| Hatboy 的个人资料Hatboy's Hatstand照片日志列表 |  工具  帮助 |
|
10月13日 Department Day and Pigfest: A WeekendMuch fun was had this weekend, starting Friday with our quasi-annual work blowout, the Department Day.
The afternoon started, as is traditional, with a series of work-related presentations and discussions that I can't tell you about and would only bore you if I did anyway, so I'm going to do you a favour and just skip them. Special thanks go to The Taj and The Poh for making our table one of the greatest contributers to discussions, mainly of things that could not be repeated to anybody but were instead muttered under the breath, or written on a piece of paper after the pen was stolen from me, only to be scribbled out five seconds later for fear that someone might see. I can only assume that the things written there were portents and prophecies of some Lovecraftian doom and The Taj was protecting our sanity by destroying them and we should all thank him.
Sanity was in short supply by the time we finally called a halt to the talk and began with the feasting process, anyway.
The food was pretty nice, although by no means the best Cantina West can offer. When you go for buffet, though, I think you have to surrender high-quality for mid-quality in the name of high-quantity, and that was pretty much how it went. Burritos and burritoes later, I was completely stuffed and most people had moved on to coffee and cake. I wasn't interested in that so much, and had another fifteen chicken wings instead (not wrapped in a burrito). Coronas were also duly served, which was a very welcome treat in these troubled times. I believe various people at our table (our table was graced by Mr. Farenheit, Gerry and Heli, as well as the aforementioned Taj and Poh) also had themselves some wine.
The Taj had apparently given up on caring about his co-workers, something many might argue he had never started to do in the first place, but I remember quite clearly a number of times in the past when he would decide not to drink but still order his share from the bar staff so his table-mates could enjoy it. I don't think I'll get any argument, even from the man himself, if I say this is one of the only reasons you'd want The Taj at a table with you in the first place.
Gerry told us a lovely story following The Taj's insistence that the mood be brought down. I won't splash it around here, but a certain amount of love triangulation and stabbing was involved. I think the conclusion we reached was that stabbing was bad - although earlier on, while we were waiting for The Taj to actually arrive and contemplating how grumpy he was going to be after having been forced to work overtime at <confidential material edited>, it was pretty funny. The only thing that could have made it funnier would have been if Steve Irwin had been there to poke a stick at him and then pick him up and swing him around by the neck. Or try to.
I don't know what time it was, but it was probably around seven o'clock in the evening when the Tampere people began to get edgy and the old game of Where The Fuck Are We Going Next began. This is a game at which we excel due to long practice. Also, the drinks had dried up and not many people were interested in my lukewarm Minttu (I give and I give for these people), so we made our way to the Pullman Bar. The Tampere team wanted somewhere close to the railway station because most of them were going home at eight o'clock, so we did the best we could and actually found a bar inside the railway station.
We promptly moved in with a force of about thirty or forty people, and took over one corner for the glory of Lionbridge. Tuija W and the freshly-returned Sari T alarmed nearby patrons with their screaming as they let off steam, and this managed to clear a few more tables for us. It still wasn't enough to get all the 'bridgers in one place, though, so Tuomas, Heikki, Hanna, Verna, Juho, Taija and a bunch of others found themselves a niche in the opposite corner of the bar. Essentially, we dominated.
Here's a small part of our crowd, busy dominating. After a little while, the Tampere folks left (except for Mikko, who has lost none of his staying power) and this freed up a bit of space on the couches. The group on the other side of the bar did not come to join us, however, in spite of our invitations.
Drinking continued to ensue. Discussion varied from advanced hair care and drunken bus drivers to chicken fingers (chickens don't even have fingers, but somehow, after the enormous pile of burritos and chicken wings I'd had already eaten, the picture on the menu managed to tempt me) and - at least I seem to recall this being a topic - the bizarre Mormon-Catholic sex rules in that awful Twilight series. Although I think this might have been another one Gerry was telling us about at dinner. Yeah, that's right. I mean, not that Anne Rice's vampires were exactly mad butch hornbags always out on the pull or anything, but at least they weren't teenagers.
Everyone loves Mopho Cake, the newest addition to the Lionbridge Paparazzi Corps. Long story. Eventually, I wandered over to the other side of the bar to see for myself what the rest of the crew were doing. I asked them if they wanted to come over and join the rest of us, and they countered by asking if I wanted to join them, so we could compare conversation topics. I was unable to come up with a sufficient answer to this, and besides they were talking about God, so I decided to give it a shot. Once again discussion began to ramble, from my Dilemma of Faith anecdote into the far deeper waters of Bill and Ted philosophy (is not the moral of the New Testament, after all, be excellent to each other [and party on] ?), then back to my ilves-eating anecdote (those of you who expressed doubt as to whether the ilves lives in Estonia can stop worrying, it does ... although arguably the one I ate doesn't, not anymore), followed by Tuomas's assertion that the blue whale has one-ton testicles.
I'm not sure whether anyone really wanted to disagree with him on that, or if so why. But I suppose it must be true, even if it has nothing much to do with God (beyond the possible fact that He designed the blue whale, and must have been overcompensating for some really small-gonaded animal at the time). We continued to talk about any number of things, while Salmari and Minttu and various other drinks flowed freely. I remembered I'd left a cider over at my other seat, but it was a bad cider anyway and I didn't go back to get it for a while. Mr. Farenheit left to go - of all places - to a restaurant, where I hope he ate hearty. The Taj and The Poh left as well, but stayed a respectable amount of time. Gerry also left, having to drive at an ungodly hour of Saturday morning.
Sari came by to see if we wanted to join them on the other side of the bar, and then stayed when we invited her to join us. Conversation went on degenerating, although where it could go from piano-sized whale balls is a matter of some uncertainty. Conversation at the other camp had gone on to cars and cannabis, but the general feeling at our table was that sex and rock and roll were the major players in the Triforce of awesome. Also, Heikki K related a couple of anecdotes about his ... was it uncle? Grandfather? ... anyway, ask him about his shooting habits. And then ask Heikki about his umbrellas.
Eventually, most of the people in the other camp decided to leave, and Verna also decided it was time to go (but didn't know where), so we all stood up and milled around for a while. I went back for my cider, but a mouthful reminded me that it was bad cider so I left it where it was. Heikki and I decided nobody was going anywhere, so sat back down, and then everyone decided to go somewhere. We piled out of the door and down the stairs and out into the railway station.
What followed was one of the more surreal pub-crawls I've ever been on. We went through at least a couple of pubs - and I can't say I actually remember walking along any streets in between - without actually stopping to drink anything. In one pub I seem to recall seeing Tomi K, and in another we realised Antti Pa (The Pas?) had been left behind smoking on the pavement. By which I mean smoking a cigarette, not that he had burned up on re-entry or something. I ran back to bring him through just as the rest of the crowd vanished out the back door, and we were on the move again.
We finally fetched up at a bar where we found a table and chairs, and we had Baby Guinnii and I had another cider and a Tequila Motherfucker in honour of absent friends. Discussion continued, along with a certain amount of Man Boob Appreciation.
Tuomas may believe he can feel a lump. I'm just not going anywhere near this. Also pictured: Tequila Motherfucker. At this point I seem to recall it was Hanna, Heli, Tuomas, Mikko, Antti Pa ... who else? Wendy, in fact I'm pretty sure she outlasted the rest of us, on a technicality. I have it on good authority that the rest of them wandered back to her place in the wee small hours, and made the usual mess. I was sure there were one or two others. Must have been. Anyway, the usual crowd of Stayers, I would say. Tuomas got me another cider and this one was much nicer than the other one I'd left behind. I finally decided that missing the eight, nine and ten o'clock buses (and blaming these incidents on Tuomas, and why not?) was enough, and I should probably get the eleven o'clock bus if I wanted to be in any condition to play the pipes the next day. So I did, and I was.
After getting home and having a bit of a snooze, it was around midday and I was just about ready to face the world when Freddo came around with his electric guitar and amplifier. This, combined with bagpipes, is a great hangover cure. We practiced for all of about an hour and a half, then called it a day - until that night, when we would be performing before an audience of in-laws and their closest friends.
Yes, it was the other quasi-annual event of the season, the Palokas Family "Eat Something We Shot" Party, where wild boar on the spit was on the menu. It all went fine, since I wasn't hugely willing to drink excessively before we played and then afterwards it was just too late and I was feeling a sad thirty-something wreck. The food was nothing short of awesome. I was ready to eat again by this stage, and I wanted one of the boar's legs although they somehow evaded me. Very disappointing.
Games abounded, like the pig-themed quiz and the much-contested Pin the Tail on the Wild Boar game, and home-made booze also abounded. The lemon schnapps was a bit too fiery for me, so I substituted Minttu after a couple of glasses. Schnapps songs, of course, also abounded. But that's what you get for partying with Swedish Finns.
Janica, Bella, food and booze and pig-themed decorations. After a little while Freddo and I decided to get it over with, everyone piled outside and we went up onto the balcony to serenade the entire village - if not the entire Vantaa region - with a bagpipe-guitar duet of Amazing Grace and Scotland the Brave, which in my opinion sounded pretty good. It's been a long time since I played vs. a guitar, and by his own admission it was probably about as long since Freddo practiced at all. Although actually, since I last played in a pub around 1998 or 1999, maybe not. But still, it was grand. Next time, we're totally going to play Paranoid. We stayed until about midnight, maybe a bit earlier, then got a lift home with some kind fellow guests. It might have been fun to stay a bit longer, as conversation was once again drifting into interesting territory (Muslims and religion and - in the words of one gentleman - shooting everybody who believed in anything), but I'd had my fill of that from the night before so was happy enough to leave before it came to blows. I was also being slowly pushed into the role of Drinks Fetching Bitch (after one unsuccessful attempt to pour Minttu into a glass instead of wine, which resulted in Janica's uncle wearing a big splash of Minttu and probably wondering in the morning why he was all sticky), and it's always good to get out of that whenever you spot it. The rest of the weekend was fairly tame. Nothing much to report. In fact, thanks to the generally consistent use of lonkero and trace elements of beer, schnapps and Minttu, I wasn't even hungover on Sunday. Wasn't exactly up for cutting wodd, of course, but heck. Maybe today I will be. 9月22日 So, what, do people die in September?I was just going randomly through my blog archive, and saw that the lead article for September 2007 was Robert Jordan dying, and the lead article for 2006 was Steve Irwin dying. This September it was Keith Floyd and Patrick Swayze.
September was also classically the month when fresh waves of newbies, morons and trolls swept Usenet, back in the day. Not so much of the dying, but I can't credit it with mere coincidence.
A whole mess of people died in September 2001, as well, but I hesitate to mention it because it has such huge hype value - really, on a global disasters / conflict scale it wasn't that huge. It was definitely tragic and horrible, but it's wormed its way into an entirely unwarranted position in the mass psyche's World's Greatest Disasters list.
Speaking of tragic and horrible, I still can't believe Floyd died.
9月21日 Little BrotherHere's something that's been gnawing at me.
The U.S. (pop. ~300 million) has something like 60 times the population of Finland (pop. ~5 million). Now even considering that Americans don't pay anywhere near as much tax as Finns, and the fact that maybe the top 2 million or so of the U.S.'s richest either pay even less or don't pay any at all, that's a whole buttload of money.
Now, they're not spending it on upkeep, utilities, or standard of living, and they're sure as shit not spending it on health care. So where is all this money going? I mean, "into illegal imperialistic wars based on flat-out government lies" is too easy an answer, and "into the pockets of that top 2 million we were talking about a second ago" is even easier, so here's my theory.
The U.S. is the world's little brother.
Look at it. The U.S. tries to be one of the grown-ups - tries, in fact, to be the parent - but just like the little brother in the house, he can't even hope to pull it off and just ends up looking funny at best. He's belligerent and moody and irrational and gets in fights all the time, which his older siblings need to help him out of (ooh, in spite of the fact that he furiously refuses to let them) and for which his parents endlessly make excuses (but still find it embarrassing and quietly hope the neighbours aren't watching).
In fact, imagine the household's embarrassment if the neighbours did actually turn up one afternoon, with a carrot cake and a "welcome to the galaxy" basket. And the U.S. was in the front yard, having a tantrum because he'd broken one of his toy trucks and nobody would buy him a new one. But I digress.
The U.S., and big brother U.N., get their pocket money every month, and the U.S. immediately runs out and spends all of it on candy, leaving himself perpetually broke. Not only this, but he has taken advances on his next month's pocket money, and the month after that, and advances on his advances, and spent all of that money on candy as well. He wants to hang out with the U.N. and his friends, even though he claims not to like them and declares that they're all stuck-up stupid-heads. Because, like most little brothers, he has this mix of hero-worship and inadequacy that makes him resentful even while he helplessly shadows the big boys like a puppy dog.
The U.N. and his friends, who have put their money away or spent it on wiser things, can afford to do all sorts of stuff that the U.S. can't, and they don't really want him hanging around ... but of course he's the little brother, and family ties demand that the U.N. looks after him. So the U.N. and his mates let him hang around with them and pretend to be a big boy, and smile indulgently when he makes a loudmouthed, often-dangerous horse's arse of himself.
Because, even though he's a bit slow and never has any money to pay his share of the U.N.'s club membership, he's got candy. Shitloads and shitloads and shitloads of candy.
And that's why McDonald's, Hollywood, MTV and Coca-Cola is everywhere. And that's why we love it.
9月18日 Precious memoriesLo all these many and varied years ago, I was blessed to visit the sleepy little town of Southern Cross in Western Australia, as part of a Perth Highland Pipe Band performance at an agricultural show. In fact, I think I visited the place two or three times in my years with the band. Chucky Reports, right here on this very blog, detail some of the more memorable events.
Agricultural shows are the best, mainly because of the food but also because of the booze and other entertainment on offer. Camel races, ute-doughnutting, f*ck-off big bonfires and The Lamb Van.
If you couldn't buy it there, then it simply couldn't be made out of a piece of a sheep.
One of the downsides of agricultural shows is the audience - not because I dislike or feel I am superior to the average hick redneck Australian - on the contrary, they are very entertaining - but because they generally have better things to do than watch a bunch of bagpipers faffing about in the 40° heat. They're not exactly your fun-time crowd, like for example a pub crowd, who buy you drinks and make you feel glad you bothered. Marching through an agricultural show beer tent is always fun and we took the opportunity to do so on almost every country performance I remember, but then I also remember being able to thank our applauding audience by name on at least one occasion.
Another favourite was the Southern Cross Hotel, the bar of which was a mass of carvings and engravings made by drunk or madly artistic people of bygone days. They didn't actively encourage bar-carving (or 'barving', as I am now coining the phrase), but they obviously didn't mind it, and by the sheer amount of it you could tell the bar was more of a feature to them than an eyesore. When asked, the bar staff said we could go ahead, as long as we weren't too obvious about it and didn't write or draw anything too profane.
I improved the bar in my own way.
You may notice, as I believe I did at the time, that this is one of the few coherent things carved on the bar, let alone correctly-spelled.
This picture was taken by a Perth Highlander by the name of Monty, returning to the SXH some ten years down the line. He was evidently pleased to see that our legacy remained, and I'm pleased to receive a copy of it way the Hell up here in the soon-to-be frozen north.
Good times.
9月14日 Oh yeah...and I just remembered. My sister-in-law and her fella got engaged a couple of weeks back, and have moved to Porvoo together.
Shine on, you crazy diamonds.
And that's my anoppi in the background, polishing her Napoleon impression. EthicMorning all,
Well, it's been a while since I had a chance to write something here, and as usual now that I have a chance, there's nothing to add. It was a busy summer, with fun and larks aplenty but nothing worth making a blog entry about just yet. Maybe some Chucky Reports incoming, time permitting.
Enjoyed two weeks with my parents (once you get used to the fact that my dad only listens to the first four words of any answer you give in response to his questions, it all goes smoothly), two weeks with my sister and her family (entirely too active, but definitely fun and now I know where the nearest lake and water-park are for next summer), and my 10th e-nniversary* with Mrs. Hatboy.
And there was much rejoicing.
Had a few parties, really got our money's worth from the barbecue, and now the summer is winding down. Getting cold again in the mornings, et cetera.
Yeah. My CD burner died, so I went to Verkkokauppa (buy faster, buy wiser) to pick up a DVD burner. Since my backups are now spread across about eight CDs and erasing and re-burning them can take a whole afternoon, I thought it was time to get with the program. It started out really easily, I got the burner and set it up, installed it and everything. But of course the burn process failed. Contacted a few compu-savvy friends and established that they could get it to work but not (even on a Linux OS) without errors, so I took it back.
Verkkokauppa gave me a new burner, of exactly the same make and model. And what do you know, it had exactly the same problem as the last one.
I should take a pause here to explain that Verkkokauppa is not exactly on my way home from work. It's a round-trip on the Metro and a few blocks of walking out of my way in fact, and it's not something I have time to do every day.
So anyway, I took it back yet again and asked them to swap it for another label, maybe. They refused to do that, but they took the burner and assured me they would get it checked and see if there was a problem with it. Now, either there's a problem with the entire product line, or there's no problem except with my OS and the OS of my compu-savvy colleagues. And guess if Verkkoraiska are going to give me a trade-in if it turns out to be the latter.
Now I'm just waiting for them to get back to me and say "hey, there was no problem, you'll have to buy a new burner". Which I could have done almost a month ago. See if I ever buy anything from them again. In fact, I may just have to pick up a new DVD burner from somewhere else. Fuck those guys. Fuck those guys up their stupid arses.
I just don't know what's wrong with the world.
On the topic of ethics, I promised to share my "painted roadkill" shot, so here it is. I liked it so much, I made it into a Motivational. There's something very inspiring about this sort of carelessness. With years of diligent refusal to give a shit, Verkkokauppa could one day aspire to this level of greatness.
I have a new phone, and as soon as I get the MMS and interwebs working on it, that'll be great too.
Ah, it has been a summer of great renewal and change.
* Like an anniversary, but celebrating our first online meeting: August 27th, 1999. 8月3日 Barbecue 2: Revenge of the GrillenedThe great annual barbecue (we have now done it two years in a row, so it's practically a Lionbridge tradition) was almost shot in the head before it began. Warnings of unpleasant weather seemed to have been an understatement, and the idyllic summer sunshine of the Night of the Arts 2008 seemed a distant-arsed dream. Lightning, thunder and pelting rain abounded just an hour before we were due to turn up at Mustikkamaa, but the dauntless barbecue-goers of the Technical Writing department had no intention of flinching in the face of God's wrath, no sir! We had free shit to consume!
The pictures are presented in no particular chronological order.
Left to right: Mr. Farenheit; Free Shit; Antti P.
I received a lift to the site, together with Wendy and four bags of sausages, booze and chicken wings, by the graceful offer of Auri, who you would never guess was an ancient and terrible Trantex dinosaur resurrected using morally questionable scientific processes by Lionbridge R&D. I mean, to look at her. You'd be surprised. Anyway, she gave us a lift and proved an excellent addition to the Mustikkamaa barbecue posse for this and many other reasons. The ride out to "the Must" was epic, and more than a little hair-raising due to the fact that the window de-fogger was not operating very well and politeness denied me the opportunity to break into the beer carton during the journey in order to dull the edges of my terror. The second leg of the trip was a trek from the Korkeasaari carpark around the coast of the island. We picked up Anna along the way as we passed by the zoo bus stop, which was great because until her appearance, I was the only person who had been to the place before and was clearly expected to act as a navigator accordingly. Boy, they were way off.
Still, we found the place in the end, thanks to Anna's map and a whole lot of vaguely-hopeful comments like "it's a small island, by the time we go all the way around it we'll have to find the barbecues." We arrived to find that the weather, which had been mostly-invisible to us from inside the car, had improved dramatically in the past hour and was now merely grey, humid and soggy rather than thunderous and cats-and-dogsian.
We also arrived to find that nobody was there with their kid, nobody had prepared for our arrival by setting the fire and getting it lit, and nobody had opted to spend some precious hours of their remaining summer holiday time to meet and greet with the peons. I began to set out our first round of sausages on the apparently busted grill. Nobody was derisive and unhelpful with regards to my attempts to fix things, more or less as expected. There was a certain amount of tension when Auri accused me of putting a piece of wood into the fire "the wrong way around", but it was diplomatically defused by the clarification that she was talking about the sausages on the grill, not the wood at all. Thus mollified, I continued to try to cook on a grill tilted at an angle of 35°, thirty or forty centimetres away from the actual fire.
Discussion turned to who else was coming, and I was halfway through my description of Hanna's uncertainty and sleep-deprived lack of confidence in ever finding the place when, to my surprise, she appeared. Mr. Farenheit also turned up around this time, and barbecuing duly commenced. Mr. Farenheit opted not to reprise his role as the Steakinator this year, leaving it in my capable hands. He also remembered that the grill had been busted last year as well, and that we had pulled it aside and barbecued directly on the catching-tray. So we did that again this year. Nobody claimed to have told me exactly the same thing, which was just a stinking lie.
I wave farewell to my dignity. It must have been fairly late by this stage, because the ciders are finished and I'm onto beer. Also pictured: my briefcase, which gets an unfair amount of teasing on account of being from the 80s. Don't look now, arseholes, but a lot of our new Technical Writers were born in the 80s. Drinking also commenced. Nobody went for a jaunt around the beach with the kid, returning with a lump of seaweed on a rock as a conversation piece. It was suggested that the lump of seaweed on a rock could be our new global department manager. It was also generally agreed that Mr. Farenheit put it on his head and pose for photos, thus earning the rock with seaweed in an honoured place in the Mr. Farenheit Hall of Things I Put On My Head And Posed For Photos. The resemblance to a troll doll was initially quite clear, but faded with time. He also placed the rock under his chin as a hilarious beard. I don't know if he has a Hall for those.
Mr. Farenheit as a Leprechaun: unconvincing and possessed of strange odours.
Mr. Farenheit as a Troll Doll: like the Leprechaun, but also prone to biting. Time went by. The packets of sausages dwindled, the steaks were a mild disappointment, the weather continued relatively pleasant. Nobody left. People began to wonder whether or not Antti would actually turn up. Hanna had a momentary panic attack when she thought we meant a different Antti to the one we really did mean. Mr. Farenheit assured us that Antti was coming, but would be excessively late due to a combination of work and public transport factors that I for one found highly questionable. For a moment it seemed like Antti, too, would appear the moment we started talking about his presence, but it turned out to be a female jogger. And then an old man. And then another female jogger, and then a dog. The thing about Antti is, he's so easily mistaken for any number of other things that aren't Antti.
Finally, though, he did show up, with some cock-and-bull story about an engineer keeping him waiting for documentation information and then forgetting he was there, as if that ever happens to Technical Writers. He then compounded his folly by making up some astonishing fairy-tale about the train being late. We forgave him for his colourful imagination, opened more sausages and began round two of the barbecuing. Hanna graced the grill with her turkey-veggie weiners, which became quite the party piece later in the evening (in the most innocent of ways) but sadly we don't have photos of that. The chicken wings also came out, and proved to be a hit.
Auri provided bacon-wrapped mushrooms filled with blue cheese, which I assume were nice ("Yay, it's the smallest one," Mr. Farenheit was heard to remark when his share of the delicacies were deposited on his plate). The general consensus seemed to be that all the nicest stuff had been brought along out of the attendees' own wallets, which was harsh but fair. The mass quantities of sausage and free booze were, however, greatly valued, and Wendy went on the official record as stating, via her spokesman Mr. Farenheit, that the blacker the sausage, the better.
Wendy: unable to get enough sausage. On that note ... I think it was well before this point that Anna began to bombard us with her patented Anna-uendoes, combining them with bad puns because Janne Keskisaari wasn't present this year to carry the torch. But they grew steadily more blatant in their disregard of the Geneva Convention for Treatment of Language-Related Humour, and she was enthusiastically assisted in her crimes by a number of other people. This is what happens when Technical Writers go bad.
Time went on. Wendy left, instructing us to call her if we ended up in a bar. This seemed unlikely, but we promised, as we always do, to track her down somehow after she pulls one of her disappearing acts. Auri left too, generously upending her cornucopia of, uh, corn onto the barbecue and leaving it with us to enjoy. And we did.
I don't know. This is probably Auri. Possibly me and Farenheit in the foreground. There's nothing wrong with the camera. We really were this blurry by then. Time continued to pass. The carton was duly emptied, as were the bottles brought along by others. I was derelict in my duty this year, in that I neglected to bring Minttu along for the enjoyment of the few. I knocked the plastic forks on the ground an inordinate number of times before giving up on them amidst "fork"-based puns that simply do not bear repeating. Hanna finished her turkey-veg weiners and departed victorious. At some point around here, we were joined by a couple of people who were scouting out the area in preparation for a birthday celebration the following day. They failed to score any free food or beer from us, and we failed to score invitations to the birthday party. I think mainly they were worried that we were still going to be there the following afternoon. By that stage, we all looked pretty comfortable and the barbecue area looked pretty lived-in..
Mr. Farenheit also graced us with the Beer Can Arts, achieving the Full Hellboy for the first time in my own personal experience, and recorded by cameras for one of the first times in history.
The Heitmeister starts us off with the Unicorn, a simple classic.
The Full Hellboy. He thanked the academy for the faith it had placed in him, and put his success down to the increase in head-fat he had gained during his summer holiday, which greatly assisted in the creation of the required can-forehead vacuum.
 Then a spaceship descended on us out of the sky, with something really nasty mashed into its radiator. Or something.
In the end, Antti and Anna and Mr. Farenheit and I declared the night won, and packed our things. The fire was doused with a combination of water and Sprite Zero, which is like water with some bubbles and no more (or less) suited to dousing a fire than it is to drinking, and the leftover sodas were donated to Mr. Farenheit's Soda Saturday Foundation. Rumour has it that he soda'd, and soda'd good, on that particular Soda Saturday.
We walked for the metro station to find it had already performed its last run for the night, which makes sense given that nobody wants to go anywhere at eleven o'clock on Friday fucking night.
We're pleased, really, to have had our arses made sweet love to down by the fire, once again, by Helsinki public transport.
The workmen on the site instructed a dissatisfied Antti to "call someone who gives a shit": I'm not sure who he called but he seemed happy afterwards. After waiting for a while we decided that we should take the bus, which thanks to our dithering was just minutes from departure. Somewhere. We struck out for the bus stop, full of hope and accompanied by a skinny-arsed teenage kid who I was sure hadn't been at the Must. If he had, I would've given him one of my steaks.
By the time Antti, The Kid and I got to the bus station and realised the buses were all going in the wrong direction and we wanted to be on the other side of the freeway, the nearest crossing of which was several hundred kilometres away, we had already missed the bus into town. Anna and Mr. Farenheit had presumably already realised this, because they'd turned back and we had failed to hear their shouts as they did so. They were gone. Antti, The Kid and I returned to the other side of the Freeway, and after many weeks of agonised trudging found a strangely deserted bus stop with a taxi-van parked nearby.
The taxi driver was enjoying a cup of coffee and a chat with a friend when we stumbled up and asked him if he was booked. He asked us where we were headed, and when we said "Helsinki" he said, "what a coincidence, I'm going that way too."
The strange and surreal taxi ride got us as far as Sörnäinen before Antti got out to go and attend some sort of concert, and I realised this was as far out of my way as I wanted to go as well. I gave The Kid some money for the rest of the taxi trip into town, and that was where we parted ways. Antti handed me the huge bag of empty cans (he was going to throw them away, but I have this cunning way of getting money for them at supermarkets) and headed for his concert and I, having missed the bus yet again, got another taxi out of there.
On the way home, my taxi overtook the bus but I was too tired to hang my arse out the window at it.
The end. 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.
|
|
|
