Blue Swede

Recently eaten: KFC
Recent annoyance: people who don't like snow

I can't fight this feeling, deep inside of me. And apparently neither can those Swedes. They just do whatever they damn well please! And screw the goats or impressionable young children that get in their way. I like that kind of attitude. No-nonsense, and we'll kick your butt in chocolate-making too!

Vandals Burn Swedish Christmas Goat, Again
Vandals set light to a giant straw goat Saturday night in a central Swedish town, police said — an event that has happened so frequently it has almost become a Christmas tradition.

It was the 22nd time that the goat had gone up in smoke since merchants in Gavle, 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Stockholm, began erecting it to mark the holiday season.

Police spokeswoman Margareta Olander said officers received a call just after 9 p.m. to report that the goat was ablaze.

"In just a couple of minutes only a sooty wooden skeleton remained," she said. There were no immediate suspects, but Olander said that one of two men seen running from the scene was wearing a Father Christmas mask.

Since 1966, just 10 of the 43-foot-high goats have survived beyond Christmas Day. Most were burned — sometimes within hours of being built during the first week of December. The 1976 goat was hit by a car, while in 1997, it was damaged by fireworks.

Man Fined For Reading Porn to Six-Year Olds
A Swedish drama student was fined 2,400 crowns on Wednesday for reading pornographic stories to a group of six-year-olds as part of a theater project on children's sexuality.

A Stockholm court ruled that the stories the man had read out were deeply pornographic and completely inappropriate for the age group, newspaper Dagens Nyheter said on its Web site.

It said the stories were about children having oral sex with each other.

The man's lawyer told Swedish radio that he would appeal against the verdict as he had not meant the stories to be seen as pornographic and had not acted with intent.