5 posts tagged “fucked up”
Today I finally had to sit down and admit that there truly is a documentary for everything. I've long tried not to, even when they decided to air The secret lives of sleepwalkers. Hell, not even when they threatened me with When hurricanes... attack. I held my ground even more convincingly than Johnny Depp held his, but today, today I finally had to cave in, because it was either that or laugh myself silly after I saw the zero-G-sex-documentary on the Discovery Channel.
You heard me.
Zero. G. Sex.
That means humping around in space. Deep space gets a whole different meaning, don't it?
I actually have to admit that, while I've pondered a whole, whole lot of inane (that's not a typo) ideas and things in my life, space-sex has never actually crossed my mind. Well, I guess the only way for shit to really hit the fan it has to take a few loops around Earth first. Seriously, who comes up with these doc-ideas, anyway?
Honestly, I'm quite sure that this documentary wasn't the first to think out loud about this (but why they'd actually decide to make said doc in the first place is almost beyond me). I am, however, most certain that this has only gone through the minds of NASA rocket-scientists and spacenerds alike, and if the documentary was a slight nudge in any direction, those nerds most definitely didn't look like they had the merchandise to get it on, even with the spaceshuttle. Driving a Hummer doesn't guarantee you getting one...
But I have to admit, it is a funny thought, and kind of tempting as well (and a PR-rep can sure as hell make it sound like you were getting it down with God if you just asked him to do so), but here's where reality sets in, mainly in the form of Newton's third law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That means, boys and girls, that if one of you "bump" into each other, the nonexistence of gravitational pull would mean that he'd pull out involuntarily, flinging both of you in the opposite direction.
Now, as much as the thought of getting to see naked people flying about helplessly in space was enough comedy for me and a good point to end the documentary, here's what Johnny-rocket-scientist decided to blurt out in the middle of the comed-... documentary: we've studied animals on earth who procreate in near-zero gravity environments, and discovered that dolphins, for example, counter Newton's Third Law with the help of a third individual actually pushing the other two together..."
You heard that, a third individual. Now, I'm as open for threesomes as the next guy (it's preprogrammed), but the thought of having some more or less burly fella holding on to one of both my and her buttcheeks and then pushing and pulling us together and apart like he's trying to play polka with his Boy-Girl-accordion is... too liberal for me. The thought of having some third-party individual playing grab-ass with me is a little... well, freaky. It's all fun and games until they whip out the bearmen, and rocket-scientists tend to have a habit of doing that (they're a dirty bunch they are). So while Richard Branson may be busy planning his Virgin Spacetravels (notice the possibility of a pun), I think I'll wait a few years until they get the kinks out of it all. Or at least get the middleman out of it all, eech...
Contrary to popular belief, I am not always as punctual as I may make it seem. I am however smart enough not to get in trouble about stuff like that, and have once again come up with a bold statement to save me from all your collective hate and rage over my lies.
... Now let me just find the bold-option on this thing...
... found it!
HERE YE, HERE YE! I COME FORTH FROM THE FROSTED HAVENS OF THE FINNISH WOODY WOOD-WOOD-WOODS TO ONCE AGAIN BRING FORTH A NEW CLUMP OF LITERARY GOLD. TRIUMPHING OVER WOLVES, FROST, POLARBEARS AND THE DREADED SANTA CLAUS, I SPRING FORTH VICTORIOUS OVER THE ETERNAL COLD! I AM NOT DEAD.
Enough bold now, now let me just... there we go.
So let's get on with the posting. What's really happened in my life over the past two three weeks while I've been away from blogging about it? Well... Jack shit, really. I know, I know, you people can't stand it without me telling you about my fabulous life. "But Joni, you live such an eventful and adventurous life; you fight real men, shoot real rocketlaunchers and destroy real plywoodboards with them and do other manly, manly things. Are you sure there's nothing you could tell us storystarved twits of the world???"
Well, to tell you the truth, there is one teeny little thing...
I caved in... again.
I went and bought some more Ben & Jerry's. I didn't think it really could do something like this to me. Me, the manly man who breaks bones and does other manly things suddenly, while lying in my bunk thought to myself "Man, Ben & Jerry's would do just fine right no-... WTF? Did I just really think that???" So as soon as I got on leave, off I went, and surprisingly, not to hunts (though there was a ravishing blackhaired bombshell buying the same stuff, so booya, sceptics!), and came home with my (first) batch of Phish Food. Ok, fuck my statement about ice cream not being my thing, that stuff was the proverbial shit people've been talkin' about. But. I. Will. Resist. Why? Because it's not very manly to sit and chew down chocolate-fudge ice cream with little chocolate-y fishbits in it, is it?
Onward to the next topic! Everybody knows what facebook is nowadays. That wasn't a question, it was a statement. It has to be like that since both my 60-year old uncle and my senior lieutenant use it. And that's just kinda... well, freaky. Hell, even I facebook, and I don't even like the verb.
Facebook just makes me really neurotic, y'know. On one hand, it's cool and effective that friends from faraway have a "noticeboard" that I can more or less rely on to get a message through. On the other, I have loads of 'friends' who in real life I probably wouldn't even talk with past the compulsory "how-you-doing-?-(though-I-don't-really-care)". Also, I have this wildly popular "compare people"-application, which pretty much just lets people compare two randomly picked people off of their friends list over some generic topic. No harm in that, it's just that most of my facebook-friends don't even know me that well (or at all). It just feels kind of disparaging to find out that someone finds you unsexy, not very useful or thinks you'd make a bad father (that last one really ticked me off royally). But still, as long as I can stay in contact with my real, overseas friends, I guess I just have to stand other people's rank generalisations about me. Y'know, screw you, I wouldn't sleep with you either. So there.
But hey, nobody wants to end things on such a depressing note, so funny comic!
Oh and figureskating rocks, or at least women's. Hey, you women keep talking about how men are only interested in women's tennis because of the marginally small and high-flying skirts, so at the very least I'm not being stereotypical over my chauivinistic sports-choices. Plus I'd hit that.
Ok, here's the thing: I've got 60 days left in the Service until I'm (hopefully) honorably discharged. Out of these sixty days "roughly" (exactly) 44 days are actual days I get to spend with the rest of the jolly ol' Green Gang, running around in army-leotards like some retard. Out of these 44 days 27 will be spent in the woods (the woody wood-woods of frosty ol' Finland). Which brings me to why I started this rant in the first place: I'm pissed. Off.
It happened to be last Saturday when I woke up at a timely 12am. I would've slept longer, but I had to go pick up some folks at the train station. So there I am, in my mood-lighted room, about as awake as a grizzlybear after being poked awake with a pointy stick by some Steve Irwin-lookalike going "Crikey!", and about as happy about said bear probably would be at that point. So I shuffle off to the window, since most people think that the curtains should be open as long as you're awake (go figure...) and what do I see?
The low, reverberating "Fuck..." that escaped my clenched teeth probably caused a few earthquakes somewhere in Tijuana and my icy gaze would probably have made Mr. Freeze proud, but at that moment I didn't care that much.
Snow-season seems to have gotten it's fuck-frosty-grip on Finland once again, and for once I'm not overwhelmed with glee because of it. The reason is that this Monday kicks off my 27 near-consecutive days in the (now snowy) forests of mid-Finland. It's fun stuff if you can go inside once you've had enough of it for the day, but the glamour of a snowy landscape kind of wears off once you realize you're getting a rimjob from Frosty the Snowman. Not only will I probably have to scrape off my nuts from the log I just sat on at some point, but this also means that eating (since we eat outside) is going to suck even harder; for some reason we're not allowed to eat with our hats/caps/helmets on ( I didn't know pinetrees care for etiquette) and now we have to eat even faster so the food doesn't freeze solid in our messkits. Maintenance is going to be a pain in the ass as well: guns freeze, and brushing your teeth with frozen water rarely tends to work. To add even more to this fuck-fest of frost is the fact that I don't get to go on leave next weekend. Instead I have to sit (thankfully) at the brigade and await the next lil' camping trip the Finnish Defence Forces decides to throw at me. This happens to be the following week's Monday...
So in case I don't post anything after two weeks (you can be sure that if I can, I most certainly will), you might want to send out a search-and-rescue party after me. You might want to look for something that's flipping the bird to the rest of the forest.
Let's be frank: I hate the army, and while I may not be stuck for the longest amount of time, my job description gives me the liberty to be malcontent about it all. I'm an antitank-infantryman (your neighborhood bazooka-boy if you will). That means I do a lot of heavy lifting, heavy carrying and heavy... well, heavy. Apart from running around with a bazooka (or three) on our backs, we get our assault rifles, combat equipment, one to two landmines, backpack fully loaded and - if we're unlucky - a bike.
But those aren't big enough reasons on their own for me to really hate the army, so why not list the really big ones, right?? So here they are, in no particular order, the ten biggest reasons why I hate the army:
1. Evacuation. In movies it's cool; some goody-two-shoes decides he has to save Stan from the grocery-store from the rushing hordes of Krauts, so he picks him up on one shoulder and shoots down every motherhubbard in vicinity with the other, all the while running back to his own comrades. Sure, it all sounds heroic and cool, but if you, like me, have another AT-infantryman next to you and he get's wounded, guess who get's to carry him and his gear?? That's right folks, me. And since we're drilling, let's make 'em run up a 20ft near-vertical dune, with his gasmask and raincoat on in case someone farts, in the kind of hail and lightningbolts that make Chuck Norris cringe. And to make sure we all really know what we're supposed to do, LET'S DO IT AGAIN!
2. "We gotta hurry so we can go wait!" For some unexplainable reason, whatever we may be doing, wherever we may be going, we're always in a hurry! I swear, if they had the legislation behind them, they'd time us in the restrooms, too. The funny thing about all this is that no matter how fast (or slow) we get from point A to Z, we always, always have to stand at attention and - here's the punchline - wait. If it was for just a few minutes it wouldn't be that bad, but we're talking fifteen minutes to a whole hour. I mean, c'mon people, we could get through basic training in three months if we didn't have to wait so much!
3. NCO's. Let me explain how certain things work in the finnish military: since almost everybody up to second lieutenants are conscripts at the time they're there, the non-commissioned officers are as well. Only most of them are as apt for the job or just about as motivated for it as the rest of us. The problem is that they're serving for a full year and get quite bitter doing it, whereas people who can play their cards right (it takes a certain amount of intelligence; I'm sorry if I sound mean, but it does) only serve as regular infantry for 6 months, and can thereafter continue with their lives with relative ease. Then again, the dumbest bunch doesn't qualify for NCO-training, so the NCO's are, without almost any exception, your average Joe. Here's the ticker: these Joes , though they might have the training to lead us grunts, do a very poor job at it, and find great enjoyment in dealing the rest of us with chickenshit (look that one up if you're not familiar with the term). Most of us ain't having any of it, which leads to complete lack of morale and a loss in discipline (since no-one in today's world is going to stand some teenager, often smaller/younger/"less of a man" than you are). And this just makes the NCO's angry -> more chickenshit -> the infantry get's angrier etc. ad infinitum. You get the point.
4. The early bird does not catch the worm. Wakeup-call is at 6am, 5am if we're unlucky. Immediately after this we have 5 minutes to "wake up", make our beds and be fully clothed and ready to go. I'm not a morning person, so jumping around like your shirt's on fire in the middle of the night isn't my cup of tea. Of course, after these 5 minutes, it's another 45 until we go to breakfast. In the mean time - guess what? - we wait.
5. VERY LOUD VOICES. I don't get it: not only do they have to wake me from my beauty-sleep in the middle of the effing night, but they have to do it by shouting it very loudly. And after that, you can bet that the only time you'll be hearing anything below 120db that day will be the fart from the guy in the next foxhole. And I'm. dead. fucking. serious.
6. "You're doing it wrong." In the army, free thought among us grunts is allowed, though not encouraged. This mainly to hide our outbursts of praise (or lack thereof), but quite certainly also so we don't have to correct the officers every time they make a mistake, and whoa nelly do they make mistakes! Not only factual errors, but everything from weapons-handling to unit-strategy is down right laden with miscalculations, illogical timewasting and your general fuckups. Everything has to be done the hard way, even though there are at the very least three (3) better ways to do it. It's not that doing it wrong annoys anyone. Fuck, we get used to it, but every time something new (and ugly) rears its head and it's complicated logistical/logical and/or other flaws see the light it should so not be seeing, a tiny bit of my brain leaks out of my ears and falls onto the moss. I'm afraid that once I do get out of the army, I won't have any more brain to use. Oh God, it's already happening!
7. The woods. Let's be fair: the woods are cool, and a central part of the Finnish flora (duh). I just don't consider myself such a crucial part of it that I have to live in it. That's what urbanization is for! If you like camping and jumping around the undergrowth like some longhaired Greenpeace-fag, then be my guest. Just don't invite me along.
8. The weather. Granted, the woods wouldn't be half that bad if only the weather would cooperate every once in a while, but, lucky for me, it doesn't. Instead we get torrential rain, fog you couldn't shoot through, rain that makes you thankful you have a helmet on, autumn stormwinds that chill you to the bone and thunderstorms that, while magnificent, ad to the overall suckiness. All this seems to happen every time we have to camp out in some mosquito-infested woods, resulting in us being cold, wet and very, very pissed. Did I mention the cold? But boy am I lucky it hasn't snowed... yet. Though with my luck, we'll be experiencing the kind of suck-weather this winter nobody's seen for a decade.
9. Eating from a mess kit. This sucks beyond measure. Not only is eating from one of these aluminium cans from hell an absolute pain, but unsanitary as well. And you never really eat that much from them, either because it's so troublesome and slow to eat out of it that you don't have time for seconds (even eating is a timed thing) or because you're just too pissed off about it all to bother with it. The second option seems to go around quite a lot.
10. Mines. I just hate carrying the fuckers, that's all.
Had a bit of a lifechanger today. Off I went to Helsinki to check out my new apartment (though I won't be able to move in until June next year...). Gorgeus lil' thing, a one-roomer with a view and all the creature comforts a guy needs: a floor to pass out on, a toilet to piss past and a fridge to cool beer in. Oh, and it did have a dishwasher as well, but that's girly shit, right? The thing'll need some fixing though, and I don't think cosmetics will do the job. More of a facelift, pliers and all. Thing is, once it's up to standards (those standards would be mine) things will be dandy, fair sailing and all those other silly proverbial wordplays 18th century novelists so do love.
The building was pretty cool as well. Not only was it nostalgically dysfunctional (in that "It's not supposed to work!"-way), but it's also designed by Alvar Aalto. Whooda thunk dat?! Although, if I have to be honest, he must've been going down on a heroin trip and/or drunk when he designed it. And the elevator's kinda cranky'n'shaky. And the lights are a wee bit too dim, even for my tastes. But who cares, I can still gloat.
Though the apartment was bought a few weeks ago already, the fact that I'd actually be moving in at some point hadn't really set in yet. Now don't get me wrong, I can't wait - but that's the thing - I can't wait. Since I'll be moving in in June next year (at it's earliest), I have to come up with something to occupy my for the next 10 months. Not to worry, the Army's taking care of 3 of those, but let's not get in to that right now, shall we.
We also went to IKEA on our way back. Weird place.
Now, it's not that I don't like IKEA, it's just that, from time to time, I find their stuff mindnumbing. IKEA is known for making really cheap stuff they make in bulk, dismantling them, and then stuffing them in little boxes with a number of nuts, bolts and screws that's about as random as most one-liners in an action movie. Sure, they have great stuff at great prices (although I still think they steal some of their designs), but some things I just don't get. The newest addition to this category was (sorry for the absence of a pic) a knife. Not just any knife, but an ergonomical breadknife. Ok, I might not know my ergonomics (or much else), but if I ever saw an ergonomically challenged knife, this fucker was it. If a knife is L-shaped, then it's not a knife, it's an aesthetically challenged scythe with personal problems.
But I bet it'd be one helluva fucker to cut your wrists with...
EDIT: Found a picture of the knife, so now ya'll can agree with me!
