"A Swedish man is to receive sickness benefits for his addiction to heavy metal music. The lifestyle of 42-year-old dishwasher Roger Tullgren from Hässleholm in southern Sweden has been classified as a disability by the Swedish Employment Service, which has agreed to pay part of Tullgren's salary, and his new boss has given him special dispensation to play loud music at work."

This sounds like a really great source of PR for Tullgren's bands (he plays bass and guitar in two). I mean how many rockers do you know who can actually truthfully say that they are officially addicted to the music. Now that's dedication, my man.

I've been running a series of userpics on Ratebeer.com based on a Penny-Arcade shirt based on one of their comics. To start with, I ran a series of "Chickens are f'ing metal pics," because if you've ever had chickens, especially any of the fancy breeds, you know there is no other species of livestock more metal than a chicken. (Pigeons are more easy listening jazz, by the way.) I kind of got tired of the chicken pics after a year and a half, so I started switching it up. But obviously I'm starting to run out of ideas. I'm really glad I came across this little news of the weird tidbit, because obviously, Mr. Tullgren is the epitomy of metal. And it matches the theme of the vaguely obscure that I like to stick with in my f'ing metal series. I'll hopefully have the Roger Tullgren pic up on Ratebeer within minutes of this post.

Oh, and at least one of Tullgren's bands reallly sucks, so he can probably use the financial help from Sweden's socialist government to supplement the dishwashing career that's probably going to be his only financially viable option.

And I'll buy a beer for anyone who can prove they've successfully clicked every link in this post.