Plops, Polyps and Fig.
There is a fun advertising campaign in Finland for the Plussa Card which is one of those 'you give us your shopping habit info and we give you discounts' cards. A guy dressed up as a big orange ball in what has to be the easiest acting gig ever attempts to seduce potential customers by smiling and saying "Plop plop, plop plop plop...." and watching other orange balls undergo mitosis. He charms a woman in one of the commercials and a few weeks later you see her in a Ms. Plop suit and conclude that she has been assimilated into the Plussa borg. It's cute in a Taster's Choice serial romance commercial from the early 90s kind of way and, similarly some of the best entertainment to be had on TV. It is rather annoying when in the infectious "plop plop plop.." creeps into your mind and stays there like a bad Barry Manilow jingle. Between the Plop Man and the "Syökää kanaa!" pig from McDonald's, I'm going to be forced to subject myself to a week of Supertramp and Christopher Cross to dislodge them.
Today I saw Polyp Man™ in Ignatz' blog and immediately thought of Mr. Plop. Polyp Man™ is the mascot of Colorectal cancer awareness at the American Cancer Society. Polyp Man's tagline is "Get the test. Get the polyp. Get the cure." Shouldn't they reorder that to put the polyp first? Polyp Man™ gives new meaning to 'butt ugly'. I will expect to see the book I was a Rectal Polyp! someday laying out the evil Polyp Man™ underworld of the ACS in the style of Sedaris' Santaland Diaries which exposed the horrors of living the life as a Macy's Elf at Christmastime. I should think that Mr. Plop has a promising future as a rectal polyp when Plussa changes campaigns. Instead of saying "Plop" he could go to all the 'extended care' homes and say "Polyp!" over and over again until folks would go get tested just to escape the talking anal polyp. He could also be the new Mr. Fig Newton who, in the 80s, spawned a dance club craze inspired by the commercials where he danced like a sober white guy while singing "ooey gooey rich and chewy" in brown tights and balloonish brown fig costume. Who are these guys who dress up in tights, smile and dance around to get our attention. Is this the natural progression of clown evolution? Is there a conspiracy of advertising vampires and the manipulation of the populace via catchy jingles and guys in tights? Hmmmm....I feel used. Plop, plop plop PLOP!.
31 Mar 2004 at 0:29, Helsinki
American Ocean
Pimp, Day 112, East St. Louis, Illinois.
This month's issue of LFI has a breathtaking collection of photos by Aaron Huey who walked 3349 miles from Encinitas, California to Coney Island, New York with his dog Cosmo and a Leica M6. I've seen quite a few collections of photographs attempting to paint a cohesive portrait of America and I'm prepared to say that if the whole collection are as good as the teaser in LFI, American Ocean blows the rest of them away.
Huey was only 25 when he got sponsored by Kodak and Leica to do this trip. Given that he apprenticed with a National Geographic photographer prior to this project, my more cynical side suspected that he was just a kid with all the right connections and a bit of talent. However, when I started reading the journals he kept while he was on the road it quickly became clear that he's no poseur. Take some time and read them as he has a particular gift for telling the story that he went in search of for 154 days. Anyone who can walk through East St. Louis at any hour of the day isn't just doing this to make a name for himself.
East St. Louis is where you go after 3am to get booze at the drive-thru liquor store where the cashier takes your money with one hand while holding a gun at you with the other hand. The city is so poor and bankrupt that they didn't have garbage collection for at least 5 years. Dead bodies from St. Louis regularly turn up under the highway overpasses. The danger is the same for people of all colours, too. East St. Louis is a place to be avoided in a car and definitely not walked through. I particularly enjoy his astute observation of how close abject poverty and the suburban middle-class are to each other and the jarring reality it creates for those who notice. If Huey could not only walk through unscathed, but make friends and photograph some of them then he is a truly gifted storyteller with his camera and pen.
Day 111 NW St. Louis to South St.Louis
The rest of the day is a series of wrong turns. I walk through a wasteland. 2 hours of abandoned buildings. Empty streets. Where are all the people. Pockets of very rich. Pockets of very poor. Large blocks of deserted buildings. Strange city. Where are the people? Walk under the famous arch. It had to be done, it is the gateway to the East. So an official beginning for the final push. A looooong final push. Walk along the river. It is flooding from a week of rain. Down by the rail yards I walk 2 miles of world class grafitti, 20 feet high and 2 miles long. The most impressive thing I have seen in St.Louis. Worth staying the extra day for this alone. It is a better gallery than any museum here.
I've driven coast-to-coast a dozen or so times and I've driven the length of route 66. You can't get the idea of how vast the US is from an airplane. America isn't the place that is portrayed in the movies no matter how seductive the fantasy. America is a gigantic place in great need of a storyteller like Huey. Apparently no publisher has picked up his book which I find hard to believe since it's just amazing work. I really want to see this collection along with the stories in a finished, bound book.
Buy two, keep your leg for free
Rumpled, armless mannequins. Maybe the new rage in mobiles is something like "New! Not just hands-free, but arm-free!" in some masochistic urban chic style or it's a pun on the shirt being so expensive that it "costs an arm and a leg" but if you buy two, you can keep the leg for free. :)
The scenery is here, wish you were beautiful
I'm a big fan of Martin Parr and I was lucky enough to get a boxed copy of his retrospective postcards last year. Parr is an avid collector of postcards himself and has published several collections of them which have been reissued in paperback recently: Boring Postcards USA, Boring Postcards and the new Bliss : Postcards of Couples and Families collected by Martin Parr.
I have a small collection of postcards I've found over the years and wonder what people will make of them in 50 years. The postcard is one of the most underappreciated art forms, especially nowadays with email and 'e-cards' making people who take pen to paper and lick a postage stamp a rare breed. Postcards of hotels and motels and restaurants and diners are fascinating in their composition, their optimism and the message they attempt to convey to the present as well as to the future. And they are fun to collect as well as being an easily concealed addiction that doesn't require frequent dusting. American Postcard Art has quite a nice assortment of postcards to browse if not all that unusual or ecclectic. I've also been an active participant in the postcards for mom project since I think it's a pretty fun idea to have people from all around the world send your mother postcards with recipes and comics and whatnot on them. I'd love to see the collection put up online after they decide to end the project.
A fabulous book recently published by Nemo, Terveisiä Kaikille! Postikortteja Suomesta, is filled with wacky and weird technicolour postcards from all around Finland from the 1960s through the late 1990s. [I will note here that the book is only 12euro down at the main post office shop while they last.] I'm hopeful that there might be a forthcoming volume of older cards as well. There are no drive through trees, no carhenge, no jackalope or world's most giant pecan postcards but that can always be fixed. There are, however, plenty of reindeer as you head north. Finland would be a perfect place for the world's largest reindeer or most gigantic bit of salmiakki. What about a Rye Palace fashioned after the legendary Corn Palace?! :) Build it and the postcards will come. I've been putting off a visit to the Korttien Talo [house of cards/postcard museum] up in Hämeenlinna, a city about 50 miles north of Helsinki, until the weather warms up a wee bit more and the castle and other attractions have longer opening hours.
So many tiles, so little time
Ambrosia Software has released yet another beautifully crafted and utterly addictive game for OS X, Aki Mahjong. The design, background music and levels of difficulty are delightful. Hours upon hours of eye-crossing fun.
kittos kaikille
Last night was the award ceremony for the Finnish blogistan awards, the Kultainen Kuukkeli, The Golden Google. I went and dragged Jarkko with me since I knew that I'd be the oddball in a room full of people I didn't know but I wanted to see the show anyway. The place was filled with the young Finnish hipnorati and I think I know now how it must feel to be a python person unexpectedly winding up at a perl party where everyone knows everyone else but you. :) The ceremony was very well done; the announcers, the poet with the finnish palindromic poem, the awards, and overall organisation were top-notch. Many thanks to the people who made it all possible and so polished.
In spite of the fact that I shouldn't have qualified for an award [if I read the rules correctly, I'm not Finnish] my blog recieved a number of nominations for the best blog in the non-finnish language category. I'm still surprised since I figured only my family, friends and people I pay read the stuff I publish here. So, to whomever nominated this blog you have my most sincere thanks as it was very flattering just to be nominated.
Snacks of America Demystified
Chicken? Are you a man or you an elf?. I see this van around quite a lot. Next time they should use a bigger marker and write backwards so the car ahead can read it in the rear view mirror. :)
The Morning News has a brilliant article titled Unexplained Snacks of America written by an Australian who has a few observations and guesses about a some mysterious American foods. This coming from the land of vegemite is a bit amusing. :)
Americans tend to assume that 99.9% of the population of the planet have a deep, broad knowledge of American popular culture and for the most part few disappoint us in that assumption. Finns, including my own husband, know more at times about my own culture than I do. I find that I take a near absurd pleasure in explaining things to Jarkko that he hasn't ever seen, like 'Rooty tooty fresh and fruity'. Suddenly, somewhere, a bunch of Americans just got a craving for breakfast at midnight at Denny's. :) The world gets innundated with American TV, movies, books and cartoons so I always feel dreadfully exposed and dull by comparison to my European friends. It's like a woman who gets shagged on the first date; the mystery is gone. I have a giddy glee in seeing that the popular culture machine hasn't given up all the little things that make life in America and that some enigma still remains.
The author, Matt Roden, makes some very good observations and I have only a few small bits to add to his explanations of the unexplained. :)
- Grits ~ Grits are, most assuredly, a food found in the southern US, south of the Mason-Dixon line and as far west as Texas. I've seen boxes of 'instant grits' as far north as St. Louis. Grits are also known as hominy grits and less often grit-corn. Hominy is ground corn separated from the hull and germ. It is ground corn [ though i've also had wheat grits ] cooked in a vat of salted, boiling milk. It's like a corn porridge served with butter and milk or cream. There is also the expression, "Kiss my grits", which was made popular by the TV show Alice in the 1970s, but us yankees have no idea what that really means. I mean, ok, she was saying "Kiss my ass", but does that mean that grits taste like ass? Some would tend to agree with that assessment. Hollywood doesn't have a clue what grits are either so this is likely why it hasn't been exported via the usual channels just yet.
- Hush Puppies ~ Curse you for reminding me of one of my favourite foods! :) Hush puppies are deep-fried cornmeal batter. Again, this is mostly in the South and in parts of the Midwest, like St. Louis. Where did the name come from? Well...the more colourful explanation is that after hunting, fishing and eating a big meal, folks would toss the cornmeal bits to the dogs, calling, "Hush, puppies!" You can, of course, add a nice southern drawl for extra flair. The UK has fish and chips and the southern half of the US has catfish and hush puppies.
- Tums ~ My father used to eat these by the pound. They are, essentially, flavoured chalk. An antacid for the tummy, a.k.a. the tum tum. They are now marketed as a 'calcium supplement' for women who want to avoid osteoperosis. Not much fun as a candy goes.
- Mr. Pibb ~ Not Pibbs. Mr. Pibb was Coca-Cola's competition for the Dr. Pepper market for crappy, sugary, not quite root beer. If you want real root beer, those yankees with good taste drink IBC Root Beer which probably hasn't made it into the tinsel town marketing machine yet either. There is one soda fountain still operating in North St. Louis, the Crown Candy Kitchen, but few are left these days since most folks just belly up for the super-size coke at the McDonald's drive-thru.
- Collard Greens ~ Collard greens are another very southern menu item. I'm starting to get the idea that the South needs a better PR guy in Hollywood. Collard, derived form colewort, is another word for Kale but collard greens these days can be a mixture of kale, spinach, cabbage and other green leaves. They are boiled in a big pot with fatback, i.e. pork bacon fat and served with corn bread and black-eyed peas. Only southerners eat this stuff as the smell is enough to kill a northern yankee at 40 paces.
- Pork rinds ~ *ding*ding* A bag of gristle is a 100% correct answer. Pork rinds are just pork skin, sometimes a bit of seasoning, cooked in the fryolator and munched while watching sports with a cold Bud. Accept no substitutes that aren't genuine pork skin. Again, a southern treat especially loved by former president Clinton.
- Clark Bar ~ Better than the Butterfinger candybar, the Clark bar gets a bad rap. The Clark bar was, apparently created long before the 1950s in one of those romantic rags to riches stories that few immigrants experience anymore. It's interesting that Necco [the company who make all those valentine candy hearts] bought the Clark bar as they're right across the street from MIT and people always said that the factory is right over the particle accelerator. So, think of the Clark bar as the closest you'll get to MIT. :)
- Snapple ~ *ding*ding* Fruit juice with a good marketing team is an astute answer. Marketing in the US is a fight club all of it's own. I lived in Boston, which is right in Snapple marketing central. They dumped all the 100% juice flavours like cranberry and have gone into the yuppie GMO fruit flavours. They're a lot like Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream which is good, occasionally brilliant, but it's the marketing that makes them so popular. And don't blame TV for making you eat a cream cheese crust pizza...ick! :)
I hope he does another of these and I may just do a version of unexplained Finnish foods just for the fun of trying to explain mämmi without using certain words to describe the visual and the tactile senses. :)
Power Point Pulpit
More Kamppi craneporn...
I noticed that an article, Netscape Co-Founder's 12 Reasons for Growth of Open Source, about Marc Andreessen's comments last week at an Open Source in Government conference was making the rounds on the net. The 12 points spoken to a crowd of the willing to believe are mostly recycled rhetoric from the dot com heyday when people would say that computers could make monkies fly out of their ass and they'd get a press release and a call from a Valley Venture Capitalist who was ready to cut a check. I get annoyed with talking heads who proclaim that open source will 'prevail'. I mean, what are they expecting, angels on horseback with Carmina Burana playing dramatically in the background to signal victory? It already has prevailed and will continue to do so.
Open source evangelism in government and elsewhere has taken on a religious quality with all the drawbacks of religion and none of the promised benefits like eternal life or 80 virgins awaiting you after you die on your keyboard while trying to figure out where CVS ate your patch. Seems like a raw deal to me. The large majority of software users don't really give a rats ass where the software comes from or how it's licensed as long as it works for what they need. Since Andreessen's power point pulpit was aimed at bureaucrats, perhaps the hackneyed isn't quite so familiar to them, but a couple of the comments were unusual. I suppose I'm just really tired of the rhetoric of social software this and open software that. I have a laptop that runs an OS that is partly opensource and partly proprietary. Why do the open source pundits continue to feel the need to pitch 'we will prevail/dominate' when there seems to be an equilibrium of open and commercial software coming. I see this as the best of both worlds.
- The Internet is powered by open source. ~ This is not entirely true. The internet is a big place where the networks are run by proprietary routers/network hardware and operating systems. Much of the rest of the internet is a mixture of commercial and open source hardware and software. The whole 'powered by' tagline is so 1997 that it hurts.
- The Internet is the carrier for open source. ~ Carrier isn't really the right word here. Yes, the internet facilitated faster development over the years, but that has always been the case even before open source was a big technology buzzword. Open source is also distributed via CDROM and DVD.
- The Internet is also the platform through which open source is developed. ~ Platform is commonly defined as the hardware and software of your computer, e.g. OS X on a Mac is a platform. Calling the internet a platform is essentially meaningless. Perhaps what he was intending to convey is that open source often runs on a wide variety of platforms.
- It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software. ~ This is one of those cargo cult mantras that hasn't ever been definitively proven. Crap software is still crap no matter if it's closed or open source and there is plenty of both to go around.
- Open source benefits from anti-American sentiments. ~ I'd really like to know what he meant by this. Over the past 10 years, roughly 75% or more of the major contributors to Perl have been people who are not American. I know most of them and while they aren't anti-American they aren't, well, they weren't born in the US. What does anti-Americanism have to do with software? Does he think all proprietary software comes from the US?
- Incentives around open source include the respect of one's peers. ~ Yeah, there's an incentive, sure. That and 3 euro will get you a cup of coffee. Jarkko spent 3.5 years as the Perl pumpkin and we've both been doing stuff in Perl circles for almost a decade now. We're famous among tens of people. There have been a few bottles of whisky for 5.8 and 5.8.1 from the usual thoughtful suspects, but it's not a big geek love-in. You have to do this work because you are a sicko who gets off on spending 12 hours on fixing a bug whether or not you get 'respect' in the form of a 200 email thread full of flames and rants about how your patch sucks.
- Open source means standing on the shoulders of giants. ~ Yes, but unless you are on the top, the view is always going to be someone elses ass. There are no 'giants' in open source, just regular people who aren't very keen on what Joe Johnston calls 'starfuckers'...and then there's ESR.
- Servers have always been expensive and proprietary, but Linux runs on Intel. ~ Intel is proprietary. Linux also runs on Sun, HP and other proprietary hardware. NetBSD runs on nearly everything, cheap, expensive or ancient. Solaris is also free for non-commercial purposes. I just don't know what the big deal is about that bullet point.
- Embedded devices are making greater use of open source. ~ Like RFID tags? I find it rather disconcerting that this was said to a group of government folks. "Your Orwellian future -- Powered by Linux!"
- There are an increasing number of companies developing software that aren't software companies. ~ Yes, but a lot of those companies are developing software with open source tools for internal use only. I suspect that companies are using whatever software that fits the job rather than making a political statement about open source.
- Companies are increasingly supporting Linux. ~ They are, but mostly only in the server market, not in the desktop market. Until someone can make the Linux version of OS X, don't bet on that really happening in large numbers.
- It's free. ~ It's free to download and install, yes, but that's where the freeness ends. There are a whole load of costs associated with software that goes far, far beyond the purchase price. Microsoft doesn't make it's money on licensing, it makes it on support and training contracts and other parts of the puzzle. Companies who buy Aeron chairs for each workstation probably aren't going to be bothered to buy MS Windows for the PCs when it comes bundled as an 'enterprise solution' that most employees will already be familiar with. I'll bet the guys from the Pentagon who pay $15,000 for a toilet seat were snoozing in the back row.
There are some interesting licensing and IP issues with government databases and the systems they run on, but when credit card companies have more information than the government does as well as people giving their information away to places like Orkut for reselling to marketers, I don't think the software is ultimately the problem or the solution rather the policies that regulate the data. A lot of geeks seem to be caught up in the legal battles over copyright and are worried about MS taking control when there are few policies and even fewer policies enforced with regard to the data itself. In a Aschroftian regime you can bet that no matter what the software, the policies regarding the data are much more frightening than Bill Gates.
I might be one of the few people who easily admit to being happy the dot bomb came for the tech industry a few years ago. Popularity tends to destroy the things you love, like artists and musicians who suddenly become far more focused on their fame than their craft. Ten years ago I was a Unix admin in a deliberately difficult to find office in a basement visited only rarely by grad students bearing chinese food and bottles of whisky to ply the intemperate BOFH who could fix their TeX documents or debug their SAS/SPSS jobs. During the boom, everything changed and the internet was suddenly popular and Unix admins got offices with windows and big salaries. Now, after the bust, things are returning to normal, but there are far too many who are still squeezing themselves in a Sally Field style hug and chanting, "You like me!", for no apparent reason. Open source people just need to stop constantly trying to reassure themselves and the rest of the world and just get back to doing the less glamorous side of the work.
Candygram for Dubya
Candy King is very popular here and is just like Pick-A-Mix candy back in the US where you can fill a bag with a variety of candy and pay by weight. While I was staring at the variety of Easter chocolates today I noticed a bin filled with what I thought at first glance were candy nipples. Considering that Finland has a soup commercial running in prime time on TV that features a couple who roll around in the snow with full frontal nudity that makes the American furor over Janet's little 'wardrobe malfunction' seem even more idiotic, I really thought they were supposed to be nipples.
I bought a few and they taste just like strawberry Tangy Taffy which used to be popular in the 70s. Sadly, Jarkko told me that they're really supposed to be mushrooms but...c'mon, I'll bet the kids don't call them mushrooms. :) I'd love to send a giant bag of them to the White House and to Ashcroft but I wouldn't get the joy of watching the secret service either freak out over the 'obscene' candy or the bioterrorism scare from a Finnish anthrax killer nipple attack. :)
Last Hope
I've always thought the name of this bar is perfect for a refuge of last resort. The plywood and the dumpster, which is conveniently located in front for easy disposal of those whose last hope expires, lend it a certain something extra and I hope they keep them there even after the construction on the building is completed. :)
Over the past week I started noticing that there were an awful lot of idiots linking back to images in my archives. One guy was using a photo of mine for the background for his webpage. I mean, sure, it's nice to know someone likes my photos, but should I have to become a content provider for random bizarre web pages and blogs to know that? In fact, 2 blogs liked the same photo, a Christmas star, and both of them were in Arabic which I thought was a little curious and idly wondered if they were related somehow and if they had both inherited the same stupid gene. Fark users like my political anti-bush pics and some churchy types on a jesus bulletin board liked a cross from Effingham for their avatars [Hey! Jesus doesn't approve of bandwidth theft in his flock you morons! There is evil in my domain name, too. Maybe the bible needs to be updated for the digital age.].
I first tried the subtle approach by replacing the images with an image of a hot tub full of naked, fat white guys brandishing a shotgun bearing the message, 'image linking verboten'. It would seem that the churchy folk unlinked rather quickly and are probably already leeching their new avatar from some other unsuspecting victim. The picture of the Effingham [F-ingham to the locals. Oh, the irony!] cross was so popular that I think the christians might be either stupid or terribly cheap [or both] when it comes to buying space on the web for their homepages since it seems that so few of them are willing to host a tiny 25kb image on their own site. Instead they prefer to let someone else pay for hosting their content. I wonder if I should write to the Pope and see if I can get in the queue for some kind of divine blessing for hosting this stuff for those whom Jesus hasn't given either clue or cash enough to provide for themselves. Maybe the new mission of the 21st Century is to go online without having to pay for anything!
The most galling offender was a cheeky asshole who liked one of my bitter candy valentine hearts and who, after I moved/replaced it, came looking for it and linked to the moved file instead. So, as a last resort, I've just gone ahead and used mod_rewrite to punt everyone, including google's image search, who try and link to images. I'll make exceptions, but the idiots who inline the background for their homepage from another host that isn't theirs just need a boot to the head and possibly something more gratifyingly visceral. I'm sure that this is very common around the net, but why do people do it so shamelessly and why are there so few sites who seem to know how to punt them and who indulge them? It ranks right up there with spam in terms of stealing bandwidth, rudeness and outright stupidity.
The things you notice when you look up
Helsinki has some very appealing architecture and I've always been rather fond of this particular building. While it lacks the ornate detail of the Jugend houses, the reserved pattern adorning the side complement the overall design of spare lines and angles. As I was admiring the building one afternoon, I noticed a mistake in the pattern which may have been accidental or possibly even intentional as an Escheresque illusion. I prefer to think it's the latter since I think it lends a bit of cachet to the building. :)
Nigga Lingua
It started with a discussion on the Wailing Wall about a poster for an anti-racism campaign that the Red Cross is launching in Finland. It should come as no surprise to anyone that racism does in fact exist in Finland just as it does nearly everywhere else on the planet where there are a least 2 humans from different races or cultures. In contrast to the US which prides itself on being the 'melting pot of the world' [which has always brought to my mind an image of homogeneity], Finland is a reasonably homogeneous culture which has only about 2% of its population who are foreigners. Given that many of these foreigners are recent imports, myself included, it is predictable that language as a weapon adapted.
So, this isn't new, but what I take issue with here in Finland is the incorrect usage of a particular racial slur whose origin lies not with Shakespeare, but with slavery in the US. The word is nigger. I strongly dislike the word and its use, but if those who use English in graffiti and in insults feel the need to make English the lingua franca of hate, they should know how to use it properly. [I will note here that I do find it curious that a large percentage of graffiti, including racial slurs, is in English] I will refer to the Dictionary of American Regional English as the authority for the word, and another I'll introduce as it's counterpart, since America is where this word took the form that is being used presently in Finland. The first citation of nigger in the US dates from 1619 by a man who was sold twenty negars by some Dutch slave traders. The Finnish equivalent of nigger is neekeri which came into use via the Swedish word neger which, of course, has the same roots as the the English word negro which evolved from the latin niger for black.
Nigger n. - may also be spelled negger, niggar, niggur, nager, ne(a)ger, neeger, negar, negur, niegor, and niger.
- A black person.
- Used in a depreciatory sense by White speakers.
- Used in a relatively neutral or affectionate sense by White speakers
- Used in a neutral or favorable sense by Black speakers.
- Used with a given name as an identifier.
- Used of any other non-White person, esp. an American Indian.
- Used of any person perceived as uncouth, immoral, or threatening, regardless of skin color. especially frequent among Black speakers; derog.
- In combination with big, head or lead - an important, often self-important, person
- Cheap; inferior; makeshift.
- Used as a name for a black animal.
- A steam engine used to operate a capstan, especially on a riverboat.
- In logging: a device for lifting, turning, and adjusting logs in a sawmill.
- A detachable length of heavy pipe made and sold as part of a large wrench.
- et. al
It is a strange word with so many uses, contexts and connotations that even native speakers of American English don't feel comfortable using it, even in a situation where it would be less treacherous to do so. It's not a word to be used lightly or carelessly. I particularly dislike the word being used as a catch-all epithet for any non-white persons given the etymology of the word and since racism is as old as race itself and there are plenty of specific racial slurs to go around. Also, if the graphic artist from the photo above was trying to insult someone, Nigga can be a term of endearment. Nigger : The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word is a book that caused a bit of a stir in the US when it was published and received quite good reviews from the curious and the scholarly.
I haven't heard nigger's white counterpart, cracker, yet. Cracker is a much younger word and isn't recommended for use in the Southern US without a death wish.
Cracker n.
- A variety of baked good, biscuit.
- A poor White person. [Probably originated from cracker meaning braggart]
- White racist.
- An extreme or outstanding example of its kind.
The first citation is from 1766; "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." It is often used in the form Georgia Cracker, a.k.a. corn-cracker, which was originally a dig at poor white trash. It's an intriguing word since there are few racial slurs specifically for white racists so insulting or incendiary. Cracker could also be easily adapted to Finnish as Krakkeri, but it's already being used as a slang term for a computer 'cracker' so it may need to remain in it's English form.
Both words have an interesting etymology, a wide range of uses, and uses which incorporate boasting in the more derogatory forms. Neither of them seem to have a very clear history of how they evolved into racial slurs. Language is a tool to bring people together and an effective weapon to exclude, belittle and degrade those who are different. Especially with epithets whose meaning depend so much on context and the culture of their origin, they don't always translate well even though movies, music, books and other vehicles of popular culture present them well beyond their native habitat.
The Fazer Chicken
Easter is defined by calendrical engineers as "Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon after vernal equinox." I have a hard time remembering what day of the week it is most of the time so I rely on a far more simple algorithm to determine when Easter is approaching; the arrival of Easter candy in the stores. It is less precise but accurate enough since the candy is the best part of the holiday.
Mämmi is back in the groceries, little hens and chickens are everywhere, chocolate bunnies, feathers, daffodils in pots and grass seed packets at the cashier since it's traditional to grow some small pot of grass for the return of the sun and warm weather. I didn't notice the Fazer Mignon eggs last year but these are the neatest Easter chocolates ever. They are real eggshells filled with an almond-hazelnut milk chocolate. The logistics of eating one of these eggs is complex and merits more study. The egg shell is removed rather easily with a brief bit of refrigeration. However, getting your teeth around a rather large, solid chunk of chocolate can produce at least 10 minutes of pure entertainment. Those who prefer to eat, not wear, their chocolate might use an egg slicer on a reasonably warm egg. The box mentions that these have been around for more than 100 years....
Mignon is an Easter tradition created by Karl Fazer in 1896, the second oldest product in Fazer's range. A genuine eggshell filled with fine nougat chocolate made with almonds and nuts. In the olden days they were delivered as an Easter treat even to the Tsar of Russia and his family....
What is it about Tsars and eggs? :) Anyway, I bought a few of these eggs, just to see if they were real eggshells and my results are inconclusive since, although they look and feel like real eggshells, the eggs are all perfectly sized. Does Finland have a chicken that lays identically sized, blemish-free eggs just in time for Easter? If so, I wonder if the chicken is pals with the Cadbury Crème egg rabbit or the Marshmallow Peeps. :)
update ~ Two people sent me links to articles about the Fazer Mignon eggs written in Finnish. I am amazed to find out that they are not only real egg shells, but that they are filled by hand, all 2.5 million of them each year. I made PDFs of the two articles and added translations for those who might be curious: Finnfood's Mignon - A Perennial Favorite of Easter [approx. 60k] and Mignon - the Classic of Easter Eggs [approx. 258k].
The Zoo in Winter
A few photos of the Korkeasaari Zoo in Winter
I hadn't ever visited the Helsinki Zoo and it seemed like a perfectly good excuse to get out of the house on a recent sunny and [relatively] warm Sunday. The ferry from downtown to the island doesn't run during the winter so we walked from the Kulosaari metro station which made for an enjoyable walk. I really don't like zoos very much as it's much like visiting a prison, but in recent years I have come to realise that zoos are becoming some of the last protected habitat for many of the remaining species of animals on the planet.
Korkeasaari is a small zoo with a good variety of animals without being overdone. Most of the animals seemed contented if a bit bored. Africasia and Amazonia house a number of animals who wouldn't likely choose to live in the cold Finnish climate. After a little while in there it was hard to go back out into the bright, cold afternoon. The island itself has a gorgeous view of downtown Helsinki at sunset, too. During the summertime it is likely too crowded with people, but it was almost deserted on a sunny winter's day.
Truth in advertising
We buy into the lies of advertising because we secretly don't want to know the dark and ugly truth that lurks beneath the surface. Arabella introduced me to Turnpike Films advertisement parodies. The Nutrigrain spot is particularly amusing. Work safe but be sure to empty your bladder and mouth before viewing. :)
Psychedelic Republicans
We received the absolute best care package today that contained, along with wheat thins [*burp*] and other fine junk foods that Finland doesn't have, a deck of Psychedelic Republicans trading cards!! You really wouldn't want to look at the pictures in any other state than sober to avoid permanent damage [roll over to see flip side of the card]. The lunchboxes might not be so successful since having Ashcroft looking at you would certainly put you off your feed, but they could be a great diet aid. It would be fun to see a set of these with the more conservative Dems or Presidents and their mistresses throughout history.
Books of Spring
Since last October, I've not bought many books. A few here and there have been interesting, but not enough to fill my Amazon shopping cart to purchasing fullness. Overseas shipping isn't cheap even when it's via slow boat so I have to balance the ~$120 [including shipping] price point where the tax people become interested with the level of my desire. Spring always brings new books to reel in my interest and my wallet though so I thought I'd list the ones that have caught my eye so far this year. :)
- The Confusion
- Little Children ~ Fantastic author who is one of the few who make me believe that fiction is not a lost art.
- The Radioactive Boy Scout : The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor ~ I read the original short story about this in Harper's and it's an engagingly good story if a bit of a sad tale about modern family and society.
- After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American System ~ This author wrote about the Fall of the USSR back when it wasn't popular. His words are worth reading and thinking about.
- Poplorica : A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore that Shaped Modern America ~ Putting fads and pop culture into historical context.
- The Great Game : The Myth and Reality of Espionage ~ An ex-CIA agent picks apart modern spy fiction which should prove to be very entertaining.
- The Linguist and the Emperor : Napoleon and Champollion's Quest to Decipher the Rosetta Stone ~ The Rosetta stone was an immensely important historical find and was the key to the later decipherment of the heiroglyphs.
- Word Spy : The Word Lover's Guide to Modern Culture ~ A compendium of Word Spy words.
- New Words ~ New words in the OED which should be really riveting reading.
- The Elephants of Style : A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English ~ Cute pun in the title and an ambitious topic.
- Subwayland : Adventures in the World Beneath New York ~ Subways will be the place where humankind goes when the surface of the planet is no longer hospitable.
- Lonely Planet St.Petersberg City Map
- A Traveller's Companion to St.Petersburg ~ If I litter the house with enough books about St. Petersburg, Jarkko might really get the hint that I intend to go with or without him later this summer. :)
- Prague Pictures : A Portrait of the City ~ Excellent writer and a city I'm curious about.
- Postfix : The Definitive Guide ~ I'm still a Sendmail devotee but Postfix has begun to tempt me into switching.
- Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition ~ The 1st edition was good and if this one ever makes it into production it might still be up to date by the time it's printed.
- The Camera ~ A classic.
- The Negative ~ I'm seriously considering building my own darkroom.
- Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs - Ansel Adams ~ I'm not interested in landscape photography but this should be filled with techniques I'm not aware of yet.
- Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, the Image and the World: A Retrospective ~ The Ur-Photojournalist.
- Here and There ~ NYC street photography collection.
- Leica: Witness to a Century ~ A history of Leica which should be interesting.
- Wanderlust ~ I loved the postcard series so this promises to be good.
- Potsticker Chronicles : Favorite Chinese Recipes and Family Fables ~ Looks interesting for the stories behind the recipes as well as dishes the less culinary might be able to make.
- Baking Illustrated: A Best Recipe Classic ~ Cook's Illustrated are the best cookbooks anywhere. I didn't go into food chemistry, but if I had I'd want to work there. Baking chemistry is fascinating
- Global Warming - Laika and the Cosmonauts ~ Strange yet cool Finnish surfer punk music.
Film processing plea
Does anyone in Helsinki have a recommendation for a good place to take film for developing? After a few months of Fotoyks printing nearly all of my photos with fuzz in the enlarger, randomly missing prints, negatives that look like they've been dragged through sand and rocks, negatives that have been cut in the middle of a frame as well as paying a lot for the luxury of all of the above, I'm looking for anyplace that will develop film, print it without fuzz on every photo, print all of the photos and leave my negatives unsavaged. My address is at the bottom of the page and I'm very open to suggestion.
Update: I received a number of responses from other people who have had very similar experiences with Fotoyks and I appreciate the feedback and suggestions. So far, Zoomi, Tunnin Kuva and the Antilla in the railway station have been recommended so I'll give them a try and update this when I've found the one I prefer the most. Thanks, again, to everyone who sent me an email!
All Must Die
A Finn embraces their inner Darth Vader and a paint pen.
The New York Times had an article A Word to Finns: 'For Your Own Good, Blow Your Top' [pdf] the other day and it is the most banal and cliché story I've read about Finland in the US media yet. I don't know if there has been a single story written in the US press that doesn't comment on how quiet or sullen the Finns seem in comparison to the chatty yankees, save maybe the ones about Nokia when they remember it isn't a Japanese company. The article is full of stereotypes and it confuses suppressing emotions with being taciturn. Non-Finns seem to take particular offense at this cultural difference but I find the silence is one of the most endearing features of Finnish culture. Never again will I ever have to politely endure some random person telling me how their husband is screwing the babysitter while waiting to pay for my groceries or comment on the weather.
Imagine, if you will, the young Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. The young Anakin and Luke were both in touch with their feelings, both lovesick puppies making an ass out of themselves and generally blithering idiots whom the force would have done well to seal their gaping, whining oral cavities. Darth Vader on the other hand was a guy dressed in a stylish black ensemble, like many Finns and, aside from the heavy breathing, spoke only occasionally in a basso profundo voice. Darth was in touch with his feelings as he reached out to Luke to inform him that he was his father and then later that he would die. Darth was a no-frills, in touch with his inner dark side kind of guy. Quiet, thoughtful, no whining. Who would you rather share a land speeder with, whiny Luke or wheezing Darth? No contest, really.
Here, experts say, a car accident brings, not blame and insults, but a polite exchange of information. A bus breakdown causes no complaints; rather, the Finns on the bus will file off and try to push it to the next stop.
[...]
Here, it is not unusual to walk into a restaurant and spot most people eating dinner in silence, content to chew and not chatter. Silence is a sign of wisdom and good manners, not boredom and half-wittedness.
Oh my god, a whole busload of people who, instead of bitching about the bus, the personal inconvenience and threatening to sue the driver for making them late, these people shut up and get the bus moving again! Clearly, this is a sick, sick, culture that needs a swift infusion of more American TV shows and movies so that they can get the script right! We were out to dinner at a Russian restaurant recently and it must have been obnoxiously loud yankee night as there were 3 groups of them surrounding a few tables of quiet Finns who looked positively terrorized, ourselves included. It's possible to dine without conversation and not have to wonder if you're killing yourself with silence and kermaviili.
Silence is a beautiful thing when you witness the sheer power it has to make people feel extremely uncomfortable without even trying. I watched a CEO of a company who was interviewing Jarkko and I together nearly turn himself inside out because Jarkko did what came naturally. It was a beautiful and sublime moment that I still regret not having captured on video. I've had countless Americans ask me if Jarkko 'hated' them because he didn't chat them up in a social situation. I'll admit that the first time we met his silent stare didn't really communicate his fond feelings and, in fact, I thought I had bored him into a near coma, but it eventually worked out in the end. :)
While it may be true that Finns do not emote enough, it may be due to the fact that it's just not really practical in a world that is mostly self-absorbed and doesn't really give a damn about your personal problems. Every time someone asks you, "How are you?", they are expecting a "Fine. You?" response to the script. They aren't asking for the litany of woe you might have. Save the emoting for people who care. Perhaps it would be more prudent to have classes in how to listen to other people and be sensitive instead. When people talk a lot it doesn't mean they are dealing with their feelings. My father was a gregarious man who loved to talk but what killed him was years of indigestion/acid reflux due to being a closet worry wart that eventually caused esophageal cancer. It's not the emotions or that you tell someone about them rather how you internalize them. An anger management class isn't likely to change your lifestyle or behavioural patterns overnight if at all.
I mean, the president has something like a 90 percent approval rating --please," Dr. Furman said. "For our country to keep up with competitiveness, we need to respond differently.
Yes, Finland needs to have a president like Dumbya to really be competitive since his approval rating is down and most of the world thinks he's an idiot unlike Tarja Halonen who is a smart woman doing a good job that people approve of as well as being a respected leader among other nations. A president the people elect and like must be a sign of a fucked up culture for sure! A seething pool of dissent and countless hours of ranting talking heads flinging poo at each other like monkies would be much, much better. Think of all the political pundit blogs Finland could have! Thanks Dr., I needed a good laugh. Have you considered relocating to the US?
So, I hope Finland keeps to its cultural pride in sisu and silence and doesn't go the way of the US with their own Jerry Springer show and people venting petty, selfish anger at every available opportunity. Embrace your inner Darth Vader, not your inner Luke Skywalker, and exploit the power of silence. Building a death star would be kinda cool, too. Even Russia wouldn't mess with Finland then. :) For the non-Finns I recommend getting a large dog and walking it daily as HB nearly always draws a crowd of friendly, chatty Finns out on the sidewalk.
Driven to drink
A popular job with expats seems to be child care since, just like in the US where Mexicans fill the cheap domestic labour market, not knowing the native language puts you at a disadvantage in the market unless you are in IT or another profession that doesn't require it. Such a job was suggested to me but I figure if I don't have one of my own then having 30 of someone else's kids probably wouldn't appeal to me very much. I'm not really sure why child care in particular doesn't seem to demand Finnish fluency from its employees.
This is a table of such child care expats whom we met at a pub one night when we were out with some other expats. The guy with the smile on his face was a New Zealander who borrowed my lighter and was trying to impress the girl across the table by telling her that Bic lighters and pens were invented in his country. I didn't have the heart to tell him that Bic is actually a French invention and that a better pick-up line would be something like, "I come from where the Hobbits live!". The guy on the end was a dead ringer for Mick Jagger and we giggled more than a few times over the likeness. These are the people who watch your kids and who, after a long week of patiently enduring your spawn, have been driven to drink. :)
Kide at dusk
I went back at dusk for some better pics of the Kide Sculpture and if you roll your mouse over the photo they'll light up. You can see lettering on the cubes, "O U T I I L O V EU", which I first thought was something about loving the EU given the original purpose of the sculpture and the EU scrawled together on the last cube but Outi is apparently a Finnish woman's name so, wherever you are Outi, someone loves you. :)
Denise Bellon
The Helsinki Jugendsali is hosting an exhibit of photographs taken in Finland in August of 1939 by Denise Bellon for the French magazine Le Match until the 28th of March. Her photos of people preparing for war and living life in Finland are a lovely time capsule of a particular moment in history focusing less on the military aspects of the run up to war than on the more ordinary daily life which invariably continues even under duress. There are photos of a ski factory, Finnish women in fashionable war uniforms, the olympic stadium under construction which came to a halt for the war, and children amidst those of soldiers on foot, bicycle and horseback waiting for something to happen. There are also a few photos taken outside of Finland, most notably of Salvador Dalí which is the least surreal portrait of him I've ever seen. Bellon has a keen eye for capturing something special in her subjects and telling a story with them. Photographs like these are particularly precious for historians. The Art Deco Jugendsali was also worth seeing as I hadn't ever been inside of the beautifully restored building.
Fleecy Amor
Pekka Pääkkö, a Finnish photographer, captured this hilarious moment and won first prize in the humorous photograph category in the Swedish photojournalism competition. Being a recovering Catholic, this scene has several layers of amusement that make me giggle every time I look at it. It's a beautiful photograph. Gnat, I thought of you, too. :)
The Confusion
The Confusion is almost here. Amazon UK has a 1 April release date and Amazon US has a 13 April release date, but it's coming soon and I'm eager to continue reading the saga. The UK book jacket artwork is so much more colourful and interesting than the rather plain US edition. I've often wondered why there is such a tremendous difference between many US and UK book jacket designs, especially when there isn't really anything in the title or the design that might offend.
The Wailing Wall
Expats snarfing down a late night snack from a local grilli between pints of beer.
I hang out on an English speaker's/Expat bulletin board I affectionately call The Wailing Wall. Lately there seems to be surge in bright-eyed young yankees looking to escape the US, a trend I expect to only gather in strength as the election approaches. I'd like to think I prepared myself for some of the challenges of moving to Finland reasonably well though there have been days I've pondered buying a plane ticket home. However, given a few of the wailers from North America on IESAF and some of the hopefuls trying to escape the return to Mayberry that the US is careening towards, I'm going to rant a little bit on how not to be an idiot asshole yankee expat in the vain hope that it diminishes some of the incoming schadenfreude fodder. It'll just feel good to rant, too. :)
- Don't announce that you're too young to drink in the US and that you're gunning for being able to booze it up with your teenage girlfriend without having to provide ID. Budweiser is 3 euro [$3.60] per bottle here and with the money you save by staying home, buying a fake ID and going to Costco for a $5.99 24-pack, you could buy an education you so desperately need.
- Don't ask us all to provide you with job contacts just because you're young, just managed to graduate from Podunk U., have a job at Circuit City and think that Nokia would surely hire you if only they knew you were available. When we tell you that the only difference between a Mexican in SoCal and expats in Finland is that the Mexican has more job opportunities, we're not really joking and, no, we're not trying to be a bummer, man.
- Don't post in the most appallingly bad English which makes an illiterate monkey look like Shakespeare and expect us to take you seriously when you say that you're 'good with languages' and that learning Finnish 'shouldn't be a problem'. When the folks whose 3rd language is English and who speak, read and write your native language better than you seem appalled, you should maybe stay home and take a remedial English course.
- Don't come to us with tales of woe about how your teenage Finnish girlfriend you met on IRC whom you're sure you want to marry is giving you the cold shoulder and that she surely couldn't be dumping you when she says she wants more space.
- Don't ask if we're enjoying the cold weather. It's not the cold that gets to you, it's the dark, dark, dark November that does. This time of year is practically balmy and sunny.
- Don't whine about Finnish food. This is Finland and this is their food. Fucking deal with it, bribe someone for a care package or go the hell home.
- Don't whine about the taxation. You're going to get taxed by two governments. Your bitching about it isn't going to change the fact that you're gonna pay. Keep reaching for that bar of soap and shut the hell up.
- Don't gripe about how quiet and unfriendly Finns are. Maybe you're just an asshole and they're just uninterested in making small talk. If you shut up long enough, they talk.
- Don't bemoan how expensive stuff is here as nothing gets cheaper once people have paid the higher price, i.e. the market is already paying, so your boring diatribe about frightful prices is about as likely to lower prices as pissing in the wind and getting your pants moist.
- Don't rail on the Finnish government until you're a citizen or at least have lived here a few years, as you are merely a guest in the country and we've heard it all before. Bitching about the US government, however, is more than welcome.
- Don't ask us if we think you're crazy if you want to move to Finland as we aren't always sure of that answer for ourselves.
- Don't get pissy when I rant about expats who irk the crap out of me because they never seem to enjoy anything. What ever happened to the country filled with people who sang 'we are the world' and all that rot in the spirit of global understanding and tolerance of other cultures? Cheer up and lighten up.
Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it. -- Mark Twain
Lomo Anniversary
Leningradskoye Optiko Mechanichesckoye Obyedinenie, a.k.a. LOMO PLC, will be celebrating its 90th anniversary this year in St. Petersburg, Russia. I've been really wanting to visit St. Petersburg since moving to Finland so this is as good an excuse as any to fill out the daunting visa application and go. The Lomography Society is supposed to be arraging some festivities and tour packages so try to keep your last week in July open if you're interested in going.
Camera Obscura
World Pinhole Day 2004 is Sunday, 25 April this year. The idea is to have people around the world take a pinhole photograph on that day and submit them. I wasn't interested in making one out of an oatmeal box or buying an expensive wooden model but when I noticed that you can buy body caps with a pinhole for your 35mm camera and an exposure guide I've decided to give it a try. Jarkko laughed at the idea of taking an expensive camera and turning it into a cardboard box. Everyone's a critic. :)
Virgin Goods
"Virgin Goods. Parking in Rear". The red cherries painted along the roofline was also a nice 'virgin' touch. :) Virgin is on the road to Zion National Park and is the city in the US that passed a law a few years ago requiring all residents to possess a firearm.
Hakaniemi Market Square
Hakaniemi Market square and the tram station next to it. I love the old markets and really hope they resist being replaced with some concrete and glass modern atrocity.
Wrath of an angry dog
Who cares about the wrath of an aloof, mysterious, erratic and possibly fictitious god when you have 60kg of angry dog in your living room? Honeybear today endured a trip to the vet, a bath, trimming of matts, an ear cleaning, ointment and pills and, the final insult, a cone. He has been giving me baleful looks all afternoon and I'm just embracing the guilt. I even went out and bought some fatty pork to fry up and add to his kibble tonight. I'm hoping that meat may soothe some of the hurt feelings he has after I couldn't help but laugh as I watched him try to navigate around the house and bump into things. It was adorable in a difficult to admit to sort of way. :) Yes, I'm whipped and desperate to appease an angry Dog.
He has had an irritated patch of skin on his left front paw for a few months that looks icky because he licks it, but aside from the purple fur from the saliva it doesn't do much. Over the weekend he developed a very aggressive growth between two of his toes on his right front paw that prompted the visit to the vet. He is almost 13 years old, which for a saint is positively ancient, so I was expecting the worst but the vet thinks that a course of antibiotics, a corticosteroid creme and the cone to keep him from slurping it constantly will be effective since it may be an allergic reaction to something aggravated by his diligent applications of saliva. If not, we'll have to have a biopsy and see what to do then. So...here's hoping the old geezer gets well soon and doesn't extort me for a thick, juicy steak every night until he sleeps the long sleep. :)
Soup of the Day
A pile of unsorted old photos was at the bottom of the box where the slides I went hunting for were. It was a surprise to discover this photo taken about 7 years ago with an old EOS at a sandwich shop on the Fresh Pond Mall which was right around the corner from BBN where I worked. There was a McDonald's across the street but the group I worked in would usually go en masse to this place for good fresh sandwiches and cheeky abuse.
The guy who ran the shop [pictured] was a real sweetheart and always had a smile and something fun to talk about. He knew all of his regular customers in spite of lunchtime being SRO daily. His mother was similarly adorable and, being Greek, would always wink at me as if she knew a special ancient wisdom mostly forgotten that my being the only woman in this unkempt group of nerds I worked with could use the friendly feminine comraderie. The guy in the kitchen behind him flipped off the camera but he was always a funny guy.I don't know how many sandwiches they made every day, but it was a rite of passage in our group to always take the new guy to lunch and goad them into ordering the small meatball sub. Seemingly innocent and delicious until one of the guys at the counter yells loudly, "Hey, guy! You order the small balls?", and then giggles when he sees him blush. I miss those guys and wonder if the place is still around and if they still close the shop for two weeks every year to take the entire family and staff on holiday to Greece.
