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6月8日 WTF does *that* mean?I had a dream this morning, just before the alarm clock went off. The premise of the dream, unstated but quite obvious once I put some actual thought into it, was that at some point in the past, the technology was discovered to make miniature versions of people - indeed, pretty much of anything - and do it safely. This technology was of no real use to anybody, except the showbiz industry who discovered that they could make sets and costumes and whole productions for considerably less money if they used the little versions of people instead of the full-size ones.
My dream was in the form of a movie flashback (my favourites), narrated for some reason by Rodney Dangerfield.
--
So I went on down to Hollywood and I was privileged to see Frank Sinatra live at the whatever the Hell it was called club. That was quite an honour. I got backstage passes and everything. Think about it, a schmuck like me.
So I went in there, went to the dressing rooms and found the door with the star on it, and whaddaya know, his dressing room was empty. He was off chasing tail or I don't know, whatever it is Frank Sinatra does in his free time. I looked at the photos and the flowers and that was about all there was, and I didn't want to get caught stealing one of his spare ties, so I left. I went on downstairs to where the little guys were. You know, they have those big old basements, and the dressing rooms of the miniatures are all stacked up like shoeboxes along the walls, I tell you, it was creepy down there.
Anyway, I find the box where Little Frank, you know, was putting on his tiny suit and adjusting his tiny carnation. And I mean those things were tiny. The little guy himself is less than two inches tall, I'm talking tiny. His jacket wouldn't have buttoned closed around my finger.
"Evening," he says to me, casual as you like.
"Hey," I say, and I didn't know what to call him. Mister Sinatra? Frank? Little Fella? What do I know about showbiz? I settled on, "it's an honour to meet you."
"I'll be up on the sound stage under the lights, doing most of the recording," Little Frank says to me then, "everyone else'll be upstairs watching the show. I guess that's where you'll want to be, up with the people watching the actual stage," I didn't know what to say to that, but he seemed to realise that and he didn't judge me too harsh. He understands, I guess. All cordial-like, he goes on, "say, would you mind giving me a lift back up to the backstage area? It takes me forever and I don't want to get dust on my new suit."
"Sure," I tell him, and he climbs into this little sort of basket tray thing, so I could carry him. I tell you, walking back up those stairs was the longest trip of my life, I was terrified of dropping him or squishing him or something, it took years off my life.
We get to the sound stage, and there's the man himself. Frank Sinatra, full-size and in all his glory, standing there with his collar unbuttoned and his tie draped over his shoulders, just chilling and getting ready for his show up on the stage, you know, in front of the real people. He sees us come in, and he gives me a nod, you know, cool from the top of his head down to the ground and back up again. I nod back, feeling like a jerk, and I hold up the tiny basket with Little Frank in it.
Mister Sinatra gives another nod, and I reckon this one has a whole lot more respect in it. "Hey," he says, stepping forward. "Yo, Frank...
"Can I borrow your shoe polish?"
---
All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players. What you have to ask yourself is, are you the normal-sized one, or the cheap-arse miniature?
6月5日 Another Vintage Chucky ReportAn amazing ten years later, I thought I would re-post my 21st Birthday Report just to show how little I have to report on these days and just how blessedly quiet and antisocial my 31st Birthday was.
Introduction by Monty as ever.
Chucky's 21st Birthday
TAP TAP! IS THIS THING ON? ONE TCHOO! Welcome to this special addition of the Chucky Report. On Saturday 22 May 1999, Charles Hindle celebrated 21 years in The Business. It was a glittering night of nights and featured industry luminaries such as Shambles, Dirty, and Mr B. Mr B was damned toey for it by the way. He wanted a leg over and he wasn't taking lack of interest for a non-answer. I was very interested to read that on Friday, Mr B....oops this is supposed to be an introduction not a preview. Shut up Montgomery you are rambling. To the point, it was great that The Reclining Red Haired Budha Who Sleeps Until Noon found time in his schedule to make an appearance and generously stayed to the Bitter End. Staff at Club must have been thrilled to have the old Deity back on his perch in the Members Bar... ahh The Eighties... Damn it Montgomery Get A grip! Wobbly also showed up which was a treat (Everyone reckons his Lady Friend looks like someone from the Corrs - she is lucky Mr B didn't start dry humping her leg. Did I mention he was On Heat?) Let me hand over (at last) to The Expert.....wait hold on Chucky your turn is coming - as a special treat we have an interview with Chucky's dad at the end of this report - do not forget to click there.... Ok please stand at your monitors for the The Man a big round of applause .....heeeeeeerrrrrreees ....CHUCKY.....
Evening all. For various reasons my report will lack its usual exquisite details today – if you are reading this for insight concerning what you might have missed by leaving early, or not coming at all, you’re looking in the wrong direction. I don’t know how pantsed you all thought I was, but I can assure you, I was pantseder. I will deliver awards as I see fit, and run you through what I remember, and that’ll be about it. Firstly, there are three ‘Best on Grounds’ to be handed out, and that is about the extent of the awards. Each one is in a different capacity though. Friday night, the night before the actual party, belongs to Mr.B. According to reliable sources, B got lucky. Nice work – I’m only disappointed I wasn’t there with my camera. (Well he must have enjoyed it because he was dangerous. He had a wild desperate look in his eye. Ed) The second award goes to Reclining, for as far as I know he was the Longest Stayer on Saturday night (That was always on the cards - The Club is his home ground. Tries were going to be scored. Ed). And he also gets a special award for following instructions laid out in the invitation, concerning milky umbrella drinks. But let’s not go there just yet. The third and most important of the B.O.G. awards goes to a non-bandsman, one Micky Plops. He came all the way from Sydney to get drunk with me, so dammit, he gets a medal. That was some sensational work. Honourable mentions to Plops and Lucky B for managing to keep the whole thing secret for three months too. Unbelievable.
Well, the night started at five, when I arrived with the food and commenced with jugs. Dirty and Scout arrived, and the Don popped by. Craig was meant to come, but I assume he had a very good reason for not being in attendance. Dirty presented me with my gift from the Band – a shiny red Slappers Unit, complete with shooter glasses, poopstick and Pirate magazine. I shed a tear or two over that, and began adding my own personal touches immediately – for starters, a big bastard padlock. Because at about that stage the relatives began arriving, and they are on the whole an untidy lot (untidy, ha ha ha ha). I toasted Slappers and the rellies with more of those jugs, you know those ones they give you that evaporate really really fast? Yeah, them. Um…
(PAGE MISSING)
“I won’t say much,” I said, and reached for my glass, which seemed untended and lonesome. My left hand was sticky. I tried to remember what that meant in the ‘symptom/response’ model, but wasn’t sure. As a stopgap solution I propped myself up against the bar. Timbo stood in front of me, refusing to put himself into focus in a very thoughtless manner. He asked me what my brother-in-law was drinking, if it was really iced coffee, and I assured him I’d find out, and that everything was under control. Um, Kahlua and milk, I think.
(PAGE MISSING)
Somebody (Timbo again I think) gave me a jug and started saying “Skull skull skull” in a very confronting way, and Mal and Monty were standing in front of me with a patch of Glad Wrap spread out to shield themselves from something, I don’t know, vomit I guess. I must be a big jessie, though, because I don’t recall skulling anything. I did drink the jug though. Just slowly. Oh, I just noticed Stuart was there. Hi Stuart. He was talking to the militant feminist who wants to kick Reclining’s acorns. My left hand was still sticky. My brother’s over at the other end of the bar, and as far as I recall he was singing. We got $500 worth of beer tickets, and I had a flipping great wodge of them, um, and my sister had the rest, and everybody was pestering us for them. For about half an hour.
(PAGE MISSING)
No more beer tickets. There were a couple of gatecrashers at this stage, I know it. Pretty cool. I remember pointing at them and saying, “Who the **** are you?” The guy came up and said, “Are you Andrew?” I wasn’t sure. I said yes and he asked me how old I was and I looked at my “I AM 21” badge on my jacket and said, “30.” He said, “Oh happy birthday,” then my sister came and made them go away. I think I was talking to Michelle at some point around here – she seemed to have had a good night – if she was still there at ten or eleven, then wow. Ha ha ha. Then I caught up with some more age-old friends, God, it was bizarre. They were talking with my brother and sister and their pissy mates, and I intruded. Sticky hand. Then the bouncer said, “Please slowly make your way downstairs,” so my sister and I did two-steps-forward-one-step-back routine across the room until the bouncer was obliged to rephrase his request to, “Leave now.” We went to Club Bay View, I forget how exactly. I didn’t touch any of the bins, hmm, and there was a fight outside the club, and we got in with our passes, but they weren’t very happy about it, um, yeah. About here…
(PAGE MISSING)
(We interupt this Chucky Report with a brief message from Reclining. Ed)
The funniest thing of the whole night was at the party when Shambles told Michelle he was off to club. Michelle asked "How late will you be?" "A while." Came the reply. "Are any responsible adults going to Club with you to make sure you get home OK?" "Well...........Johno's going......" came Shambles desperate attempt.
The response from Michelle was a chilling stare the likes of which you wouldn't believe. Probably the fact that Shambles and I were killing ourselves laughing didn't help.
(Back to Chucky who takes up the story. Ed)
I had a poopstick – not the quality one from Slappers, just an over-the-counter one. I blew smoke on my relatives. Not as good as blowing chunks the way Dirty did, but hmm, not too bad. My brother was buying drinks for underage girls.
(PAGE MISSING)
The D.J. looked pretty scared when I popped my head up through the trapdoor to the music room up in the ceiling on the top of a ten-foot ladder, and said, “Hi. Can you play something by Faithless?” I think he said yes out of shock.
(PAGE MISSING)
I hadn’t seen Leigh Cockerill since the Old Boys BBQ. He was at the Club, he’s coming to Band for the election of playing officers. Apparently. He didn’t look anywhere near as busy as he was supposed to be. Mickey bought me a shaker of banana liqueur stuff I think it was called a hardon. I remember I got the giggles every time I ordered one, and wore my sunglasses when I was drinking it. Both my hands were all sticky. I can’t believe how many bourbons you can get for $150.
(PAGE MISSING)
Shambles was halfway down the stairs out of the place. “Shambles…” “I’m leaving.” “Shambles…” “I’m leaving.” “Shambles…” “I’m leaving.” “Shambles…” “I’m leaving.” “Shambles…” “I’m leaving.” “Shambles…” “I’m leaving.” “Shambles…” “I’m leaving.” Hey guys, Shambles is leaving. Hey, he made it to about 3. So did my Kahlua-guzzling brother-in-law and my sister, and my brother was there for the long haul. Scout was sitting on a chair, kinda passed out.
(PAGE MISSING)
“Hi. Can you play something by Faithless?” It was a different D.J., but the scared expression and the hasty agreement was the same. I climbed back down the ladder and stepped on somebody.
(PAGE MISSING)
Me and Reclining were up at the top bar, and we had giant chocolate mudslides in front of us. No umbrellas, but it was nice of him to obey the letter of my invitation. Everyone had gone home, I think. Those mudslides are an absolute treat. Except I didn’t souvenir a glass. Then the Club closed and the lights went up. The introductory notes of Faithless’ “Insomniac” thumped out of the speakers, then the music stopped and the doors opened and we were booted out. I legged it home, insisting on wearing my sunglasses, even though it was still dark. Five thirty-ish is much brighter in summer, isn’t it? I got home and ate all the leftovers in the fridge, washed the sticky shit off my hands, and went to bed.
Gah, the end. Thank you all for making it so ... um, memorable isn’t the word I’m after...
Pissy, that’s it.
I will be busy customising Slappers, ready for Southern Cross. What a delight that shiny red toolbox is!
Kindest Regards, Charles.
Here, as a special treat, are the details of a conversation Malcolm and Reclining had with Chucky's Dad....
Reported by Malcolm
He started relating a story about the first time he ever saw Chucky pissed. It was after some bus trip with that pesky pipe band he plays with. Anzac Day, he remembers. He got some garbled indecipherable phone call from his son on the bus back and assumed that meant "come and pick me up".
He was horrified to see a kilted 17-year-old Gummy Bear on spat-coloured rollerskates resembling his Dear Boy, Andrew.
After administering assistance in removing complicated buttons and straps he put Chucky to bed with the hall light on so he could see the bucket, repeating "spew in the bucket, not on the carpet" like some slogan for M&M chocolates.
Reclining and I listened in horror as he kept stressing, "God, he wasn't even 18, he wasn't even 18".
Yeah! Damn pesky pipe band. Friday, Stardate Half-Past One Point Three
Ugh, what a week. I'm not allowed to tell you about it because it's totally classified and secret but you should thank me for that because if I could tell you about it, and did tell you about it, it would bore you so much you would probably die from it and the boredom would cling to your corpse and then your whole funeral would be boring.
But anyway, the smelly carcass of this week is dragging itself towards a glorious ending, an ending with doughnuts and coffee and an early departure from the office.
We're going to see the new Star Trek movie on Saturday. We've seen it already, but we're going to see it again just because we can, and because it was so freaking cool. Consider it a warmup for Transformers 2 and Terminator 4.
4月28日 My Rock and Roll LifeIt has been explained to us, on many occasions, that there are different types of manager, and they do not necessarily:
a) make more money than we do;
b) have higher standing or status than we do
In fact, it has been explained to us that a project manager - and this goes for many companies - is essentially on the same level as we are, a working Joe with a crappy salary and no clout with the Higher Powers. To top it all off, the project manager does more work, longer hours and more stress, having to organise and plan and communicate and do all of that stuff, usually internally-paid because the customer has no interest in forking out for that sort of thing. It's a wonder anyone actually sets out to become a project manager, and this leads me to believe that nobody does.
I think what this basically boils down to is, the project managers is a roadie to the technical writer's rock star.
Think about it. The roadie sets up the stage, carries the boxes, talks to the venue owners and deals with all the annoying little details while the rock star gets in the zone. The roadie is unseen, unappreciated, works long hours and is generally derided by everybody as a waste of space and money. Then the rock star gets up in front of the audience and brings in the money, using the microphones the roadie set up, the guitars the roadie tuned, the amps the roadie gave himself a hernia carrying up from the carpark.
Everybody knows the rock star. The rock star is the one everybody sees. They sing the songs and do the dances. Everybody sets out to be a rock star, nobody goes to school thinking they will become a roadie. The roadie is the unsung and faceless blob in the black tracksuit, who runs around behind the scenes and gets in the way backstage, uglying up the joint and simultaneously creating and destroying the rock myth. A necessary evil. The troll that must exist under a bridge somewhere, in order for the pegasus to soar in the skies above.
The project manager is the drab, interchangeable drone that makes the technical writer a star.
No, I don't buy it either. But I know some project managers who'll find it funny.
3月11日 Birt is OutSo, 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.
-------------------
Hi!
Your service request below is completed.
Please do not reply to this automated email.
We would like to know how satisfied you were with our service. We kindly ask you to follow the link below and give us feedback:
<address>
You’ll have 7 days time to answer before the link expires.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Solution: Birt is out.
Time of delivery: 11.3.2009 13:35
------------------- Isn't that great? Isn't that great?
 Birt: Out Train Station Tourette'sI 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.
3月9日 Pia's Pregnancy Parting Parté: Some Coarse LanguageI 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.
 Figure 1: Japanese hornet: possibly the reason Japanese bees go for the "cook him alive in his exoskeleton" option rather than bending their back-barbs trying to sting the colossal armour-plated fucker.
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.
Figure 2: The B-shirt: warm in winter, cool in summer, and you may never get mugged again. Warning: has been linked to incidences of hives. 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.
2月13日 The Animal Farm ModelOur mission statement: To build a windmill.
Our values: Four legs good, two legs bad.
Our history in brief: Old Major founded the business unit in the late 90s, passed away in a tragic departmental team-building accident, and left everything in the trotters of Napoleon, who introduced a number of cost-cutting measures and an assortment of initiatives to increase productivity.
Our process: Boxer will do it all while the pigs sit around eating.
Boxer's motto: I will work harder.
Boxer's retirement plan: You don't want to know. 1月19日 Antichristmas PartyOn Saturday night we were honoured to attend the Lionbridge Christmas Party, held over from 2008. Before getting to the report, I should hand out the obligatory awards.
Best on Ground: This is a difficult one for me to judge, since my memories of the evening are foggy at best, but I have it on good authority that Mladen and Titta were still up and kicking after 2am, at which point they called around to various mobiles looking for company in a second leg to the drinking tour. I also have to give Lars points for being the sensible one, and getting me into a taxi and home in one piece. He didn't even lose his bottle when I failed to turn up a wallet at the end of a €35 taxi ride, leaving him with the bill. Sorry about that, man.
Lamest Excuse on Ground: Gerry, gifted with the perfect excuse of having kidney stones a few days before, instead opted to go with the irretrievably lame "I missed the cut-off date for signing up" excuse for some reason. That's not an excuse. I can fully understand not being in the mood to attend, or not being on form, but just say it. Shame, shame, shame.
Pissiest Pants on Ground: I'm sure there were people as drunk, or maybe even drunker, than I was. But I don't remember them. And I think this photo says it all.
Figure 1: You put the invisible lime in the invisible coconut, and drink it all up
Special thanks for my hairdressers for the night, Jenny and Wendy. Janica was totally appreciative of your efforts.
Mad Dancing Fool: Mr. Farenheit was absent from this year's party and was therefore unable to defend his crown. Again, I seem to recall Mladen and I tearing up the floor on a couple of occasions, even dragging Niina along for the ride. Also, I recall attempting to headbang, and falling over in the process. Few were hurt. But this year's Mad Dancing Fool Award goes, no questions asked, to a worthy runner-up of 2007: Mr. DJ Kalakukkos, aka. Mild Mannered Tuomas T, who set stage and dancefloor alike on fire with brilliant magnificence and total, utter win.
Figure 2: This is your brain on drugs
Figure 3: DJ Kalakukkos sets the house on fire!
The awards duly dispensed with, I will start at the start, which was Om'pu bar at about 4:00pm.
I turned up early, and alone, and was debating whether to sit in the main bar or in the room Wendy had booked for us. Either way, I knew I'd be sitting and nursing a beer and looking very sad - although, as was pointed out, very sharply dressed. The music didn't exactly stop as I walked in through the door, and the bar's patrons didn't all turn and stare at me, but it was a close call. Wendy remarked, when she turned up shortly afterwards, that Om'pu is not exactly the sort of place where suits, even cheap ones like mine, show up very often.
Wendy was also apparently asked, by one of the lady regulars, "who is that wonderfully handsome man, with the suit and the long hair?" Wendy apparently laughed when she realised they were discussing me. I mean, come on. I'm as modest as the next guy, but a wonderfully handsome man? Not Mr. and Mrs. Hindle's boy Chucky.
 Figure 4: Antti's Beer Serenade This joke continued as other players arrived - Antti, Mikko, The Taj, Maija and Mladen, perhaps others but I can't recall - and everybody had a good laugh about what a wonderfully handsome man I was. I tried to throw them off the scent by showing them my Baby Woody, but ... oh, it's a long story. I'll have to add a picture sometime.
Drinking and merriment went on until about 5:45pm, at which point we tumbled out into the street and wandered around Kallio looking for MacBeth's. Antti was, I seem to recall, very pleased to be in the neighbourhood. He took a deep, happy breath of "that sweet, sweet Kallio air", and pointed out such picturesque sights as the porno shop, the Thai massage parlour, the barber's shop and the Thai massage porno barber's shop (Ask About Our Happy Endings). We caught up with Titta, Jari and Jarmo, and eventually found our way to MacBeth's.
 Figure 5: Macbeth's
 Figure 6: Dinner started out in a very civil manner
Figure 7: Upper Management was very pleased
MacBeth's was a very nice place, for all the understatedness of its entrance and the inordinate amount of stairs leading up to it. Axes on the walls, a good spread of wine and booze tickets on the tables, and acceptable food - plenty of it. I seem to recall The Taj folding on is second plate of mains (I could be wrong here, I'm sure he'll correct me because I would hate this blog to become a house of lies), leaving us more or less at a draw this year. I also seem to recall that I was still eating mains when everybody else was having dessert and coffee. These things can't be rushed.
 Figure 8: Surly, Snappy and Tubby
It was around this point that The Taj called Jenny over and had her go to work on my hair. So for the rest of the night, it was down, flying free, and getting in people's drinks. Dessert and coffee were scarfed, Tuomas (before changing into his magical superhero identity) ran the beats, and dancing commenced. Shortly afterwards, Crazy Machine got up on stage and played a variety of beloved classics for us. It was a source of considerable surprise to me, when I learned that this band was in fact Mr. Burgess's band. I've never actually met him in person, so obviously had no idea.
 Figure 9: Tuomas, Wendy, and Unknown Headbanger (maybe the tie is a give-away though) Drinking continued unabated. I did some attempted mingling, going from table to table and borrowing people's drinks. Actually, I suppose it's fair to say I stole them, because I sure wasn't about to give them back (a fact for which I would imagine people should be grateful), but most of the time I had permission. Tuomas was actually generous enough to share his bourbon with me, and later on I returned to the same table by use of some kind of electromagnetic booze-migration sense, and found the bottle again. Also, for some reason, half a lemon and a pot of honey. This, in hindsight, was probably Tuomas's throat restorative, which ended up not working for him due to all the shouting that needed to be done ... that, and the fact that some fat Australian bastard-and-a-half drank it all. It was, also in hindsight, probably very stupid to mix the lemon, honey, and bourbon together and drink it.
I was sitting and talking with Heikki and Lauri at this point, but I'll be damned if I remember what we were talking about. I also chatted with Brendan about his studies, and with Pia about her latest project, which may end up weighing in at about seventeen kilograms at time of birth. She took my comments with what I seem to recall as good grace.
 Figure 10: Heikki and Lauri: caught on camera Crazy Machine gave way to DJ Kalakukos, who as you can see from the picture above was sporting the best costume ever. And he put on a hell of a show, in spite of losing his voice. Mad dancing and revelry abounded.
 Figure 11: I don't remember my jacket being that blue Hmm, I don't remember much more than that, except it was about two in the morning when we rolled out the door, and we were discussing where to go next when Lars convinced me to get in a damn taxi as we'd agreed to do, and go home. So, lucky he was there. Apparently some of the team went on to enjoy themselves elsewhere. Lars and I managed to navigate our way to a taxi stand, and I managed to direct the taxi home - or Lars did. I can't remember very much of the trip. I do remember searching my pockets when we arrived in the Hindle yard, and having a mild panic attack when my wallet was nowhere to be found. lars assured me that he would deal with the taxi fare, and I went inside for an more thorough search, during which my wallet turned up. Which was lucky.
I will now throw open the floor for anecdotes, missed conversations, accusations, photographs and dirty, dirty lies.
12月23日 Whiskey and Doughnuts, 2008Loofahs, Snuff and a Boat that Looks Just Like a C*nt: Whiskey and Doughnuts 2008
I guess I failed to live up to my promises regarding just how drunk and rowdy I was going to be on Saturday night, but all things considered perhaps that is for the best. I was still, to my knowledge, the only person to actually break a piece of furniture, so that's got to count for something.
The day started with tremendous incentive to drink, a long and stressful week combining with a lack of Christmas Party and an excess of mixed booze to produce a sort of Perfect Storm of drinking and loose talk.
We started at Bakers as usual, Antti and Lars joining me for a few rounds during which I regaled them with stories about my failure to find doughnuts anywhere in Helsinki, and my equal and opposite adventure trying to find a certain parcel delivery spot (I found no less than four of them, each one subtly different, at all of which I waited for a considerable time in line, and none of which turned out to be the precise place I was looking for). We also congratulated Antti on his up-coming promotion, which I can't discuss here. Ah, Lionbridge. Home of the huge step sideways.
So then we merrily made our way across town, visited an Alko and finally found a doughnut shop. We ordered about 16 doughnuts, and the good employees convinced us to buy another 4 in order to get some sort of Police Force Discount. Thus laden with booze and doughnuts, our prerequisites met, we sallied forth to casa de Wantone.
We were fashionably late and found Wendy, Gerry, Jenny, the Taj and some others (my memory fails me) already in attendance, not that they're unfashionable in any way. Also in attendance, sooner or later, were the Virk; Veli Tuomas; Katy and her brand-spankin' new kid; Mr. Farenheit; Mladen; and Titta. I think that was about it.
Glögi was served in a timely fashion, the first few servings being poured in a stunning combination of backhand balancing and incredible third-degree-burn-risking bravery, which nobody seemed to appreciate. Vodka and wine and other additives were splashed liberally around the apartment. In the next room, puns were splashed around in a similarly reckless fashion, the main culprits being Mr. Farenheit and - as always - the Virk.
Jenny was sporting a new hairdo, and Tuomas was, as I recall, boundlessly impressed with it. He declared, after excessive poking and fondling, that it was like a sponge and that he would like to take her - or at least her hair - into the sauna with him. The mental image left us all a bit overwhelmed. The idea of Jenny being a sponge was duly discussed, nicknames such as "Loofah" and "Spongebob" were duly bandied about, and drinking continued.
The classic Finnish joke, the kirkkovene, was trotted out for consideration at this stage, and to this day I am not sure why. Apparently the Taj was determined to make fun of Gerry about it, and had decided to involve the rest of the clueless foreigners in his malicious-ass enjoyment. The basic kirkkovene seemed to be a rather crude anatomical drawing, and we were supposed to guess what it was.
 Most of us thought "vagina" was too obvious, but clearly Finns have a less refined sense of humour than Swedes, Irish or even Australians. The word translates roughly as church boat, and the picture could also feasibly represent that. Or, indeed, pretty much anything. For my part, it looked rather like the symbol of the Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster.
 Amidst this classy hilarity, Lars produced his latest care package from Paul. For those of you who were unaware, the Great Barbecue Caper at the Old Hindle Place went down earlier this year, and Lars gave me a special housewarming present at the time. It was a special nasal distribution catapault that he had whipped together in his Workshop, and it was dubbed the Snuff Hammer for reasons that don't need going into. Paul, as it turns out, is Lars's contact in Leeds, and Paul once again delivered the goods this time around. Anyway, since I had been unwilling to carry the Snuff Hammer around with me all day (which would include its presence in the office which would probably raise some eyebrows, as well as having to carry it on my Annoying Parcel Oddyssey later on), we were forced to employ alternate means of ... oh forget it. Euphemisms fail me, but Lars referred to it as "the Scarface Method" and there are pictures but I'm damned if they're going up here.
Mladen remarked that he used to do that sort of thing when he was twelve years old, a comment which was found vastly amusing by all and sundry.
Drinking went on. Music was played. Vast quantities of food were consumed. Gerry took a bite of a salmiakki doughnut under the mistaken impression that it was dark chocolate, and was so outraged that she apparently threw the whole thing in the bin. I was equally outraged. I also have a very distinct memory of trying to convince Jenny that she should try a salmiakki doughnut, and Jenny refusing. "I don't eat anything black, honey," she remarked.
Mr. Farenheit discovered a new use for his head at around this point as well, namely sticking beer cans to it by pressing the bases into his forehead and creating a vacuum to hold it in place. Many of you will be utterly unsurprised to see the words "head" and "vacuum" in the same sentence here. I don't think he managed to stick two on at once, but there are some pictures of this floating around anyway. I'm sure I'll be able to add some sooner or later.
It was only about eleven o'clock, a very disappointing effort, when I threw on my jacket and turned to leave. Of course, in the process I trashed Wendy's bedroom like some sort of tubby ageing rock star, but she declared that it was fine. Her parents had bought her the lamp and she had smashed it shortly afterwards, then bought an identical one from Ikea. It was not, it seemed, a lucky lamp.
By the time they'd swept away the glass and announced it was safe for me to depart, I had missed my bus by twenty-five seconds. I stood and said bad words in several languages at the bus stop for perhaps another twenty minutes, debated going back for another couple of drinks, then got a taxi home instead. All very sad, like I said.
The next day we ate and drank and made merry at a friend's place, cooked a whole mess of cookies and shit, and then went to the Raskasta Joulua concert. Why is that girl Ari Koivunen constantly invited back? It's my theory that she wasn't invited this year, she just showed up in her dumb beanie and eluded security long enough to get on stage. Little fucker.
So anyway, that went until 2 in the morning. And was a lot of fun too.
The end.
11月24日 The Relentless March of Old Age Goes OnSo, here is what I did on the weekend. Went out on the piss two nights in a row, managed to pull it off with minimal hangover and at least a little bit of flair, and then spent the time between then and now wondering at what point in my life it actually became an accomplishment to stay up until midnight drinking, twice, without actually dying.
I have a feeling, as the years go on, the bar will be set steadily lower and lower, until finally it will be a cause for celebration when I get to the toilet without my inner thighs experiencing the Warm Rinse of Shame.
Anyway, we were called in to perform our duty on Friday night, with a gathering in sunny Helsinki at a place whose name I will now attempt to spell by memory: Kellarikrouvi. Hey, it was a nice place. The organisers of this little bash, a pair of my colleagues who shall go by the titles Mr. Cream and Mr. Mahal, had decided that I would be involved in sending out invitations but not, due to my distressing habit of inviting everybody, in deciding who the invitations should go to. They also arranged the accommodations, so that when we assembled our nice group of drink-fixated co-workers, it was in a classy-ass private dining room with food and booze service laid on. There was not, to the apparently lasting disappointment of certain Technical Writing Department Players, a stripper show of either gender.
Team Hindle, accompanied by Mr. Cream himself, arrived unfashionably early and nevertheless discovered that they had been beaten to the venue by Team Bergius, who was determined to enjoy a long-awaited night out, and Team Farenheit (with Mr. Mahal in some sort of support role), who had decided to turn up early and alienate as many of the bar staff as possible in order to guarantee we would spend the rest of the night having our drinks and food spat into. As I said, this was mainly due to the support of Mr. Mahal, and nothing really to do with Team Farenheit itself.
Drinking began, or in the case of those who preceded us continued, and there was a pleasantly prevailing Thank Fuck It's Friday mood. The rest of the team arrived in easy stages until about eleven of us were sitting in the dining room and food ordering commenced. It was quite fortunate, for those of us who were drinking (perhaps less so for those who were prevented from doing so) that the food was an extremely long time in coming, which gave us several more hours to work our way through a variety of fine-ass alcoholic drinks.
It being a long table, conversation tended to divide up along certain axes, such as Nerdiness, Language Barrier, Interest in Strippers and What End of the Table You're Sitting At. I seem to recall there was a prolonged conversation about "coke used as birth control" at one point, during which the main article for discussion seemed to be "When Mr. Mahal says 'coke', do you think of the refreshing caffienated beverage or the powdered drug made famous by dumbass 80s businessmen?". The around-the-table vote seemed to be a resounding, if unjustified, "drugs". Mr. Mahal was devastated, and conversation then went on to just how a drink that can keep you awake all night in sufficient quantities is supposed to act as a fucking contraceptive. I never did get a clear answer on that one.
Other topics included Doctor Who (analysis of); Strippers (absence of); Language-Based Humour (the heartbreaking predominance of); and Sheep (fornicating with, and the group-noun of). The latter subject proved enormously fruitful. Mr. Cream was of the opinion that a group of sheep was called a herd, because the word "shepherd" obviously came from "sheep herder". The rest of us decided unanimously that the group-noun for sheep was "flock", with the amendment from Team Laine that the word "shepherd" was probably used instead of "sheep flocker" for a shining good reason.
Discussion moved by a process of evolution (more proof if any was needed against the merits of Intelligent Design) back to the fornication issue.
Eating and drinking continued unabated. The food was excellent, if erring slightly on the side of "a pea-sized lump of delicious stuff in the middle of a giant-ass art deco plate with a sprig of parsely on the side". I was certainly glad I got two courses, even though my wallet was of a differing opinion. Main course at least consisted of a decent-sized pile of meat and sausages and stuff, so that made Hatboy happy. The meeting finally adjourned around 23:30 and Team Hindle, at least, headed for the last bus that would get us anywhere near home before 6am the next day.
On Saturday evening, after a morning of sauna-sitting and Ikea-shelf-assembling, I and many of the Kellarikrouvi Crew were invited to a Christmas Partystitute at the home of Mr. Farenheit. Some of us, as it turns out, work for a giant faceless and heartless multinational corporation that is run by Americans and, in spite of priding itself on being a multicultural communications and localisation company, really has no idea of what countries other than America find important, nay indispensible, facets of professional life, and therefore when the wunch of bankers over in the US decided to do unspeakable things to the comatose body of the global economy, said faceless corporation decided to take certain steps to save ridiculously tiny amounts of money by sacrificing things that Americans consider a privilege but other nations consider a fucking birthright, and where was I at the beginning of this sentence? Oh yes, we are not getting a Christmas Party, so Mr. Farenheit decided very kindly to provide us with one. And good for him.
Of course, some people didn't show up on account of having had Christmas Parties the night before, and being too hungover to bother getting out of bed.
Team Hindle arrived fashionably late to the party, only to find that fate had conspired to render us unfashionable as ever, so we were still the first people there. We were therefore privileged to witness Mr. Farenheit's last-minute preparations and panic-attack, which is always fun. I recommenced drinking - enjoying most of a 12-pack of grapefruit lonkero throughout the course of the evening, interspersed with other offerings.
So various teams turned up as time went by. I mainly remember when Team Pohjoisaho turned up, because he brought a traditional Russian appetizer with him - pickles with sour cream and honey, with a vodka chaser. I don't know how I managed to do it, but my respiratory system somehow conspired to make me choke on the pickle and cough warm vodka out of my nose, filling my sinuses and ear-holes with sour cream, honey and pickle-brine. Seriously, I was still breathing that crap on Sunday afternoon.
Still, I managed to restrict the damage to internal systems, and provided amusement for the crowd as I did the traditional Russian Weeping Vodka Out Of My Fucking Tear Ducts Dance. Good times.
Dry Martinis were also served, and music was discussed. I was mocked savagely for not giving a flying fuck about Nirvana for some reason. I retreated to the kitchen after this, only partly because Janica had been trapped among people she didn't know and was beginning to look as if she might go catatonic at any moment. Also, Mr. Pohjoisaho was in the kitchen, dealing out booze. I allowed him to deal me in. Copious amounts of chocolate cake (Mr. Farenheit's speciality) were consumed.
This was about the point at which Sing Star came out, and Pohjoisaho and I began to heckle. Mr. Mahal, who had appeared briefly and been remarkably well-behaved, sat through one song and beat a hasty retreat (but did not, to his credit, beat anybody else). Sing Star <generic> gave way to Sing Star Rock, which didn't actually seem to have any rock on it, and then Sing Star 80s. Freddy Mercury was a favourite, which is why I have given Mr. Farenheit his new nickname for the month.
Another hour or so went by, and my designated driver decided it was time to head home. I did not, at this point, disagree very strenuously, because I was down to my last three or four lonkero and was beginning to suffer from Pickle Lung. Guitar Hero came out, and Team Hindle pulled out (a slightly more effective contraceptive than dipping your todger in a glass of coke).
Thus ended the weekend. Except for Sunday, which was spent in a combination of bed-ridden fugue and mounting panic as I looked out the window at the blizzard attempting to bury our house.
And then it was Monday.
10月2日 Imagine that your workplace is a familyOkay. This is what everybody says they want in a workplace, right? The positive benefits of a close-knit family unit, with none of the dysfunction, none of the feuds and, for the singles, perhaps a tad more incest. Here's a story about a family I know. One day, leading up to the birthday of this family's child (he'll be a boy in this analogy, because 'he' is easier to write than whatever you'd have to write for an hermaphroditic gestalt child comprising some 200 employees in this country, upwards of 4000 worldwide ... what would that be? 'Schlee'?), the parents sit him down and explain that money is tight, they're very poor right now and they have to save money every way they can. With this in mind, they explain apologetically, they are going to have to postpone his birthday. Just for a month, they say. We can't afford to have a party for you, and invite all your friends over, and have a cake and get you a remote controlled car. Not right now. In another month, things will be better and we'll be able to afford nice things for you again. We know it's unfair, and we don't like it any more than you do, but in the long run this will help us get back on our feet and everything will be fine. We could have a tiny party for you, and invite one friend, and put some candles in a loaf of bread instead of a cake. But nobody wants that, do they? Now this, I can only imagine, would be bad enough for the kid. You don't just tell a kid his birthday is not happening on the day it's meant to - is being put off to some vague later date and give no sign that the family will be less 'poor' then - and expect the kid to be happy about it. You don't explain how poor you are to the kid, and how you might starve the week after his birthday in an attempt to make him accept it through guilt. You don't justify your actions as a parent by saying, we're not going to shoot you, if that's what you're worried about. No, you celebrate the kid's birthday, because you know it's the right thing to do. But it gets worse. The kid's parents are tooling about in a brand new car a few days later. They go on expensive trips and stay in fancy hotels. For the kid's benefit, they say. How long do you think this family's child will accept his parents' actions and excuses? How long do you think it will be before he thinks, hang on, my birthday would have involved a room full of kids, a few bags of candy, and a fifty-buck remote controlled Ferrari. That new car of theirs probably cost more to get waxed. My parents aren't poor, they're just saving a few bucks at the expense of my birthday, so they can spend it on what they want. They couldn't really save money by postponing my birthday, anyway. It might be cheaper for them to do all the buying at a different time of year, and it might be closer to their next pay cheque, but that's a tiny amount of difference, for what it's done to my sense of worth. In fact, to make it worth anything at all, they're going to have to move my birthday, give me really crap presents for a couple of years until I get used to it, and then discontinue it altogether. And even that will only save them enough money to get a new set of tyres for that Cadillac of theirs. And oh yeah. I made three thousand pairs of sneakers last year. Why am I still walking around barefoot? How long before the kid says, fuck those guys. They're not my real parents. That nice couple next door must be my real parents. They've got lots of kids, and they always get candy and their birthday parties are great. How long? He's a kid. Kids go where the candy is. Incidentally, all those kids in the neighbours' house have new sneakers. Guess who made them? This crap won't fly. If we let this crap fly, our so-called parents will keep throwing crap in the air and calling it birds, and you know what happens after too much crap has been thrown in the air. A rain of crap, my friends. A rain. Of crap. 8月25日 Night of the ArtsFriday night was that wonderful, magical night when every drunk and/or insane person in Finland and neighbouring countries crowds into Helsinki, drinks every beer in the city, makes a lot of noise and then tries to catch the same bus somewhere, because all the taxi drivers are hiding in a huge concrete bunker underneath Suomenlinna.
Yes, it was Night of the Arts in Helsinki. Not remembering this a month in advance, I planned the TW Department barbecue night for the very same night, although "planned" might be a bit too strong a word for what I did. Is there a word for "asked everybody if they know a good place to barbecue, then suggested we all go there, then take a big pile of meat and beers there and leave it up to the others to buy all the cooking and eating utensils we might need, as well as come and pick me up when the meat and beers and I caught a taxi to the wrong place"? If so, I did that word.
But anyway, it all went very well. I arrived quite early, after buying about twelve kilos of meat and a bunch of coke and beer. The taxi driver took me happily through the middle of town, and we had a brief chat about what a crazy night this was going to be, and how the taxi driver was planning on hiding in this bunker. That was about when I realised I had forgotten everything - everything - except the meat, and so had to text Mr. Mahal. Mahal duly called me, and once the taxi driver had heard me speaking English into my phone, he switched to "tourist" mode and patronised me all the way to the harbour, telling me that the barbecue place we were headed to was very popular at Juhannus and asking me if I knew what Juhannus was, before dropping me at Korkeasaari, assuring me it was Mustikkamaa, and leaving.
Figure 1. In a breach of internal chronological consistency, here is a shot of the place; very nice as you can see
I had a beer while I waited for Mr. Mahal to come and rescue me, which he did with a minimum (for the Taj) of offensive remarks. We headed to the barbecue site, which was very nice in spite of the mad wasps all over the place, where Janne H was already in charge of the fire, and doing an excellent job. Quite aside from the plates and cups and forks and stuff, they had purchased an additional kilogram or so of meat, in the form of pork ribs and bacon-marinated tenders of some sort. I couldn't fault them for assuming I had forgotten the meat. Better to be safe than sorry.
We settled in for a few drinks (the Taj opened a bottle of vanilla cola which proved to be a mistake, because vanilla cola is apparently a wasp aphrodisiac, and we'd already smoked them out of their nests so they didn't have anything better to do than to buzz us) and waited for the rest of the team. This was about 16:30 or 17:00, as far as I recall. After a long day at work and almost giving myself a stroke carrying the food from the shop, I was already feeling a little bit light-headed.
Figure 2. Mladen arrives in background while I finish the Taj's share of the beers
Anyway, the others began turning up in twos and threes around 18:00, which was a relief because the Taj had found a stick and was attempting to beat Janne H with it, in between innumerable offensive remarks about pretty much everyone and everything. Boy has a lot of anger. Unwilling to wait any longer, we commenced to barbecuing.
Figure 3. The Steakinator
Figure 4. Janne H ruins his manly "Mister Barbecue" image a little bit by drinking Foster's
Figure 5. Pia and Jenni; Anna and Heikki; me running away from wasps like little sissy girl
The battle against the wasps continued. There's nothing worse than a wasp that has been made madly horny by vanilla cola, unless it is a wasp that has also been dunked in a can of beer and allowed to reach the surly-phase of drunkenness. At one point I took a sip of my drink and thought I had accidentally ended up with the ring-pull in my mouth, only to find it was a wasp. I spat it out and spontaneously said "vi**u" instead of "fu*k", which everybody seemed to find very amusing. I found it amusing too, but only because I was giddy with relief about not being stung. That would have ruined the whole day.
Figure 6. Heikki thought he had a pretty big hat until Janne H put his on; so Heikki took his hat off and was sad
This set the tone for the next, ooh, five hours. Janne H stood and cooked sausage after sausage, steak after steak, chicken leg after chicken leg, while the rest of us sat and ate, drank, and made merry until we quite literally couldn't fit any more food down. Janne H had, as illustrated, provided Foster's for himself as well as a couple of kilograms of pig products, and rather than drink them warm he bade Mahal and myself to go down to the seaside and put them in the water. We did so, at great personal risk, and I was quite surprised later on when we returned to pick them up and they had neither drifted away nor been stolen by passing swimmers.
I kid you not. Swimmers.
Figure 7. Chicken
Figure 8. Actual meat
Figure 9. Heli is surprised at the quality of the cooking
Figure 10. This is why she was surprised
Figure 11. Also this
So, anyway, gorging commenced. The overload of meat and charred black ashy bits may have been responsible for the excess of puns at around this time, but I tend to blame the group in general. Seems we can't go anywhere in a group without making awful language-based jokes. Among the guilty parties were Janne K with his "lefty-pihvit" and his brilliant "Koff / cough" joke; Anna with a string of increasingly-disturbing sausage-innuendoes (or Anna-uendoes, as they should be more accurately named); and Janne H with his emu joke:
Q: What happens to an emu on an emu farm when it gets too big?
A: It gets ostrich-sized.
Figure 12. Janne K tells his "Koff" joke to Mladen and his bike; the bike finds it funnier than Mladen does
Figure 13. Mladen does his impersonation of Napoleon Bonaparte waiting in line for the bathroom; Janne K doesn't guess it
Figure 13. Antti and Heli enjoy their dinner while Janne H wonders just what the fu*k the Rock is cooking
The gorging went on for a staggering amount of time. Everybody seemed quite satisfied. The drinks flowed freely (special thanks to Heikki for providing some excellent "Old Invalid" port wine) and conversation was cordial and frequently in good taste, except where dominated by the Taj Mahal and his topics of choice. Into which this reporter will not delve.
Figure 14. The hungry masses wait while Janne H performs Turn Steak spell
Figure 15. The Turn Steak spell accidentally miscasts, resulting in a Summon Fatass spell
Figure 16. Antti and Heli are left wondering just what will happen next in this crazy company; Antti at least resolves to be ready for it
Figure 17. Surprise! Fire!
Figure 18. The smoky aftermath
That was about it for the rest of the night. We sat and watched Janne H eat his way through a kilo or two of pork ribs, some of which he rosvopaisti'd in foil and left on the grill for a while, until he got his appetite back. In spite of his pleas, nobody else really helped him eat the ribs, although he did get a bit of help with the sausages. Things began to wrap up at around 23:30 or later, as the sounds of the Night of the Arts began to drift across the bay towards us. There were even some fireworks, I think, although we couldn't really see them from where we were. We were actually quite lucky, I think, that the barbecue site wasn't as crowded as the city centre.
At one point, we were discussing kids and parenting (I was an interested spectator at best throughout this), although I can't quite recall the context. I do distinctly recall, however, that somebody (who shall remain nameless) expressed surprise at the revelation that the Taj had managed to breed. "Oh, for fu*k's sake!" were his or her actual words. There didn't seem to be much to add to that exclamation, so we adjourned for the night.
After cleaning up and risking further drownings and drenchings while retrieving water from the sea in order to quench the fire, we wandered towards the nearest public transport, which was apparently two hundred kilometres away. Pia optimistically called a taxi, and one actually seemed to arrive. It drove straight on past us, however, so she and Janne H headed off determinedly after it. Antti and myself headed for the metro, and the rest parted and made their way to the bus station.
There were millions and millions of people in Helsinki, and almost all of them were trying to catch the same bus as me, after I'd navigated my way from the metro to the bus station and found Janica, who had been enjoying a school reunion in the meantime. After about three loads of people (the sight of a bus lumbering towards escape velocity, crammed to the ceiling with drunk people, its doors bulging open and more drunk people chasing it along the platform, screaming abuse and throwing bottles because it hadn't managed to fit them in it, is one that I think will remain with me for a long time), we finally got on board and headed for home at about 01:30.
The final chapter of the night, and regrettably I had no camera with which to capture this, was perhaps the most surreal. A crazy and/or drunk woman, who had been scampering back and forth along our platform for the past hour, swearing and laughing and throwing beer bottles at things, staggered onto the same bus as we had. All was well until we got to Hakunila (the bus was filled like a sardine can, so she couldn't really get up to much mischief), at which point she freaked out. Demanding to be dropped in Hakunila (the driver's increasingly desperate shouts of "this is Hakunila! Get off my bus!" went unheeded), she became rapidly hysterical and started to plead not to be left in the dark forest all alone. The poor bus driver, displaying more decency than any other ten people in the bus combined (score one for us immigrants, I say), promised to drop her at her house as soon as he'd finished his circuit. This was not good enough for Ms. Crazy, who started to scream. This set off some of the other drunk people, who started to shout and cry and stuff. The bus was transformed almost immediately into the fu*king Gibbon House.
All in all, it was very exciting. Janica and I disembarked just as Ms. Crazy started hitting people. If you ask me, the dark woods would have been a perfect place for her to be deposited. But you know, nobody did ask me, so there you go.
Anyway, as Janica said, it was nice to get back to Sotunki, where the only crazy people were ones we were related to.
8月22日 A Dork Day for SkavenkindLast weekend saw the field of battle darkened and soggified with the blood of many scores of Skaven. Many of them killed, as it happens, quite unnecessarily. But that's the lot in life of a slimy ratman, so what can you do?
The day started out with a unilateral declaration of hostilities against the High Elves, who came armed with the Always Attack First rule and a bolt thrower capable of demolishing an entire unit. And what did the Skaven have, but the ability to shoot into their own fighters, the ability to run an extra inch while fleeing the scene of battle, and a ratling gun that had an unfortunate habit of blowing itself to pieces.
Fig. 1: Janica's Wood Elves take on the Dwarves
Things went surprisingly well for the massively-outclassed Skaven, right up until the point at which they all started dying, and running away like ... well, like rats. The High Elf wizard managed to miscast and neuter himself, dropping him to a lowly level 1 wizard for the rest of the fight (heh, just like my wizards were all along) and breaking his own magic for that round disastrously. The Doomwheel did nicely, managing to wipe out two skirmisher units with a combination of impact hits, warp lightning, rat bites and massive toughness. The problem was, once it got free from those mincing tosspots, the battle was over and everybody else was running away. The problem is the new combat resolution rules, which essentially mean that my big expendable units, and even my tough units with a lot of wounds, lose big time at the end of every fight because I can't afford banners, and then have to roll less than three on 2D6 in order to not run away. And when I do run away, it is always 2D6+1, which is invariably 13, which puts me off the board. And even if it doesn't, my guys never rally so the next 13" puts them off the board anyway.
Fig. 2: Mr. Rumbly charges some faggoty High Elves
Fig. 3: Mr. Rumbly runs away from some other faggoty High Elves
Fig. 4: Jani goes for the D6; Bella is dismayed by something happening in her war
Fig. 5: Maybe this; Lizardmen fail (for the first of many times) to fit between edge of board and corner of house
So they ran away, a lot. Most of them, including the Marx Brothers (Rat Ogres Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo and Karl, I left out Chico for comedic value), ran right off the board and died. The ratling gun, at least, didn't explode, in fact the only misfire it managed was to jam for a round, which was nice. Not that it did much damage even when it was firing. The glorious ratty army of mighty Skavendom managed to take out that pesky bolt thrower and ended the battle with a nice round whipping. That is, the High Elves whipped them, by about 400 points.
Fig. 6: The Marx Brothers lead from the rear
Not to be discouraged, the mighty and cantankerous army shook the blood and shit from its whiskers and went toe-to-toe with the shambling undead in the next fight, a battle to the, uh, death. Against the Vampire Counts.
Fig. 7: Lizardmen croc-ogre things running away from Grave Guard (for later reference)
Fig. 8: Mr. Rumbly running away from Grave Guard; Clanrats bravely covering the retreat
Fig. 10: Bella says "bring it, rat boy"
These guys were tough, and scary. Nothing quite like putting Skaven up against an army, every unit of which causes fear or terror. Or both. Every magic round, the Vampire Counts rolled all their magic dice and every six rolled was added to the chariot driven by one of the Vampires, boosting its powers. By the time it had three D6s dragging along behind it, the bastard had scythe blade wheels, an aura of terrifying darkness, and a bunch of other stuff I've forgotten in sheer horror. Another unit of undead, some über-tough guys with the Vampire General in their midst, be-bopped and scatted all over the Doomwheel and Rat Ogres, causing them all to flee destructively.
Another new rule - the one which states that you can't shoot at any single model (like a mage or a general) if it is within an inch of one of its own units - jumped up to bite me on the ass at around this point, so not much of my shooting or magic was any use. Even if I was really, really close to them. What a dumb rule.
The crowning moment of the fight, however - or what would have been the crowning moment of the fight, if I'd read the rules - was when the terrifying Vampire chariot of doom charged my weedy, lonesome ratling gun. Against all reason, the gunners passed their panic test and stood their ground, opting to Stand and Shoot as certain undeath bore down on them. Figuring what the heck, I might as well blow the poor little sods up rather than let the Vampires kill them, I rolled the D6 again and again, even after getting a 5. Any double, you see, misfires so each time you re-roll the D6 you're taking a risk. Anyway, before I knew it I had rolled up 14 shots, so decided to let it go through.
After rolling to hit, rolling to wound and then going through the armour save and ward save rolls, one wound was actually made against the chariot, which then trampled my ratling gun into little squeaky bits. It was only three days later that it was suggested I read the rules again, whereupon I found out that every shot fired by the ratling gun automatically hits. So, taking that devastating reductive step out of the process, fourteen hits would probably have demolished the fucker.
Oh well.
The Skaven army, battered by another 400 point massacre, limped away from the battlefield and on to the next: a no-holds-barred slug-fest with the Dwarves.
Fig. 11: Ratling gun; a fistful of D6s
Fig. 12: Mr. Rumbly and the Marx Brothers prepare to take on the Short-arses
Fig. 13: The victorious Dwarven army; not pictured, the Skaven
These guys, in spite of not having magic, were a force to be reckoned with. Their stubbornness and toughness were legendary, they didn't run away, they had huge leadership to draw upon in panic tests, and due to their scepticism they had a great deal of power die to use in dispelling magic. Not only that, but they were equipped with a gyrocopter-mounted flame thrower that had previously burned out half a Wood Elf army (keeping in mind that half of those guys are made out of, yeah, wood).
Again, things got off to a nice start. The Doomwheel, Mister Rumbly, performed an epic charge and wiped out half a unit of very tough guys before getting bogged down and ultimately scared to the point of fleeing for some reason. Oh yes, destructively. I was quite impressed with the Dwarven General, who was standing in that unit at the time (which might explain why Mister Rumbly's crew got so scared). He pulled out his pistol as the Doomwheel charged, and shot the bastard. And this one shot (remember the fourteen shots I fired) actually got through and caused a wound. Didn't hurt Mister Rumbly all that much, o'course.
Most successful of all was the teamwork between the Skaven General (Eshin Sorcerer Squeako the Great) and Warlock Engineer Scotty, a high-powered duo fed to the back teeth with warpstone and armed with the latest in warp technology. Scotty would periodically beam, er, skitterleap across the battlefield, wave his Storm Daemon and warp gauntlets around, and call down the lightning. Sadly the Storm Daemon burned out on second use, but the gauntlets and additional power dice were very useful. Especially coupled with the irresistable force of a 13 roll, for the skitterleap, and then another 13 rolled for the warp lightning itself. With this combination of teleportation and surprise magic, the Skaven managed to demolish the gyrocopter before it could do more than misfire once.
Less fortunately, this was the last useful thing Scotty managed to do. Everybody else ran away, the Dwarves killed Squeako the Great, and in the final round only Scotty remained on the battlefield, surrounded by a bunch of crossbow-armed skirmishers he'd been trying unsuccessfully to warp-lightning back to the stone age since Round 2. They killed him as their final act of heroism, and the field was thenceforth wiped clean of Skaven forces. A 1200-point annihilation, indeed, which ultimately put the Skaven at the very bottom of the ladder, under the victorious Lustria lizardmen, and all the other armies as well.
A sad, sad day for the pride of ... oh, wait. Skaven have no pride. So in a way, it's a technical victory.
Plus, I fubbed the rules, so I totally would have killed more guys, but didn't.
8月12日 The House of MeatLast night, we attended the Casa de Carne concert. Missed the warmup band on account of Lahdentie being closed down to one lane, but anyway.
It was without doubt the best Meat Loaf cover band I have ever seen or heard, arguably the best in the world today. Pity about the tone-deaf old dude in centre-stage who insisted on ruining every song.
Poor Meat was having a bad night. Either he was suffering from a nasty throat affliction, or he just can't do it anymore. He failed to hit the high notes, and his success rate with the rest was pretty iffy too. He warbled and gasped his way through a breakneck selection of songs, from various ones I'd never heard of to a culmination including You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth, I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) and, of course, Bat out of Hell. They were still great, and he certainly put on a dynamic performance, but man, that singing was just atrocious. His choice of encore-songs (mostly covers from other bands) was a bit weird, but how do you encore after doing Bat out of Hell?
He went from song to song without pause, only stopping to converse with the audience once, about an hour into the show. I don't necessarily care about that, since I find the way musicians patronise and puppeteer the audience to be a bit irritating, but Meat was pretty funny with it, and that was what I was there to see. He put on a good show, leading us through the relationship arc with numerous costume changes and a clever selection of tunes, so it was almost a rock opera rather than a simple concert medley. And like I said, his band (which was like an army, there must have been eight or nine hundred of them) was great. He had a couple of backing girls to do his various duets with, and they were excellent. It was just unfortunate that his contribution to every song was a dramatic reduction in listenability.
No, I couldn't have done better. But I'm not God damned Meat Loaf, now am I?
7月25日 ImmortalI fear for the human soul.
People are smaller, meaner, less magnificent than they once were. Oh, glorification of the past plays a part in it, sure, but I can't help but think there's more to it than that.
The human population is rising. This is not, I fear, the case with the population of souls. That has been more or less steady at a couple of million, for at least the past few thousand years. They're just not making any more.
As the human population increases, there are less souls to go around. So they're being spread out. Which means that a planet with a population of over six billion, with let's say three million souls, evens out at about one soul for every two thousand people. And having only 1/2000th of a soul can't help but make you a more bitter, tawdry, miserable little person. It's like a bald man stepping out of the house with only 1/2000th of a toupee.
This is why so many nutbags claim to have been Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, or some other semi-mythical royalty or hero in a past life. It's quite possibly true. Do you think there are two thousand people out there who believe they were Cleopatra in a past life? I think there are. Maybe they all were. It just takes two thousand modern humans to contain the single reincarnated soul of somebody from that long ago. Any more concentrated, and it would just be too much. Our heads would explode. We can't accept whole souls for the same reason a Skoda can't accept solid-state fuel from a space shuttle.
As for the overwhelming majority of people, who don't think they're reincarnated ... well, there were ordinary people back then, too. Nothing particularly memorable there. It's just that even those souls, of everyday folks who didn't wrestle polar bears or sack Constantinople, are being spread out over thousands and thousands of us, today.
If it gets spread out much more, we might as well not have souls at all. 7月24日 Completely Random Blog EntryThe trip back from Australia was an absolute nightmare and I still have a cough, although it is fading and soon I anticipate actually getting a full night's sleep.
The trip itself was fun, but I don't know if I'll bother with a report. Maybe once the photos are ready and I can be bothered captioning them and stuff. So much to do and so little time. A mother-in-law's birthday card, a grandmother-in-law's birthday card, a Warhammer tournament to prepare for (practice war on Sunday), and lots of nothing to squeeze in.
Cousin-in-law got married on the weekend and the party was fun. No report forthcoming but it was fun.
Speaking of sleep, a guy at work yesterday told me my coffee cup was not a coffee cup, but an inland sea. I told him to stop vibrating and leave me alone. Not sure he got it.
DEATH PENALTY FOR:
Told you this was random. 5月26日 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal SkullLots of people are bitching about this movie when they have absolutely no right to.
So the movie is more sci-fi than fantasy. So what? Indiana Jones was never about magic or technology, and lots of people seem to be forgetting that. Indiana Jones is about creepy old relics surrounded by traps, and about Indy performing cool stunts in the process of exploring them and trying to save people, and making wisecracks, and punching un-American types of people with funny accents. The mythology (I won't even call it archaeology) behind the stories was just there to add a bit of eye candy. It was never more than a cone for the ice cream. The cone's chocolate-lined. The cone's waffle-dough. The cone's got a thin candy shell. Who gives a fuck?
Nineteen years have passed, in the real world as well as in the world of Indiana himself, which I found to be a nice touch. It's the late 50s and America is in the grip of anti-Communist paranoia. Indy, who is now something of a decorated war hero, sets out on a new mission, more or less appropriate for the period. There's nuclear testing, Reds under the bed and all that sort of stuff. There's also new enemies, a sort of Russian bunch (Communists of course) led by a sword-brandishing femme fatale with an outrageous accent. Indy gets caught up in a rescue mission with yet another wise-cracking kid, and there is much fun to be had.
Ultimately, we meet back up with the refreshingly strong, smart-aleck love interest from the first movie, which is nice, and there are a lot of other little references to the earlier movies as well. It was cool to see the Big Warehouse of Hidden Mysteries again. Turns out the bad guys are after a semi-mythological, semi-archaeological relic that will give them great power. Hmm, just like in the other movies. The only difference is, times have changed and this particular "myth", rather than being religious in nature, is a little bit modernised. As far as a 5000-year-old made-up Aztec myth can be modernised. So they end up in the jungle, braving all sorts of dangers (I thought the army ants were cool, fuck you if you're not into that sort of thing, what are you doing watching Indy in the first place?) in order to reach this long-buried mystery, and endeavouring keep it out of the hands of the bad guys.
Frankly, I don't care that this particular relic had a bit of Roswell and Mission to Mars mixed into it. I think they took the piss out of it enough in-movie, with eye-rolling 50s-60s-style references to "saucer men from the moon". This is one pseudo-myth that has long since been taken over by the science-fiction geeks. Nothing we can do about that. The pyramids of Egypt have suffered much the same fate. That wouldn't stop me from enjoying an Indiana Jones movie centred around them (oh, and by the way, a new Mummy movie is coming out, and I got a giant nerdon just watching the trailer).
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark was not a Charlton Heston Bible story. It was a story about an ass-kicking, name-taking professor of archaeology who swings from shit using a lion tamer's whip and a bunch of Nazis getting their faces melted by the wrath of God ... or something - and this is the important part - that is explained, rather dubiously, as being the wrath of God.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was not a mystical look at the forgotten religious practices and magic of ancient India. They pulled a guy's heart out and then burned him alive while the heart was still beating and then made a special brainwashing drink out of blood, for fuck's sweet sake. It was very dubious, loosely-mythology-based magical entertainment - and this is the important part - that could feasibly have been fuelled by the power of an evil God from the depths of Hell (yes, a powerful trans-dimensional being that has been part of human culture for millennia). Indy kicks ass, takes names, and restores the magic stone like some 1930s Lara Croft.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was not about the final resting place of the Holy Grail. That was just something that happened in the background while Indy was taking names and kicking ass, not necessarily in that order. It was about Nazis and Indy's dad and the obsession that spanned two generations, loosely bound together by some Biblical references which - put together better than the Da Vinci Code though they were - really did have no more basis in fact. It wasn't really religion. It was barely even mythology. It was - and this is the important part - a bastardised hodgepodge of stories put together to provide a background for an adventure movie. And the super-fast-aging Nazi, that was pure special effects goodness (yes, the work of a powerful trans-dimensional being that has been part of human culture for millennia). It wasn't fantasy, it was flat-out fiction.
Same goes for this one. Sure, with "alien" beings and a flying saucer, it was closer to sci-fi as classically understood than the religious fantasy of the first three movies. They copped out a bit by refusing to man up and admit the aliens were from another planet, instead describing them as powerful trans-dimensional beings that have been part of human culture for millennia. Excuse the fuck out of me if, in my view, the only difference this makes is that this movie was a little bit more plausible than the others.
Seriously. The glowing magic rocks in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were about as plausible as the crystal skull in this one, and who cares that they had a bit more "magic" to them as opposed to "science"? Magic is just science we can't explain, after all, and it's not like the "science" of the crystal skulls was really explained by their origins. It was still magic. It just had nineteen years of technological cynicism layered on top of it, from the movie-world's point of view - as well as our own, really.
Whether you're talking about heart-eating Kali worshippers and a glowing rock that fixes the weather, or a crystal skull that grants telepathic powers - both of which are based on extremely dubious pseudo-archaeology - you're on pretty level ground. There's no real factual backing to the magic rocks in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and there's no real factual backing to the crystal skulls. What there is, is a bunch of randomly-associated relics like the Nazca lines, the Aztec carvings of alleged space-helmeted aliens, and the crystal skulls themselves, none of which have ever been confirmed as non-hoaxes. Sort of like the randomly-associated relics of Kali, or the randomly-associated Biblical references in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The only difference is in the mix. Indy kicks ass, takes names, and kicks ass again, all the while freely acknowledging that he is nowhere near being a young man anymore. He solves the mysteries and saves the motherfucking day, and brings closure to a few other franchise plotlines while he's at it. He delves into the pseudo-ancient quasi-mysteries of make-believe antiquity, and narrowly avoids getting squashed and impaled and shot in the process. The bad guys, sneaky and conniving though they are, die in an increasingly-graphic progression of ways according to rank and the nasty stuff they've done through the course of the film. And in the end, the dangerous mystery is laid to rest and everybody who deserves to lives happily ever after.
It's a fucking Indiana Jones movie, people, and it's one that is worthy of holding its head high with the other three on the DVD shelf.
What I liked:
Pretty much everything. The continuity, the care that went into the sets and makeup, the honest way Indy was portrayed (mostly), the BSTs and the other effects. The story was great, plenty of excitement and plenty of laughs, in a perfect mix. The action, the adventure, and everything. It was spot-on. Shia LaBeouf did a good job (why is he showing up everywhere these days? Oh well, he's not annoying so I say let him stay), and Cate Blanchett was ... well, funny. There wasn't even really any sort of disproportionately young love interest or sexy ninja-style evil woman, which was another point in favour of the honesty of the film. I guess Cate Blanchett might count, if you're into that sort of thing.
What I didn't like:
Okay, so maybe Indy was still a bit too spry for his age, punching and jumping and swinging. But it's a movie. Come on. I don't know if the flying saucer was necessary but I like flying saucers so I'll let it pass. The "aliens" were a bit funky, the link between Roswell and the crystal skulls was a bit forced. The Roswell Greys were little guys, if I recall, and the Crystal Skull Aliens were, like, twelve feet tall. Why was that? And at the end, they gave their "gift" to the Commie woman in much the same way as the bad guys got their "rewards" in the previous movies ... but I didn't quite understand. Did the "aliens" somehow understand that this was a baddie and therefore made her head asplode? Or were they really meaning to be benevolent but the dumb baddie was not ready for the "gift" (net result, head asplode)? Didn't quite get what they were all about. Also, I'm a little worried that they'll try to make more movies. Shia LaBeouf did fine in this one, but I don't think for a moment that this makes him worthy to wear The Hat. This was a good movie to end it on, but if we're going to see continuations, can they stick to the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, please? I don't suppose I need to worry, if the general reaction to the movie is anything like the reactions I've seen so far. The movie will flop and they won't make any more.
All in all, this was a great movie, and as good as any of the other Indiana Jones movies. I'd rank it as better than Raiders and maybe Temple, a close second to Crusade. So there.
5月19日 30th Birthday Report: Festival of the Horn 2008CHUCKY REPORT
Festival of the Horn, 17th of May, 2008
Blood on the driveway, vomit on the couch and the axe taken out of its packaging. Now that's what I call a party, and this has proved to be an absolutely epic report (came in at just over 4,700 words), so get yourself a cup of cocoa, get settled in the comfy chair, and get ready. First, the awards.
- Best on Ground / Barman of the Year: Lars "Da Whisker" Sundahl,
for providing more drinks than I would have suspected possible, and mixing them for anyone who asked, until the wee small hours of the morning. Also for performing his patented Gangster Rap on at least two occasions, for the benefit of those who hadn't had their cameras ready the first time. Also for accepting the "he's Swedish" crap from all my relatives and friends, especially after Sweden had their asses handed to them in the hockey. An all-round well-deserved win for this great campaigner, as I'm sure all present would agree.
- Pissiest Pants on Ground / Punchiest on Ground: "The Evil"
Sebastian, for ... well, read on. What a colourful character. - Catering Award (a four-way tie): The Great Aunties (Gitta,
Tutti) also Mommo and Anoppi, for pretty much arranging everything, buying and making all the food, and helping clean it all up the next day. - Class Act Award / Last Man Standing Award: Henrik "Hena"
Lithonius, for showing me how to put on my tie clip (until he arrived, it was sitting in the pocket of my jacket making me look a right tit), and for keeping us all entertained until rooster's fart in the morning, under near-constant threat of having his elbow broken by "The Evil" Sebastian. - City/Country Relations Award: Juuso, aka. "Mr. Taj Mahal",
for making a banjo joke. - The Minty Goodness Award / The Pissing Off Early Like A
Giant Candy-Ass Pussy Award: Jukka "Spamshark" Karén, for providing all the minty booze a growing boy needs. One of the bottles went straight into circulation for shots, as you'll see. Sadly, these two awards cancel each other out. Ha ha. Zing. - The Druncle Award (new award): Aulis "Aukku" Palokas, for
arriving after midnight, promptly out-drinking all his brothers, and falling down. Also deserves honourable mention for letting a bunch of assholes from the city park in his yard. Just to put things in perspective, my day started at about midnight on Friday night, when the traditional "wake up the birthday hero in the middle of the night with a serenade" gag was played out by my mother-in-law and her aunties. Finnish Swedes do this all the time, or at least they do in our family. Anyway, I got a Finnish "happy birthday" and then hung up. Then they called again and gave me a Swedish version of the same. I had time to get back to sleep again, then they called with the English version. Then, just for laughs, they called and gave me the Swedish version again.
So, after a long day of preparations, we were finally under way. First to arrive was Matti, who enterprisingly caught the earlier bus and arrived just as I was getting changed. He accepted our lack of readiness with stoicism and good humour, especially after we gave him some wine. He hadn't, I noticed, brought any Criminally Bad Elf with him this time. Then Jussi, an old net-buddy of ours, showed up with this incredible vomiting machine that he calls a son. At least we know he wasn't adopted. Ha.
Yeah, so anyway, I'm not going to go through the entire arrivals list and the marvellous presents they got me, because there were about two billion people there. I was kept busy for an hour or two, running back and forth and greeting people, ordering Janica back and forth with welcome bubbly, and accepting gifts and flowers in between chipper greetings-conversations with various groups. I seemed to receive, on balance, a lot of booze-related presents. Wine, whiskey, and Minttu (Mr. Karén picked me up a bag with about five different sorts of mint alcohol in there, which was thoughtful) were represented. I also got a few books. And also books about alcohol. I also got my very own Råuskis, with sparkling wine and a lump of cheese in it. This is far too long a story for any mere Chucky Report.
After a while the house started to fill up, and so we opted to move out into the yard, where we had set up tents against the arctic chill of early Finnish summer. Lionbridgers began to arrive and they promptly took over a couple of tables, rearranged them so they'd all fit in typical Lionbridge style, and commenced to drinking.
Lars "Da Whisker" Sundahl, hands-down winner of the Best on Ground Award for the night, was able to keep the entire table well-watered and entertained just from his own stash. I don't think they even noticed when the bar opened. Juuso and Janne showed up and decided to park in the neighbours' yard, outside of what Juuso termed "the vomit zone". If only he knew our neighbours.
As I said, there were an awful lot of people and only fifteen or so were friends. The rest (not to say they're not also friends) were family. Namely the great gestalt village family of Palokas-Helenius-Asplund, which comprises almost the entire population of bustling downtown Sotunki. Some of you thought I was joking when I told you about my in-laws, and now you see I spoke the truth. I won't even begin to explain the family tree. Suffice it to say that at one point there was a bit of mingling between the "kyläiset" and the "kaupunkilaiset", and things were cordial until Juuso mentioned Deliverance, at which point relations became strained:
I happened to utter the word deliverance at some point, when there
was one of the villagers talking to us, and let me tell you my friend, he was not pleased. There was this guy trying to be nice to us and shit, and then he made the mistake of telling us how the whole village is related to each other. The diplomat of the company, Juuso is. Or, in modern parlance, the Taj Mahal.
This family member has since been identified as Pele, son of Rafa, who is in turn the cousin of Anoppi. He was most likely not all that offended, having been brought up on far more insulting conversation at the hands of his esteemed father.
Dinner was duly served, and was a huge success. My heartfelt admiration must at this point go out to my mother-in-law, her mother, and her mother's sisters, who joined forces as they had at my wedding, to become a sort of unstoppable gastronomic Voltron. Wild pig and deer were cooked (pretty sure all red meat provided for the party was shot by my father-in-law, so thanks to him as well), sausages and meatballs were warmed, and more salad than you can possibly imagine was chopped up and mixed. Oh yes, and ten giant fillets of smoked salmon were provided, along with about five kilograms of silli. Mustard silli and silli in nettle-sauce. Nobody - and I mean nobody, not even Juuso - said "this is shit, I won't eat it." In fact, in his own words:
Yeah, I would've gotten more than 2 plates of the food if it wasn't
for people making comments like "Oh, that's a LOT of food you have there on your plate". And this came from a pregnant lady. I received a fine, hand-carved drinking horn from my sister-in-law Bella and was obliged, naturally, to drink from it for the duration of the night. Jokes abounded about my horn, and not simply because it is such a funny rude-sounding word (try explaining how your wife's little sister gave you a horn sometime). Anyway, I was drinking wine, or something, out of the horn ... that's right, first a horn of wine and then a horn of Lars's home-made salmiakki kossu, which was excellent. Amidst all the dashing back and forth and making sure everyone was happy, though, I didn't get a chance to sit down and eat until at least the second round of diners were making their way through the kitchen to pick over the remains. I shall use this as an excuse, should it prove necessary. Lots to drink, yeah, and no solid food.
I was pleased to see Hanne and Niina turn up at around this point too, having driven through the area and almost ended up in Porvoo on their way to the house. But they found us, and settled in for a few drinks and a plate of food. According to Wendy, one of the more priceless moments of the evening at the Quiet Table was the look on Niina's face when Lars asked her if she wanted a shot of Moskovskaya. According to reports, she downed at least two or three like a pro, so hats off to Mrs. K.
When they headed off into the wilds once again, I remarked to Bella that "my bosses are leaving" and she demanded to know who they were, and that she be allowed to speak to them. I managed to avoid disaster (and incidental secrecy breaches) by delaying just long enough for Hanne and Niina to disappear out the door. Hope they made it out of the village intact. Jukka and Maarit also left a bit early, a disappointing effort from the big fellow, we all had high expectations ... but he had his excuses and that was that. Anyway, I can't complain about shattering expectations. I'm sure when my dear workmates bought me a Borat man-kini, they expected me to just throw it on right then and there. But I failed to do so, and am continuing to fail even as we speak.
Jussi and his little man Eero (can't believe it was so long ago that this kid was born, and nor can I believe how much vomit one small child can fit in his stomach) headed off about the same time. Jussi said that if his Boss was in an allowing mood he might be allowed to come back, but apparently this didn't happen. I give Jussi a hard time about the vomit-on-couch incident, but seriously, it was fine. Not a mark remains.
With Lars's incredible bounty of extra drinks, the Quiet Table was soon competing fiercely with the table where my mother-in-law and her cousins were sitting. I dropped back wherever possible to have my horn filled (see?), and to provide the Quiet Table with shot glasses. Lars was mixing shots from the recipe print-out he had brought with him (no, he really did), and the bottles he had brought along in a pair of cooler-bags, and what finesse he lacked with the layering of the Baby Guinness he more than made up for by the fact that he had brought his own can of whipped cream for the Galliano Hot Shots. He even provided cookies. Pia was a willing lab rat for all the shots, trying them all and giving each one her seal of approval (or not). I think Jenny's poor husband, Topi, was wishing he'd never been born, or at least that he'd never agreed to be designated driver, by the time they left.
Incidentally, Jenny told me that her son Mattias had commented on my "men's toilet" sign. We'd nailed a toilet seat to a pole, and I'd affixed a sign and an arrow pointing to our nicely curtained-off urinal area complete with hand-wash bottle. Mattias mentioned very quietly that the arrow on my sign was the wrong way around or something, because at the moment it just pointed off into the woods. Janne also came up to me at one point and asked me if it was for real, and the men's toilet really was the forest. I told him it was, and with a muttered "oh my God" he wandered away into the wilderness. Oh how we laughed.
But hey, it wasn't that bad. You couldn't get lost or anything in there. In fact, it was right in view of the neighbours' yard. I just hope neither Mattias nor Janne mistook the "toilet" for a ... ahem, a place of number twos, rather than strictly number ones. We had a real toilet inside for that, guys. Way less stinging nettles inside. Just saying.
Wendy has given me a small list here, including some highlights I either missed due to my hosting duties, or had forgotten in the meantime:
- The look on Janica's face after tasting Lars's shot
invention, the ingredients of which escape my mind at the moment. Anyone? (I believe it was something with mostly whiskey [Canadian whiskey was stipulated in the recipe, I remember], perhaps some vodka)
(It has since been narrowed down to either a Duck's Fart, a mixture of Baileys, Kahlúa and whiskey, or a more simple whiskey coffee. Whiskey and coffee flavour can hardly be described as two of Janica's favourite things)
- The Quiet Table cheering on anyone having a shot and
sticking about a dozen cameras in their face. No pressure or anything... Teehee. - Lars trying to figure out how to get high on the
cream thingy. - The parents - mainly Gerry and Jenn - teaching us
childless the art of raising kids. Apparently, clear and concise does it, thus, phrases such as 'bugger off', 'don't (touch)', 'get out', and 'you hear me' come in handy. I feel truly enlightened. - Juuso showing Nicky some moves - maybe he'll have a
chance against Silja now. I still have my money on Silja, though. (that reminds me, I don't know how many people were still around for the re-enactment of the Duudsons that a bunch of kids came up with, setting up a pile of wooden boards at the bottom of the slide and then sliding into it. This is the generation to which we entrust our wellbeing once we are in our feeble dotage)
- Juuso trying to convince Antti to have a mint whiskey,
even illustrating his point by picking up the two bottles and invitingly rubbing them against each other. - Getting a kick out of a trendy group of Hakunila
teenagers on the way home on the bus. I suppose I blended in nicely with my can of beer for the road, though. I seem to recall that where Juuso failed with Antti, he succeeded with me, because for about three hours, I was walking around with a drinking horn filled with mint whiskey. It was just bloody awful. Before I finished it, I remembered sticking the horn through the middle of our lawn table, and going to play my bagpipes while I still could. While debatable as to whether I was anywhere near sober enough to manage (the performance was one big finger-fuck from beginning to end), it seemed to go down well with the crowd. Of course, it was my birthday and they were all drunk so I would have gotten applause even if I'd played with my ass. Maybe especially if I played with my ass.
My obligations done for the evening, I went back to my mint whiskey, and I finished it at last. I think this was where about a third of Jukka's gift (one of his bottles, some sort of special green Minttu) went. I remember telling people that when I worked in the steel mill, the foreman's wife had found out I liked Minttu, and told me about her favourite drink, which just happened to be this mixture of green Minttu and whiskey. Anyway, after that we found a better use for the Minttu, namely the Dirty Girl Scout.
This beverage was supposed to have Creme de Menthe in it, but we only had the green Minttu so that would have to do. It also had Baileys and Kahlúa and vodka, as I recall, shaken on ice in a cocktail shaker just for that added flair. I provided the necessary additions by taking an ice-cream container full of ice (intended for the punch bowl) into the garage, and smashing it with the biggest sledgehammer I could find. The whole thing flew to pieces, I salvaged a bit of ice for the cocktail, and all was well.
I'm getting out of order here. But as the evening went on, some of the old folks headed for home. One had already fallen over near the punch bowl and hurt his hand (later turned out to have sprained or possibly broken his thumb), and then his wife took a nasty tumble down the driveway and cut her head on some rocks. She ended up needing fifteen stitches, but she was at home that night (ambulance never arrived, it must have been hijacked in Hakunila and drained of medicinal alcohol so her daughter drove her to the emergency room) and all she could say was that she was sorry about ruining my party. I told her Juuso had ruined my party already, but she didn't get it.
So, after that slight hiccup, parté-ing continued in earnest. As I mentioned, the punch bowl had been set up, resident punch expert Pete Tuisku presiding over the mix. Pete is my cousin-in-law, and was quite recognisable by the army fatigues and beret he was wearing. He's not in the army any more, I should add. I think his gear was merely a statement about the fact that I hadn't specified any sort of dress code in my invitations. Incidentally, he was apparently very drunk by the time his wife bundled him in the car. I think he used my hair as horse-reins at least twice, while singing Missä Miehet Ratsastaa, and on another occasion almost broke the nose of Sebastian's girlfriend (we told him, after that, to wrestle with Bella, who was a bit more used to his crap). He demanded coffee when they got home, but was unconscious by the time the it was brewed. Still, we couldn't have had punch without him. He's a former bartender, and he made the punch for our wedding, and for this party, and for a lot of piss-ups in between. Some people even tried the punch, which was a dangerous affair with about four litres of vodka, topped up with "Spritestitute", cider and raspberry juice.
Night had fallen and I dashed out to take down the flag, one of my uncles-in-law insisting on helping me so the flag did not touch the ground. I told him there was no way the flag was going to touch the ground anyway, because the ground was sodden with septic tank overflow and covered with stinging nettles. The Quiet Table all got up and stood to attention like smartasses outside the tent while we lowered the flag, and were apparently disappointed that we neither folded the flag into a triangle nor sang "God Save the Queen". Life is full of these little setbacks.
Pete and a very tall gentleman who introduced himself to me as "Sebastian" stood guard over the punch bowl for the rest of the night, and drank pint after pint of the stuff. Sebastian was the boyfriend of one of the other guests (who was, let me think, the daughter of one of my mother-in-law's cousins or second cousins? Yes, something like that. In fact, she was the daughter of the lady who gave me the Råuskis, and was in on the whole thing and had been one of the main perpetrators of the original Råuskis incident as well), which explains why I had no idea who he was until that moment.
Hena arrived, as did Che, and there was much rejoicing although Che was hungover and didn't stay more than a couple of hours. Hena gave me a gift of a "genuine replica" Viking glass, so I was obliged to use both the glass and the drinking horn from that point on. The Viking glass was promptly filled, as a calculated insult against Vikings everywhere, with Dirty Girl Scout. I was awarded shortly afterwards with a genuine (and at this point the world's only) Daughters of Handicrafts Groupie T-shirt, to thank me for my tireless efforts in drawing designs and things for the local sewing circle, and sexually servicing one of them, more or less satisfactorily, for the past eight years. I was then encouraged to give them all a hug, so I did. Now that I think about it, was Linda even involved in the group, or was she just caught in the hug-zone?
Juuso suggested I put on the T-shirt, and the man-kini, and pose for pictures, but for some reason this ended up not happening, and is continuing to not happen.
I was also charmed by another epic ballad of punnery from the talented quills of the Halén family, who had written a similar poem for the occasion of our wedding. This one featured the brilliant rhyming of "wish you luck" and "you old ... chap". I admit I wiped a tear from my eye at the conclusion.
Things get a little vague, I remember saying goodbye to groups of people and badgering them to sign our guest book. Lots and lots of them didn't, just buggered off without a backward glance. At some point in the evening, I also seem to recall it started to bucket down with rain. It got cold, and only one hardcore group (Anoppi and the cousins) stayed at their table outside. The rest crept in and lit a fire in our fireplace, and started to watch the hockey.
Finland won against Sweden, and there was a bit of good-natured ribbing directed towards Lars (because, presumably, he's a professional hockey player), who had also moved inside with the remainder of the Lionbridge group and his mobile bar. Music was demanded, I failed catastrophically to initiate anything using my iPod, and so just whacked a Flogging Molly CD on the player. Sebastian cornered me at this point and exclaimed over how much he liked Flogging Molly, which was just one more point of similarity between us (and also, it has to be added, another thing that, like the word "horn", is impossible to talk about wthout sounding rude). He also, as it turned out, loved our DVD collection, and our house, and thought our bathroom was pretty much exactly the way he wanted his own to be done. He told me that he was two years, one month and eleven days younger than I was, so he had that much time to get married, get a house, and fill up his DVD collection. I didn't have the heart to tell him how long I've been married. After all, he doesn't have deportation to worry about.
Lars put on a balaclava and sunglasses and did his Gangster Rap again, much to the amusement of everybody, especially those who had no idea who he was. "Do you really work with that guy?" one of my aunties-in-law asked. I admitted that it wasn't so much work, as a string of alcohol-fuelled college dorm pranks with occasional stints of sitting at a computer in between. Tuomas was giving Lars pointers on how low the waistband of his jeans should be slung to perfect the transformation to Hip-Hop Lars, and the general consensus was that it needed to be pretty low indeed.
In Lars's self-defense statement:
As for the photographs and videos of a unknown rapper with a
woolly hat pulled over his face... I deny that it's me. The hat is
over his face, you don't know who it is!
Lars managed to get along well with everybody, in fact, and his bag of drinks and his endless supply of shots was amazing to behold, and popular with everybody. Incidentally, we did have some port wine to make whatever shot it was that required it, but Janica quite rightly pointed out that it was matured fruit port carried by suitcase all the way from Margaret River, and there was no way in Hell we were going to put it in a damn cocktail.
Lars had a very long and involved conversation in English with one of my cousins-in-law, who had apparently been wanting to practice English with a non-Australian for a long time. It seems Australian is too fast and badly-accented to be of much use, and English is much better. There was a call for more Galliano Hot Shots. It seems Sebastian was begging for them, but Lars insisted on fresh coffee instead of the cold stale stuff left in the pots. A man of distinguished tastes. So I brewed some coffee and we made about nine of the bastards, and shared them out diplomatically. Then the bottle of Galliano was empty.
A short period of silliness with the whipped cream spray ensued, and I believe Lars made some comment about somebody spraying whipped cream on, as he put it, Bella's décolletage. I told him it was a cleavage, and he rather primly told me that no, it was a décolletage.
"Who the fuck is this guy?" Bella wanted to know. It seemed a continuing theme for the evening.
Oh yes, and Sebastian - the *other* Sebastian, another cousin-in-law - had turned up by this stage, and we all marvelled at Sebastian and Sebastian having the same name for a while. I suggested that the tall, skinny, excessively drunk Sebastian with a penchant for talking about (and, increasingly, demonstrating) martial arts was the "evil" Sebastian, and the Sebastian from our family was the "good" one. This seemed to go down well, especially since "The Evil" Sebastian had a goatee.
I went outside briefly to check on the remaining bunch in the tents, to find that Torolf (one of my mother-in-law's cousins or second-cousins I think) had proposed to his girlfriend and been accepted. Then, he had fallen down and dragged the punch bowl with him, giving himself a nice rinse. We made some more punch, this one pretty much just vodka, in front of which we had teasingly waved a bottle of fruit juice.
After a while most of the people sodded off, leaving myself, Janica, Lars, Hena, Bella, her friend Linda, "The Good" Sebastian, Fiu and "The Evil" Sebastian, her boyfriend. I think it was around this point that Lars pulled out the axe and started pretending to open bottles and jars with it. Ahh, safe and friendly fun in the precincts of one's own home, with responsible adults.
As an amendment to this accusation, I have the following statement from Lars himself:
About the ax... I was getting more and more annoyed with "evil" Sebastian
and seriously considered kicking his ass but didn't because I suspected
that our host would take offense. however at one point "Evil" insisted
on showing me strangle holds which was painful and annoying. Rather
than cracking some of his ribs with my knee I went for a psychological
approach. I reached back and gently caressed his balls. "Evil" dropped
me like red hot iron and jumped backwards twisting in a fit of Finnougrik
homophobia. He avoided touching me again. Realizing that I had actually
touched the balls of another man I went and got the ax in order to cut
my hand off. After having thus demonstrated my good intentions I put the
ax back. Without cutting of anything from anybody, honest, its true. If
something was cut of it wasn't me.
Now that he mentions it, I seem to recall being caught in a strangle-hold as well, and giving "The Evil" Sebastian a reach-around in response. He let me go pretty sharply, too, although since he had already done this to Lars and I definitely remember talking about it, I can only assume he liked the reach-around. From then on he concluded that he wouldn't do anything to me because I was the host and he was drinking my booze and it wouldn't be polite. Whatever.
Hena's jokes about martial arts had not gone down well with "The Evil" Sebastian. Hena had been telling us about a new martial art he had masterminded, by which you could totally take out a huge crowd of ninjas single-handed. The trick, he said, was to develop your kicking strength until the point at which you could kick a man in the balls so hard, his pelvis breaks. That was step one. Then, he continued (over the increasingly agitated objections of "The Evil" Sebastian), you had to learn how to do another kick that breaks the guy's knees. Then you had to step in behind, deftly, and twist his head until his neck breaks. The final step, he confided to us (while "The Evil" Sebastian started to cry), was to learn how to do all three of these steps in less than a second.
"The Evil" Sebastian insisted that this wouldn't work, but was unable to explain exactly why. Then, he wanted to show us the move he had learned - while fighting kung-fu against all manner of world champions - that you could perform to break somebody's elbow. I told him he couldn't. He told me that he wouldn't, but if I just gave the word, he would. Break Hena's elbow. Or mine. Or even his own. Hena's flawless recitations of "Blazing Saddles" and "Spaceballs" scenes, and a long passionate breakdown of why Episodes I, II and III sucked ass, did not dissuade "The Evil" Sebastian from his plan. In fact, on several occasions while Hena was ranting about Jar Jar, "The Evil" Sebastian was standing behind him, making elbow-breaking gestures and looking at me hopefully for the nod.
Oh, to put him and Juuso together for just twelve seconds.
Anyway, this went on until about six in the morning. Lars and "The Good" Sebastian shared a cab out of Sotunki at about four, and Fiu and "The Evil" Sebastian departed at about five. We laughed for an hour and then Bella and Linda left, Hena fell asleep on the couch, and Janica and I went and collapsed. I got up four hours later and began cleaning up. We finished cleaning up at about seven o'clock that evening.
And to answer Tuomas's question, my alcolemia did not bother me in the slightest. I am gradually evolving from the Kate Moss of alcoholics to the ... I don't know, the Roseanne Barr of alcoholics? Either way, I was fine. I put off my hangover by the simple expedient of taking a drink or two from the punch bowl in between picking up rubbish, so by midday I was, let's say tipsy, again. Now, I'm just tired and sore all over.
Good times.
5月15日 90s Party? Really?Last weekend, like I mentioned earlier, we were at a party for a couple of Janica's former students who have become friends of ours. They're in their very early twenties, to the best of my knowledge. I still remember when I arrived in Finland back in 2000, you know. Back when they were thiiiis big.
They've moved into this sort of giant party house, an old-style mansion with a big old bakery oven in the basement and a couple of huge floors, potato cellar, that sort of thing. I don't know the details. The details aren't all that important anyway. Che (for 'tis the nickname of one of these guys) said he was forced to move home for a while, so he could finish his studies. Too difficult to concentrate in the giant party house. I can dig it. Word. And stuff.
There was many a lava lamp, groovy big screen TV display, and water pipe on display, although naturally they were only smoking some sort of fruit tobacco in the water pipe. There was a big old turntable and entertainment system, blacklights, and a DJ spinning his disks or hitting his phat beats or whatever DJs do. I'm pretty sure Janica and I were the oldest people there by a clear half-decade, and we're by no means old.
It was a 90s Party. I didn't realise this at the time, until one of the guys who sat with us for a while pointed out that he had worn a lumberjack shirt for the occasion, and noted that several other people had as well. Because that's what people wore in the 90s. Because Achey Breaky Heart. I was sitting there dressed in pretty much the same sort of stuff I had worn in the 90s, namely a black T-shirt and black pants and sunglasses (on my head, I have moved beyond wearing inside although I might have been tempted if it wasn't so dark in there), the only 00s addition being the dinner jacket I'd flung on from the night before. I was sitting there, pretty much stunned by the idea that there would be a 90s party going on. I mean, it's still pretty much the 90s, isn't it?
That's when I realised, the 90s are almost a decade in the past. The 90s were when I was still in Australia, and I've been living in Finland for eight freaking years[1]. If the guys at this party were really being honest, they wouldn't have been wearing lumberjack shirts and jeans. They would have been wearing short pants and Pokemon T-shirts. At best. My God.
Soon, we'll be into the 10s, and there will be 00s parties going on. But the 00s, like the 90s, were pretty much impossible to define in terms of funny clothing. There was a bit of distinctive music, but nothing definitive. I mean, the 60s had flares and the last decent pop. The 70s had sideburns, big pointy collars and disco. The 80s had leg warmers and not-decent-but-at-least-recognisable pop again. The 90s had fuck all and Billy Ray Cyrus. And the 00s have less. It's enough to make you weep.
Humanity isn't going to destroy itself in a boldly roaring flurry of nuclear fire. It's just going to bland itself down until there's nothing left.
At least if we had a nuclear war, we could have a 00s party by wearing old clothes and tucking our extra limbs under our protective layers of animal skins.
[1] Good years, don't get me wrong. Great years. I'm not exclaiming on that point. That they were good years does not make them any less years. |
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