KLT, or Kalmar Läns Trafik, is the local public transportation company. I had the idea of making a bus snail, but I couldn’t solve the problem of making a round snail shell look like a bus. Instead I chose to make one with the logo of KLT and the light blue colour of the town buses. The real logo is yellow between the letters as well, but I thought it looked better the way I did it.

It was not intended as a comment on the service of KLT, although I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking that. The rates are fair and the bus frequency during week days (daytime) on the two main lines is very decent, but it is clear that when you have a tax financed monopoly in place you don’t have to worry too much about the needs of the passengers.

The last town bus leaves central station at around 23:00 during week nights, so if you fancy a couple of beers you better bring money for a taxi or hope it isn’t too cold for a walk. Overcrowded buses with passengers packed like sardines, especially during the winter, is another problem. Still, in spite of the majority on such trips standing, at least you can’t fall. I’m griping about this living in Kalmar itself, but for passengers on Öland (seven kilometres of bridge east) or in the countryside it’s even worse as the option of walking home is rather daunting. The recent decision to entirely rid the buses of cash as a means of payment is another example of poorly thought through ideas.

Look at me go! It should be noted that overall the buses are clean and look good, the drivers are (generally) very nice and taking the bus works fine as long as you do it during the day and don’t mind the risk of standing the whole way. Given the alternatives, it’s usually preferable. As for the snail, I used the “permanent” marker pen to fill in the black, the rest is the usual Humbrol paint. I’m quite satisfied with the end result.

Although it’s hardly a movie of epic greatness made on a huge budget, Zach Braff’s “Garden State” is one of my top five favourites. There’s no advanced plot and no great twist – it’s just a regular guy returning home to bury his mother.

He realizes he probably never needed the medication he’s been on since he was a kid and finds himself on an oddysey finding love and meeting old friends – all regular people, but with an odd thing to them that makes them stand out. The places he’s taken through aren’t ordinary at all, however. All of it is set to a wonderfully picked soundtrack that is similar to that of Scrubs – the series that made Zach Braff famous. You’ll either love it or hate it. I guess I like it because of the way it makes me feel.

To the point: Braff’s character Andrew Largeman’s true love Sam (Samantha) played by Natalie Portman is the perfect girl. Not in the sense that she is without flaws, because she’s not. She’s a pathological liar and an epileptic, but none of that matters as she’s cute, natural, caring and wonderful in every way. In one scene she explains that whenever she feels too unoriginal, she does something that noone has ever done before so that if nothing else, she’ll be the first one who did that and feel unique for a second. Her example is doing a quirky dance as seen in this video:

That should explain the basis for the snail – it’s a reference to a good movie and a great character. As for the “painting” of it, I used the supposedly permanent pens and lacquered it afterwards. Just wrtiting “Love” on it didn’t seem like enough as the reference is very (very!) vague even to people who have seen the film, so I added a heart as well. It looks better and let’s anyone finding it see a message in it, even if it’s not the intended one.

This is another of the low-on-ideas-snails, made at the same time as Penix. It comes from the same nonsensical idea as this old thing, but as it would be on display in Sweden the message had to be translated. The text means “Eat soap” – “Cleanse your soul” doesn’t translate well, and wouldn’t have fit on the shell anyway. Consider it a public service announcement.

Sweden is a country that where there’s obviously not enough real racism to go around. This is of course not true, but when you look at what a few of the anti-racism bureaus do with their time, it’s the only reasonable explanation. As a result, we have organizations like “Centrum mot rasism” (“Centre against racism” – CMR) filing complaints and crying out in the media about the names of icecreams and 150 year old names for city blocks, demanding changes because someone might take offense. As for the great racist icecream debate of 2005, it’s almost too silly to explain, but I’ll give it a go so international viewers might understand the backstory.

A nougat icecream was introduced by the Swedish company Glace-Bolaget (known to everyone as GB) in 1978. It was called Nogger, derived from the word nougat, and has been sold ever since. By 2005 the company had been sold to the international food corporation Unilever, and some idiot thought making a liqourice flavoured version of the Nogger was a great idea. The advertising campaign had “Nogger + Liqourice = True” written in crayon on asphalt, which put CMR president Stig Wallin’s panties in a twist.

Because he read Nogger as “nigger”, that’s what it said, and so the name must be racist. The change to the logo, to make Nogger Black noticably different from the old brown standard Nogger logo, was also unacceptable to CMR. GB had made it black, and the rounded letters (identical to the old logo) combined with the style of the additional word “Black” was to CMR inspired by graphitti, clearly a reference to black culture (what?!). They demanded GB withdraw the icecream, threatening to file charges “for racism”, and encouraged buyers to boycott the icecream.

The bag of far-fetched prejudices made people wonder who the real racists were, and why CMR was funded by tax money. To be fair, you could read Nogger as “nigger” if you wanted to – but only if you wanted to. It wasn’t the first nor the last time GB was accused of making prejudiced icecreams – another one of their classics from 1964 is named “88:an” (“The 88″), which according to supposed anti-racists is a neo-nazi reference. See, because the eighth letter in the alphabet is H, 88 means HH and this is obviously (!!!) short for “Heil Hitler”. Soon after complaints were filed against Nogger Black by CMR, “The anti-discrimination bureau in Malmö” – another tax financed organization – filed charges against 88:an.

Two years later the GB icecream Girlie, a pink star on a stick with silver sprinkles, sent feminists raging about “könsschablonisering” – a word made up for use by feminist conspiracy theorists. Basically, the icecream was sexist, and although making a blue one and naming it Boy wouldn’t be so bad (könsschablonisering, like all powertools of the patriarchy, only affects women), “making a Mr Macho icecream might be as bad” in the words of Jan Bertoft.

In the early summer of 2005 Nogger Black and 88:an were, according to the icecream sellers I spoke to, doing far better than expected. There was no boycott of the racist icecreams, rather nearly everyone made sure they bought one. After a while, sales of 88:an went down to the usual level and Nogger Black disappeared from the shelves. Not because GB Glace was found guilty of “being racist” by any court, but because liqourice and icecream is a horrible combination. All CMR and the Malmö bureau had accomplished was to never be taken seriously again.

This snail is in memory of that great, awfully silly, debate. I attached a photo of three of the icecreams mentioned – know your enemy!

Although George Orwell’s 1984 takes place in a perfectly fashioned communist surveillance state, a lot of things in that great book can be applied to the world we live in. There’s an exponential increase in the amount of people, organizations, companies and parties that will go to great lenghts to make you believe lies. Sometimes it’s because they think their ultimate goal is worth it – the ends justifying the means -, sometimes it’s to preserve status quo and sometimes it’s just to make money.

Regardless of who says it, it’s important to remember that 2 plus 2 does not equal 5. Even if the world forgets it tomorrow and all copies of 1984 are burned, this snail can be expected to carry the message. Unless it’s been eaten, of course.

I’d recommend the two Orwell books I’ve read so far; 1984 and The Animal Farm, to anyone. As for the latter, brushing up on the history of the Soviet Union 1917-1945 (circa) before reading makes it even better. Note that the book has some sequences of events twisted historically for the sake of storytelling – I did not know this before reading the book and was somewhat confused at times.

I’m all about fairness, and with two more or less communist snails and only one that might be counted as a nazi, I decided I had to even it out a bit. Say what you will of the SS and their actions (and there’s a lot to be said), but they sure had a kickass logo designer. I could of course have attempted the official flag of Nazi-Germany, but after the earlier failed attempts of making anything circular, it didn’t seem much use – especially since I’d have to fit a swastika in it!

Additionally, the Schutzstaffel runic symbol has a special, ambivalent meaning to me. Growing up with the initials S. S. in a family where World War Two history books were frequently found on nightstands, it was only a matter of time before young Stefan picked it up and made it into his own. I still have a vague memory of a teacher who was quite confounded by the way I signed my crayon paintings. At the time I did of course not know anything of the organization that had used it, and when I grew older and learned more, using it was obviously out of the question.

Still, from a purely graphical standpoint I still think it is a beautiful, clean, powerful and simple design (which is exactly what the nazis were going for in all their design) and my initials will remain S. S. no matter what historically significant organizations might share the letters.

The idea for this one was to make it appear as if the shell was actually a creature swallowing the snail. It turned out looking more like the SHOOP DA WOOP /b/ meme, so it has been passed around called that as well.

To international readers, this one will require a bit of explaining. Swedes, skip down to the pics.

Not so long ago, Sweden was a state rather capable of managing its own defence. The threat of the Cold War going hot was real and Sweden was prepared to keep anyone (mainly the Soviet Union) out. For a small nation such as Sweden to manage this, conscription is required. All men were enlisted when they turned 18 and spent eleven months (usually) going through basic training, unless they had a serious medical condition that made them incapable of participating.

All men, having completed basic training, were then part of a unit that could be ready for battle within 72 hours (in theory) in the event of a war. When they turned 48, they were thanked and released from their service. To keep the men somewhat fresh and able to do their job as soldiers, every couple of years they had to participate in a large repeat exercise that took about a month. This was called “Repmånad”, or repetition month.

In 1979 the Swedish comedy filmmaker Lasse Åberg made a movie about such an exercise, and although many would say it’s not a great movie, I think everyone who’s seen it remembers some select scenes. One in particular stands out; the group is to move somewhere by truck. They arrive at a bridge, but they are not allowed to drive across it because in the exercise, it has been “destroyed”. They will have to find another bridge instead.

They of course don’t really care for the wargame rules and don’t take any part of the exercise seriously, so instead of going around they find some white paint and write “HELIKOPTER” on the sides of the truck. With their “helicopter”, they speed across the bridge. Now you can understand the idea behind this snail’s warpaint!