Too much on my mind...

...and too little time to blog about it, LOL! Right now I'm between two giant steps in my life, but I don't know where the other step locates. Not yet.

It must be somewhat inconvenient for readers to follow my blog. Sometimes I write even 3 posts per day and then it may take a week before I continue blogging. Sorry for that.

Right now I have been watching how our prime minister Mr. Vanhanen struggles with his statements like a worm in a hook. It amuses me. Frankly, I think he's alright but only become a little too arrogant lately.

Midsummer was a fiasco as far as the weather is concerned. Cold (+10 degrees), rainy days and almost nothing to do. Television is broadcasting reruns of reruns. Hell, I can't laugh with Frasier forever! I was hoping the forecast would have been faulty as it had been for two weeks now, but no: rain was forecast and rain we had. Rainy days in June... Not everybody loves a rainy day! Not this often at least. Sorry, Ray.

Ground hog zero day

This is my ultimate touch-down day. It's for me to know and you to find out. I may reveal it later in my blog, so be patient. This June I will never forget. Alas. Cold and rainy in so many ways.

It only can get better (can't get much worse, as John Lennon sang), the positive thoughts are needed now. And indeed, I was so prepared for this that I think I will get by just fine. Nothing's too certain though, but a good slap in the face wakes people up. And I have been sleeping a lot lately.

Maybe I'm ready to start another phase in my life. Just maybe. Take the lead, so to speak. Well, it's not that serious. By tomorrow I probably will get another issues to worry about, LOL! I'll see you in my next post, with a natural TIC-attitude as usual...

An inch is better than a mile in the wrong direction

Sometimes it's the small things that make your day. Like today. No matter how frustrated I have been at work lately, I shared a happy moment with a drink machine. It serves coke and other soda drinks.

I put my coins in (2 euros for those who wonder how much it costs) and received not one but two bottles of soda. Plus 20 cents in return. 0,5 l times two. It was a kind of payback time, because the very same machine stole my 2 euros twice - more than 2 years ago. As if I had forgotten it, LOL! Now the machine owes me one drink still, but the things are moving in the right direction.

Actually, this didn't cheer me up that much. But for the sake of giving a positive post for a change, this will do just fine!

Smek to the resque!

In Finland there has been wide discussion going on about pensions and the lack of labour in near future. Some people suggest that the retiring age should move up, all the way close to 70 years, while the others say it wouldn't change anything. People can't work that old, if they are not anymore fit to work. Also I have read about proposals according to which only the working years would be counted. Meaning if you start working at 30, you should work until you're 75 or something. Many highly educated people have to study for 10 years after high school graduation before they can start working, like some doctors and architects. It wouldn't sound fair to me, although I don't represent any of these.

But have I got the answer! Not just criticizing other people's ideas - I have some of my own. Go ahead and criticize this!

Ballet dancers have a low retiring age, 44 years. Likewise pilots, depending on airline company, retire under 60. Army officers do it at 55-60. Yes, I'm getting to the point right away. If a ballet dancer is all worn out at 44, she or he might still be very useful in other walks of life. I can't believe a 44-year-old ballet dancer equals to a 67-year-old factory worker when it comes to comparing their physics. What about their life expectancy after retirement?

What we could do, is to keep the 44 years as a maximum age for ballet dancers, 60 for pilots and army officer etc., and then send them back to school or unemployment office. That would give a plenty of new manpower reintroduced. It's another thing, whether anyone would accept any old and cranky army officer shouting in their work environment, LOL! A ballet dancer might easily do book-keeping or any other desk job, if his/her legs are busted. Hell, even some of the handicapped can work quite normally.

For example, I can't dream of doing the job I'm doing right now (apart from blogging obviously) at 60. No way. It feels hard for me to imagine doing this even at 50. Well, who knows what'll happen. I could retire next year, had I chosen to be a ballet dancer. Could I still change my profession? LOL! I have done a dozen or so different jobs during my life; should I have stayed in my first job - as a lawnmowerman in the city of Tampere? Actually, I saw some men close to 60 still doing it. Women too. Man, they owned the world if you asked them, but that's another story...

And yet another thing: men die approximately 7 years younger than men in Finland. It wouldn't harm to let men retire earlier than women. Maybe it's not equal, but dying younger isn't equal either.

Feel free to tip the government off about this. Any government basically...

Women gonna rice again! (Aikuisille naisille)

Are these the fist or the last signs of women ruling the world? At least it's what's happened in the world of rice krispies, LOL!

Check out the box, right corner. I have made a blow up of the green square I marked in the original box. It says in Finnish and Swedish that 30 g portion of rice krispies includes certain amounts of indredience mentioned in the picture and the percentage of GDA for a grown-up woman. Grown-up woman? WTH? Do the grown-up women only eat serials? Especially rice krispies by Kellogg's? What about grown-up men? What's my percentage? And, most of all, what about the kids? Should they be divided into girls and boys as well? And it's a family pack (perhepakkaus)!

This doesn't make sense to me. Then again, so few things do these days. But as soon as I had read this percentage table, I knew I had a new post coming. Good enjoyment while eating rice krispies!

Kick it in, Gladstone Gander!

This June has been a catastrophe to me financially. As if I needed something more, I got a bill from Sweden yesterday: 1135 crowns! I couldn't believe my eyes - where did this come from? A fake bill? Then I started to reminisce. Last Autumn as I brought my car back to Sweden once again, I passed through a couple of street toll stations, one of them extra because I got lost at some point. I calculated that it was worth 85 kronor to drive from Slussen to Solna.

From my bitter experience I knew now that I should pay myself in the web instead of waiting for a bill with extra cost to arrive. I checked the net immediately the following day, but I couldn't pay yet, because they hadn't collected the data from that month. I had to wait for two months or something. It also read that this new system would send me a normal bill, so I basically didn't have to worry about it. I kept on waiting and gradually forgot all about it.

My hassle with address change in Skatteverket may have had something to do with it, but this bill I got yesterday to my current Finnish address directly was the first one to have. With 1135 crowns to pay? The interest and the penalty fee had accrued month by month, and I wasn't notified at all! This is a hell of sum to pay for driving a car in Stockholm. What were they thinking there? The car hasn't been registered in Sweden for months now - and I'm not registered there either anymore. Not since last December. And I should not be blamed if Skatteverket has blown it up. I did everything by the book, and that should be enough in Sweden as well. Hell, especially in Sweden!

Naturally I sent a reclamation to Sweden this morning. Seems I'm making a habit of reclaiming, LOL! Actually, I'm not laughing here. I only hope that they have some kind of sense out there. Common sense would do. All this time after my move back to Finland I have tried to defend the Swedish here and what do I get in return: a kick in my teeth! That should teach me not to pamper our neighbors of the West.

History repeats itself: Another 3-0 result against Russia

Russia showed Finland how to play football yesterday in Helsinki. They also showed how to rumble. I mean those Russian hooligans who claim they are football fans. Luckily injuries were at minimum. 30 Russians and 5 Finns were arrested before the game. Must have been fun to come all the way to Helsinki and yet miss the game. By the way, there was a saying during the WWII that a Finn correlates 10 Russians. According to arrested people, a Finn correlates only 6 Russians these days, LOL!

It was such a sad game all in all. I didn't even bother to watch it after 2-0. The Russians made yet another goal, but the game had been over for a long time already. The Finns try so desperately to get into a major tournament that they have forgotten their basic skills and playing together. They should concentrate on the game at hand, not the points they need. Well, the Russian team is probably one of the best teams in Europe at the moment, so it's not a shame to lose to Russians. But still, Finland was much better against Germany, one of the all-time greats. What happened? Not much, LOL!

The picture quality of the channel TV5 (or VII5I) isn't that glorious. But it's free and I'm glad I didn't have to pay for that game. Not that I would have. Good picture quality doesn't necessarily mean good football quality.

Bowing to 747

This is such a stupid case that it's a natural source for my post at hand. I'm sure everyone agrees.

It was less than ten years ago, when we got a notification that after an accurate re-calculation our yard is sized only 747 square-meters. When we bought it, the size was 750 m². It had been that way ever since the yard had been zoned.

I got a bit mad. How come we lost 3 m² suddenly - we already had the smallest yard around (no Freudian slip remarks please, LOL!). One of our landmarks had slightly collapsed, like the tower of Pisa. My first thought was that it had caused the miscalculation error, because it was leaning towards our house. Well, that could the reason, but the authorities claimed that it was just due to the new advanced technology which made it possible to be more accurate than ever. Go figure.

I swallowed it, what else could I have done? But the information of our newly calculated yard-size hadn't reached the tax officials. When we got a yearly property tax payment, it still referred the yard size to 750 square-meters, and the cost was counted accordingly. Shit, that pissed me off!

As I have not always been fast in my moves, I made a reclamation of it only this year - almost ten years overdo! The claim to correct the fees we had paid already could extend no more than five years back. That pissed me off too. I did my thing anyway.

Well, I got a reply yesterday. Our records had been set straight. The only problem was that it was so little money in question that we will get nothing back. It was only around 10 cents per person per year to receive, and the lowest amount money to return is 5 euros. Our refund totalled 0,94 €. Bad luck. Well, at least we won't be charged for anything more than we actually own. That was the main thing.

They must have had fun at the tax office at the expense of my reclamation. Ok, let's be happy that even they can sometimes have a smile on their face. In a way, it was a win-win situation. At least I'm not pissed off anymore. About that matter I mean, LOL!

Count me in/out while playing the system

I wasn't aware of the Finnish vote counting system until late '93 when an old friend and a namesake of mine told me that. Thanks for sharing it! Ever since it's been common knowledge to me, but not for all I guess. Today I read from Hairy's post (link in the right column) that the Swedes have a different way of counting it. Kind of interesting, if you like boring stuff. Which I obviously do.

In Finland, we have a D'Hondt method in use. It's in quite common a use in several countries. The main idea of it is that the most voted person in a party gets all the party votes for him/herself. The second best gets the half of the whole pool of votes. The third gets a third and so on, until we have run out of candidates or votes.

This method seems to be widely critized. For example I remember one person getting almost 20000 votes but still didn't get in, whereas several persons who got under 10000 votes were elected instead. The person in question wasn't representing any major party, while the others got help from more popular fellow politicians.

When it comes to the results of the EU election in Finland, it was somewhat interesting. The absence of the left-wing is striking. I'm glad that the Green party got two competent representatives in. My candidate wasn't chosen but I don't care. I did my share anyway.

I can't understand why Sweden chose two Pirate Party members to represent themselves in EU parliament. To me it shows the same kind of devil-may-care attitude towards European Union as they have had with their ever-dropping currency. I had back flashes of European Song Contest behavior from last year, when this Swedish clown was mocking the contest by making an ass of himself. And the Swedes cheered. This looks like a similar situation.

New EU countries didn't vote eagerly. It seems evident that they are not ready to rumble. The concept of being an EU citizen hasn't properly materialized to most of them yet. Well, actually, that applies to many old EU members as well. These opinions coming from a mouth of a non-political loud-mouth, well, just might convince someone. I take no responsibility whatsoever if it does, LOL!

Oops! They did it again!

I have always been proud of my level of writing in Finnish. Yet I'm the first one to admit that I don't know everything. Still I'm eager to point out a finger at each and every mistake I come across in the printing media. It's partly because in my opinion they should know better their profession. However, for the most part it's because I'm still angry for not being chosen to study to become a reporter at university in Tampere. Decades ago. If they didn't let me in, what about these stupid reporters then? How did they got in, since they clearly don't even know how to write.

Yup, I have blown it as well, with a legendary 'slut station' in my Moved To Sweden blog. I'm not that clean anymore. Remember my two parking tickets from last week for instance. But still. My blog isn't actually a nationwide web tabloid. Come on now!

I have talked about this with Jaime, and he defends those poor bastards. They are so busy and under stress. Well, who isn't? I can understand small errors in a story, but doesn't anyone read and verify those titles? This is disappointing to me. Then again, what isn't, LOL!

To make an exception once more, I have cut a part of the web page to demonstrate my point of view. It's from Iltalehti, a Finnish tabloid which I read from time to time. I had to take a screenshot of it, because they might notice their error and correct it before you are reading this. That would give a stupid impression of me, don't you think?

Take a look at the blue square. It says: "Joka kolmas ilmaseksi katsomossa." That translates to "Every third air sex [happens] in an auditorium [of a football stadium]." Now, isn't that a sensation or what? Wait a minute - air sex - what is that? Is it like playing air guitar, only having air sex? Sex with air - like one of those notorious Michael Jackson's dance manoeuvres, LOL?

Anyway, it should say: "Joka kolmas ilmaiseksi katsomossa." That means "Every third [watching] free of charge in an auditorium [of a football stadium]." Just one 'i' missing and we have a completely new ball game here. And another mean and mocking post by Smek. Come to think of it, maybe I should be forever grateful for these funny mistakes. They kind of make my day. Every time.

Finnish Cuisine Delicacy VI: silli ja uudet perunat

This is something you normally can't find in any cook books or delicacy lists. Yet it's one of the most popular Summer dishes in Finland. I have a hunch that it's very common in Sweden too, and maybe in other countries as well, but being such a simple and modest dish it's not that much advertised. Correct me if I'm wrong.

po-tar-to po-tay-to

"Silli ja uudet perunat" means herring and fresh potatos (sill och nypotatis). Fresh meaning they have been picked only days before; not from last year's harvest. Old potatos won't do this time, so this is mostly a delicacy of each early Summer.

Normally it's convenient to add some "tilli" (dill/dill) there on the side. And of course some salad - preferably made of tomatos, cabbage, cucumber and such. Dill isn't present in the picture, because my wife doesn't like it and thus it's up to me to remember to buy it. Well, that's why it's not on my plate either (pictured). "Ruohosipuli" (shallot/gräslök) with "kermaviili" (sour cream/gräddfil) gives a nice extra touch to it. All you need then is some milk or sour milk to drink it with.

It's easy to cook fresh potatos. Remember not to peel them - washing will do. The peel is so slim and has most of the vitamins there. These potatoes take only 30-something minutes to cook. Just like with 'normal' potatoes, put water so much so it barely hides all potatos. No salt needed - that's old-fashioned and not healthy (besides you'll get the salt from herring anyway). Don't over-cook them. SIMPLE AS-S, LOL!

There is a good selection of several types of herring jars. This time ABBA has no musical associations. You can easily variate the dish by trying out different herrings. Well, the herring itself stays the same, but the sauce variates. Sometimes it's good to add some raw onion rings in the herring jar to give it more taste. It's not a bad idea to boil an egg to eat with the rest.

If you haven't tried this yet, please do. Now's the season for it!

A new fashion - a new shit?

As you probably noticed already, I have edited my banner. It's the first one of a kind that isn't just cut-and-pasted from a pic of mine. My artistic bullshit values are on display now, LOL!

Purple has been my favorite colour since my early twenties. Maybe it just grew on me by watching those fabulous colours on Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and Prince albums covers. Suddenly I realized that HELL, THIS IS MY COLOUR! It was used as a theme colour in my wedding too. Luckily my wife likes purple too!

Well, my oldie favorite colour was yellow. You can draw meaningful conclusions based on that, and all that shit. I'm not sure if I ever get back to yellow again. I'm not even sure of if I wanted to. Purple is so cool... like vanilla to me.

Two-fold-idiotism idioms on sale

Almost 25 years of having a driving license and then getting two parking tickets in one week. For the first time in your life. Amazing! I feel like an idiot.

Last Saturday I was visiting Tampere with my family. We knew there was a sushi restaurant in the city centre. I let the others off at the restaurant and continued to find me a parking place.

I found one very closeby. I went to the parking meter and started putting money there. It said that at 2,80 € you could stay for an hour there. Quite expensive but I put 3 euro coins there. The machine threw up the coins every time! If 2,80 were a maximum, it could have given me 20 cents back, or swallow the whole of 3€, but no; the coins ran through the machine as if they had been forbidden currency or something.

Then I put in my mastercard because it said that it was a valid means of payment. It only prompted: "Take the card off." No PIN query, nothing. I still pushed the 'print out' button and it started printing. But the time in the note was present time.

This morning I sent a reclamation to the city of Tampere. I have already paid the bill I got, but still. There's not much hope of getting my money back and setting my record straight, meaning my increasing criminal record, LOL! Well I'm not actually laughing, but you might be.

I have been using parking houses lately in the city, so I had no idea what's going on. It came to me only afterwards that maybe I should have pressed that green button several times to get more minutes for parking. But the printing started immediately, so how could I have done that?

I feel like an idiot. Just give me a third ticket and my driving license becomes one endangered species. This is giving more shades to my spectrum of state of mind. In a day (read: week) or two I'll get over it. A piece of good news wouldn't harm me severely at this point though...

Yet another (un)success story?

It's been a long time since I previously have been interested in drawing. Yup, one of my unsuccesful hobbies. I have no idea why I'm putting effort to it again. But it seems to be happening that way.

In the early 90's, I created a bird character. It still looks ok to me, but especially what this character is all about intrigued me. Still does.

I sent some of them to a Finnish comic book, Pahkasika (warthog). The level of the drawing quality in Pahkasika had gone down so much so I gathered it was my chance to make it. Well, I was wrong. Thanks but no thanks, and have a great life elsewhere. And all that jazz.

My character made his debut finally in our self-produced cassette recording in 1996. It had a comic strip included in the inside cover. Then my character disappeared in haze.

Last Autumn in Solna, when I hadn't too much to do, I tried again. This time I managed to draw the first coloured version of my character ever, but my interest ran out shortly. At least it had colours now - final colours - that I don't know yet.

This year when I was giving a finishing touch to me-and-my-brother's music quiz project, my bro suggested that this (good) old character could be a mascot for the game. After a looong persuasion of myself I took a pen in my hand and continued with the character. It's there now.

But it didn't end there. For a while, I was planning to put it in the net, but from there it might be too easy to steel. On the other hand, the circulation would be free and world-wide. But I'm doing it in Finnish. Some of the jokes I put in the mouth of my character can't be translated. So much lost in translation to carry on in English, sadly.

I have been dreaming of drawing a comic strip book for years. I had the character, but lacked the substance. Lately I have been writing down some of my new ideas for the character. So even that one might materialize some day. Wouldn't put my money on it, although I may have to, LOL!

What's the name of the character, you may ask. Well, I keep it a secret for now. It will quarantee me a fake feel of security if nothing else. I tried to rename it, but all the new suggestions existed in Google already. Man, I'm beginning to wonder if Google has an algorithm which lists on-the-fly made-up web pages and results to any word you can possibly think of...

The character will have my 'charm' and wit, of course. You decide if that's going to be a success story or not. Yes, still fighting against obscurity. Maybe blogging per se is a sign of mediocrity, brrr, perish the thought!

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe...

I'm a non-political person. I vote individuals, not parties. In that sense, you might call me an irresponsible voter.

This weekend all the countries inside European Union are voting their candidates for members of European Parliament (MEP). Interest in election varies in different countries between low and very low. They make important decisions over there in Brussels, but the man in the street really has no clue of what's happening. Laws are complex and difficult to find out what they actually tell about.

In my opinion, parties are obsolete. In Finland there is a party for Finland-Swedish people. Is it a left or right wing party? You could say it's in the right because Finland-Swedish are usually loaded. What about the green party? I think it would require a third dimension at least to fit all these modern parties on a scale these days. Why wouldn't a party in the right/left take care of green values? Or do they use it as an excuse to skip all nature-related issues and leave them to the green party?

There is a relatively new and small party, True Finns. I don't like their extreme right-wing attitude by some of them, but at least they are talking in a way I comprehend. Just to be a bitch, I thought to vote them this weekend. If I manage to get myself to vote, that is. I have several reasons.

  • I don't want to give my vote to the center party. The prime minister has lost my trust some time ago.

  • I don't want to vote social democrats. I hate their chairwoman's attitude. Also the president gives me the creeps nowadays.

  • Nor do I give my vote to any other major or minor parties, no priest nor celebrities as my choice.

  • If I were as sensible as I should, I would vote the green party. I dislike their chairwoman as well (not as much as I used to though), but I have to admit that their contenders have earned my respect along the way.

  • There is an election database machine in the net (valmaskin/vaalikone). You may call it as a lottery machine as well. Anyway, I did my choices about the EU issues that were selected topics in the machine. Then it compared my results with all Finnish MEP candidates and gave me a list. The person number two i.e. which had the second best matching answers is my final choice. It was a True Finn.
I don't expect anyone to follow my decision. Maybe it's foolish to talk about your political orientation - in Finlad it's almost a taboo. Well, not for me, but I respect other practise too. It's interesting if any of my friends reveals his/her political view. I automatically take the other side! If someone takes the middle, I'll choose anything but middle. But I'm not that serious about it anyway. Hopefully no-one gets hurt while my making fun of politics...

I have voted maybe all parties by now. I'm not sure about Finland-Swedish, but nothing stops me doing that next time. Maybe. Like I said, I'm irresponsible when it comes to voting, LOL!

Without a net

I'm not talking about living without Internet, God forbid, LOL! I'm referring to my way of creating things. It's like balancing on a tight-rope without a safety net. Let me explain.

It doesn't matter if it's painting, drawing, composing, writing (blogs, lyrics, books) - even talking - when I start I often have no idea how it's going to end. I just start doing it. Not too much planning, just developing the idea along the way. The plan comes later and somehow the pieces seem to fit. I usually land on my feet with my creations, but lately I have began to worry about it. What if I won't? Maybe it's the risk that excites me and pushes me do something new and unforeseeable. I don't know for sure. All I know is that I have always been like this.

I had a recurring conversation with my wife about my so called creative hobbies. I told her that my constant failures in art make me so depressed. She asked: "Why do you want to be famous?" I said that I only want to be respected in things I value myself in me. Yes, I've blogged about this before - sorry about that. She said that not anyone can be that good in what he's doing; I should accept that. Well, I don't want to be anyone - admitting that would kill me.

Clearly my wife can't see my potential, or maybe she has seen enough evidence in our 14+ years together to make a statement like that. It's good to have someone to talk to anyway. Someone who has the balls (although in this case doesn't, LOL!) to tell me things like that straight in my face. I appreciate that anyway, and indeed it gives me power to try harder. Reverse psychology..?

Like this post, I didn't really know how this would end (I came up with the last sentence less than one hour ago basically while chatting with a mate. It seemed somehow fitting so I added it there). The conclusion might be that perhaps I really should plan what I do. Then it might be more acceptable by other people too. And boring to me. Well, that's something I'm not too willing to accept. I don't want to compromise anything in my art - or called it crap if you will. It's either my way or no way... d'oh!

Tomorrow never knows Tomorrow knows, but never tells.

When the going gets cold, the cold gets going..?

Just realized this week that the half-life (puoliintumisaika) of Finnish Summer weather is two days. On Sunday we had +28 degrees Celsius, on Tuesday it was +14° C, and forecast shows +7 degrees for today. It was +4° C this morning, so it looks like the theory has almost already been verified. I'm looking forward to experiencing the upcoming next weekend. With Winter clothes on.

Bossed around

Yesterday it happened: Bruce Springsteen and his band played a concert in Tampere. It was probably worth every penny cent, but it just isn't my thing. It's kind of boring music actually. The whole center of Tampere was jammed, so I didn't go there at all. We had had plans on going to a terrace near Ratina stadium for a drink or two and listen to Boss' music for free. We skipped that too, thinking of how many other people had had the same thought - especially when it was written in a newspaper as well.

Today another boss paid a visit to Finland. Mr. Putin, a real boss. Well, I don't want to say much about him. Things are not moving fast in Russia, that's all. So many serious news around that I begin to wish to see some light-hearted Summer-news for a while...

Save your "breath" :)

I keep wondering why I'm so critical against green values. I enjoy all kind of saving, not the least energy. Here's how I'm welcoming green values at the moment:

  • I have bought a lot of energy-saving light bulbs. They make a lot of sense.

  • I have started separating and composting bio waste. Better late than never.


That's it. The list could be longer I know. Could be shorter too. I'm thinking about getting a heat pump which should give huge saves in electricity costs.

I have following tongue-in-cheek suggestions for energy-saving. Sometimes things like these can be realized later on.

The temperature of the highway road is 5 - 20 degrees, maybe more, higher than that of air's. Somehow we could get the heat stored as energy. The dark roads are easy to find even in Finland.

People fart a lot. More vegetables the merrier, LOL! Someone could manufacture a device that would be installed in everyone's butt. It would gather the gas in a container. No more smell of shit around - instead free gas available. Containers could be taken to a factory that burns the fart gas and thus creates more free energy.

_______________________

A joke I came up with yesterday:
Who is the fastest guitar alive? Kimi Hendrix

One-way ticket to the blue

I used to be without a criminal record, as far as I'm concerned. Well, not anymore. In many TV crime series some people are regarded as "clean as a whistle - not even a parking ticket". I used to be like that, until yesterday.

To end this hot weekend, both literally and metaphorically, I got a parking ticket. Hell, my first one! Admitted, I could have gotten one several times before but my luck seemed to have run out. 30 euros for basically nothing, argh!

We were attending to a track and field sports hobby of our daughter's. I had never before noticed the sign telling everyone should put their parking disc visible in the windshield of the car. That's why I hadn't put it there (and it didn't weigh a ton).

In the middle of the event, one spokesperson of the club suddenly cried: "Attention everyone, there are meter maids in the parking area! All should have a parking disc set in a car!" A group of parents, including me, rose quickly and started to run towards their cars. There were two meter maids, although one of them was a man, hurrying in attaching those tickets now that they had been 'caught in the act'.

Too late for me though. I was one of those unlucky bastards that got the ticket. Like a woman checking her ticket in a car next to mine said: "Myöhäistä rypistää...", as I was putting my parking disc where it belonged. She referred to a famous Finnish saying "It's too late to crumple when you've got shit in your pants". That was my direct translation and it may exist in other form in other countries. She was painfully right. The ticket was there and it wasn't going anywhere.

To demonstrate how it's released in the news these days, I attached a pixelized picture of the ticket. We all have often realized how informative those pics can be, LOL!

Later I got to thinking that it was kind of wrong that only part of us got the ticket when all of us had been breaking the law. Naturally I wouldn't think like this, had I avoided getting the ticket.

Still I'm mad. I can't help it. Here comes that rainy day feeling again. The end.

Who's factory?

It was reported today that a Finnish rock group Eppu Normaali has won the rights over the usage of 'Akun Tehdas' and a company called Akun Tehdas has lost the right. The loser pays everything and the winner stays in the ring. Oh, what poetry!

I'm stupefied. Old Ramones-style punk rock band has gone pinstripe. They used to mock everything, now they are so touchy that it almost makes me laugh. Like I noted, punk's dead, and what we have left is a bunch of old men. This band is a rich institution in Finland - one they were attacking against in their twenties. Nowadays they have accepted facts and learnt how to play the game.

Well, I have always liked Eppu Normaali and I guess I always will. But this trial hassle seems quite ridiculous. Especially if you know the background behind the name. 'Akun Tehdas' means Aku's Factory - Aku being the name of their drummer. It's common knowledge that their 2nd guitarist has an eternal love affair with the CCR music. They have an LP called "Cosmo's Factory", Cosmo being a nickname of their drummer. So, it's not difficult to draw conclusions. Even the record's cover art has been copied from that CCR's album, so who really owns and what? This must have been forgotten along the way I guess. They have mocked two more CCR album names, in the name of humour or lack of own creative ideas.

In case Eppu Normaali reads this post and thinks about sueing me: I didn't write this; it was my swamp rock guitar idol John E. Horny - a secret twin brother of John C. Fogerty, LOL! Well, it wasn't...

Crowded houses

What a busy weekend we had! Saturday morning we rushed to attend to our daughter's first spring festival, or how you call the celebration of the term ending? Well, it was quite nice a happening. We were placed unfortunately close to a speaker which was turned on and off without warnings. The person responsible for audio system wasn't too professional if you ask me. Otherwise it was lovely.

From there we drove to the city of Akaa almost immediately. One of my wife's godchildren was graduating, so we really had to hurry to get there. It's only natural I guess, but the people from two families were clearly segregated, like in South-Africa years ago. They were sitting in two groups, on the both sides of the house. When I hastily visited the other group, I got remarks that could be interpreted as bitching. Only the star of the event was freely mingling among the crowd. The house was packed although most of us got to spend time outdoors. Luckily it didn't rain.

It's not for me to judge, but... Well, the graduate is a very tall man nowadays. Everyone (bar me) was joking about his height and it just didn't stop. His mother was the worst. She's proud of her son, no doubt, but this kind of one-subject conversation starts bugging me after a while. I think the graduate himself is also up to here of hearing envy remarks about his height. Well, his parents are short, maybe it's worth mentioning about two dozen times a day then..? And the guests had nothing else to talk about, clearly revealing that they really didn't know the graduate that well...

It's almost like if a woman graduate were praised after her good looks only. Nothing to do with her achievement under celebration. No compliments about her brain. Wouldn't that be rude in some unintentional way? Or, if people were praising how beautiful breasts a graduate had? Yup, it's the Smek in total action, but in spite of my overdoing isn't that so?

Well, it was a beautiful day all Saturday and everything seemed to roll nicely. +25 degrees was another topic of the day. Sunday was welcoming us with a 28-degree-in-the-shade weather. Can't get much more Summer in one day. It was time to do some house painting. I have done painting for a living when I was about 20. I developed exasperation for solvents and I haven't been a fan of painting ever since. Over-exposure for turpentine did the trick. Painting outdoors with latex paint isn't that bad, so no more murmur about it.

Then an obligatory manual lawn-mowing session. In the heat it's a bitch but it was time. A lot of yellow dandelions were blooming all over the yard. They look nice for a while, but basically they are weeds (not trying to create a tenuous link to Hairy's current post, LOL!).

I had been digging and constructing a terrace in our backyard with my wife. It's been an on/off project for some time now and we had planned on proceeding with it. We laid tiles on the ground. The result looked ok. It remains unfinished, but it's come a long way now.

My wife invited one of our neighbors for BBQ'ing sausages. It meant that it was time to go shopping for more sausages. We decided to ride a bike to the 'city' of Nokia. Yeah, it was Whit Sunday (helluntai/Pingstdagen) and most of the shops were closed. They had recently broadened the opening hours in Finland to include Sundays, except for official holidays. And this was one of them. Siwa shops are usually open on Sundays, but the nearest Siwa wasn't. Their slogan "Surprisingly close" turned into "Surprisingly closed" in my mind, as we drove to a kiosk which was open. Good for us, good for them - it was pretty crowded there.

I have advertised it before and I'm gonna advertise it again: Kabanossi is the best class A sausage you can get for barbequeing. It's well worth investing, forget the cheap flour-power sausages. LOL!

In the evening I felt nauseous. I had sunbathed without a cap part of the day, so a sunstroke was only a stroke away. I slept bad, waking up feeling not too good. I should use a cap at all times in the Sun. Another thing bothering me were the allergic reactions to hays. It's normally not until midsummer before I start getting those symptoms, but now it seems that the nature is ahead of its time. The possibility of drawbacks is evident and almost inevitable. Almost. Indeed, rain and cold has been forecast already for this week!

Punk's not dead!

Yes, the title doesn't ring a bell to anyone outside Finland, so let's give a hand. "Punk's not dead" was/is a slogan used in badges in the 70´s/80´s. If referred to punk rock of course, desperately ignoring the truth. While 'punkki', which is a Finnish translation of 'punk' means also a mite. And mites are starring in this episode of 'Alive in Finland' - dead and alive. So, watch out, Grissom, LOL!

Yup, it's the red mites (Dermanyssus gallinae/lintupunkki/ fågelfästing = my own translation in Swedish) in question this time. No more silver fishes anymore, although I have seen one in our house too. Dermanyssus gallinae is a mite that is detected close to birds' nests. According to a quick browse on wiki pages, it's difficult to get rid of, if you have a garden or even a yard.

A couple of weeks ago I was chopping wood into small pieces in our backyard. There is a birdhouse in a tree closeby with a bird nesting there, but I didn't pay any attention to it. It had probably gotten used to the noise we were making by then.

In the very same evening, I felt like something itching in my ankle. I thought that a spider or an ant had climbed in my rubber boot and bitten me. It was a long way to climb and land, for I had my huge black Nokia rubber boots on - kind of classics around here, if you will. It was a nasty bite but it was alright. These things happen.

Then in the following week I started to get more bites. This time in my knee, upper thigh... you know why I began to get worried, LOL! Luckily it stopped there. The bites itched like crazy, and I had to scratch them a lot. It took a whole week before the itching calmed down. It didn't help much putting some cream on the bites, but I was willing to try out everything. Spider and ant bites never felt like this, so I got pretty much confused.

Then I read about these red mites. Everything started making sense. Well, everything related to this anyway. I'm 95% sure that it was those mites that caused those evil bites on me. They will die in a week which explains why they/it never took a bite of my balls... No more I'm that excited about getting birds nest in our yard.

Don't get me wrong, birds are lovely. Yet it's amazing that after living more than 12 years in that house of ours, it had never happened until now. There's probably more to come, if we won't get a cat as a pet. That's even more unlikely to happen because of allergies, sadly, so I might have to get used to this possibility of another red mite incident...