Skrivbordslampa. At first glance it’s a perfectly fine word but no, it can be quite problematic. First off, lets break it down as it’s a compound word.

Skrivbord + s + lampa.

Skrivbord means desk, and is in itself a compound word from skriv and bord, write and table respectively.

S is a common infix with compound words, there are rules and exceptions and lets not go into those now.

Lampa means lamp. Simple as that.

So skrivbordslampa means a desk lamp. Wohoo! However. If the hyphenation gets a tad wrong it will have some devastating results which will change everything. Normally it’s hyphenated skrivbords-lampa, but skrivbord-slampa can happen. It can! And slampa means slut. So you see, quite quite different all of the sudden.

Bonus: the Swedish word slut means end. And the French word for end, fin, means pretty in Swedish. So now you know!

^{(Shivkitten, an Illustrator drawing from 2007.)}

Unlike everyone else it seems, I don’t want to be rich. Really not. I assume it brings worries and grief that vastly surpasses it’s amount of usefulness. And paralysed I would wonder what I’d do with it — keep it would be boring and counter-productive to its purpose and giving it away has far too many to whom options.

I want a house, a nice job, a pet — why not a squirrel named Nötgärna (it’s a very bad Swedish pun; nöt = nut, gärna = gladly, hjärna = brain. gärna and hjärna are pronounced the same and nöthjärna = idiot) —, some friends, and be a bit happier. A tiny bit. Even in dreams I’m a bit dull but I make up for that when I sleep, those dreams are more like Cronenberg.