In reporting the news from the made great again United States of America last week, Swedish reporters were challenged to make a proper translation. They settled on the word skithål. The runner up was rövhål. From this we can deduce that hål is Swedish for hole. You figure out the rest.
How do I know this? I have a brother who lives in Sweden. He’s lived there his entire adult life, having gone there as a twenty-year old in pursuit of the opposite sex. Why else does any red-blooded American boy do anything? He was virtually out of our lives for over twenty years. Then someone invented Skype. And text messages. Last week one such text came in. It read as follows:
What in hell going on over there in WH? 🙁
I have been getting that one a lot lately. I’d estimate for about the past twelve months. A few texts back and forth resulted in the aforementioned lesson in Swedish. And now you, my rarified readers, have also been launched into that lovely language, like it or not. Information like that is easier to take when you don’t see it coming.
I asked him if Sweden felt left out. Did they feel jealous of their Norwegian neighbors? After all, our pusillanimous prez pines for scads of Scandinavians to grace our American shores, but neglected to mention the Swedes. Are they feeling forgotten, neglected, and unappreciated? (By the way, prez likes being described as pusillanimous, because he thinks it has something to do with p#$$y). I texted my brother across the pond, expressing my deepest concerns. His reply came back as follows:
LOL 🙂
Not to worry, my brother assured me, the citizenry of Sweden has little interest in answering the president’s call. Any potential relationship was strained last year when prez loudly proclaimed at a rally, “Look what happened in Sweden last night!” The implication was that terrorist immigrants were making the country uninhabitable. Well that was alarming, if you have a brother in Sweden. A quick text established the truth. Nothing had happened in Sweden. Well not exactly nothing. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported the following:
’A wooden moose got the attention of a lovesick moose bull. It all happened in 79 year old Ove Lindqvist’s garden in Byske outside Skellefteå, northern Sweden. “I thought it was going to start a fight, instead it humped the wooden moose thrice”, he said.’
Since the Swedish are squeamish about Fake News, they admitted this affair of the moose had happened the prior autumn, during the rut (that is wildlife talk for humping season). That editor will never make it in America.
The unfortunate statement the prez made at his rally is not the only source of tension between our two great nations. It was recently reported that we had been scheduled to conduct joint military exercises, but there was a snag. Sweden decided to sign onto the U.N. Treaty On The Prohibition Of Nuclear Weapons. It’s mostly aspirational at this point, but hey, it’s the thought that counts. Nevertheless, the U.S. warned Sweden that if they didn’t buy into MAD, we would refuse to play with them. MAD, by the way, used to stand for Mutually Assured Destruction. Now it’s just our state of mind.
The story on skithål countries wasn’t the only thing in the Scandinavian news last week. We also learned that the Norwegians are now the proud owners of a fast and furious fleet of F-52 fighter jets. We know this because during a state visit with the Prime Minister of Norway, our prez announced that he’d made the sale. There is only one little problem with this, which is that the F-52 doesn’t exist. It is a fictitious fighter which is only found in a video game. Fake News media are crowing about this, claiming it points out a flaw in our prez. But no, I say! No, not a flaw but an amazing display of salesmanship! He sold the Norwegians a phantom! A figment of his imagination!
Certainly Norway is a noble nation, but Sweden also has much to be proud of. They have no need of American F-52’s, because they not only build Volvo’s, they build their own fighter jets. I’ll bet you didn’t know that! They have been doing so for years. These days they build the Saab JAS 39 Gripen. ‘The Gripen has a delta wing and canard configuration with relaxed stability design and fly-by-wire flight controls. It is powered by the Volvo RM12, and has a top speed of Mach 2.’ And you can take that to the bank, because I copied it directly from Wikipedia.
But Swedish designers have outdone themselves with their latest creation, a marvel in that most critical field of modern technology. Video games. But this invention, courtesy of the Swedish advertising agency Animal, is so much more than a game. It will relieve you of stress, allow you to blow off steam, harmlessly vent any frustration you may have. (Though I can’t imagine why you’d be feeling any of that these days.) Here, with the swish of a mouse, you can swing a trumpet around our president’s head, his eyes warily following it’s every move. With each click you will blast in his ear, or under his chin, and send his entire horrendous headful of hair flying. Beneath it, you will see a mostly bald pate. I suspect there is a lot of truth in this game. And I will consider it a public service to leave you with a link, right here. Enjoy!