posting them as they come along. So far I have three:

1. Isocyclocitral and Unhappiness
2. Caramel Furanone 3%
3. Calone 1951: A Tribute to Aromachemicals that have Defined Their Time

So far I've just been putting them up on The Neld Adventure, so go there to hear them. But I suppose I'll put them on music sites or whatever eventualish.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

The Neld Adventure

Aiiight, everyone go look (now! not later!) at The Neld Adventure, at http://neld.tumblr.com.

For the more digestible introduction, check out Nils's Introduction in Nine Parts (which should have shown up first, but I couldn't figure out how to make the draft thing work). The picture below will sweep you there:




For the longlongLONGLONGLONGLONGLONG-ass prose introduction, which I don't think I have to even say is mine, click the beautiful picture below.



Here's to one helluva 2010.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Mount Dora

Click on the (above) picture of my dream house to read The Daily City's excellent coverage of me hometown, Mount Dora (known as "Mount Whora" to students of Eustis "Useless" and Tavares "Ta-fairies" highs school). Beep.

Good King Wenceslas

Everyone download Good King Wenceslas right now. Nils Harning on vocals, Ed Shepp on electrospazzle.

And there's always the rest of the Christmas canon here.

Flerp!
E

An Open Letter to V and Madonna

This is an open letter to V and Madonna. There's no easy way to say this (because I'm actually quite stupid), so I'll just be as plain and waldervacknerian as puquistibly turrilicious.

V: Yes, you, V. The show. The remake from of the iconic miniseries-cum-canceled-series from myne youth. When I heard they ("they" being "those Hollywood types" or something to den där effect) were remaking you, I was joyous. Then crestfallen. Then irritable. Then flatulent. Then hungry. Then drinky. Then sleepy. Then bored. Then smelly. And only the joyous part had anything to do with you! But then I thought more about you, and it occurred to me: I need to be working on that show! Then, a few minutes later, a fatter truth belly-bumped me: I had it backwards! YOU need ME to work on you! Now, I won't go into how I adored the show as a middle-schooler, and how I ran around pretending to be John (but really pretending to be Diana), and how I quoted it for years and how I even had the COMIC BOOK and read the paperback book The Florida Project. And I won't go into my "qualifications," because, as multiple comments on my resume have apparently proven, "irrepressible genius" isn't a very precise descriptor. At any rate, for my sonic abilities, you can check out my show on WFMU, The Ed Shepp Radio Experiment, or have a listen to my audio stuff, or just check out A Very Ed Shepp Christmas. For my visual abilities, just check out my facebook photos. They look good, don't they? I'm actually 57 years old. For my acting abilities (although I think I'd rather be behind the camera), just check out any Madonna movie. I guarantee you my acting couldn't be as bad as hers. (I love you, Madonna, but it's true. You stink up the screen like an open jar of skatole.) (Yeah, I'm into perfume chemicals. So let's do a V-inspired scent opera, why not then?!? Think it over.)

So I'm not going to try and convince you that you need me, even though that would seem to be the piont of this open letter. I'm just throwing this opportunity out at you like pieces of expensive pastry to a gaggle of expensive ducks, bred for their smooth bronzey beaks. So look me over, dammit! You want a resume? Well, I want an island in the Caribbean, but I'm not getting that. Help yourself to some belligerence, however. That's free. BUT--if you want just a brief overview of myne history and all that crap, have a listen to the piece I did to put in my next letter, the one to the King of Sweden:

About Ed Shepp

Well that's the squizz. It's all on you now, V. Don't disappoint! And now onto you, Madonna.

See here's the thing, see. A friend of mine, number 081993, was squawking one day about how Mariah Carey was coming out with her third perfume, and Hilary Duff with her second, or whatever the numbers are, and Celine has one and gobble gobble gobble nibble nibble... And then he wondered aloud why you haven't yet come out with a perfume, and it got me thinking. I assumed that you were planning to come out with one eventually, but were waiting for the right perfumer to work with. So I thought, "I should write an open letter to Madonna and introduce her to Calice Becker, my close-personal-friend-in-that-fictional-character kinda way. Or maybe whoever did Tom Ford's stuff. Because his perfumes are bombastic, and I think that would work for Madonna. After all, she supposedly likes Youth Dew and Fracas, two bold fragrances. Now do I want to go to Taco Bell again or take a bath?" But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I should simply suggest myself as the perfumer. Do I have experience? UGH! What IS it with this "experience" thing with you people?!?!?! I've blended Christmas scents at home and managed to stink up the whole house a couple times (sotolone's one HELL of a molecule, yo)--that counts, right? Yes. But more important than experience, I have PASSION. And BOREDOM. So I have, like, all day to daydream about your fragrance and frustrate the perfumers and compounders with my endless iterations. (See the links above for all the rest.) Choose me, and while I can't promise that it will be a blockbuster, I can promise that it will be something. And unforgettable. Isn't that all you need? Have your people contact my people. No, wait--I don't have people. Just contact me directly. KTHXBAI!

Well that's the gist. I'll be waiting to hear from both of you.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Christmas Come Early

(click it)

(And if you don't like it, DROP DEAD.)

The Ed Shepp Pandora Experience

This is The Ed Shepp Pandora Experience. It is the pilot episode, season launch. It is the raw, unedited Ed listening to Pandora, and periodically telling you about how he listens to Pandora. At teachable moments. There's always one special guest to every episode: YOU. Now listen, [general audiences-appropriate term of mock derision].



Beep!

From Brun Potatis to Choklad Papegoja: Desperately Seeking Stockholm's Sweet, Sticky Center

(Note: To read the orignal post on WFMU's Beware of the Blog, click here. )

Ed's note:

Welcome, comely and prudent reader, to the debut publication from the Swedish American Futurimagineering Institut (SAFI), our Orange Brief. SAFI is a genuine-fake-maybe-real-but-probably-phony-except-for-real-but-you-never-really-know-these-days-anyway culturobstretrical organization with a life-changing mission: to build bridges of understanding between the American and Scandinavian peoples. And in so doing, heal the universe. To achieve this we use the power of Ultramultiscience, a new way of thinking that fuses multiple disciplines—sound, embalmery, competitive eating—into a gel that, when mixed with bleeding-edge scientificalism, unleashes transformational power not seen since Nutella met Bisquick. Wielded wisely, it can fuel cars-that-go-boomlike engines toward a more pumpkinlier future.

This Orange Brief is a patent-pending hydron-condensed version of the SAFI Orange Paper*, a 200+ lb nectarine of cunt-punching erudition, bursting with scratch-n-sniff pop-ups and double coupons. The design is no laughed-so-hard-you-shat accident: Its brainfeel mirrors its subject matter—strange and familiar, wordy and unreliable, cursory, broad-brush, mythically sextronic. Loosely unarranged, it takes you on a fluid, urinelike journey into insight, contemplation and that feeling of release when the brain freeze abates. It assumes an "asymmetrically interactive" posture; you're thus encouraged to connect its themes to their oft-repeated parallels in convenience store hot dog theory. A "necessary cliché," as it were

Like an artistic masterwork or courtesan selling stew, the Brief will screw each reader individually. But a basic overview of it might help you feel less afraid: Parts I and II pop out of the brassiere of History to feel through the Experiment in blind boob Braille. Part III is your Dark Patchouli Mistress, buttplugging you into the bicycle-rich tumult of modern Stockholm straight from the scribbles of my notebooks. Part IV drives you up the mountain, forces its conclusions on you at Céline-point and grins smugly as you gaze upon the beauty below in the cupcake afterglow of the Acknowledgments.

Behold your adventure, taut and energy-conscious reader. Good reading, and may pumpkin's indecent ambrosia glide down your throat into your soul, filling you with oily orange Ecstasy.

(Click here for my "Sounds of Stockholm" mp3 that contains some of the audio research from the Experiment.)

I. ABSTRACKGROUNTRODUCTION

For millennia, the idea of Sweden has enthralled the world's imagination with shots of hardbodied Vikings, ass-chapping winters, barbaric seafood concoctions, and fuck-off-style horned headgear that's perfect for when you're hung over and cranky. In modern times all this whimsical filligriboobery has ripened into a single prevailing stereotype: Sweden is a country of well-mannered blond beauties who celebrate high taxes, addictive pop hooks, cradling regulation, hard booze and isn't-that-dangerous? rituals involving candles. Until recently, this view was universally accepted. But a look beneath the latexy surface reveals that it completely misrepresents Swedish culture—the candle thing is completely safe, apart from a miniscule number of yearly burnt hair incidents (which, notably, fall well below average BHIs in the 63 NATO countries). Since a central centerpiece of SAFI's mission is to deglistenize the myths about Scandinavia and America, while simultaneously extolling their positive realities (muppetacular languages for the former and unlimited pizza buffets for the fatter), I, Researcher Ed Shepp, braved to conduct SAFI's first transcontinental Experiment: an observational visit to Stockholm, the self-described Scandinavian City That Almost Everyone Knows Isn't In Germany. The porpoise of the Experiment: To capture Stockholm's hot cultural jizz fresh from the spout, and use it in three ways: 1) as a launchpad to inform future research, (2) as a basis to issue edicts for change (3) as raw material for another bizarre Ed Shepp-style blog entry.

To prepare for the Experiment I baked the following recipe, with half the ingredients, for half the time and at half the temperature, for consistency:

Firstly, following my Facercise® instructor's practice of finding truth through bulleted lists, I created numberless agendas catalogues outlines timetables canons indices lineups and dockets. 37,000 pages of dots and fragments about everything conceivable: foods to eat weddings to crash snakebites to fake ways to wear a fake shit-stain on my pants and bring up the topic of Hitler at inopportune times. Purselessly I listenumberumerated until my consciousness reduced to only a beating heart composed not of living cells but of spreadsheets. From the tendrils of dusk to the fists of dawn, I steeped in this moment. Then I ripped the lists to shreds like so many paternity suits and flung the vodka-soaked mess on the Denny's floor and lunged to ignite it before security showed me out. And there in that life-giving parking lot, I willed myself to absorb all the lists and recall them instinctively when needed, like the street whore recalls the car of the plainclothes cop, before shapeshifting back into rat form.

Aquitionally, I gulped down many salty loads of advice, most of which reiterated the same plan: "Get laid a LOT!!" While such advice was adequately helpful, like a rubber butthole, I needed meatier counsel. Then finally one ghastly, grim and ancient raven volunteered an instruction that scraped the eye-boogers from my consciousness: "Assemble of your mind the Void," it crowed, "and ever you are given the tender, rejoin, YES! YES! YES! 'Fancy a herring-lingonberry-reindeer popsicle?' YES! 'Escape to Skåne for a Druid ritual and return riding atop train cars drunk on herring-reindeer vodka?' YES! Come to my flat and star in my movie, Herringly Insatiable: An American Annabel Chong in Sweden?' YES! And while, frankly, his examples seemed to me properly queer, the philosophy behind them gripped me like a crackhead octopus (or maybe just a crackhead), and I vowed to live it with the same devotion I live the Holy Orangitude of Brand Ed Shepp.

Further, I endeavored to annihilate all expectations I had (keeping, of course, a respectful fear for the cuisine, as one would for God or an ugly baby) and submerged myself in galaxies of disinformation, all to avoid creating My Own Private Stockholm in the gallbladder of my brain. Every night I drank Ukrainian amounts of a Nyquil-bacon mixture to corrode any preconceptions I'd formed. I appeared nude on Slate, wearing a blank foundation. (Remember, podiatry-aware reader, that it is only possibly to eradicate ones preconceptions to an certain limit. Brainwiping is an inexact science, like anal bleaching. Residue always remains. For more on residue, see Dr. Robert Mariah Carey Olson's seminal work, Streaks on a Microscope.)

Lastly, I'd like to introduce you to my Jonah Lehrer Magic 8 Ball. (For the unaware reader, Jonah Lehrer is a modern-day oracle, who provides counsel to people in need with his books and articles, through the lens of "science." His book, How We Decide, changed my waiting-in-the-airport-for-my-flight experience forever.) Sometimes, when faced with a novel challenge and neither a night of Correctol nor a chat with the mole people brings me clarity, I consult my Jonah Lehrer-branded Magic 8 ball. This was one of these times. You see, succinct reader, my adademinicity and scollershrimp have always served as my Achilles flaw, and I wondered if it would behoove me to approach my Experiment less intalectiually. I conferred with the JL8B, and it validated my intuition: "Let your emotional brain guide you," it said, "and you will absorb what data you need. Insight will surface, and bubble out like peroxide on a scab. Allow it to percolate and unfold, and it will bless you a unifying theory. Or a cowlick." Yes, his messages are incredibly long—thankfully the ball contains only one. Well, that's Banana for you!

II. MATERIA EXPERIMENTICA

The Experiment headquartered at fellow SAFI Researcher Nils Harning's laboratory, located in the dense thicket jungle of Södermalm. The central location permitted travel by the foot to all of Stockholm and the close proximity of the public transportation (known Stateside as "the shitbox"). The laboratory itself sported a Cluttered Gothic Trailer Kitsch theme, with, like the exotic dipping sauces at Burger King, a Swedish accent. As for Researcher Nils, if I were pacing a masturbatorium in a velvet jacket, smoking into a Dictaphone, 100 years ago, I might say that he had an artistic bent and involved himself in the theater. The Experiment spread itself over five days at the outset of summer and had no itinerary, thus allowing for 1) maximum serendipity and 2) the ever-lingering spectre of diarrhea.

III. INCOMPLETE EXPERIMENT NOTES UNORDERED IN BLANK VERSE

• Wu Tang Clan on flight! Swede from Philadelphia! Owner of purple ukulele! I'm smelling omens. The shitter's right behind me.
• Famous Swedes on airport billboards. Dolph Lundgren is an engineer?!?! Note: get MFA in 'sexiness engineering.' Matriculate at Karolinska Institutet.
• Checkmate. 7-11 victorious. Prize: ubiquity. Loss: Duh. Raise another glass for invasive species. Skål!
• Souvenir crap carts renew me. Thank you, Floridian heritage. I burp a silent blessing.
• Pistachio polymer chemasterpiece. Fashion me into tongue and pour your green sugar on me forever.
• Tree sign: "Caution: Deer Ticks" or "Gay Gnome Sex Ahead"? "Gay Gnome Sex"=verbal MSG.
• Borgerskapets änkehus: Once: "Home for Upper-Middle-Class Widows"; Today: punchline.
• Buildings that aerially resemble a hammer & sickle. Everyone's gotta rip off Disney World. Sheesh.
• Researcher Nils knows EVERYONE! ...So why hasn't he taken me to the elf underworld yet?
• Katarinahissen? I'll wait for the space elevator, tacksa meekay (Thanks Bark Maratelli for that spelling). Or taxi mocha (thanks Japanese friend of Nils!)
• Sample sale. Goo-goo-la-la-shi-shi-frou-frou-ding-dong. Pronounced: "Ock-NAYuh." Spelled: Acne.
• Gorgeous Gothik Lolita. Too nice to hate on. Stockholm Syndrome?
• Smell of Stockholm: rain, earth, white flower, crumpled up in a can of Glade Lilac Spring.
• Youths in shadows. Flickering light. Sounds of partying. Eurovision theme song. Not gay. Not gay?? NOT GAY?!???!?!?!? Not gay.
• Stockholm has enough streetlights to create artificial dawn? Or could that be REAL dawn at 2am?
• If news shows in other countries were food, they would be good Belgian waffles. Not stupendiferious ones, but delicious anyway.
• Election signs: everywhere. White tennis shoes: ditto. Starbucks: Oubliette.
• Yogurt? YES! Granola? YES! Cashews? YES! Too-thick milk! WHADAFAAAH???!!! ...Oh. "Yogurt."
• Plastic flamingo. Do they know it's Christmastime at all?
• Does oxytocin stain?
• State liquor store: great selection, always crowded, closed on Sunday. THAT's a business model I can get behind!
• Shower?? Shudder!!
• "American style"=thisiswhyyourefat.com
• Giggly girls: annoying in every language and culture.
• 40 kronor and my Big Mac is STUCK to the BOX?!?! Bitches need an exchange study program in Harlem.
• Black pudding: Apple butter if it liked horror movies.
• ---Hey guys, let's rent a Hummer stretch limo and drive around fucking in deserted parks!! Yeah, let's do it! While we're still teenagers! I've got Hummer fever!---

[ALTERNATIVELY]

• ---God, Mr. Eriksson is such an amazing boss, renting a stretch Hummer limo and driving through deserted parks. He's so classy and sophisticated. I think I'll give him a hummer later on. Oh, I feel his hand on the back of my head! Maybe sooner than I thought!---
• "It's just too good here. It's too good in Sweden." I KNEW it. I KNEW it would be said sooner or later.
• Lost! Help! Key won't work! So many ways to have a breakdown—how can I lose??! Wait! Random stranger from doorway. Lends me cell phone without eye-rolling. Explains to me how to dial locally! Valeriee, these are not people. They are angels.
• Swedish hipsters DJing on boats. ...And we're back.
• Noise music. Yawn. Wait! GIANT VIKING HORN?!? Fireworks from deep inside my bosom.
• There's a Göteborg affliction of saying "or" after everything. If anyone can pull it off in the USofA, Ed Shepp can.

IV. FINDINGS and CONCLUSION

1) Bathrooms in Sweden are wrong. Exhibit A: Researcher Nils's. Behold the showerhead hanging lonely on the wall, unprotected by any curtain, door or tub. So when anyone takes a shower, the whole room showers with him, including the toilet and the gnome. This is wrong. Showers are one of the 37 experiences in life that live up to commercials: Orgasmic explosions inspired by hair conditioner are common. Stripping its defenses from the hostile world is to devolve the shower experience from that of a private sanctuary into one of a chambre of horror, reminiscent of those rooms where people were sprayed with hoses in prison or psychward movies. Imagine, pithy reader, attempting to enjoy a shower while struggling to avoid drenching your Naughty Dentists of Prague 1987 calendar or your 2-lb bag of Cheetos or the Readers Digest with the invaluable conversation tips, to say nothing of the paintings and the Mary Lou Retton commemorative plates. My scientific conclusion is that every bathroom in Sweden urgently needs renovation, and immediately. SAFI is presently in talks with DANIEL (not Mavis!) Libeskind about this important matter.

Note: Another Swedish-bathroom abomination exists, one that scrapes against the pinkest depths of inhumanity; but we at SAFI believe that its enormity demands nothing less than a direct communiqué to the King. Thusfore, hereinly it will pass unmentioned, like Aunt Tula's heart-stopping farts at Easter dinner. You didn't hear or smell anything.

2) Coffee in Sweden is wrong. Exhibit B: At every restaurant and coffeeshop I graced with my orangeness, milk flowed copiously, like a union of menstruating hippies. But half-and-half, in unspeakable contrast, was nowhere to be seen, its absence lingering like a fat ghost's fart. If you, price-wise reader, take your coffee as I do, with enough fat to lubricate every subway car in London, you will find yourself spasming and seizing in disbelief when you realize that no half-and-half can be had in Sweden. As both scientist and saint, I feel it my duty to speak out against this inhumane condition. Everyone, no matter how goatlike his airspace or gnu-like her countenance, deserves the lardicious comfort of half-and-half, in coffee, pee or any other nutritious beverage. Further research may reveal whether the void of half-and-half plays a role in explaining why the people of Stockholm appears so skeletal and undernourished compared to Americans. (Note: The adipose deficiency of Stockholm's residents is striking. Unprecedented and impossible, like skidless Saturday panties. Consider my experience with public transportation: Over multiple trips on different types of transport, I never once encountered another passenger's flesh spilling over her seat into mine. Not one person exceeded the seats' already lean capacity. In a deeply personal place, this saddened me. How desolate to never feel the plush, unsolicited caress of a fellow commuter's muffin top! It's been said that Stockholm can be a cold place, and in some ways, this rings all too true.) SAFI vigorously recommends that anyone moving to Sweden import a live-in cow to ensure that abundant cream is always on hand. Some h8ers in the medical community may brand drinking cow cream directly from the teat unsanitary and dangerous, but we at SAFI just call it "French."

3) Despite their emaciation, the people of Stockholm exhibit a statistical supersaturation of slammin überhotness. The factors that account for this are uncertain; perhaps the city sustains an mammoth sprawl of modeling schools; perhaps the contentious link between herring and hotness may contain more validity than previously thought. Surely intensive research is warranted.

4) The thoroughness of 7-11s colonization of Stockholm is staggering and strange. The phenomenon seduces you in stages: It perplexes, overwhelms, paralyzes, then transfixes, alarms and appalls, and finally soothes inexplicably, as if some neuronal Pixie Stick broke in your crapstorian lobe, slathering it in synthetic sweetness. Compounding the oddity is the Fanta-commercial-subtle slogan trumpeted from every 7-11 in Stockholm: "Coffee. FOR REAL." Judging by its flavor, the coffee's authenticity was indeterminate, but Stockholm 7-11s' coffee experience, compared to its American counterpart, leaves much to be desired. Example: American 7-11s are required by the Church of Neon Ubiquity to offer a vast selection of flavored coffee creamers. In Stockholm these creamers were inexplicably absent. All things ill-considered, however, this researcher must concede that if being able to get a Slurpee on every corner (even if it is a green tea-peppermint-jingleberry-salmon flavored one) is not a sign of an advanced society, then I don't know what is.

CONCLUSION: Further research is vital. (Indeed, it has already begun—this researcher is presently wearing Björn Borg underwear, measuring its putative advancedness.) Five days might suffice to grasp the phenomenon of Dolly Parton, whose wigs, layed strand-to-strand, could cover the entire land mass of Scandinavia six times over. But alas, It is a sorely inadequate timeframe to attain understanding of the culture that has given us Roxette, Absolut, IKEA, and herring gelato. Multiple projects are presently in development by SAFI's think tanks, and the many targets for study ensure a bright future for SAFI, and the Universe as a whole.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I'd like to thank everyone who made this research voyage possible: SAS airlines, Newark and Arlanda Airports, orbitz.com, Jesus for all he does for me every day--you da man!, CandyApple Sharonta productions, L'Orilivia Shite Management, Sharon Levine, the most patient editor on earth who will wait through the longest stretch of constipation known in the Western world, Avril--guuuuurl, we gonna do spa day again soon w00t w00t!, the borough of Södermalm, repreZENT!, WFMU, Courtney L. for all the hours you spent with me on the phone when I was freaking out or not--you are my therapist, the State of Florida for bringing two so amazing people together as my Mom and Dad, so they could then have ME. Oh yeah, and those two others. I love you, Mom. Peace up, A-Town down, Dad. No, I don't know what that means. Ummmmmm, let's see. I don't want to miss anyone but don't freak out if I do cuz guys, this is like crazy, ok?! A sincere thank you to the madwoman raving on the street: you gave me new life. I choose you. The entertainment you give the world can't be measured. Maybe in minutes. I'd like to thank all the great people on the World Wide Web who talked to a little American with a big dream. Thank you V and Nena and Mount Dora and Lake Square Mall and Burger King for the solid foundation you gave for my EdSheppness. Thank you to Tallahassee. And thank you New York for being such a shithole—if you never stank like you do or were loud and crowded like you are, I may never have needed the escape to Stockholm. Peace, my Stockholmies for speaking English with me and for pretending that they way I pronounced "meat balls" sounded like I was saying "butt balls." Thank you, SAS again, for the two complimentary alcoholic beverages! Thank you, other passengers, for not getting sloshed like I did. That's so crass.

And if these were real acknowledgements, I'd of course thank Researcher Nils for everything. And to D (and everybody) for putting up with my lost-sleep crabbiness.

Lastly, thank you Ed Shepp. You did good, beeyotch. You had a good trip and good things to say about it in your good epistolary piece. Rock out with your good self! W00t w00t!

*An Orange Paper, which can only be issued from the Swedish American Futurimagineering Institut, can be compared, for the unfamiliar reader, to a "white paper," in which it shares many characteristics, one of which being the gravitas and "officialness-n-stuff" connoted by the concept. Moreover, like many whites paper, it is neither white nor on paper. The most salient divergence, however, between the two is the name: The Orange Paper. And of course, if printed, it would appear on orange paper. A less immediately evident aspect of the Orange Paper is that it also exudes all the unique aesthetic and genius connoted by the color orange.

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This has been an Orange Brief from Swedish American Futurimagineering Institut.