So, I don't know if this goes in the "you have a really dull job so anything is inappropriately funny" file (see my earlier entry about unangebracht freude), but a couple of weeks ago I spotted a bird stuck in the elevator shaft here at work. The Evil Empire seems to have this sadistic relationship with birds. When I first started, it was a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest on a carpark lamp-post. Now, a sparrow in the elevator shaft.

 

So anyway, I mentioned it to my colleagues and it was agreed that somebody should be told, otherwise the bird might die.

 

So I made an IT help request. What? At least I didn't call emergency services.

 

The next day they leapt into action, telling me that this wasn't their problem and passing my e-mail on to another group. Fair enough, this was what I was hoping for anyway. I didn't know who to ask and assumed they would.

 

Now, a couple of weeks later, I received the following e-mail message from the problem solvers.

 

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I think I have fallen victim to this insidious and socially awkward disease. It is becoming more and more difficult to control, and - even worse - it is becoming more and more difficult to want to control it.

 

We've all been there. The trains, indeed the entire public transport system, is supposed to run on smoothly-oiled wheels in any modern industrialised country you care to name, leaving on time, arriving on time, and getting from point A to point B without unnecessary drama or cornering on two wheels. But yet, of course, it doesn't. Any large machine with well-oiled wheels can be expected to slide around and kill lots of people, and this is what - sometimes metaphorically - happens. Every day.

 

You're halfway up the platform, busting your arse to get to the doors, just as they swish shut and the train trundles away. Sometimes, you get close enough to risk losing your fingers as the doors close, because those fuckers aren't like elevators, they're hydraulic and they'll cut you in half before they pop open again. Other times, you can only see the fading lights as your ride vanishes into the murk, seconds or minutes before or after its duly appointed time.

 

Because it's not always that they leave early, although they often do. Sometimes - indeed, pretty much any time they're not early - they're late ... but not quite late enough for you to get on board. They wait for you to break into a run. They wait, the extraordinary fuckholes, until they can see the gleam of hope in your eye, the glimmering, hopelessly trusting facial spasms that say maybe today I will get to work on time. And then they extinguish that hope. They crush that childish trust. And that is when Train Station Tourette's kicks in.

 

I first read the adjective "cunting" in the book The Exorcist, and found it an amusing addition to a repertoire that was becoming stale in spite of the influx of highly satisfying new Finnish swear-words. However, with the onset of Train Station Tourette's, I find my creative juices flowing with wild abandon. I have called train drivers "cunty fucko shitfucks". I have called them "arse-crap-piss-bitch-whoreshits". I have called their mothers "dog-cunt crap-titted crackwhore slut skanks from Hell", and I have called their trains "cunting buggering fuck-cans that I hope you die with up your fucking, fucking, fucking arsehole, vittujumalauta". And I have done it all, my friends, at quite audible volume.

 

Sometimes, I spit.

 

This is a real problem, and I have seen many, many others displaying the same symptoms. Sometimes we exchange notes - inadvertently, of course, because when the red rage comes down you find yourself in your own world and such a thing as two-way communication is an alien concept. We learn from each other, and we feed from each other, and we pass our condition on to the rest of the population. We are fuelled, at least twice a day, by the thick, methane-rich manure of our beloved public transport officials.

 

And the looming threat of Bus Station Epilepsy is casting its shadow over me.

 

 

I don't know why I keep turning up so early to these things. Sure, the alternative was hanging around at work and not getting compensated for it, but I didn't really achieve much. I waddled into Teerenpeli at about 4:00pm, after promising that I would be present to get seats for everyone and keep the early-starters company.

 

So who keeps the early-starter-company-keeper-guy company, huh? I show up, the place is packed (but not with our guys), I eventually crowbar myself into a spot at the bar and get a stool by the simple yet effective expedient of looking like I might start talking to the person sitting in it, and then the waiting game begins. At least for this incarnation of the waiting game, I had a place to sit. Place was still packed, though. All the tables were filled and the couches upstairs were piled three deep with jobless fucking hoboes. What the fuck? I thought I was living the good life walking out of the office at a smooth half-past three. Turns out these cunts had been sitting in there since breakfast. It's like the banks, and administrative offices. Nothing is set up for the benefit of people who work. Everything is set up for the benefit of people without jobs. And this is Capitalism?

 

My promise to save seats for everyone seemed futile in the face of such overwhelming odds. Every time some of the hoboes got up to leave, larger crowds of people swarmed in and took the space, leaving me helpless. And not quite drunk enough to sit down at other people's tables and pretend to know them.

 

I was ... what, maybe two and a half beers in the hole by the time ... who turned up? Veli Tuomas, Mr. Farenheit and Antti Pa (as opposed to Antti Po), I think. Yeah. I'd been there maybe an hour. And now that I mention it, I saw that bastard Farenheit go sneaking past the window at least half an hour earlier, but he didn't come in. He went to Lautapelit.fi and snubbed me in favour of board games. Actually, can't say I blame him. The main difference between me and a board game is, people give a toss for board games.

 

We made our way outside, of all places, to the Smoking Pit where the icicles dangled and the darkness loomed on every side. Tuomas and I were of the opinion that it wasn't quite unpleasant enough for smokers to really enjoy, since the cold was only moderately lethal and only after long periods of exposure. Our beloved stinktards require something a bit more dangerous to really get their nicotine-addled blood pumping. You know, something with a label on it saying "THIS WILL FUCKING KILL YOU". The chairs out there, for example, could have had bear-traps instead of seats. That would have been fun.

 

Gradually, other people started turning up. Anna T and Marleena, and the crowd from elsewhere in Kara, including our friends from India and the hero of the day, Pia "sod you all, I'm leaving for a year, let me know how the economic slump turns out" Karasjärvi. And we call her that affectionately. The precise order of turn-ups escapes me, as do the specific group dynamics of who showed up with whom. Wendy, Antti Po and Titta turned up a bit later, Nick, Mladen, Lauri and The Taj a bit later still as far as I know, and Lars didn't turn up at all. But we all expected that, because he called the meeting in the first place.

 

Mr. Farenheit, no doubt hungry after all his board-game-shopping, was the first to order himself a giant Teerenpeli sandwich, and incidentally the first to fall victim to a previously-unknown medical condition known as Sandwich Crotch. This is a malady unlike others, in that once you have caught it you become more likely to catch it again in the future, and all those nearby become less likely to catch it as a result. The joys of melted cheese and scalding-hot chilli relish on the gonads kept us all amused and, briefly, warm. Our crowd was growing but was still not quite large enough that we could huddle together for warmth like penguins. Teerenpeli management, perhaps instituting a cost-cutting policy or assuming that smokers had access to fire in order to keep themselves warm, did not switch on the outdoor heaters for an inordinate length of time.

 

Actually, speaking of penguins, Mr. Farenheit took a break from picking hot, soggy sandwich lumps out of his groinal region and enhanced our knowledge of the world by telling us about Japanese bees.

 

It seems that when a wasp attacks a Japanese beehive, the bees swarm around it, cluster together and build up tremendous friction by circling and spinning and vibrating and stuff. So great is the friction that the wasp is consequently cooked in its exoskeleton. Many of the bees also die, but this is deemed an acceptable loss by the hive in general. Apparently Japanese bees are unaware that they have stings, and that two or three of those up in a wasp's face would probably kill it as well. But then, of course, the bees would end up with an overpopulation problem, due to the lack of friction-oven casualties, and massive pay-cuts would ensue and travel and entertainment budgets would be slashed and the bees would no longer be allowed to leave the hive to look for flowers, and then one day the bees would say "hey, we have these stings..." and one of them would sting the Queen just to see what happened and that would be the end of the hive and probably, if modern environmental science can be believed, the planetary ecosystem as we know it. So spin on, you crazy spinning Japabees.

 

 

 

Jussi (the beer; many was the time I walked up to the bar with the intention of ordering something or other, and then drawing a complete blank and panicking, and blurting out the one Teerenpeli-beer-name I was at least moderately sure actually was a beer name) gave way to Hoegaarden and very drinkable but hugely overpriced Teerenpeli whiskey, and we finally got a foothold inside on the couches. Within half an hour, we were filling most of the upstairs area with our exclusive and inimitable conversation. SME, PM, BSC, GCD and TS-fucking-plus peppered the dialogue like cloves in a curry. Following Mr. Farenheit's sterling example, more food was ordered and consumed. Not following his example, the food was consumed directly from the plates, rather than from the layers of cloth directly covering the sexual organs.

 

We were also graced with the presence of a couple of LOC folks. Salla was kind enough to show up and order food just at the point we were all getting hungry again, and then permitted the starving Technical Writers to pick over the leftovers. The Taj, as already mentioned, showed up after sending me some text messages to make sure he wouldn't be all alone when he arrived. Why didn't I think of that? He also disparaged my estimate of "a fucking million" when asked how many people had turned up for the shindig, suggesting that maybe I was counting my dying brain cells rather than actual human company. Fair cop.

 

In the grey areas between TW and LOC, and incidentally speaking of Japanese bees, we would have been joined by our dear colleague Tiina, but for an amusing combination of factors. Her husband, a man she has described as "that utter bastard" (on more affectionate days), had arranged to spend the night out drinking whiskey with his buddies, leaving her home to look after the house and offspring. With every e-mail that went around concerning the gathering, Tiina became more bitter and vengeful. We later learned that Mr. Tiina spent the night sitting in a Japanese-style tub under the open and freezing sky, sharing bottles of whiskey with his pals and ending up catching a nasty dose of the flu which he then passed on to Tiina during the course of his still-continuing (we can only hope) hangover. What they needed was some industrious and over-protective Japabees to keep them warm.

 

Starting to sound a bit like an Eddie Izzard routine, isn't it?

 

Overpriced whiskey gave way to Tequila Motherfuckers and Lonkero, and more overpriced whiskey. I don't know why I was drinking Hoegaarden and Lonkero, but my barside panic attacks were getting worse as the night went on. The Taj even came down to buy me a beer, and I unaccountably failed to drink it. I'm not sure why he bought me a Hoegaarden when I asked for a Salmari shot, but the two are very easy to mistake when spoken in unsteady Finglish in a crowded bar. And they totally look alike, as well, when you put them on a table next to each other. This might have been a good time for me to mingle and be sociable, and at least say hello to our visiting friends from India, but alas I failed to do so and shortly afterwards they went home. Oh well. Next time!

 

Conversation went on, but was mostly beyond me. Politics was discussed, which isn't my strong suit. Ask me about the politics in an obscure science fiction series (the Old Commonwealth was governed by an elected body headed by three Triumvirs, the New Commonwealth is basically an anarchy run by Kevin Sorbo), and there's no problem. Ask me who I voted for in the recent local elections (the guy from the farm across the road, he delivers milk and eggs on time and whenever his pigs get free he's always the first one out there with a rake trying to get them back inside before they poop on something, and when his horse went nuts and kicked a friend of ours he offered to have it shot and made into sausages), and I'm in the same ball-park but not exactly watching the game. Beyond that, and you might as well be speaking Klingon. In fact, I'd do better if you were speaking Klingon.

 

Then Mr. Farenheit and some of his peeps departed for Bakers, where apparently there was a girl waiting for him. We shall call her Mrs. Farenheit for now, and await with breathless anticipation any further developments and dramas. I will depend on The Taj to provide me with accurate and trustworthy reports. Apologies to anyone I have just character-assassinated by referring to them as Mr. Farenheit's "peeps".

 

This left a few of us (Antti Po, The Taj, Ilkka, Wendy, Sanna, Mladen, not sure who else) behind to talk shop, which these days consists mostly of muttering curses. Still, most entertaining. I seem to recall putting forward my theory about why this year's sick leaves were three times as high as last year's and five times as high as the projected ideal (the theory is basically as follows: people don't feel there's anything to get better for when they're sick at the moment, and the projected ideal is a fucking daydream based on some utopian society where nobody gets sick because their B-shirts protect them from all illness), and the Seedy Ämmät (as represented at this point by Antti Po, although Wendy was also present) promising not to hold it against me. Salmari and overpriced whiskey gave way to extremely well-priced but body-temperature Minttu, a sure sign that the night is winding to a close.

 

I was also obliged to recite my hilarious How I Was Deported on the Day After My Wedding anecdote for Mladen and Sanna and others who hadn't heard it before. Always a crowd pleaser. The trials and tribulations of a foreigner trying to get paperwork done in summer always make for a few laughs. Mladen's counter-anecdote, How I Just Walked Into the Police Station And They Gave Me a House, was also funny. It's nice to be from an EU country. The question, incidentally, of why Australia isn't in the EU when its population is clearly dead-set on being part of the British Empire, has never been answered to my satisfaction. Why Israel is in the Eurovision but Australia isn't, also, is a real fucking poser.

 

So anyway, then we all left. I took a taxi, Wendy joined me as far as Hakaniemi, and I managed to get home without getting lost, or falling asleep, or being dramatically late. I could have taken a bus, since it was only around midnight, but was basically in no mood.

 

That's it for now. If you'll excuse me, I've got to buzz off and do some work.