I was just going randomly through my blog archive, and saw that the lead article for September 2007 was Robert Jordan dying, and the lead article for 2006 was Steve Irwin dying. This September it was Keith Floyd and Patrick Swayze.

 

September was also classically the month when fresh waves of newbies, morons and trolls swept Usenet, back in the day. Not so much of the dying, but I can't credit it with mere coincidence.

 

A whole mess of people died in September 2001, as well, but I hesitate to mention it because it has such huge hype value - really, on a global disasters / conflict scale it wasn't that huge. It was definitely tragic and horrible, but it's wormed its way into an entirely unwarranted position in the mass psyche's World's Greatest Disasters list.

 

Speaking of tragic and horrible, I still can't believe Floyd died.

 

 

Here's something that's been gnawing at me.

 

The U.S. (pop. ~300 million) has something like 60 times the population of Finland (pop. ~5 million). Now even considering that Americans don't pay anywhere near as much tax as Finns, and the fact that maybe the top 2 million or so of the U.S.'s richest either pay even less or don't pay any at all, that's a whole buttload of money.

 

Now, they're not spending it on upkeep, utilities, or standard of living, and they're sure as shit not spending it on health care. So where is all this money going? I mean, "into illegal imperialistic wars based on flat-out government lies" is too easy an answer, and "into the pockets of that top 2 million we were talking about a second ago" is even easier, so here's my theory.

 

The U.S. is the world's little brother.

 

Look at it. The U.S. tries to be one of the grown-ups - tries, in fact, to be the parent - but just like the little brother in the house, he can't even hope to pull it off and just ends up looking funny at best. He's belligerent and moody and irrational and gets in fights all the time, which his older siblings need to help him out of (ooh, in spite of the fact that he furiously refuses to let them) and for which his parents endlessly make excuses (but still find it embarrassing and quietly hope the neighbours aren't watching).

 

In fact, imagine the household's embarrassment if the neighbours did actually turn up one afternoon, with a carrot cake and a "welcome to the galaxy" basket. And the U.S. was in the front yard, having a tantrum because he'd broken one of his toy trucks and nobody would buy him a new one. But I digress.

 

The U.S., and big brother U.N., get their pocket money every month, and the U.S. immediately runs out and spends all of it on candy, leaving himself perpetually broke. Not only this, but he has taken advances on his next month's pocket money, and the month after that, and advances on his advances, and spent all of that money on candy as well. He wants to hang out with the U.N. and his friends, even though he claims not to like them and declares that they're all stuck-up stupid-heads. Because, like most little brothers, he has this mix of hero-worship and inadequacy that makes him resentful even while he helplessly shadows the big boys like a puppy dog.

 

The U.N. and his friends, who have put their money away or spent it on wiser things, can afford to do all sorts of stuff that the U.S. can't, and they don't really want him hanging around ... but of course he's the little brother, and family ties demand that the U.N. looks after him. So the U.N. and his mates let him hang around with them and pretend to be a big boy, and smile indulgently when he makes a loudmouthed, often-dangerous horse's arse of himself.

 

Because, even though he's a bit slow and never has any money to pay his share of the U.N.'s club membership, he's got candy. Shitloads and shitloads and shitloads of candy.

 

And that's why McDonald's, Hollywood, MTV and Coca-Cola is everywhere. And that's why we love it.

 

 

 

Lo all these many and varied years ago, I was blessed to visit the sleepy little town of Southern Cross in Western Australia, as part of a Perth Highland Pipe Band performance at an agricultural show. In fact, I think I visited the place two or three times in my years with the band. Chucky Reports, right here on this very blog, detail some of the more memorable events.

 

Agricultural shows are the best, mainly because of the food but also because of the booze and other entertainment on offer. Camel races, ute-doughnutting, f*ck-off big bonfires and The Lamb Van.

 

 

If you couldn't buy it there, then it simply couldn't be made out of a piece of a sheep.

 

One of the downsides of agricultural shows is the audience - not because I dislike or feel I am superior to the average hick redneck Australian - on the contrary, they are very entertaining - but because they generally have better things to do than watch a bunch of bagpipers faffing about in the 40° heat. They're not exactly your fun-time crowd, like for example a pub crowd, who buy you drinks and make you feel glad you bothered. Marching through an agricultural show beer tent is always fun and we took the opportunity to do so on almost every country performance I remember, but then I also remember being able to thank our applauding audience by name on at least one occasion.

 

Another favourite was the Southern Cross Hotel, the bar of which was a mass of carvings and engravings made by drunk or madly artistic people of bygone days. They didn't actively encourage bar-carving (or 'barving', as I am now coining the phrase), but they obviously didn't mind it, and by the sheer amount of it you could tell the bar was more of a feature to them than an eyesore. When asked, the bar staff said we could go ahead, as long as we weren't too obvious about it and didn't write or draw anything too profane.

 

I improved the bar in my own way.

 

 

You may notice, as I believe I did at the time, that this is one of the few coherent things carved on the bar, let alone correctly-spelled.

 

This picture was taken by a Perth Highlander by the name of Monty, returning to the SXH some ten years down the line. He was evidently pleased to see that our legacy remained, and I'm pleased to receive a copy of it way the Hell up here in the soon-to-be frozen north.

 

Good times.

 

 

...and I just remembered. My sister-in-law and her fella got engaged a couple of weeks back, and have moved to Porvoo together.

 

 

Morning all,

 

Well, it's been a while since I had a chance to write something here, and as usual now that I have a chance, there's nothing to add. It was a busy summer, with fun and larks aplenty but nothing worth making a blog entry about just yet. Maybe some Chucky Reports incoming, time permitting.

 

Enjoyed two weeks with my parents (once you get used to the fact that my dad only listens to the first four words of any answer you give in response to his questions, it all goes smoothly), two weeks with my sister and her family (entirely too active, but definitely fun and now I know where the nearest lake and water-park are for next summer), and my 10th e-nniversary* with Mrs. Hatboy.

 

And there was much rejoicing.

 

Had a few parties, really got our money's worth from the barbecue, and now the summer is winding down. Getting cold again in the mornings, et cetera.

 

Yeah. My CD burner died, so I went to Verkkokauppa (buy faster, buy wiser) to pick up a DVD burner. Since my backups are now spread across about eight CDs and erasing and re-burning them can take a whole afternoon, I thought it was time to get with the program. It started out really easily, I got the burner and set it up, installed it and everything. But of course the burn process failed. Contacted a few compu-savvy friends and established that they could get it to work but not (even on a Linux OS) without errors, so I took it back.

 

Verkkokauppa gave me a new burner, of exactly the same make and model. And what do you know, it had exactly the same problem as the last one.

 

I should take a pause here to explain that Verkkokauppa is not exactly on my way home from work. It's a round-trip on the Metro and a few blocks of walking out of my way in fact, and it's not something I have time to do every day.

 

So anyway, I took it back yet again and asked them to swap it for another label, maybe. They refused to do that, but they took the burner and assured me they would get it checked and see if there was a problem with it. Now, either there's a problem with the entire product line, or there's no problem except with my OS and the OS of my compu-savvy colleagues. And guess if Verkkoraiska are going to give me a trade-in if it turns out to be the latter.

 

Now I'm just waiting for them to get back to me and say "hey, there was no problem, you'll have to buy a new burner". Which I could have done almost a month ago. See if I ever buy anything from them again. In fact, I may just have to pick up a new DVD burner from somewhere else. Fuck those guys. Fuck those guys up their stupid arses.

 

I just don't know what's wrong with the world.

 

On the topic of ethics, I promised to share my "painted roadkill" shot, so here it is. I liked it so much, I made it into a Motivational. There's something very inspiring about this sort of carelessness. With years of diligent refusal to give a shit, Verkkokauppa could one day aspire to this level of greatness.

 

I have a new phone, and as soon as I get the MMS and interwebs working on it, that'll be great too.

 

Ah, it has been a summer of great renewal and change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Like an anniversary, but celebrating our first online meeting: August 27th, 1999.