We’ve had Mozilla’s Firefox as our primary web-browser for some time now, and we’ve been very happy with it.

Recently, we feel that Outlook Express (and, therefor, Hotmail) has been hindering us from doing certain things, not least using Trillian with MSN Messenger. Updated versions of MSN get placed (without asking) somewhere where Outlook refuses to look, using instead the older version. This means that we appear offline to anyone with the new version of MSN Messenger.

This problem is quite possibly extremely easy to fix, though much searching/installing/re-installing/unistalling has not given us the answer. This is a downsight on Microsoft’s part. As Jo says, a company that dominates the market should have the best customer support available, but it doesn’t. Long from it.

So, we have decided to (painstakingly) do away with all things Outlook, slowly changing our emails to Thunderbird-friendly (Microsoft and POP3 is a taboo). This also means an eventual end to Trillian, since most off the people we know use Skype, or can be convinced to do so.

As Easter appraoches, people in Sweden ebulliently partake in the buying of sprigs of (birch) twigs decked with coloured feathers, known here as påskris.

Apparently, in days of yore, folk would whip themselves with such a device (minus the feathers, which only appeared in the 1930’s) on Shrove Tuesday or Good Friday (wisely, the Swedes call this day Long Friday, which it undoubdtedly was.) Such flagellation was carried out as a reminder of Jesus’ suffering.

This all now seems like a load of nonsense, and instead we (I being Swedish in this context) decorate our homes with brightly coloured pieces of trees.

This must be something unique to Scandinavia, and I simply cannot imagine paskris being exported to any other country today. And yet I wish it would, for I should like nothing more than to hear the mellifluous chanting in marketplaces around Britain, “Twigs with feathers on, get yer lovely twigs with feathers on ‘ere.”

Incidently, a bunch of påskris like the one pictured here would set you back about £1.50.
Double-incidently, Paschal is the adjectival form of Easter, pask in Swedish. These words come from the Hebrew, Pasch, which means passover. So there you go.

I was in my local supermarket today, the third time in as many days thanks to American Express incorrectly blocking my card, and then not putting things right when they said they had (don’t get me started on that).

A longish line to the checkout had formed, when the man who had just had his stuff processed asked for a plastic bag. Unfortunately for the cashier there were none left at his station, which seemed to cause annoyance to said man. He walked to the next checkout and fetched….a single bag.

Had he have been intelligent, or not a cunt, he would have taken with him a whole box, but he didn’t. I became, as I often do, well pissed-off with his behaviour.

I did furnish the cashier with a box of bags, giving me the right to pen this rant. Hello moral high-ground, my name’s Jon.