I guess I never fully understood the obsession with action figures until I found this one. Or when it found me. Or shall I say when he found me?

What a beautiful craft by sculptor Sen-U Tanaka!

I did buy some smaller action figures before, mainly from Ashita no Joe and Sailor Moon. But never before did I happily pay over 6,000 yen for an action figure. Hello otaku world!

This blog usually has between 100 to 200 visitors a day. Needless to say I was a bit taken aback as I just checked the statistics: 2321 visitors yesterday!

The reason was a link to this post about vintage boy magazine logotypes. I’m happy that people take such an interest in graphic design history – you are all very welcome! And while you’re at it, why don’t you visit Entartetes Leben.

There was a time when religion made me see red. This “opium of the people” that made them lethargic and mad – how nice wouldn’t our world be if it wasn’t for religion!

But that time was when I was 20 years old.

Then followed a period when I respected religion, since something practiced by so many people must have a point. I respected people’s need for ceremonies, but I still saw it as a need.

It wasn’t until recently that I started to admire religion as man’s greatest invention. I now look upon religions as philosophies rather than churches. What is a religion if not a distilled society – a way for humans to describe themselves and their experiences with the lowest common denominator in order to understand themselves.

This is most evident in the polytheistic religions. There were many gods, and each of them represented a typical story in the lives of humans. The stories functioned as a guidebook as for how to live. We make a mistake if we think that these people were “stupid” enough to “believe in” various gods. Instead, they were smart enough to make their abstract lives concrete enough to fathom. Just like we do today when we say that someone is a careerist and someone is a bohemian. Or a John Doe for that matter. We simplify and idealise.

In a way, religion is what makes us human, since animals don’t practice it. Everyone who, like myself, is hopelessly in love with humanity should hail our amazing capacity for abstract thought. Yes, I’m a religious man!

Not to be continued – I respect my own attention span.

I’m interviewed about my old project Destroyer in the February 2012 issue of Out magazine – click the picture or read the piece here (or buy the magazine for that matter; it’s for sale worldwide).

The article starts by citing some of the reactions to my magazine in Sweden: “This is filth!”, “It’s really, really disgusting”, etc. Out, which is the world’s biggest gay magazine, writes:

But these attacks were not from right-wing politicos – they appeared in the gay press.

I think this is called redress.

2011 was a great year. I published two books and one magazine. I learned Japanese quite fiercely, and went to Japan twice. And I probably had my most social year ever, meeting friends more or less every day, and partying quite hard!

However, I hardly read at all in 2011.

In fact, I haven’t read so few books since I was a teenager. It was a semi-conscious choice – I needed a break from the world of letters. But enough is enough!

I’ve included 2010′s graph above for comparison. (Read the 2010 post here.)

Berlin paper Tagesspiegel has a story on politicians who, like the German president Christian Wulff, have attempted to tell the press what they should publish and not.

The first example is that of senator Sybille von Obernitz, whose press person sent Tagesspiegel this e-mail along with a photo of the politician:

When you publish photos, only use this one. You can delete all other photos from your archive. Thanks for your understanding.

Tagesspiegel writes in their article:

See for yourself why we don’t have any understanding – and which photos of the senator we found in our archive.

Yes, take a look at them here – the fun starts after about 5 photos.

I didn’t bother to read the other examples – I should be OFFLINE now! - but I just had to share how happy this article made me. It reminded me of how a free press should work: Always the sceptic, always mistrusting the power. If only power was acknowledged and criticised outside the obvious arena of politicians – I’m thinking companies, lobbyists, and NGO’s.

PS: The title of this post references the so called Streisand effect, where an attempt to silence something instead spreads it thousandfold.

I’m loving it.

Some of the stuff I got home from Tokyo this time around.

Food is one of the things I love with Japan – and hate with Germany. Here are some of the dishes I had during my December trip to Tokyo.

The first photos are from an “izakaya” that specialised in sake. I was taken there by a Japanese-American friend of mine, but only remembered to document our first course.

The next pictures are from a cheap lunch joint in Akihabara – I went there with my Swedish friend Petter and his Okinawan friend Mikayo.

Rice balls from Seven Eleven – my favourite!

Then lots of small dishes that me and my friend Hideki were served at an exclusive restaurant with traditional Japanese food. Aren’t they beautiful!

A bean burger from Freshness Burger in Shinjuku – I had two of those in one night.

And the last shot from our trip back to Europe – Petter of course managed to upgrade us to Economy Extra, where they kept the Champagne coming…