Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

The "what to do before you turn 30" list keeps on getting shorter and shorter. I can now tick off No. 367, Sing in gay karaoke. A (with whom I go to the ballroom dancing lessons) decided to go get one glass of wine in honour of the first lesson.

Funny how most of these things start with one glass of wine.

At 2 a.m I had sung very badly but in compensation very loudly a romantic duet with A, drank more than is good for me but still had the presence of mind to excuse myself when he found company. Today's lecture on the subject of the most dry and boring management theories went in through the other ear, looked in vain for functioning brain cells, and then left the cranium via the other ear.

I so needed that. I have been noticing the usual signs of autum depression - can't get anything done, am considering hibernation and so on and so on. After three decades I still am not used to the change in the amount of the light. I should probably move somewhere with a more steady climate. Plus, the change of the season somehow always dries my skin to the point where no amount of lotion seems to be enough.

Loadsa congratulations in the end:
Happy birthday, sister mine!
W00t to all the new homes - St and T, as well as my sister and her bf, I shall expect an invitation to the housewarming party, just so you know.
And everyone else, just give yourself a pat on the back, I'm sure you've done something to earn it.


Current soundtrack:
Orgasm Death Gimmick: Crazy Woman
Rammstein: Keine Lust (ich zähl die Fliegen remix)

Wo bist du, Sandmännchen?

I must be turning into a vampire. My sleep pattern has turned completely upside down and shows no signs of returning to normal. Like right now, I'm so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open, but if I take a nap now there's no hope of falling asleep in the evening. Not that I'd had any trouble falling asleep in general, the problem is that for some reason my body seems to think that 1 or 2 a.m. is the best time to really wake up and be active. If I didn't have neighbours I'd be doing the laundry and washing the dishes in the middle of the night...

And of course, at 7 a.m. when I need to get up and go to work or school, that in my body's opinion is the best possible time for some sightseeing in the slumberland.

Obviously there are some disturbances in communication between my brain and the rest of me.

I guess there's no other option but to buy the entire 69 Eyes discography, start to wear too much eye shadow and pointy false teeth and go about brooding and being all melancholic and try as hard as I can to look haunted and mysterious.

Or, of course, learn how to sleep properly. Oh, the choices...

Seeing as writing the literary masterpiece above has now taken me some 30 minutes (plus the additional 15 minutes for the headline), I'll leave you with, as one wise man put it, etwas Nitroglyzerine. If you have QuickTime installed, you can watch the famous, uniform-heavy video Benzin here.

Me, I'll don my running shoes and head outside to see if I can clear my head enough for a 300-word German essay on my previous work experience. That'll be an interesting read, I'm sure. The teacher must be suffering from insomnia too.

:)

Today's top news go into the category of happy family news.

My sister's got engaged. My actual kid sister, the only one I've got. A big congratulation and an equally big awww to the happy couple, though I have to scold them a little for holding back the big news for a couple of days. You see, sis and her fiance J (awww) reached the agreement on Tuesday, and only on Friday J brought a bottle of Koskenkorva booze to our parents as a compensation for the loss of their daughter. I expect my father will chuckle about it for years.

"Never is a man happier than when drunk or engaged" was his comment so I suppose he approves of the arrangement. As does mother, of course. It'll be an interesting event if there'll be an actual wedding as a result, people in my family are not that keen on marriages. Like another immortal wisdom from my father goes when asked why my parents have never made their union official: What would it change?

What would it change if they suddenly decided to get married? They seem to love each other and that's it. After decades of living together they probably know what they are talking about.

I'm going to be all soppy and happy for a few weeks. Please accept my apologies, the doctor convinced me that this is not permanent and with the proper use of the ointment he gave me will wear off eventually.

Today's random quote and the winner of the Funniest Typo Of The Year Award is the poor sod who registered on the Herzeleid.com forums just to say how crappy the forums are, how badly they are run, that all the posters are just selfish bastards who "have nothing else in your olives."

I'd be on a crappy mood too if my olive was empty.



Soundtrack of my evening:
Sigur Rós: The album Takk
(Sigur Rós will be in Helsinki on 29th October. I noticed that about ten minutes ago, the tickets will come for sale on Wednesday morning at 9 at the Lippupalvelu website. Guess who doesn't have money)
Weissglut: The album Zeichen

I hate having to come up with headlines

9 months to go before the big three-O strikes, so posts like the following will appear here every now and then. Feel free to skip to the bottom of the page, where you will find pictures of Rammstein in firemen's uniforms. I kid you not.

[ pointless, random angst ]

I just had a talk with my mother and she quite casually mentioned that she's now officially a part-time pensioner (that means she only works from Tuesday to Thursday). My mother. A pensioner. And it won't be more than a couple of years when my dad'll join her. I shudder to think what'll happen when they have to find new ways to spend all the energy previously used for work.

It may well be our humble summer cottage turns into a Taj Mahal or a Buckingham Palace.

Anyway, what that also means, is that I won't stay young and beautiful (no need to comment on that, thank you ever so much) forever either. If I was to believe what I'm told, I should by now have a family and a career. I have a shy fish, does that count? Funny thing is, that even if being young, urban and single is a growing trend, and there's more and more single households (if that's the temr I'm looking for), I still, in some luckily rare situations get the feeling that I'm, I don't know, an awkward. It may be just me, of course.

But enough with the age crisis, if there even is one, and on to the more happier things.

[ /pointless, random angst ]

Rammstein's new video Benzin will air tomorrow on German MTV's Total Request Live, and on Saturday on Viva. I just saw a couple of pictures of what to expect. They are portrayed, like I said, as firemen. If you don't believe me, look at the photographic evidence. Here's one, and here, too.

Hell, if they can pull that off in their fourties I have nothing to worry about.

EDIT: Of course I forgot something. Clicky here for the original source of the piccies (there's more of them there, too). And the release dates of the single.

Mix mir einen Drink

For some reason I seem to have ended up on the Statistics Finland's mailing lists. Yesterday I got another questionnaire (I filled one out last year, too) on my drinking habits and overall alcohol consumption during the past 12 months. Have you any idea how difficult it is to be honest when you want to write on every page a disclaimer saying that this is not really true, I don't drink quite that much, I've just spent an entire week on a festival?

So if there seems to be a worrying increase in young women's intake of alcoholic beverages, you know why. Though I have to say that there might be a worrying increase in my personal intake of alcoholic beverages if the weather continues to be like this. It's the first official autumn storm outside, if you hadn't noticed, or are lucky enough to live in the Caribbean. Right now I want hot cocoa with rum in it, or at least a huge glass of white wine. I guess it's safe to say that the summer is over and we're facing the six months of bitter cold, sleet, rain, darkness and the few rare sightings of snowflakes called, for want of a better word, the winter.

In all of the handbooks of how to write a bestsellere are instructions on the use of cliffhangers. Here's this episode's moment of suspense and action: this morning I went see a doctor about my arm (amazingly enough; it usually takes me weeks to schedule an appointment with one. Don't know why, I'm not afraid of doctors or anything. Just your basic laziness, I suppose). Anyway, after poking my arm and twisting it this way and that and getting confused with his computer he ordered some more tests, so there's nothing more to do now than to wait. Who knows, maybe the damn thing will heal itself by the time of the next appointment - which may lie months away in the future.

Current soundtrack:
Janus: Kadaverstern
(I just found out that Amazon.uk and Amazon.de will accept Visa Electron as a method of payment. I'm gonna buy me a few good CDs and books once the money fairy visits my bank account again. Read: the next life. Janus is most definitely on my shopping list).

Dear Camera, I'd Like To Confess...

I have to confess that I am kinda expecting the new Idols competition which starts next Sunday. Not because I'd want to know who'll the winner be, but because of the first few episodes when the most awful, horrible and pathetic singer-wannabes are trying to impress the judges. I don't know why but it really fascinates me how some people have the iron-hard self confidence to go and ridicule themselves in front of a dozen cameras and consequently thousands of people. Have they never heard themselves singing? Or don't they just care? Some are clearly in denial, at least judging by their outraged reactions to the judge's decision. There's no way I'd do that, I know exactly how much I suck at singing - my dear departed dog used to leave the room whenever I had the urge to sing. I took the hint.

The human mind works in mysterious ways and hope clearly springs eternal. Whatever the reason for their (and mine) behaviour is, I'm going to make myself a huge pile of popcorn and have a pillow ready so that I can cover my eyes when the most embarrassing contestants are performing.

It's like watching a particularly well-made horror movie, really. All you want to do is shout "don't go there! For all that is good in this world, do not open your mouth!" and then when they inevitably continue singing and your other eye is watering and the other won't even open up anymore and you can feel your mind devolving to a level beyond retarded and all you want to do is to crawl under a very large rock because of all the embarrassment by association and you fear that nothing will ever, ever be the same anymore, that something pure and beautiful has been destroyed forever you realize that while everything you're seeing is true it'll be over soon. And then the flesh stops crawling and the brain fires up all the neurons necessary for a good fascinated wondering. Why would anyone want to humiliate themselves in public? And why on earth would anyone want to watch it?

And then it starts all over again when the next hopeful enters the room.

On a bit more serious note, I feel I might be due another 8-month wait in the black hole also known as the Finnish healthcare system. My left arm, the one with the nerve stuck in between the bones (yes, the one I'm constantly complaining about, sorry about that) has been acting up again and since my usual "ignore it and it'll go away" - tactic hasn't proved to be successful I'll probably have to take the bull by the horns and go see a doctor. I don't want another operation, even if the magic medicine they gave me made me so tranquil and peaceful I almost reached nirvana that day.

It could be that the pain goes away just as soon as things calm down at work again and I don't have to do heavy lifting and repetitive motions as much. It's just that I dropped a plate full of food into a sauce dish the other day because my fingers went suddenly numb. It's never done that before.

Meh. Old age doesn't come alone, as they say.




Things to do when feeling bored: select All music as a playlist on Media Player.
Suomen Talvisota: Mielitauti-rock
Stahlhammer: Stahlmania
Dinah Washington: Keepin' Out Of Mischief
Feeling B: Lied von der unruhevollen Jugend
Mediaeval Baebes: Erthe Upon Erthe
KC & The Sunshine Band: That's The Way I Like It
And it goes on and on...

The Rambling Continues

Since I have a blog I guess I should actually post in it every now and then.

Time for another episode of the amazing life and adventures of S. Hietanen!

Um...

..Errr..

Like one of the best t-shirt slogans I've seen goes: I'm like a superhero with no powers and motivation.

Okay. School first. I did what I promised to do and will now finish my education at the business school instead of the hotel- and restaurant management branch I started it at. Both are different branches of the same polytechnic, so the actual transfer included enrolling to the courses in a slightly different manner than what I've been doing so far and informing a few faculty members of my intentions -and actually finding the building and the classrooms. Easy as anything.

Today we were chilling in the cafeteria with a classmate of mine who also switched over to the business school, and analyzed the differences between the two branches. In Haaga, the school where we started out, the student body is from a different planet compared to the one in the business school - and naturally so, it specializes solely to the hospitality management, while the business school is exactly what the title promises it to be. In Haaga we have these outgoing, trendy, social people in their twenties who generally know what they want out of life and how they will get it - what I am doing there, I don't know.

The Vallila branch, however - a good part of the students are so very young. On Monday, for example, I bumped into a group of questionmark-shaped young men dressed how they feel a hiphopper should and using the word fuck at least three times in every sentence. Then there are the ultra-trendy babes and dudes, straight from the fashion catalogue. Blend in some people well over their fourties and you should see what I mean. Again, the question of what am I doing there arises.

The teaching staff seems to be in the same professional level in both schools, and I mean that in a positive way. I especially adore my new German teacher (learning German is my little perversion, I know), who does most of her talking in German and also makes us talk - and she addresses all her students as Frau or Herr so-and-so. I feel I'm going to enjoy myself on her lessons.

And I was supposed to continue smoothly into some few random notes about Life Outside School And Work tm (yes, there is one), but just noticed there's a pretty gorgeous thunder storm outside. It's 1 am, it rains like there's no tomorrow and the experience is made complete with flashing lightning and rolling thunder. If I was a goth I'd be beside myself.

Anyways, tomorrow I have the rare luxury of a whole day off. I'm not going to answer the phone if anyone from work calls, I'll make myself a nice cup of coffee and for once read the paper properly and not in less than 5 minutes which is what I usually do. And then I'll clean up the pigsty I've been calling home lately.

I can't wait next spring when I've hopefully graduated and can focus on one thing at the time. Right now my calendar's so full of stuff it's amazing I can find anything in it. I can't imagine what it would be like if I had family and children to look after as well. Respect to those who manage to juggle with education, work and family.

All right, time for my beauty sleep.

Currently playing:
Peggy Lee: Black Coffee
Billie Holiday: I'm A Fool To Want You

Minx fought the law...

...and Minx won.

Some happy news first. Rammimages.com is back, just as fabulous and great as it was before The Attack Of The 50ft Corporate Lawyer. Minx, the webmistress extraordinaire, got permission to keep her site alive albeit without the few video screencaps which apparently were the reason to all this hassle. But as they say, there's no such evil that something good wouldn't come out of it.

1) Go us rammsteinfans! We showed support and made our opinion clear - and we were heard. Though most of the work was done by Minx, I think that our little community managed to create enough pressure to help nudge the management to the right direction. I mean, corporate lawyers admitted being wrong. Who'd have thought that possible?

2) The slightly paranoid who's website is next - atmosphere has vanished, at least for now. Had the management decided otherwise, it would have had an immense impact on running and creating fansites and not only on Rammstein fansites.

There has been another example of how to handle these kinds of tricky situations, a Harry Potter fansite mugglenet.com ran into similar difficulties with Warner Bros. but luckily someone came up with the idea of making mugglenet.com their official fansite. A great deal of fan activity happens on the internet nowadays and that puts the various managers on the edge, or at least should put them there. As fantastic medium of attracting new fans/customers as the Internet is, there's a multitude of issues to be dealt with - beginning with copyright laws and how do they apply in cyberspace/different countries.

The question is, where do the limits of control go? Can The Man just order someone to shut down their website, on the pain of financial charges, or pain? And who gets to decide what is acceptable behaviour/website content/you name it and what isn't?

But for now everything's fine on teh intarweb.

As for Real Life (tm), school started, things are busy at work and I've been nursing a massive hangover today. There were plenty of reasons to celebrate yesterday (combined finished thesis and birthday party thrown by partyorganizer extraordinaire Ms. E) and celebrate we did. The one good point of having students as customers is that if you for some unknown reason might appear to be a tad tired and not necessarily looking like a little miss sunshine they do understand and probably feel exactly the same themselves.


Today's music:
Rammstein: Benzin (a sample of the song here)
Silber: Kalt wie Eis
Clawfinger: Biggest & The Best