Go Ahead, Make My Convention...

I just had an epiphany. Okay, hear me out on this.

Well, it's more theory.

A thesis.

Just because you're famous, and extremely manly, doesn't mean you're at all gifted in the political spectrum, good at debates or even very good at speeches. I say this because I just saw the manliest man in the world brutally massacre a speech at the Republican convention. One would think that a political convention's mystery speaker would be a politically acute individual, but apparently that's incorrect.

Who was this mystery speaker, you ask? None other than Dirty Harry himself. 

Political speech at a Republican rally? Guns and rage it is, then!

As the legendary star of classics like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Dirty Harry - amongst many others - walked on stage (this is pivotal, mind) the audience roared. "Clint Fucking Eastwood at our fucking convention. Shit. We're not worthy."

Not only is he too manly for clothes, he's manly enough for a cowboy hat not to look gay.

 He mounted the stage accompanied by an incredibly manly western tune and raging applause, and proceeded - after the screaming had died down - to ask what a movie tradesman like him, a Conservative, doing there. Apparently there are Conservative movie stars (we all had no idea) and he is one! He made some quick jabs about how Oprah cries at things and how his emotions run rampant about the 23 million unemployed people in the US. All in good, political fun. So far so good; we all expected unemployment issues to be raised - it's a massive problem - , and it's not really a massive surprise that he made fun of Oprah, everyone does.

What happened next was a surprise to us all.

He brought out a chair. 

This chair was actually President Obama.

At this moment I think we all realised just how bonkers one gets from playing Dirty Harry.

Clint: So, Mr President, how do you handle... uhh... how do you handle the promises that you've made, when you were running for election, and how do you handle, uhh, how do you handle it? I mean, what do you say to people, do you, do you just... I know... people... people who are wondering...

Chair: ...

Clint: You don't... okay...

This went on for some time, brining up subjects like Guantanamo and the war in Afghanistan, both which were blamed on President Chair.

Mr President, do you think your metamorphosis into a chair will impede 

your chances of getting re-elected?

By now all the laughter from the audience was either one of three things:

1. Supportive pity chuckles from people who thought they would hurt Clint's feelings if they didn't laugh at his jokes and his, disturbingly enough, rather heated debate with a chair. 
2. Rancorous laughter aimed at him, from the people who had actually realised that, yes, he has actually gone bonkers! Yay!
3. Finally, the maniacal gibbering and distraught screaming from those equally crazy as he was.

 The speech didn't carry on much further; Clint mostly teased President Chair up until the point where he ended the speech with a few well-chosen political slogans such as "We own this country!" and "Go ahead, make my day!" to which the crowd went wild. For some reason. I'm not actually sure.

Now, most people must've realised that this speech wasn't very good, at all. At least the brains behind the convention. Many highly appointed officials gave their opinions on the speech, lauding it, and Clint, which such well thought-through comments such as "The fact that he walked on stage was tremendous, just tremendous!"  and "That Clint Eastwood, himself, showed up is amazing!".

I need to adjust my theory.

Adapt my thesis.

All it takes is showing up, which is amazing, and walking on the stage to make your performance tremendous. At least if you're Clint fucking Eastwood.

Why I Love Swedish Awkwardness And Bus Stops.

I'm going to start this one off with an anecdote which isn't really an anecdote but since I say it is, it is.

Something hilarious happened the other day, as I was waiting for the bus which would take me to Girlfriend's place. Or, well, it didn't exactly "happen" all by itself. I kind of made it happen. Either way, that isn't the important part. The important part is the hilarity and awkwardness of the situation.

As I approached the bus stop, I saw a lone man standing there. Okay, fine, there are other people who take buses at night, nothing odd with that; and some of them look kind of, but not quite, like Argus Filch. As I approached Filch-Man, he eyed me nervously, as if in fear I would do... stuff; he then proceeded to actively not acknowledge my existence. Not only is this silly because I'm completely harmless, but I also looked kind of, but not quite, like Benedict Cumberbatch.

Rather strapping haircut, I daresay.

To fully appreciate what happened next, one must delve further into the mind of a Swedish person.

This is a meme which has circulated here in Swede-land for a while now; a row of Swedes waiting for the bus in June (yeah, we totally have snow in June. What about it?), all maintaining their comfort zone by standing as far as fucking humanly possible from any other human who might be nearby.

Swedes are, beyond anything else, scared of embarrassment and will go to great extents to avoid even an inkling of awkwardness or any unwanted attention, i.e., all attention.

This manifests in fairly apparent ways. When we stand in line, we stand silent and rigid and wait for our turn. Not that we would be stopped should we ever attempt to cut in line; we're simply too scared of doing that, since we're all silently and secretly terrified of judgement. When we wait for the bus, we stand 4 feet away from all other life forms (at least), and stay as silent as we can - being careful not to breathe heavily, as that would definitely make everyone judge us silently. We attentively eye each other to make sure the other one isn't judging us at a distance, suavely diverting our gaze every time we notice that they notice they're being watched and, in turn, judged. Even reacting ever so slightly to someone breaking this cardinal rule of Swedishery is socially forbidden as it, in itself, attracts attention.

All Swedes are socially awkward penguins.

Now, back to the tale of the other night. As I stood Swedishly next to Filch-Man, he cowered away a bit. Nothing special there, I suppose. No one likes standing close to strangers. 

 I'm totally Benedict Cumberbatch.

I was rather hyperactive at the time, having eaten an entire cube of fudge(!), so I rolling on the balls of my feet, doing miniature bounces and generally looked like an ADHD squirrel, albeit without tail. As I was doing this, I accidentally took a step right, closer to Filch-Man. He took a step away. 

"This is odd..."

I was more than a bit perplexed at the sudden turn of events. How could he acknowledge me like that? How dared he? 

He just broke a cardinal rule of Swediquette. By acknowledging my intrusion into his zone of Zen, he made the situation more awkward. I knew innately that I had to push him. How far would he push this pseudo-Swedishness?

I approached him again, far more decisively.

I was yelling "Yippee ki yay, motherfucker" on the inside.

This not only made him take a panic-stricken gasp of air as the status quo he had earlier disturbed was  entirely demolished, but it also forced him out of the bus shelter entirely. I was victorious.

As to further mark my utter victory, I decided to push him even further. This is something I never would've done if I wasn't in Sweden, but seeing as I was, I feared no retaliation. I had spent the last couple of minutes slowly breaking down his psyche, he had no will power left to continue our duel. 

I decided to randomly extend my arm.

The ensuing confusion and turmoil inside poor Filch-Man's head was indescribable.

"Why would the guy who looks slightly, but not quite, like Benedict Cumberbatch do this?!"

I saw he wanted to hurt me. I felt the tension. Yet again he slightly panicked at the horrendous breach of protocol. But, no matter how annoying I was being, he was Swedish. What he did, almost instinctively, was to step back, away from my arm, to maintain his little air-bubble - his comfort zone. he followed this up by stepping away from the bus shelter entirely, under the false pretences of a phone call. I knew it was fake. 

The bus arrived soon after, and after I had taken a seat at the front of the bus, he proceeded in seating himself at the very back, with the semi-drunk teens and possible drug addicts.

God I love bus stops.