Don’t you just love a good thunderstorm?! It’s awesome, like yesterday evening when heaven opened up and absolutely flooded Fredhäll. It rained so hard that car alarms were set off. A perfect weather to snuggle up in the sofa and watch a movie, drinking a cup of tea with the rain pouring down form a sky lit by lightning. Absolutely breathtaking.

So we survived our first real grocery shopping at Willy’s and now the fridge is packed.

Attended a very good seminar today. It was given at the Marketing forum we have at work. This trend analyst came and talked about the 12 most attractive trends. He used a lot of analogies to illustrate how my company should/could use these trends to increase business. Among other things he briefly touched the subject of Urban Span.

He gave us a really good example of how a Pizza place in the US had used this Urban Spam (consumer messages brought to you as “freeloaders” on other things you buy or in your surroundings some of which botheres you hugely) in their direct marketing campaign.

It doesn’t say if it is the pizza boy/girl who delivers the pizza who slaps one of these on your door or if it is done kind of blindly through some ordinary distributor of marketing material. I think it’s pretty cool.
I’m sure it has freaked some paranoid old ladies out though…

Anyhow, this made me think of the other day when I walked through Midsommarkransen here in Stockholm and I started noticing these stickers all over the place; on light poles, power boxes and house walls. They all had the same message, someone or an organization of some sort is reclaiming Midsommarkransen from the brats (!) I never knew there were any Brats in Kransen. These stickers are all displaying the same message, “You’re not welcome here”.

Click the picture to see more stickers

As with the pizza boy sticker it comes close but because it is so abundant, the stickers are everywhere you turn in Kransen. Contrary to the Pizza boy I don’t think these stickers will generate any sales opportunities, I can’t imagine what that should be. Still I would consider it Spam…Urban Spam.

Dear Ms. Eatasmuchasyoucan Glutton

I appreciate and understand your need of feeding yourself, going to nice restaurants, drinking all kinds of fluids, strong or week.
I understand (yes, really!) that it is lovely with some holiday gluttony. I understand that a combination of Caprese salad for lunch AND for starter AND for main course AND on top of that a Caprese Pizza with chili sauce for main course feels like a good idea at the time. Not to mention all that wine and beer.

I can understand that it all adds to the holiday feeling. I can even understand that some of these things are hard to stomach, strong and/or fat. Note that I say SOME – not all!

So if you EVER sit on your ars (or lie down on a sun chair on the beach for that matter) and eat non-stop for 6 days again and forces me to swell and triple my normal size I will go on strike. I hope that the aching and bloatedness you’ve been experiencing lately will serve as a light reminder of what me going on strike would be like.

Truly yours
/The stomach