8 posts tagged “me”

It takes a certain amount of skill to, up until now, not have noticed that the European Championships are being played out right now.

Then again, I'm no football-fan.

But to tell you all the truth, I had had a sinking feeling in my spinal column that something generally "big" was coming down, mainly from the huge amount of jokes newspapers would write about how vibrator-sales were estimated to go up within the next month.

Me, of course, being completely oblivious, was wondering what all the males would be doing since the females were being kept busy by themselves. Hockey-season's over, Formula 1's on pretty much every week, and the only actual tournament I regularly watch, Wimbledon, isn't on for around a month. In the end, I probably would have missed the whole shindig hadn't I leafed through today's tv-schedule. Portugal versus the Tzcheschsh Republic ( It's like trying to spell Christina Arugula), hmph. Not exaclty a thrilling match-up, even if I have no idea how good their teams may be.

And this coming from a guy that actually played football for three years in the somewhat distant past.

But football just isn't that exciting to me. There's little to no chance of anybody dying; whenever someone gets hit by anything more menacing than a firefly, they grab their face, fall down and go "Uaaawwgh!", which makes them just look like the biggest, most overpaid babies in the known universe. And since I'm neither a teenaged girl or a flaming homosexual, I find little to no satisfaction in seeing grown up men a few years older than me take off their shirts every time they get that beach-ball in between the fishnet-posts.

I'm not an avid fan of Formula 1, either - mainly because I don't see the charm in seeing cars I'll never get to drive go around tracks which make the Atacama desert look like an amusement-park. The only interesting bits are when there's a big-ass crash, and even then mainly because it's fun to see a three million € sportscar go summersaulting through the air, all the while thinking "THAT'S going to hurt someone's bank-account!".

In fact, the only sports I do watch are martial arts-competitions ( by default because of my hobbies) and, as I mentioned, tennis and, more importantly, Wimbledon. And I'm not just talking about women's tennis, tennis overall is fascinating! 

... Even if pretty much anyone with any knowledge of today's international tennis-rankings can make a pretty safe bet on who's going to be in the tourney- final.

Friday rocks, anyway you put it. Flip it sideways and throw it into the middle of your general Finnish winter, and it still rocks - frozen rocks, but still - Solid.

Work's done for the week, and I can go write off yet another week from my calendar, inching ever closer to that faithful day in August ( no set date) when I'll finally be able to gather my stuff, move out and start studying university-size.

I'm 20, and all in all, I like to consider myself a fully grown man.

I've served in the military and have the required skills to man most weapons your standard army uses and improvise the rest. I can use, plant and disarm mines, I can blow up tanks.

I'm anti-tank infantry. I carry big-ass bazookas and I've got the body to cope with it.

Since the army forced me to postpone my university-studies with a year, I'm now working full-time as a construction worker. Each day, from 7:00 to 15:30, trying to earn an honest month's future rent.

Today wasn't that much different: after work, I went to have my hair cut, after which I went off to go check on some witty space-saving furniture solutions as well as some kitchen-related articles, trying to go through in my mind what every-day items I'd probably need to buy before moving out.

After that, off to the library to try and remember what books I was supposed to borrow ( I naturally forgot to check my "to read"- list), resulting in me delving through the erotica - section and wondering whether the Story of O would be anything worth reading.

I end up going home without really having gotten anything done, change into a tee and proceed to leaf through today's newspaper, since it was late this morning and hadn't arrived before I went off to work.

And then the doorbell rings.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I still live with my parents, since there's no point in moving out yet, since I'll be moving to another town in August, so for now I'm just playin' parasite.

Apart from me, the only one home is my dad, though he's up on the third floor, so I naturally go open the door.

The dude's quite a spiny fellow; pretty tall, but could be broken in half like a twigg. At best 3 years older than I am. Holding some pamphlets, so he's probably a-pushin' the latest spiritual trend. OK, I'm game.

And the fucker blurts out

"Hi, is your Mom or Dad home?"

I'm pretty sure even the neighbors heard my brain short-circuit.

My gray matter having been reset to zero, the only thing I'm able to blurt out is a fumbly "No.". No cutting retort, no magnificent one-liner, no nothing. Just a blank stare and a single cyllable.

It takes a lot to make me speechless, but this guy pulled out the wild card.

*sigh* Couldn't August come by any sooner?

... Because Yours Truly has now hit the 20 year mark, the big 2-0 (Birmingham 2, Joni 0). Although nothing peculiar per se (I love writing that, since if you take out the space in between, it means ass in Finnish. *sigh* I still have a simple mind...), I always used to think that, even though here you're eligible to vote and buy most alcoholic drinks at the tender age of 18, 20 was the definite "adult-being" age; a kind of age when, I used to reckon as a child, you were simply old enough. Adult.

And that's a definite hitch, since I still feel like a little kid. I just haven't "grown up" yet, and still, according to prepubescent little me's definition of adulthood, I "have". It's just funky because I didn't really think I'd feel this juvenile at this age. But I was pretty much on the money when it came to trying to guess how little I'd have achieved by this time. Woop!

Then again, maybe I have grown up a wee bit. Most clearly visible when checking my birthday-presents (those I have already gotten, but I am not yet satisfied -_- ), especially since they were exactly what I was hoping for, which is always nice.

It's a citrus basket. For my Cuba Libre- lemons.

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The Big Present, the one I got from my parents, was an Alessi Blow-Up citrus basket (pictured), something that I specifically asked for (for Christmas). The fact that I went "*gasp* OH!" when I got it may earn me some adulty-points, since the kid inside of me would probably have wanted a TIE-fighter toy instead. But the soon-to-be broke university-gopher, was extatic.

I also gave myself a few presents: a dictionary and a few forms, but more on the paperwork once they're actually through. The dictionary, is probably something I should explain. I got it because it's part of a small promise prepubescent-me did at some point in my life: have learnt at least one new language every decade-birthday. So I decided to go for it full-time, and took up studying a new language for, well, for the fun of it. It's especially weird, since I've never willingly read through a dictionary to expand my vocabulary (or otherwise, either. Rational me says "WTF mate?")

But today's not really about me, at least that's what I'd like to think. All the "happy birthday!" greetings I've been getting have just made it even more clear, since stupid ol' me actually took almost 20 years to actually realize it. I personally would like to dedicate today for all those people who consider me a friend, because it's you people who actually keep me going. You make my life so much more fun, in part because you're the best (and sometimes sole) audience for all my antics, and you make me want to surprise you even more. I know I don't say it enough to you all, but seriously, I love you all. Friends make my world go round; money just makes it go 'round faster.

But seriously, happy 17th guys and gals of my life, you rock my world!

Been awfully busy the last week, mainly being sick and getting acquainted with my new (<3) laptop. Productivity has, of course, been at the usual all-time low, but I've finally gotten some spare time to do something I haven't really done in a few years: gaming.

For those of you who do know about computers, getting a new one for me was going from a GeForce 4 to a 8600m GT. For those of you not into computers... well, programs that have come out after 9/11 actually work on my computer, which is, at the very least, nice.

But, ah, what great stories I've missed over the past four years! I haven't played a decent game for a very long time, and finally getting my hands on today's contemporary computational storytelling-devices has been a thrill to go through! And the fact that I can finally use my tablet without it making the computer bend over and "take it" is on a whole 'nother scale.

Work, of course, is not something I will be doing with my laptop in the near future; partially because there really isn't anything requiring such work for the time being, but, more importantly, because I'm lazy!

But good times are to be had. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go seek for adventure and gravitational anomalies at Chernobyl.

Call me silly, but up until this week I'd always imagined that construction yards and -sites were mainly about building things; mainly houses, but you can have a go at whatever.

This week, however, i've started to find compelling evidence and clues as to the true nature of building buildings and of the people who build them.

It seems that a significant part of a site's construction cycle involves a whole lot of deconstruction. Now, I'm not saying 'all out destroy' since I've yet to see anyone break out the dynamite, but you'd be surprised how many times I've had someone ask me if I've seen a sledgehammer around. I sure as hell was. And a sledgehammer isn't exactly a surgical tool for trimming down the hedges, and I've yet to find any type of indication that someone would be thwacking bolts into concrete by hand; no, someone's fucked something up and someone else needs to go unfuck it, albeit in a not-so-subtle way.

And sledgehammers aren't the only things people are using, or should I say looking for: I dare say that half of the tools at work (because this is where I work) are more prone to breaking things than building them. The rest, while primarily for building things, seem like the perfect items to exact hilarious/painful slapstick comedy throughout. I'm sorry, but nailgun-wounds are, concerning all successive factors that have to come into place, ultimately, funny.

Of course I can't be sure, but it seems that many things are inadvertently done in a haphazard manner, though to be fair, most of these incidents involve the use or over- of cement or the laying of it. Ok, sure, having to redo something three times does take time, which simply means more pay and that the site stays in production for a longer while, but still, c'mon!

I'm also starting to think that the laissez-faire attitude of it all is affecting judgement and productivity quite profoundly. Don't get me wrong, they get the job done, but I don't think they've had deadlines since junior high.

I got a personal taste of said attitude yesterday when my foreman put me up on "peaking"-duty. 'Peaking' is blue-collar slang for drilling the shit out of slabs of rock/concrete/incorrectly laden cement with a machine that resembles a vibrating, steel dildo more than anything. I kid you not, that's exactly what you'd use for the job if the thing just had a handle.

Now, I'd done some 'peaking' earlier in the week, but to a much smaller degree. This time the project at hand involved wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting wall that simply happened to be too thick, which basically meant that I had to peak it to a certain depth, otherwise the wall could just as well be pulled down (and wouldn't that make everyone else happy). Not for the foreman to care, it pretty much seemed that any construction worker unoccupied at that moment seemed good enough.

The thing he failed to mention was the tiny bit that I'd need to use a crane to get up to the wall. So, after 4 hours of trying to breathe life into a big crane-truck and deciding it "probably won't work today" and a quick how-to of about 2 minutes with the topic "how i oporatez" I was by myself, my only company being the Peking-.. sorry, peaking-tool and a fashionable little yellow lift/crane that seemed like it was built like a tank and could surely ram one off the road as well. I know that sounds contradictory, but that's the impression I got. It was supposed to propel me to about 10-15m.

Try to find the moment at which I should have pointed out that I am deathly afraid of heights.

So there I am, high up in the air, scared shitless and ready to cave into the excessive bowel-movement my body's decided should be ramped up just a teeny bit more, just for the sake of comedy. Although for the sake of continuity, I have to admit that after a few minutes of pretty much just putting "oh shit" on repeat I was able to get a hold of myself and admit that there was no going down for me until I'm done, so I'd better just start working. I've heard that simply coming face-to-face with your fears is the most effective method to get rid of them, but that was ridiculous. But I will admit that being an adrenaline-junkie it did peak my interest (no pun intended) and, in the end, I guess you could categorize it somewhere near 'fun'. And it was definitely an "experience". Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go wash my pants. 

Two and a Half Men - Theme

Being a man by most standards, it hadn't really dawned on me that I seem to be starting a career in Manly Jobs until a good (and, duh, female) friend of mine pointed it out to me.

Quite true! Having just gotten out of the army (I blew up tanks and shot bazookas: if that ain't manly then I don't know what!) I quickly followed suite by calling most contractors in the citywide area and asking for a job. A few weeks later I find myself in (somewhat) trendy neon yellow overalls and matching safety-helmet!

And, I mean c'mon, construction workers are up there with soldiers, firefighters, cops, indi-... ok, now it's turning into a recap of the guys from Village People, and they were... manly in a whole different kind of way, so screw that thought.

But working at a construction site is manly; you work with big, heavy machinery and tools that chew through rock and wall; there's soldering, riveting, and welding; big cranes and tractors moving big piles of rocks and sand and, of course, there's the site itself, a big, booming skeletal manifestation being worked on by hundreds of tiny, neon colored ants, each building upon the skeleton bit by bit only to stop until it's done (or union coffee-break, whichever comes first).

And in the middle of all this is, well, moi, trying to look the part and act like I actually know what I'm doing - given a completely new type of power-tool and asked if I knew how to use it I deftly answered "I can manage". A few minutes later I, surely still quite deftly, plunged said power-tool through the nearest floor. And the thing was actually supposed to do that. Way to get a revelation, y'know?

Of course, it wouldn't be nearly as manly if there wasn't some form of Nature to stand up against, so we choose the safe bet: weather. No matter what comes down from yonder sky, our manly, manly men stand out there, toiling relentlessly until they're washed away by the torrential storms! (Or until it's coffee-breaktime again, whichever comes first.) Drilling, sweating, paving, working(, drinking coffee), moving heavy objects; hell, being manly!

And it wouldn't be nearly as manly if you didn't start each day's work an hour earlier than normal people, because eight o'clock is just too late! We get up earlier so that we can work more! (Granted, I'll be damned if I see anyone toiling away after lunchtime...)

And this is the reality I have the privilege to be a part of for the next 6-or-so months! Alright, I'm about as likely to wake up early as Guns'n'Roses are of releasing Chinese Democracy, but the money's good and the work's kind of enjoyable. (Never heard that one out of a prostitute's mouth, huh?) Plus, time flies when you're operating heavy machinery. And if all goes well, in six months I'll so be saying "we don't need to hire someone to fix that, I can fix it myself!"

The DIY-man's famous last words.

I've noticed over the years that, whenever I'm stressed out, I start exercising relentlessly, and since I've been stressing out about getting/not having a job, I once again started another exercise-a-thon right after coming out of the army. Every spare moment I have goes to doing all kinds of cardio- and fitnessthingies, just to get my mind off of things. I also happen to be one of the crazies my sister writes about because jogging has become a near-fanatic thing for me lately.

This is the point where I should be telling myself that the temperature averages around a constant -10ºC and that I shouldn't be out jogging in a snowstorm. Nevertheless, this is what I've been doing.

You have to understand that, even though sane/foreign people wouldn't go jogging out there to save their life (did I mention the ice?), jogging seems to have misplaced itself next to my bathroom-selector in my brain: when you gotta go, you got to go!

Perhaps it's just the jogging, or perhaps it's the mind-numbing cold, but running around for an hour in midwinter has a wonderfully "emptying" mental effect. Even my usual existential crises have been averted simply by getting my "flow" on. And the wonderful thing is, my flow-feeling's started sticking on to me and staying with me even after I've stopped my jog for the day.

I don't really know what it is with running; ever since I was really tiny (let's add "young" as well, since I was still "tiny" five years ago) and we'd drive past a field, I got this immense urge to get out of the car and just go running up and down that field. Even as I've gotten older, every now and then, when I've felt really aggravated or stressed out, I've simply put on my shoes, gone outside and started running down the street. A couple of blocks later and I just feel more in toon with my inner "flow" again, y'know?

But like I said, I don't know if it's just the jogging in itself, the surroundings or the idea of "running 'til your heart stops" that makes people get their flow on, but sometimes the only thing that really helps is running really fast. And emptying your brain out on the dirt-track really gets you in tune with yourself. And an empty brain means there's more room to be creative.

But let's de-zen this post for now. I got a job.

Two posts a day, whoodathunk? Seems I may have recovered some of my energy with a bit of rest (though I'm still not the ususal 'bunny on Extacy'-persona I usually am), so I thought I'd post a lil' sumthin' sumthin' for y'all.

You see, although I may proclaim myself as [all-knowing, all seeing and all-powerful] / [conceited] (choose one), there are still many things in this world of [ours] / [mine] which I don't know and wonder about. It's just that...

...I Don't Understand:

• ... why people decide to give their children names not even fantasynerds could come up with for their newest elf? I mean, I can understand names like Latifa or (to some extent) Gaylord, but if you name your kids Shaqueena, Teeroy, Janelle or Preshuss you either intend them to become sidekicks for He-Man or you just crossed the line between originality and 'stoopid'.
• ... why women are allowed to complain about how men "don't understand" them, but can put every quirk and happenstance men have or are able to generate into a category I think is labeled "habits of simpletons".
• ... why certain people find it necessary to flaunt their sexual preference (or lack thereof) to other people? If you're barely fifteen and wearing a hoodie with "What makes you think I'm heterosexual?" printed on it, it only makes me want to ask you "What makes you think you aren't?".
• ...why kids have adopted the facemask-trend? You know, the kind that surgeons and japanese people wear when performing surgery or it's really smoggy (those crafty japanese with their mad sushiskillz). I mean, c'mon, you're living in a small town with cleaner air than even Jesus could muster; take it off, you look like a douche.
• ... who, or what, actually puts those big, yellow cranes you see at construction sites together? Doesn't it just need a bigger crane? And who's put that one together, huh? The big mysteries of life...
• ...why women are so sensitive about their weight? I've gone down 7kg, and even then I thought I was quite slim. If you're a woman and disagree with me about this, re-read point # 2.
• ... why men supposedly aren't allowed to cry? Because it's girly? You mean there are sex-segregated emotional states I'm just not allowed to use? Fuck you, I can cry if I'm sad, if the world's feeling too big at the moment, if people's general stupidity drives me to it, if I see the ninth episode of Band of Brothers; if I effing want to!
• ... who was the first to start drinking milk? By this I mean (as Lewis Black put it) moo-cow-fuck-milk. I mean, picture it: who in his right mind looked at a cow's udder and thought to himself "I think I'll pull those things and drink whatever comes out of them"
• ... why are "really" gay guys often portrayed with a voice that could shatter glass if they just screamed "Eeee!" (which they'd probably do at some point). What, came out of the closet and forgot your balls? Castration got your tongue? Couldn't burn a bra so you nipped your nuts instead?
• ... why do some people seem to think I'm a bad father?
• ... why is the perfume department in a department-store often right at the door? Nothing wrong with smelling nice, I like that, but it's a bit different when you walk into a room and *WOOF* you're run over by a symphony of odours, scents and smells from hundreds of different perfumes, eau de toilettes and colognes that could take down an elephant.
• ... WWJD...
• ... for french fries?

That's it for now, though that was just a snippet of my Ultimate List Of Life's Big Mysteries™. Now for a glass of some good ol'...

... wait a minute, one more:

• ... who in their right mind decided 'glögg' is a good name for a drink???