Dread Swede profile picture

Dread Swede

...only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted. - Kierkegaard

About Me

She likes the free fresh wind in her hair - life without care - she's broke - and it's ok-ay! - it's California, it's cold and it's damp - that's why the lady is a tramp!

My Interests

writing; filmmaking; drinking beer and eating hors d'ouerves at outside cafes in the summertime, watching people go by on the sidewalk

Music:

Gogol Bordello, Beirut, DeVotchka, Wilco, Gomez, Bright Eyes, the Decemberists, Neko Case, Lavender Diamond, Steve Earle, Leonard Cohen, Ani DiFranco, Jack Johnson, Robin & Linda Williams, Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, They Might Be Giants, Barenaked Ladies, Flogging Molly, Tish Hinojosa, DJ Tiesto, Paul Oakenfold, Belle & Sebastian, Mazzy Star, Sneakerpimps, Nick Drake, Magnetic Fields, Moby, Coldplay, Portishead, Nickel Creek, Alice Deejay, The Arcade Fire, Ozomatli, Ferry Corsten, The Smiths, Interpol, Spearhead, rdj2, Leftfield, Cake, the Beatles, Miles Davis, Violent Femmes, the Crystal Method, Crash Test Dummies, Astral Projection, M.I.A., Goa Gil, Green Day, Vira Bila a Kale, the Verve, the Grateful Dead, Cornershop, Django Reinhardt, the Dixie Chicks, Sean Paul, The Cure, The Misfits, Gorillaz, Bob Dylan, sixties-era Bee Gees, Cowboy Junkies, Groove Armada, Joni Mitchell, Beth Orton, the Darkness, St Germain, Bob Marley & the Wailers, Dido, Jem, Sublime, Voxtrot, Beirut. Any recommendations, send em my way, I am eager!

Movies:

Coen Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Marx Brothers, Eddie Izzard, Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, Christopher Guest, Monty Python, and my beloved Austin-ites Robert Rodriguez and Richard Linklater.Lately: Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men, Dreamgirls, Borat!, Little Miss Sunshine, Half NelsonAlways: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Raising Arizona, The Man Who Wasn't There, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, Bonnie & Clyde, Natural Born Killers, The Third Man, The Edukators, The Proposition, The Seventh Seal, The Salton Sea, Thirteen, Metropolis, Casablanca, Harvey, The Philadelphia Story, Roman Holiday, The Birds, Pi, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Exorcist, Dr. Strangelove, Lolita, The Cuckoo, True Stories, Everything is Illuminated, Clerks, Clerks 2, Brazil, Dogville, Lost in Translation, I Heart Huckabees, Capote, Brokeback Mountain, Crash, Citizen Kane, Winged Migration, March of the Penguins, Triplets of Belleville, Army of Darkness, Blue Velvet, Ed Wood, My Dinner with Andre, Walk the Line, Baraka, Coffee & Cigarettes, Rent, Lost in La Mancha (oh it's heartbreaking!), The Jerk, Love Actually, Say Anything... and, um, Thunder at a Playhouse

Television:

M*A*S*H, The Simpsons, Arrested Development, Firefly, Mr. Show, Futurama, House, Lost, Scrubs, Slings & Arrows(It's all about this guy.)

Books:

Just about anything by Tom Robbins and Paolo Coehlo -- especially Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Jitterbug Perfume, The Alchemist, and Veronika Decides to Die. Poetry-wise, Rumi, Richard Brautigan, Allen Ginsberg and assorted Beat poets, Saul Williams and assorted slam poets that I've only heard a little of, like Shane Koyczan. Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot. I miss reading poetry on the London underground.....if only, if only in America.... Forever beloved: Dharma Bums, Unbearable Lightness of Being, Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, Catch-22, Like Water for Chocolate, Walden, Chimera, Steppenwolf, The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, Slaughterhouse-5, Cat's Cradle, Frankenstein, Zorba the Greek, The Last Temptation of Christ Of late, finished Best American Travel Stories, edited by Jamaica Kincaid; Evasion, by CrimethInc, (quite eye- and mind-opening), and Teacher Man by Frank McCourt which I completely fell in love with and now I am compelled to read the rest of his life so Angela's Ashes is next on my list.Currently reading An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks, and Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey -- both of which remind me why everyone should read books during every spare second in their day

Heroes:

The Dixie Chicks, Thomas Jefferson, Jon Stewart, Ira Glass, Eugene Hutz, Al Gore, Rick Blunt

My Blog

Transcripted transcendence.

The following was sent to me recently by one Rick Blunt, known colloquially as one of my favorite people on the planet, in response to my request that he elaborate on his proclamation that 2008 is the...
Posted by Dread Swede on Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:21:00 PST

Sidetracks (or, Night and Freeways)

With all the anxiety over the past year about what I am supposed to be Becoming, I have lost the exhilarating foray into the New that I used to embrace joyfully.  I've ceased to look around and s...
Posted by Dread Swede on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:28:00 PST

Short time here / long time gone

I have not been writing on here like I used to.  I find it less easy these days to package my thoughts and post them either blithely or emotionally.  I am pondering how one lives - how to ac...
Posted by Dread Swede on Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:10:00 PST

...and consequently meant for publication.

In my college journals, I find all the elements of what I went through this year in LA.  This awful aloneness in the maw of the dark city and the terror of love... which I thought I had never fel...
Posted by Dread Swede on Sat, 22 Dec 2007 08:41:00 PST

everything close to my face is stone

I always knew I was supposed to like Rainer Maria Rilke, but all I truly ever dug was "Letters to a Young Poet" - that volume ubiquitously gifted to aspiring writers by some parent, teacher, lover or ...
Posted by Dread Swede on Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:30:00 PST

novel progress

You can monitor my NaNoWriMo progress here...http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/223819I'm at 14,258 words.... with six days, sixteen hours, and 31 minutes to go. errrrp....
Posted by Dread Swede on Sat, 24 Nov 2007 05:30:00 PST

when youre not feeling holy, your loneliness says that youve sinned

So in order to combat the depression/despondency/general literary and worldly impotence that has been chewing me in its beastly maw of late -- I've decided to write a novel.  NOT JUST ANY NOVEL.&...
Posted by Dread Swede on Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:54:00 PST

quarter life crisis / memory addendum

Exactly six months ago, I posted a blog while sitting in Kev and Leigh-Ann's house in Austin, in my interim period before departing for Los Angeles.  Now I have one more day in L.A. before Kev pi...
Posted by Dread Swede on Wed, 18 Jul 2007 10:47:00 PST

these happy days (featuring You)

I started thinking about good things.  Good people, good times, good places I've been.  Perhaps as a way to stop freaking out about my present and future so much - but it became a kind of i...
Posted by Dread Swede on Fri, 29 Jun 2007 04:49:00 PST

Family (or, animal crackers and tears)

Every couple of years, one of my cousins gets married and the family gets together in New York or DC or California.  It's pretty much the only time we all see each other.  There are bear hug...
Posted by Dread Swede on Sun, 24 Jun 2007 11:11:00 PST