Eating Muffins in an Agitated Manner

Ice Hockey and Vappu

Posted by jukkahoo

It's almost May and so it's also the time to start lying to oneself and create unrealistic expectations from the team in Blue and White. Yes, it's Springtime for Team Leijonat!

Kisastudio will be located at Casa Tali with appropriate furniture movements provided by Yours Truly and some unsuspecting Male of the species (my money is on JussiTee). Since the first game (vs. Denmark; jukkahoo says 5-1) begins at around 9.15 PM, we're heating up the sauna beforehand. Nothing like clean skin and rousing ice-hockey match. Or something.

Vapusta tuli mieleeni hassu juttu: luin tässä oikean työskentelyn lomassa ystävien ja yhteistyökumppaneiden verkkopäiväkirjoja ja törmäsin erään satunnaisen tuttavan sivulla toivotukseen: "Happua Vappua!"

"No jopas," (sanotaan Syksy Räsäsen äänellä), tokaisin ääneen ja totesin moisen sanonnan olevan aika hauska tapa toivottaa tätä työläisten ja opiskelijain juhlaa. Voisiko tästä tulla tapa? Tai ede spienenpiirin perinne?

Kunnes vaisun epäluuloisena ihmisenä palasin jo pois klikkaamalleni sivulle, löytääkseni vain sen tavanomaisen ja tylsän hauskaavappua -tervehdyksen. Blaah. Se ei kuitenkaan ole mikään syy olla ottamatta käyttöön uutta ja toivottavasti laajalle leviävää tervehdystä:

Happua Vappua!!!

SF Pöytäjääkiekon SM-kisat 2005

Posted by jukkahoo

Once more the gladiators known as tabletop hockeyplayers gathered to the sacred arena of Helsinki University SF Klubi's venerable Clubhouse (this being the fifth in a line of such hallowed places). The 2005 Championships was a certain future classic, a test of skill and stamina of unimagined proportion to any outsider and a casual wanderer, fortuned enough to be able to gaze upon such luminaries as Anssi Makkonen, Toni Jerrman, Vesa Virri and Antti Kallio, not to mention new-comers like Pasi Vihinen or Manu Paavola. And how could one forget the likes of Teemu Whatshisname or Jussi Thenotably-Not-Last-One!

But I digress.

Actually, I didn't, but anyway!

This year the games were called up at a very late date. Truth to be told, I was given the date only three weeks before-hand, and asked whether I could cast out my tentacles and seek forth and fifth the Usual Suspects. This I did. Most I managed to get in touch with. Many came, some were forced to stay out, due to various lame-ass excuses as flu, broken wrist or honeymoon(!). Nay, not all were up to the challenge, but several were. Most notably J-P Hartikainen, the Hero of the Nation and the Official Herrasmiespelaaja of 2005; who not only played well, treated the opponent as a gentleman ought to, but rise to the occasion with such fervour as never before-seen. You see, after some last-minute drop-outs, the number of actual players was a nigh-difficult-to-divide 11, but with little coaxing (none really) J-P agreed to join the legion of athletic champions, becoming in essence, number Twelve.

After some time-honored ceremonies, which I'm not allowed nor willing to divulge to the general public, two equally interesting and hardened divisions were formed:

A
Pasi Vihinen, Anssi Makkonen, J-P Hartikainen, Teemu Naarajärvi, Antti Kallio and Manu Paavola
B
Esa Heilimo, Vesa Virri, Topi Mäkelä, Toni Jerrman, Petri Salin and Jussi Tuhkanen

In the first round everyone played against each opponent from the same division, thus playing five games in all. Five minutes a game, no pauses - unless the game brakes down etc - and with an additional 30 second Sudden Death in case of a draw (after which it is a draw). No kirppu's, no scoring from the opening and always re-starting from the middle. And remember the handshake.

After the initial phase, four best ones from both divisions started the SF-playoffs (Rules copyright by Hannu Pajunen), where the winner of div. A played against the fourth from div. B and vice versa, 2nd from A played agains 3rd from B etc. After this, it gets a little bit more complicated, since one loss at the playoffs-stage doesn't mean that you're out, but that you're now at the repechage stage, where the next loss is the final one. This highly complex arraingment was created solely for the purpose of relegating the small piece of euphoria that some people experience from winning the so-called bronze-game. This way all positions, beside winning, are achieved by losing! The last four players from phase one played a simple relegation playoffs.

Many a game were exiting, some more than others. Only one sad 0-0 game was played during the first round (we're not naming neither Toni nor Topi here) and only two more were played at the playoffs (Topi was the repeat-offender). A lot of goals were scored and the Goalscorer-title (goals scored during the first round) went to Vesa Virri, with nearly mind-boggling 38 goals (Pasi Vihinen was 2nd with 31).

The playoffs were fierce, a lot more vivid and vibrant recollection of said games can be read from Petri Salin's otroligt bra reportage in Näthörningen (på svenska), but let me tell you, you haven't seen anything before you've witnessed the David vs Goliath battle between Manu and Pasi, where the winning goal (2-3 to Pasi) was scored only seconds before the full time. Last time such one-sided dominance was almost fought to the stand-still by an inferior force, the battlefield was few hundred kliks to the east some 65 years ago.

But in the end we had a winner. The reigning FinnconKampen Champion beat the reigning SF-Tabletop Champion in one match, 2-1 (having beated him before 4-0). Pasi "Fist" Vihinen was victotious and celebratiosn were in order. Hurrah! and Huzzah! Glory to the Vizier of Finance! Praised be the Master of Mäkelänkatu! Sela!

I'll put the full results of all of the games played to the Official website when I have the time, but here's the Final Order of Things:

1. Pasi Fist Vihinen
2. Vesa Terminaattori Virri
3. Antti Rehtori Kallio
4. Manu Illallinen Paavola
5. Anssi Sotamaali-kauppias Makkonen
6. Esa Leijona Heilimo
7. Toni Tähtivaeltaja Jerrma
8. Petri Kuolemantuoja Salin
9. Topi Lonkeroporno Mäkelä
10. Jussi Tuhkis Tuhkanen
11. Teemu Poroisäntä Naarajärvi
12. J-P Predator Hartikainen

Genre Rant

Posted by Sari

I am increasingly short tempered and frustrated with fandom and its endless games with genre definitions. You know the drill, you can’t call Science Fiction scifi because that means just pulp and mass-produced movie tie-in crap. And SF means science fiction except it can also mean speculative fiction which was at one point a reasonable umbarella term for fantasy, science fiction and horror, but is apparently now been kidnapped to mean science fiction and fantasy that is good enough to be worthy of the attention of those fen who don’t want to read anything labelled fantasy. (Except that speculative fiction in itself is a problematic term: all fiction is speculative). And Horror with fantasy elements is within our “genre” but without them isn’t. There is New Wave and Next Wave and New Weird and Space Opera and High Fantasy and Low Fantasy (which, by the way have two different definitions), and god only knows what.

In the end it is all about prestige and literary worth. Genre fiction is percieved as entertaiment, not serious literature. So if a novel is percieved to be of literary worth, it is lifted out of the genre. We rant about this all the time: how this and that book is clearly SF but is shelved among mainstream, and this and that writer clearly writes genre fiction but represents the work in public as something else. Well, I think we are doing exactly the same thing within the genre. We are creating genre definitions which have more to do with percieved literary worth than with any actual criteria that define the content of the works. And I am bloody tired of it. So I am going with Damon Knight: “science fiction means what we point to when we say it.” Except I am going to point at things and call them Fantasy.

What is going on?

Posted by jukkahoo

I try to check our weblog and all I get is a page for some [foul language] domain registration "service"!!! Who the Hell does this pairnic think they are? What the effing christ have they done to our webpresence?

And why can't I click to Pulpetti or Pool of Thought - Shallow End, either? Is it because of our computer (Hello, Mr. Sanders, everything OK?) or has some unscupulous bastichs done something wronk? Something they ought to be prosecuted, tried and hanged for? Grease the rope, Orville! We need a hoe-down.

Gaah!!!

And now (later) they seem to have everything under control.

Sorry for the problem. This is a temporary issue at our     domain registrar that is causing the wrong page to show     temporarily for a group of users coming from some ISPs.     Your weblog is still intact and will display again shortly.

OK. Let's not have this happening again, shall we?

Habent Papam

Posted by Sari

If I remember my rudimentary latin correctly. I was just a wee thing when John Paul II was elected, but old enough to remember vaguely the two conclaves that followed the deaths of Paul VI and John Paul I. I wonder where I got the information? I am trying to remember myself at the age of ten and drawing a blank. I don’t think I was an avid reader of newspapers at that age, but I propably watched news from the black-and-white TV my parents hid in a cupboard when it was not in use. I do think that the main source of information about the traditions must have been my Aunt (also a historian) who loves Rome and used to visit the city often.

Be that as it may 1978 there was no 24/7 news media and thus this conlcave was the first where the whole world (at least those with TV/radio/net access) could immerse themselves in the drama. And we certainly did. Even I had one window open to Washington Post’s live camera feed from St. Peter’s square while in another window I was reading a pamphlet by miniature painter and architect Sir Balthazar Gerbier entituled “A Discovery of certain notorious stumbling-blocks which the Devill, the Pope and the Malignants have raised to put nations at Variance” (London 1652).

And by chance “Médico de Familia” ended on YLE Teema just when the bells were ringing to confirm the white smoke rising from the chimney. And as a spectacle it was surprisingly exciting: cameras zooming on the balcony, reporters trying to decipher the latin announcement (okay it was pretty easy to pick out “Ratzinger”, so no great language skills were needed), and then the little old man blessing the crowd who did not seem to want to quiet down.

As Sarin noted in Johanna’s Blog, our frame of reference now includeds reality TV which gave its own weirdish stamp to the proceedings. It was not difficult to conjure up images of cardinals going to the chalice with their hand-written ballots and survivor-like looking at the camera and saying something like “Claudio, I love you man, but I just have give it to Joseph this time”, or  Benedict XVI emerging to the balcony like the winner of "Big Brother", the Vatican edition.

And strangely, considering how much I instinctively and and emotionally disliked John Paul II, I feel quite calm about the prospect of the Papacy of Benedict XVI. Panzerkardinal or God’s Rottweiler he might be but maybe because of his reputation as a scholar and theologican, I don’t get the scary evangelical vibe from him. Not that vibes are anything to go by, really.

Number Two

Posted by Sari

Actually, I had written this quite some time ago, but wanted to wait for a bit for reasons to do with uni entrance examinations. But here goes: my favourite book(s) number two:

Which is Pat Baker’s Regenration –trilogy, a series of books about shell-shocked British officers during the First World War. It is an inspired series which weaves together history, metaphor and fiction better than any other book I know, and does it in so many ways.

At the center of the trilogy is the real and fascinating figure of doctor W.H.R. Rivers, an MD, psychologist and anthropologist who during the war was assigned to treat officers with war neuroses. Among his real patients was lieutenant Siegfried Sassoon, a poet and decorated solider who in 1917 became so disgusted at war that he chucked his medals in the Mersey and wrote a declaration to be read in the House of Commons denouncing the continuation of the war. He was shipped off to Scotland to be treated by Rivers in order to avoid a scandal. Regenration, the first novel in the series depicts the debates about the justification of the war between Rivers and Sassoon, the friendship between Sassoon and fellow inmate Wilfred Owen and Rivers’ efforts to break through to patients really suffering from what today would be termed PTSD.

The next book, “The Eye in the Door” continues to trace the friendship between Rivers and Sassoon and the consequences of that friendship to Rivers’ world-view, but it centers more on a fictive patient of Rivers, Billy Prior who is a “temporary gentleman”, a working-class solider who has risen through ranks to be an officer. Besides being the liminal character capable (and eager) to transgress all boundaries, Prior presents in this part of the trilogy a new dilemma for a warring nation. As Rivers has to make sense of the world were he is curing patients so that they can be sent off to the front to be killed, Prior has to come to terms with his guilt regarding the inhumane way the state (and he himself as a representative of that coercive war-time regime) treats conscientious objectors, and to lesser extent others who do not wholeheartedly buy into the great nationalistic project.

The last part, Booker winning “Ghost Road” is in a strange way the most lyrical of the three and alternates between depictions of Owen and Prior back in France, Rivers in London and Rivers’ memories of his anthropological trips to pacific island headhunters whose culture is in crisis because westerners have banned head-hunting and thus destroyed the cultural equilibrium of the islands.

There are number of reasons why this trilogy is maybe my favourite work of fiction in the world. Firstly, it is the only historical novel I have ever read that has prompted me to read more about the subject-matter and that has not destroyed one bit of the effectiveness of the novel. Rivers’ own writings, his biography, Sassoon’s actual autobiography, his fictionalised autobiography, and biographies, Owen’s biography, Showalter’s “Female Malady”, Fussell, other works on FWW PTSD… I can situate all that in the novel and not cringe. That is not to say that Baker’s novel tells the truth about the war - the revisionist WW1 historians have severly criticized the fusselian take on the war experience – but it can and does tell a truth.

The second, and even more important reason why I love the books is the masterly way in which Baker uses the web of connections between the real persons and events as very powerful metaphors. For example,  stammering was one of the most common symptoms of war neuroses in officers. Rivers stammered. So did rev. Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll), a friend to Rivers’ father. Rivers father, also a clergyman, was also a speech-therapist. These are historical facts, but the way Baker interconnects them through Rivers and makes the power-relations of utterances one of the central themes in the book is nothing short of uncanny. Another example: before the war Rivers worked with his friend Dr. Henry Head in an experiment where they traced the regeneration of nervous system. They severed Head’s radial nerve, then sutured it and during the period of five years Rivers tested Head’s hand by pricking it with needles to see how and how the nerves regenerated. They named the two stages of nerve generation the protopathic, where the stimuli are percieved as painful and poorly localised  and epicritic, where responses to stimuli are gardeable and localisation can be percieved. In the book this experiment and its results act as metaphors for the process of trying to deal with the war trauma from the unlocalised suffocating pain of  the trauma to the gradable, localised pain achieved by therapy. For Rivers the experiment functions also as an allegorical reminder of the pain he caused/causes while dealing with his patients.

My third reason for admiring Barker’s trilogy can actually be seen as one of the central themes of the novels, the justification of war and violence. It carries through all three volumes, beginning with the discussions between Rivers and Sassoon where they in a way convince each other that the other is right, and ending in Ghost Road where the debate is lifeted out of this particular conflict by interspersing the text with passages of Rivers anthropological studies in the South Seas. On one hand there is a sensless slaughter in Europe bitterly described by Owen in Abraham and Isaac, on the other there is the Pacific head-hunter culture which through Rivers eyes looks like a dying idyll, because traditional outlet for tribal violence has been shut down western missionary culture. Neither Rivers or through him Barker find easy answers to the perpetual dilemma of the violence of humanity, but the trilogy, unlike many other fictive and historical works does at least face that question head on.

And if you googled yourself here because Regeneration is the entrance exam book for English Philology this year in Helsinki University, congrats. It is a great book to take apart and put together again.

In Just-

Posted by Sari

   In Just-
Spring        when the world is mud-
luscious

It is time to break out the classics:

Like Tom Lehrer

Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here. 
Life is skittles and life is beer. 
I think the loveliest time of the year 
Is the spring. I do, don't you? 
'Course you do. 
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me, 
And makes every Sunday a treat for me:

All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Every Sunday you'll see my sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.

And Flanders & Swann

A bold Hippopotamus was standing one day
On the banks of the cool Shalimar
He gazed at the bottom as it peacefully lay
By the light of the evening star.
Away on a hilltop, sat combing her hair
Was a fair Hippopotami maid;
The Hippopotamus was no ignoramus
And sang her this sweet serenade:
'Mud, Mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!
So follow me, follow
Down to the hollow
And there let us wallow In glorious mud'

And that's all you really need to get rid of the spring fatigue.

I quite like it

Posted by Sari

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Shuriken of Forgiveness.

Get yours.

We must be living in a den of crack-whores...

Posted by Sari

Firstly, apologies for having been very uncommunicative for the first quarter of the year. The PhD is taking all my time and energy, and will continue to do so for the near future. At the moment however, I am just too tired to form a coherent thought about 17th century England, mainly thanks to the fire engines messing about in the street 3 am. few nights back and disrupting my fragile sleep pattern.

What is it with Taimistontie and Emergency vehicles? I mean we live in a nice neighbourhood. The neighbours are nice. The parks and streets and yards are nice. There are no stalkers or drunkards or robberies (well somebody broke in to the video rental shop few months back...), everything is safe and clean and, well, nice. But for some reason during the years we have lived here, emergency services have been visiting our nice cul-de-sac of a street for  six or seven times. So I conclude that the niceness is actually a ruse and we are really  living in a den of crack-whores.

From which I can segue elegantly to Gumrah, my latest Bollywood fare which is crack: poor orphaned Sridevi first becomes a singing sensation and superstar, then begins to search for his father who was falsely accused, disgraced, and deported from India. Unbeknownst to her, he is in Hong Kong busily becoming an alcoholic. Sridevi has also met Sunjay Dutt - a rogue with a heart of gold - who robs stuff for her, gets caught, goes to prison, sings a song, escapes and ends up in... Hong Kong! working for Sridevis Father!  Who apparently owns a restaurant and is a lawyer in addition of being an alcoholic.

Sridevi Goes for Mauritius for a brief fling with a smarmy Rahul, tracks down her father and flies to Hong Kong. But the smarmy Rahul has planted cocaine in her luggage and she is thrown to prison. Cue in loads of tears, suffering, evil female prison guards with too much lipstick, executions, dirt, scraming, despair, blood and a trip by Sunjay and Sridevi's dad to the public library of Hong Kong to find out about a secret tunnel dug during the second world war which is leading out from the very cell Sridevi is in. Happy ending.

It is not a film I can recommend to anyone except maybe to "the professionals". Also, I really, really did not need to see Sunjay Dutt in a wife beater. I need to go and scrub my brain now.

A meme

Posted by jukkahoo

I did this with my livejournal, since it really is a lj-meme. Feel free to ask the Question, but remember that you really ought to have a some kind of weblog for the answers. Ta!