My final text about Harry Potter

The past weekend I finished the last Harry Potter. Don't worry, there are no spoilers in this text.. there is some background information about Voldemort, which should not be hugely important for the plot. However, if you want to stay spoiler-free, please don't continue.

After reading the books I started thinking what set this one apart from other fantasy-series. I'm not a huge fan (I don't think I'm a fan at all, though they were good books), but I did see something worth noticing in how Voldemort was characterized in the books, as opposed to many other Big Evils in other stories (starting from Lord of the Rings and going all the way to other books of the genre from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (of which, I dare say, I am a fan of).

The Thing that really touched me was the origin and characterization of Voldemort. He was not a god, he hadn't done anything extraordinary to get where he was. Even though he was expectationally powerful wizard - and some of it was probably thanks to good genes - he still didn't do anything that anyone else couldn't have. The spells he cast, the reputation he got and the minions he had -- hard work and sacrifice, all of it! He stayed awake during classes in Hogswarts (studied there from his 10th year to his 17th), "networked" with other individuals and secured connections thru his friendships. Of course Voldemort was a psycho, but basically, anyone could have done it.

And this is what I find great. During the series, Voldemort (a name he took himself because his own name was basically very mundane) is seen searching for objects, studying, making traps, trusting people, giving responsibility, punishing failures, manipulating, suffering information deprivation... he's not just sitting on his throne and gloating as his master scheme unfolds. He keeps busy. He delegates. Many times we see him acting and thinking like your normal company CEO. Of course, instead of running international company he's leading a crusade against society... but basically, isn't that pretty much the same thing?

And this is what I love about the books. Voldemort had the same education as everyone else. There was no secret knowledge or selling souls or such like. The whole Harry Potter-story could easily have been told in slashdot-posts; evil CEO, bad program (Sony rootkit, maybe?), department heads and PR, young hackers noticing and exploiting a weakness in the code (HD-DVDs); trying to silence them with lawsuits, pushing forward with the program (DRM in legal mp3-substitutes). Punishments. Some company figureheads get sacrificed, but most don't. Life goes on.

Sliders - creating alternative realities

Few days ago I had the opportunity to see the pilot to scif-series Sliders, from 1995. In the show punch of people "slide" from world to world trying to find a way back home. The plot of the pilot was - to make long story short - about four people who are stranded on an alternative timeline, where Soviet Union had won the Cold War.

For the record, I happen to like alternative timelines, the "what if"-scenarios. But I didn't like this one. A fast plot summary;

The sliders arrive to the new world, thinking they are home and separate. The first is in hurry and shouts a taxi; the second one decides to call home and the rest two (the inventor and his teacher) start to talk about physics in the park where they landed. Then each notices that something is wrong;

• The telephone box doesn't have a coin slot and the operator wants to know if the slider has calling privileges, and thus wants to know her id-number. The operator further mentions that the box is operated by PT&T (People's Telephone & Telegraph).
  
• The taxi driver speaks Russian and not English.
  
• There's a statue of Lenin in the park, instead of Lincoln.
  

The plot starts to develop as the taxi drives through a toll booth, and the slider pays his trip with a dollar he had in his wallet. This promptly gets him to jail.

Meanwhile the three sliders walk around seeing police beating, arresting and even shooting citizens. They stop to buy a sausage from a stand and pay with a dollar. The sausage seller mistakes the sliders into revolutionaries and reminds them not to waive the dollars around; apparently they are used by the resistance as a code. The official new dollars are printed with red ink and have Khrushchev's picture in the middle.
At this point police takes interest in the three sliders and the sausage seller helps them away into revolutionaries hide-out. Once there they see a broadcast from People's Court; apparently the show is entertaining in nature and has a smiling host. During the case witnesses are sworn in with the traditional oath, which ends in "...and help me God". One of the cases handled is that of the fourth slider, who is sentenced to Alaskan gulag for 15 years.

The revolutionaries explain how the world has come to this; how losing the Korean War started a set of events which spread communism to the rest of the world, leaving USA economically separated from the other countries. In the end even USA fell, and thus they are now living in the The Socialist States of America.

The revolutionaries help to free the fourth slider. After farewells the sliders depart the world.

* * *

I found the episode to be fairly painful to watch. The changes were for shock value and not at all consistent; the telephone box wasn't operated by coins but the city (San Fransisco) had toll booths; the court used vows that mentioned God; the difference between streets were the police acted like thugs and the devoted people who saluted voluntarily when the national anthem played and so on.

I have noticed similar problems with several stories; the writers often just replace some things (such as statues) and names (AT&T => PT&T) without considering how the changes affect the larger dynamic of the world. Writing a story is not just about character interaction (while that was pretty painful as well) but about surroundings, particularly in a show that is devoted to alternative timelines.

I don't know why I'm so disappointed. Maybe because the articles I read promised a show with large following and it had nine stars out of ten; maybe because once you see a story that has done it RIGHT you can't help but compare the rest to that one (for example some episodes of Stargate SG-1, Star Trek DS9, X-Men, Buffy.. the comicbook Exiles is all about alternative outcomes of other comics...) .

Changes in the blog

§1. The writer of Town of Ponte Corvo noted how my blog would need some colour. I started looking into the possibility and was surprised how much Google had developed the Blogger-template engine since I had last looked at it (about year ago, when I tried to make The Gulag-blog (now in deep hibernation, with all the illustrations broken links) all pretty. It used to be hard work and involved reading through the Blogger-template code and making alternations.
Now it was much easier; the only thing I had to modify in the template were the header-wilth, which didn't click with the new at all well. Even the sidebar - which had to be modified by editing template - can now be worked with using Java(?)-tools. Very easy, very simple.

§2. I checked the tags I have been making the past few weeks. I had been adding new tags like they were last day on sale, which is not very smart - too detailed tags will never get more than two entries in them, and are therefore useless. They are now sorted by categories (TV, Internet, philosophy) that are so wide they should get several entries. "Guest of the Third Reich" is exemption I made in hope that if ever finish it, readers that are solely interested in that should find it easier to check out. In the following weeks I hope to go through my posts from the last two years and tag them as well (only about 70 to go!), hopefully giving them some more value.

§3. I also added links to few (very good) blogs by my associates in the sidepanel. They are all worth looking, provided you are interested of my blog, which might be too strong of an assumption.

What do you think?

Sunset

Taken around 23:00 at my balcony about a week ago. You can't stay up too late - after 2:00 the sun starts to rise up again..

On another topic: Picasa, a service by Google seems to have a rather embarrassing bug; while Blogger and Picasa are both owned by the same company, I can't actually add pictures I have loaded to Picasa to Blogger -- but pictures I load to Blogger are shown as folders in Picasa, and can therefore be shown. To get this picture to you, I had to load it to Picasa here and to Blogger separately here.
Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, but I doubt it.

Kari Suomalainen

-Kuinka toiset jaksaa ja viitsii?
-Why do they bother? Where do they find the energy?
[The paper reads: "Massacre At Algeria" and "Indonesia Mobilizes"]

Kari Suomalainen (1920-1999) was a political cartoonist for the prestigious Helsingin Sanomat 1950-1991. He affected very strongly on the way different political parties were seen in Finland, and was an important opinion former.
Soviet Union tried to silence him several times as he poked on politically raw things.

His humour was based in stereotypes and making what seemed high and mighty into something small and ordinary; showing president Kekkonen (usually deciphered as a demi-god) as a normal (if demanding) man, the parties as avatars instead of people who got changed every four years and observing news through a small and old-fashioned village somewhere far from everywhere. Local news from Helsinki were often observed by two "men of the streets", who had been unable to fit back into civilian life after Continuation War, and had so become urban tramps. Sometimes he inserted himself into the commentary, as a small black wearing man wearing a ridiculous hat.

He continued on the paper long after his retirement age, and quit only after being forced to do so after several pictures that were too far out of line with paper's policy.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, when Finland was starting a new era in it's history without pressure from East, Kari critized very strongly on the decision to open doors to immigrants and war refugees, Somalis in particular (he drew them in a fashion that left little doubt of his opinions concerning blacks in general and Somalis in particular).

Kari continued publishing his pictures in local papers, but he was getting old which showed in his hand and in the jokes; the pictures weren't as funny as they used to. His views on subjects got more old-fashioned, to the point of bigotry. The avatars to which he based his humour on started to look old-fashioned, even antic (the tramps, the village stuck in the rural -40s). Those he tried to update ended up looking cluttered and forced (the political parties).

Kari's moral stance was firmly set on the early 50s, which shows ever more unfavorably as the decades went by. From there, he saw the country chance from a war-wrecked nation with GDP of average Third World country into one of the richest in the world.

-More important than riches is the quality of life, clean air, unpolluted water and beautiful scenery.
-If it's all right, I'll take that in money.




-You can no longer travel safely in this city.




-Hey guys, who was the one who first proposed consumer-protection law which says that bad promises are punishable by law?
[From left: Vennamo [?] who proposed the law and then the parties; Social Democrats, Rural Party (later Centre-Party, later Finnish Centre), Communists (later Left Alliance), Liberal Democrats (later dead), Swedish Party, Coalition (moderate right) and a cop carrying a box marked "Election promises". The size of the parties is relative to their (historical, exgenerated) power in the parliament. ]

I own several collections of Kari's work. Half the fun in them is seeing how the seeds of today (like the Green Party) slowly enter into the picture and how Kari tries to make fun of them, sometimes good naturedly, but often grumpily. And then the retrospect fun on his argument about "modern music" on 60s; Bach is still as popular now as he was centuries ago, but who will remember Beatles in the 1990s?

But after all is said and done, Kari was a person who was a master of his craft. After him, Helsingin Sanomat has been unable to secure a person to fill his place whose work is worth reading.

What is real?

Many TV-series (particularly scifi-series, which are very dear to me) have an episode where the hero has to question what's real and what's not. In the more extreme cases, the hero starts to have flashes where he or she is actually locked in a mental institution, and everything that has thus far happened in the show has been a figment of imagination. This is strengthened by people in the institution knowing about the series chronology, about vampires (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) or aliens (Smallville).

In Smallville Clark Kent finds himself in a such a situation. He is shocked to find that Jor-El is infact a brand of soap, and Oliver Queen (a.k.a. Green Arrow) is the name of the hospital worker administrating his medicine.
Buffy in turn finds out she has been in the mental institution for six years - since the series started - and both her mother and her father are expecting her to come out of it. All that has happened in Sunnydale is just dreams in a sick woman's mind. It makes it even worse that the series questions itself: "sick girl who's in mental ward or super-girl who battles vampires - which sounds more insane?" to paraphrase from memory.

This annoys me on three levels; first it ridicules fans who have invested time to the series chronology. It highlights the built-in ridiculousness of the more absurd parts of the series mythology (hero's super strength, origin story, being centre of the world). Also, for stories to work we have to believe in them, believe in the rules of the world; these is-the-hero-insane stories beg the question is that time well placed.

On second level, the stories don't end well. The mental ward is often thought to be in "our" reality, where there are no Kryptonians or vampires. It is inherently more "real" than anything in the series itself. After you introduce the ward, you also have to explain why the ward was just the figment of the hero's imagination. Otherwise we get to the "it was just all a dream" scenario, the most effect way to lose interest of the watcher.

In Smallville, Martian Manhunter explained how the ward was infact a psychic attack by hostile force, who tried to overtake Clark's mind by showing him that he was mad.
In Buffy, just the opposite is done; at the ward Buffy's mother explains how the friends in Sunnydale are not friends at all but traps that keep her comatose in the real world. The episode ends with Buffy asking forgiveness from her friends - and then cut to the ward where the doctor diagnoses Buffy comatose and we are shown parents weeping. It wasn't a trick, or an attack.

On third, and less popular culture-level these episodes beg the question about life itself. If we interpret the world solely by our senses, and our senses are processed trough our brain - how can a person decide if she or he is hallucinating? A person tells you that you are hallucinating - do you trust the person? Or if two different things claim that the other isn't real - how can you make an educated choice between the two?

This isn't just about me pondering TV-series. I have a friend who sees hallucinations. Doing pretty well with them too, as I gather. Takes medication for it. When my grandmother gets sick, she regresses one year at a time back to her childhood. Mother is going to get me soon. Who are you? Why are you here Uncle? Back from America? When her body gets better, her mind gets better as well, and again she knows who I am..
And while I don't have anything of that magnitude, I do get blackouts when I rise or make sudden moves, during which my ability to see or keep my balance greatly diminishes. They take up to 30 seconds and when my mind clears it always hits me how much on the mercy of few wirings I am. My whole world - literally - is hosted inside a lump of meat. And the distinction is so hard to make; am I living in the world or is the world living in me?

[ To talk about am-I-crazy scenarios, here is a good wiki-link about it taken to it's extreme; Tommy Westphall.

The mental ward or it's variation has also been used in Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: DS9, Lost, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and Charmed. ]

Guest of the Third Reich: Mare nostrum: Villa am Meere

Before I go any farther, I should probably note that back when the book was written German was teached for children at schools from the age of 9 (this was replaced by English in the seventies). Mr. Paavolainen doesn't therefore deem it necessary to translate everything into Finnish. I don't speak German - at all - and my Swedish could be much better, so if the reader of this blog understands what some of the non-translated words mean, please don't hesitate to write.

Review.
Foreword.
Mare Nostrum 1: New Horisons.

Dichterhaus was founded by Nordische Gesellschaft but taken over by Reichsschrifttumskammer, Reich's Chamber of Literature in 1935. This brought changes to the modus operandi; while it used to be just a summer camp to bring writers together from different parts of the world, it now has "official programs" led by "determined staff". While there is no outright propaganda, the German writers are card-carrying members of national socialists.

Of the other people living in Dichterhaus, Sweden's representative Sven Stolpe was known to have a brilliant mind and "radical swings". He had studied in Germany, married a German as well as speaking the language fluently. Trough the newspaper Young Sweden he was one of the most important opinion-leaders of his generation. Paavolainen himself was quite stricken by the author: Stolpe was the kind of man who only exists in fiction; world-traveller, modernist and liberal, honest to the causes he championed and a great sportsman even as one of his lungs was non-functional after medical operation. Of all the writers in the house, he was the only one who openly criticized the Third Reich.
From the text you get the impression that the German government hoped to convert Stolpe to the cause. After all, his background and ties made him a terrific candidate. Alas,

When reaching the Third Reich, Stolpe had a surprise to us: he had come directly from England, where he had gotten an oxfordian awakening. "It is the greatest moment of my life", he repeatedly says.

He didn't stay long. He soon after departed to show his oxford-book to an old friend in Norway, and while travelling there his lung started acting up again and he could not return.

The Norwegian in the house was Doctor Eyvind Mehle, who had gotten his degree in Germany.

He was both the most popular person in Dichterhaus and its enfant terrible. Nobody could believe that this man [...] was the oldest person in the house - 41 years. Mehle was as black fascist as they came and one of Norway's Nasjonalsamling's leading personalities. He was [...] a newspapersman, who had visited both Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler, interviewed them all and forged strong ties to all European fascist-organisations. Wonderful and funny man who could not be taken seriously - for example when he lists who are going to be shot after the Norwegian fascists grab the power!

Paavolainen's room mate was Erik Bertelsen:

Bertelsen is so nice and good-hearted and un-revolutionary, that one has to wonder how one such as him can earn his living writing in our days.. he is not shocked by Nazism nor by Bolshevism. [...] He is only interested in his books [...] about old Danish memories.

About his fellow Finn, Göran Stenius.. the translation is hard and relies much on knowing the popular culture of the 30s (I don't). Apparently he had some interest toward Fascism, but because of language-movement (Stenius' native language was Swedish) was sidetracked and belonged to some fringe-group.

Stenius came to Germany well-versed in national socialism. Rising his hand up in greeting comes easily to him. Because of this I'm greatly interested to see how his moods swing.

But after everything is said and done, Paavolainen believes that he is level-headed, as is Mehle, and does not go all metaphysical and romantic as the Germans do.

Of the Germans..

My greatest interest was naturally toward the three national socialist authors - and how different they were!
[...] Rupert Rupp from Saars was only 28 years old. [...] Saars' suffering and humiliation during the French occupation were the main focus of Rupp's poetry. [...] Rupp has taken part in the fighting even as a youth in the ranks of Schlageter. This is why he has naïvely and with all his heart embraced the Nazi-ideology as only soldier-youth born in the south can. [...] No great originality could be found in Rupp's poems. The poems tended to become mystical [...], but the deeply felt pain and aching were very common to the young generation to whom Nazism meant salvation and the spring of new strength and innovation.

Another German, Friz Helke;

At the age of 30 Helke had gained his station by fighting. [...]During inflation he had worked as a businessman, started then studying at night [...] and at at the same time took part in political fights as a leader of youth-chapter in Stahlheim. [...]He quit [...] when he noticed that freemasonry had taken root in the chapter and joined national socialists in 1929 taking to Hitler all the 25 children in his care. Today Helke has a very influential position in the Hitler-Jugend [...] headquarters; he is the auditor for literature suitable for Hitler-Jugend(!), Referent im Kulturamt der Reichsjugendführung and his rank in Hitler-Jugend is Bannführer im Stabe! [...] According to Sven Stolpe his purpose is to "show millions of young Germans primitive pictures of national and military heroes and systemically force the youths to think that heroism is only possible in the military".
[...]Helke has written surprisingly many books for children during the past few years. [...] They only have one aim: to rise national socialists.

The third German, Ottfield von Finckenstein

I think it as a great personal victory that I was able to secure the friendship of this extraordinary man. [...]Sensitive, well-raised, good and wise man, who emits a strangely calming presence to all those near him. [...] Finckenstein is a marvellous example of what happens when old aristocrat has the ability to worship life and the straight-lined, non-compromising thinking of national socialistic ideology. [...] Stolpe's oxfordianism looks cold and calculating compared to Finckenstein's [...] radiating joy of life.
[...] When talking about Hitler, he has no reservations. "One must learn to believe, that even on our days can such genius be born." With Germans - even with Fincenstein - it is impossible to discuss... one just has to listen and wonder.

Paavolainen remarks how closed the German culture was. The national socialism was only interested in building its own view of the world, disregarding everything that happened abroad. He remarks that Doctor Domes didn't even know the name of Lawrence (of whose books at least two were banned in Germany). This made the German books so dry; Finckenstein was the only one who wrote lively books - and he had spent much time abroad.

Guest of the Third Reich: Mare nostrum: New horisons

Review.
Foreword.

This chapter is a short introduction on the writer and how he came to be at Travelmünden at the 14th day of August. The German-Scandinavian Dichterhaus, writerhouse had been opened late that year, and thus Finland's Writer-Alliance [?] had had troubles to find someone to go; the vacations were already over. Because of troubles, the writer arrived day late and missed the Olympics at Berlin.

I'm tired. I sit on my luggage on a dark and empty terrace. Silent longing everywhere. Again I ponder the question that has been troubling me the whole sea voyage, on railway thru Denmark, on train ferry over windy sea between Gjedser and Warnemünden: why this trip? What do you think you'll find?

The writer hopes to find something new. Too many years he has been trying to write about his trip to London four year previous, to write down the many projects that had haunted him for years. But he had never succeeded. The Finnish political landscape was in heavy movement; the failed coup d'etat of the fascists in 1932 had depressed him and he no longer felt like writing.

And still I knew that in the world something was happening, something that people back home understood completely wrong. We saw the world like thru an old window; greenish, blurry and distorted. Revolutions right and revolutions left.. but back home everybody was shouting: old, tried traditions are the way to go! The most descriptive thing: the clergy changed from defenders to attackers! Confusion over terms. Ignorance, pathetic good-will, [...?], doing small movements in the middle of steely, determined, bi-polarizing world...

In the end the writer is let in to the house. Everybody else is in Berlin, watching the Olympics. The next day he met them; the director (Doctor Fred Domes) and hostess (Madam Lisa Hayn) of Dichterhaus, two German writers (Rubert Rupp and Count Ottfried von Finckenstein), a Norwegian (Doctor Eyvind Mehle), a Swede (Doctor Sven Stolpe) and another Finn (Master Göran Stenius). Each of them was important to the writer, opening to him new horizons.

The weeks at Dicherhaus gave the writer new strength. Again he felt like he knew where he was, and how to to hold the pen.

Guest of the Third Reich, foreword

After doing the review here, the fancy to write about the book itself came over me. I'll go one chapter at a time, doing a short summary/shortened translation as I find interesting. You may try to affect my work by cheering on or shouting critique.
Anyway, it seems to me that no one has done similar thing in the Internet previously, neither in Finnish nor English, so I have the honour of being the first. University students will be reading these texts for the Easy Street for years to come!

LEGEND. As usual, the text in italics is from the book. If not otherwise marked, it is direct translation.
[...] means that I have cut something I deem unnecessary off.
Text inside [bracelets] means that I have summarized longer text into the hard core.
[?] means that I am somewhat unsure of the translation, as the writer refers to words or cultural things that have in the passing 70 years gone out of use. I'm not so dedicated to this project to start hunting for meaning of names of old popular culture etc, even if I do try to translate the words to the proper English equivalents.

THE FOREWORD OF THE FIRST EDITION
To all the readers of my book and criticizers I would like to quote André Gide's words: don't try to understand me too fast.

I know fully well how daring it is to write a book of this sort. I know I'm poking a beehive of conflicting opinions. In Finland they have only discussed national socialism in newspapers and magazines. At one side it has been admired without being understood what it's actually about. On the other it has been beaten as far as the journalists sticks carry. At third it has been tried to be silenced to death.

[The book is not an extensive nor even narrow view into national socialism. The writer has tried to avoid using sources. Nearly all quotes the writer has seen himself or heard on the street. Everything in the book is based on the writer's opinions and are therefore subjective.]

I have tried to collect a picture what is the national socialistic Welterlebniss, world view. Therefore I think my book is foremost an extensive raport, and that's why the subtitle of the book is "rhapsody"[?].

[Many will wonder why this book has been written. I can only answer that I have always been solely interested by present, and national socialism is just that. ]

I would not wonder if the people on political right would take the book as a commercial for anti-Christian values and the people on left as Nazi propaganda. In a way both would be right. [Both would also be wrong. [?]] I just want to prove that it would be as grave mistake to take the Third Reich as a caretaker of the values of forefathers as it would be to call it cradle of new barbarism.
[The book is one-sided, as I was a guest and saw only what they let me to see.] I will not judge concentration camps nor the persecution of Jews as neither were shown to me. But I can say that the German culture is not dead even if Lion Feuchtwanger has been exiled.
To keep it short; you should not throw the baby with the bathwater, even if the water is dirty and possibly even bloody.

[Also I had been writing another book for the previous seven years, before the trip.] Because of this I have dedicated much space for the new vital [?] and simplified human type, anti-Christianity and the changes in gender-moral. [These three will be the guiding stars of my new book, and to research them the guesting at the Third Reich gave me valuable material.]

The book concentrates on the Nürnberg rally of 1936. I suppose that the one thing people will be most divided over will be if it was necessary to describe the event in such detail. Personally I feel it to be paramount. I often became desperate when reading Finnish papers in Germany. I often thought that people in Finland didn't realize what was happening in the world presently. We are closing fast on time that might very well be the most important event in European history. It would be deadly mistake to solve problems by playing them down [?]. We have to dare to think apocalyptically.
Currently Germany is guiding the destiny of Europe. Literally; Germany is the heart of Europe. It is completely irrelevant if these beats that shake the continent are because of new vitality or -as many claim- the effects of camphor injection. The important part is; the heart of Europe is beating strongly. Horribly strongly.

Tuusula, Onnela, 19.11.1936.

Meditating in car

I have always loved the feeling of being on the road when midnight is drawing close. Getting back home from somewhere far away, after long day. There is something wonderful in the way you are going somewhere and still sitting; a friend is behind the wheel and you know that just by sitting, you are doing something. The lights appear and vanish and you can hear the sounds of the road under you.

And radio plays, and as the midnight closes, you hear less and less of Britney Spears and the Boy Band of the Week, and more and more of the classics and the songs with staying power. The songs you remember having heard previously, but of which names you can’t quite recall. Idly you think that maybe tomorrow you will do some research and find out the song... only to forget till the next time you are on the road.. The annoying hosts of day time have all gone, and the ones speaking are middle-aged and melancholy.

And you are on the road. Going somewhere. And you don’t even really ever want to get there, because as uncomfortable as the seats are during day, just at that instant there is nothing where you would rather be. All the worries, troubles and aspirations are somewhere far away. There is just you and the sounds of radio.. and a driver, somewhere far away..

[ These thoughts occupy my time just before I go to sleep ]

Guest of the Third Reich, translation of an original review

In the blog Town of Ponte Corvo the writer asked me to write a summary of the book Guest of the Third Reich, written by Olavi Paavolainen in the mid-30s. I have not read the book, so the task would be impossible to do. However, I can translate an article on the subject, which hopefully does the same thing.

This was written for Helsingin Sanomat back when the book was originally published in 1936, by Lauri Viljanen. The newspaper has the review online. I shortened some parts where he starts talking too closely about Paavolainen's masterful use of words (he actually sometimes disregarded content in favour of style at parts) and on one occasion actually stops the review in middle to mention he has visited the place himself. Anyway, onwards;

OLAVI PAAVOLAINEN: GUEST OF THE THIRD REICH

”The distancing of youngsters, even children, from their parents and transforming them into crowds as well as the poor, even disrespectful status of women by Scandinavian standards are phenomenons to which the author's modern training in psychological observation fixates in warning.” - Lauri Viljanen, Helsingin Sanomat 13.12.1936

Olavi Paavolainen, that restless "seeker of the modern world" has just visited in the bygone Fall "the Third Reich". According the official language he was even "guest of the leader"on several occasions, for example during the Nürnberg Rally. [...] As earlier, he remarks on bowing to "the times and lives" and his travels on the soils of the "Third Reich" has strengthened his conviction that Today's Germany is part of the living present of Europe. As we know his prejudice-free, shyless [...] way of writing, we may be sure that "Guest of the Third Reich" is a book whose writer has something special to say.

[The trip starts from the] "German-Scandinavian writer-home" [...] in Travemünden. [...] In the first part of the book Paavolainen presents lively portraits [...] of this scening surrounding. [...] The name of this part's - named Mare nostrum, "our sea" - weightiest chapter is, however, the one that handles so-called "northern idea" in modern Germany's world-view. I think that Paavolainen has written in very trustworthy and critically apt way this "intentional myth" which has gotten its most famous airing in Alfred Rosenberg's world-view book. [...]

More passionate [...] changes the writer's wording in the strange part "Human god". I dare say that the glimpses into the soul of Hitler's realm are revelatory in a way. The description of the Nürnberg Rally wakes in a cool Scandinavian mind the image of ecstatic ritual, and Paavolainen will not hesitate saying; "national socialism is the first religion given birth by Europe". The new lifefeeling's self-confident, decidedly unchristian tendency did not go unsaid in the previous part's chapter "In Bachen Marienkirche" [...]. To this connects heavily the chapter "Blue temple", a portrait of the religious psyche of political leaders - a shocking painting of new Babylon in the middle of old civilized world.

The writing of Paavolainen is curiously so rich in this part that the reviewer has no chance of deep margin thoughts in this part. But I have become confident that he is closer to truth than our cool thought processes might initially lead us to believe. We shall wager that Hitler's best weapon against the dull grey of Weimar Republic was the mystically grand presentation which so touches the German heart.

On his best Paavolainen is in the last part, "Toward Germanic Sparta", where he analyses the new human type being born in Hitler's Germany. Paavolainen has a sharp, seeing eye towards everyday facts of life, which seems insignificant but end up being important. He emphasises the part that the young generation has had in the founding of "the Third Reich", [mentioning] youths who are very self-assured about the condition of their bodies. One of the few words of admiration without restriction he gives are for so-called "work-service", which has brought together social classes and has even made work into some sort of ceremony. The distancing of youngsters, even children, from their parents and transforming them into crowds as well as the poor, even disrespectful status of women by Scandinavian standards are phenomenons to which the author's modern training in psychological observation fixates in warning.

I will not hesitate to say that "Guest of the Third Reich" is a rather monumental accomplishment from the author [...]. I suppose Hitler's Germany opens to us as an actual physical place, which causes uneasiness and curiosity, only after reading this travelling report.

What blogs do you read?

I promised myself that as I don't really have any other commitments I would at least practice my writing by writing five texts per week, either to Blogger or to some other thing.
Last week I did four; the previous three blog-entries plus a review for comics-page. I don't know if I have mentioned this earlier but I aim to improve myself to the point where people actually pay to publish my texts. Not because of the money but for the knowledge that I'm actually good enough in something that people pay to get it.

I know I don't have that many readers (two, three?) and only one person who actually comments without prompting (thanks Vlad, you're a true friend) but yeah, that's my goal.
Anyway, I know the entries about problems I have had have been rather boring, and I thank your patience if you have actually read them thru.


So, I have been using Google Reader. It's the first RSS-reader I have ever used, and without knowing anything of the alternative ways to home on the subject, it beats checking the webpages one by one hands down. If you read this and don't use RSS-reader, check this one. It will change your life. Trust me.

Anyway, what blogs do I have on the reader? Currently I have 16 blogs. Some of them update very slowly (ergo, I wouldn't bother to check the webpage because chances would be good that there wouldn't be anything new there) but that doesn't cause any problems with this piece of code.

Anyway, what I do have on my Reader are;

5G - a blog about technology. The bloggers are Helsingin Sanomat-newspaper's tech-journalists.

Beaucoup Kevin - a blog about comics. Honestly, there was a time I didn't like this blog at all. Too many photos of "me-with-my-friends-with-funny-texts" but those have gone. Also; new layout and amusing old comics-panels.

Blog@Newsarama - A blog about comics/nerd-news. Rather funny and sometimes very enlightening.

Boing Boing. Eh, you know Boing Boing. One of the most read blogs in the world. Tech, tech-politics, nifty things and other such stuff.

Dave in Suomi. Only added this little while ago. Don't really have anything to say about this one yet, expect it gives outsider's perspective to familiar things, which is always welcome.

Dave's Longbox - a guy reviews old comics with very hilarious phrases, which makes you remember why comics are awesome in other ways than just because of plot. This blog has made me appreciate "so bad it's good" comics and "radness" factors, which earlier escaped me entirely. Thanks Dave.

Finland for Thought - American talks about the Finnish system and Finnish news. Outsider perspective plus life philosophy which is quite far apart from mine. Again, helps keep perspective and keeps things on my radar that I wouldn't otherwise. You know about the thing about reading only things that please you? That's excellent way to round up in cocoon and miss some important things.

Jyrki Kasvi - My representative in the Parliament. Green but has brains. While this is off topic, I'm often annoyed by people who complain but don't offer solutions. This one has his feet on the ground and actually understands modern technology. Alas, this is so rare I have to mention it..

Katuoja - Finnish comics/meta-blog kept by my...associates.. and which is very well written. Wish I were half this good.

Life in Silico - Exellent when it (1) updates and (2) doesn't talk about coding. And I'm not saying this because I count Vlad as my friend, and not just of the internet-variety.

Paleo-Future -A blog about past visions of the future. Very charming. Like everything else made in the past decades, even futures age and grow old. It's amusing, charming and somehow so innocent.

Peter David - Book/comics/telly/what-else author. Has sometimes pieces of information on the site that fall under "good to know" category.

Rajatapauksia - a blog by culture reporter of Helsingin Sanomat. Fantasy and scifi as seen in comics, games, novels, music etc.

Retromania - a blog by reporter of Helsingin Sanomat. About past futures.

Teräsmies elää - a Finnish blog about Superman. Updates seldom, but when it does it is very good. The texts handle like engineer's blueprints, which is very amusing.

The Beat - Comics news site, which updates (1) too often and (2) with information I don't need. On feed because sometimes it hits gold.

Town of Ponte Corvo - blog about the politics of Israel, mainly. I disagree with the author regularly but he writes and argues well, which is something that's always welcome.

No links because writing this on laptop and adding them is a nuisance. Hope you can manage without. If I have readers, might they do similar listing? It's always nice to know what other people read..

Short comment on MySpace

MySpace. The name itself conjures ideas of freedom, about liberty to customize, change and design your own place in the Internet. The freedom does not always work; many youths and even companies have badly designed pages.

Personally I don't have very high opinion on MySpace -- the few profiles I've seen (even professional ones) seem rather clunky and remind me of the web pages I did during the late 90s in the IT-lab. I thought the reason for the pages to look so clunky was because the tools given for customization were hard to use, people were not trained in layout-creating (and thus adding the most clashing of colours and images to their profiles) and finally; because the people Just Couldn't Do It Right.

I seem to owe them an apology.

Yesterday I was bored and thus registered to MySpace. I thought it would be interesting to create a page, maybe do a simple and refined design to show how to Do It Right. As soon as I had finished the registration progress, I started browsing the account-settings. But.. where is the "Layout Settings"? Where do I change the background, fonts, tables-colours, link-colours?

After brief Google-search the answer dawned to me; the reason MySpace-pages look so bad is not because the customization tools are hard to use; it's because there are no customization tools. The pages code has to be set --by hand-- to the ABOUT ME-box. The attached image should make things clear.

I kid you not. All the MySpace design is entered into this box, titled "About Me". Those people with bad profiles? Those are the fucking gurus who fought a horde of dragons to get where they are. It's a miracle they get anything out of this at all. You can customize school property with axe easier - while your teacher is watching.

I have not seen such a bad design in ten years. Actually, not even then. I registered at Angelfire around early -98 (at least that's when my oldest file in the space was dated). It gave 15 megabytes of space, url and all it wanted was a banner on top. It had some limited custom tools; you could set the colours of the background and the text without knowing html. When I was 14, that was a really great thing. If you did know html, you could use that as well.
Of course, I didn't have anything to put on page - though I did try to create content few times (the front page I did back then, can be found here as well - made for 640x480 resolution).

It is miserable to note that as far as MySpace goes, it gives less chance to custom than a ten year old hosting site (which even by that time's standard was pretty basic).

So, what does MySpace offer then, if not your own space? Instant Messaging services; I suppose sending a message thru MySpace can be deemed to be less important, less direct, than sending email or contacting someone in MSN. Marketing products and networking. Exellent service for people who don't irc with a shell or know how to use forums.

I see no reason why there shouldn't be a custom-page in the settings. People seem to custom them anyway, and the lack of tools makes the end-results ghastly. Companies and groups that use the page for networking could easily make their page easily more attractive. This is the page of US Presidential Candinate. If this were a normal web page, I would laugh the designer all the way to the sea. I could do better. Infact, I have*. As things stand, I have to conclude that the writer was probably elite. And the guy who designed the Marine Corps-page? He must be some sort MySpace-Messiah.

But the fact still stands, that if the user interface were easier to use, you should not need sacrifice goats to dark gods to get to Barack Obama-class.

In conclusion, I have hard time understanding how this could be the sixth most popular page in the whole damn world. I can understand how the service the page offers could be needed.. but it's hard to believe that no other site has been able offer the networking and Instant Messaging with easy customization... or, have done so and made it popular. There is something really wrong with this world.

*I might add a link here once I get my web page back online.

Problems with establishment - Part 2: Nordea

There are very few things in life one should be able to trust without any limits. On the top of this list there is the bank. If you start to think about it, your life goes through the bank. Using credit cards, ATM, paying bills.. we are dealing with our banks. Trusting our way of life to the bank; should the bank come short of our expectations, it would only take few days till we would be living on the streets.
I mean, how much cash do you have? If I would count together the amount in my wallet, pockets, small containers and so on, I might be able to rise as much as €20, and on any given day seldom more than €50. Why would I need to? There are five ATM's inside 50 metre radius, my bank is 100 metres from the front door and I have several cards if one should fail me. Having lots of currency in cash would be foolish; you can't very well walk around €1000 in your back pocket, and I would not feel very comfortable leaving that amount lying even in my apartment. Credit cards are a great invention; even if someone would get his hands on one, you should still know the PIN-number. And for added security, you can always kill your card if you find it missing.

But to the story;
I have been customer at Nordea since I was 13 years old. For many years I didn't have much contact with the bank; my mother would transfer money to my account over the Internet, which I would then withdraw from the nearest ATM. My needs were simple; I was living with my family, I didn't have rent or any other expenses that I would categorize as involuntary.
This all changed when I moved to my own. Suddenly I had a need for a debit card (instead of just an ATM card). I had bills to pay, clothes to buy, and so on. I went to my local branch and got Visa Electron and Netbank-account. The service wasn't excellent - I had to wait for my turn for a long while, and neither was the service excellent. But it would do; it wasn't like I would visit the branch every week.

As did my last story, this one properly starts after I started preparing my extended leave from the country, around October of last year. I went to the local branch after getting appointment two days previous, telling I wanted to discuss about getting MasterCard in-depth. Even as I had appointment, the service-lady came ten minutes late to the meeting - because she was in the middle of her lunch! As I had skipped mine to be there on timely manner, this didn't really start our conversation with the right foot.
Immediately she put the papers in front of me and started telling me how to fill them; she either didn't know or didn't care that I wanted answers to several questions I had. When I tried to ask questions, she kept repeating that I don't have to know those things. She didn't even know anything about the discounts I was eligible for. At one point she confessed she had actually specialized to home-loans. After several problems, where she disrespected and offended me quite strongly, I finally finished the papers, got answers to most of my questions (but on retrospect didn't find out about many important things that I should have), ordered the MasterCard and authorized the bank to remove the money directly from my account (instead of sending me a bill once a month). I left the bank angry, and told the extended version of this story several times to my friends and family.

It should be noted that when I started looking after insurance for my trip, I didn't even consider Nordea -- even though they were supposed to have the best offers.

Months went by. I left to Scotland, and the MasterCard served me excellently, till at 18th of April (Wednesday) when I got email from my father; apparently the card wasn't in the autopayment scheme as I had thought, and the bills had been sent to my home - where they had stayed unopened. My father had finally started to wonder why I had gotten so many letters from the bank and opened several -- and found the bills, of which some had graduated into reminder-bills, with additional late-fees.
The next day father called the bank and asked after my direct payment-authorization. Apparently I had made one, but they had never sent it forward to the Finance-department, which handled such things. But at least now the things were under control; the bills had been paid, everything was just dandy.

Then on the next Saturday (21st of April) I decided to withdraw some money from Lloyd's ATM. I put my card into the wall without realizing this would be the very last time I would see it. The machine ate it; apparently because of the bills (which I had paid three days earlier). To ad insult to injury, the bank had closed not 15 minutes earlier, and I would get my card back on Monday at the earliest.

Next Monday I went to the bank, where they courteously explained that as demanded by international banking agreements, my card had been destroyed. Swiftly I sent email to my bank, asking why this had happened and how they would take care of this, as I was now without money in a foreign land (I didn't mention that I had Visa Electron; I thought that this might increase the priority of my case, and help me find out how much they bothered to read about me).

24th I got the first email from the bank. It asks could I get the card back if Nordea would send guarantees? I explained that the card had been destroyed, but gave the contact information of Lloyd's Paisley-branch.

26th the representative of Nordea said I could get a new card but "that would mean the bill dated 7.5. should be paid immediately". I sent angry answer where I quote the amount of money on my bank account (several times larger than any bill I would have to pay) and mention that they still had the direct payment-authorization, and would you please use it?
After this they apparently actually checked my balance and other information, as the next (over courteous) email mentions that as I have Visa Electron and could I use that one instead, till I got home? After getting back, she would like to meet and discuss the problems. Very well.

Visa Electron didn't have much coverage in Scotland; shops regularly declined to accept it, which meant I had to use ATM's often (of which Nordea took €2+2,5%).

Back home, I found out that not only had the delightful service person mishandled my autopayment, she had also forgot to give me all the discounts (of which I had had to educate her on), so I had been paying €3,22 per month for the right to use MasterCard even from the months I didn't have the card. As a sugar frosting on the cake, they had also taken €4 from my account when my father had asked after the state of my account, after things had started going wrong. The bank even took money when you complained?!

Thankfully, after pointing out all these things to the person I had been in communication with, all the money were returned. But it did teach me not to trust banks (and Nordea in general) without limits.

Now that I have my money back, I have opened new account in Nooa Savingbank; unlike Nordea which is a publicly traded company (with the first priority of bringing money to its owners) Nooa's first priority is to increase the amount of money in the saving-accounts. This means that they don't issue ATM-cards, but they give up to five time more interest than Nordea ever did. And I can still get Visa Electron (which I get to design myself, oh fun).

Problems with establishment - Part 1: Elisa

There's something magical in the border where company turns from an extension of a person into something that nobody quite claims as their own. Years back one of my brothers said this about a company that had turned from one-man enterprise into company employing hundreds, just in five years; "it used to be that the clerks felt like they were part of something bigger, doing something new and amazing -- now they are just working there". He was talking, of course, about the level of service.

When the people who deal with the customers get farther and farther from the people who make decisions, and decision-makers from the customers -- that's when the companies become evil. Or, if not evil, inept.. which, in a way, is even worse. I mean, you can trust evil. Evil always knows what it's doing, and it has manuals how to deal with different sort of complaints. Inept... well, it's hard to complain to the customer service that your broadband isn't working when the other end of the line doesn't acknowledge that anything is wrong. But I'm going too fast. Let's start from the beginning;

Elisa is a telecommunications company selling -- among other things -- broadband and mobile phone accounts, under several brands. Founded in 1882 as Helsingin Puhelinyhdistys (Helsinki's Phone Corporation), it used to be a co-operative where you had to own a share to get a phone installed. At some point they abandoned the you-need-to-own-a-share mentality, but otherwise it worked thus till the year 2000, when it incorporated into a public company, where each old share was worth about 20 new ones. The stock changed hands (and price) several times during the following years, and I believe that the majority of the stock is owned currently by some Icelandic millionaire.
After 2000, the company has grown aggressively in size by taking over smaller companies, not always kindly. They currently employ about 5 000 people.

I'm currently subscribing to their broadband because it was one of the two companies that at the time served my area (the other being TeliaSonera). I had some bad experiences on the other company (my mother had, and still has, their broadband). Long story short, the broadband worked at times really slowly, sometimes not at all, and the company never admitted any problems.

Now to my story. As you might or might not know, I was at student exchange from the late January to early June. Naturally, I contacted Elisa before-hand to let them know of the situation and to find out how I could avoid paying the bills - €25 per month - during the following months. They proposed to put my broadband on hold, which would have cost me €9 per month, but would have let me keep my homepage-space (where I hosted several avatars and a homepage I had made as a school project) and email-addresses (which I didn't use because I didn't want to be tied to a provider so strongly). I then said I would simply end my subscription on the last day of January and start a new one at June. For the credit of the person on the other side of the line, she was very courteous and innovative and arranged it so I didn't have to pay the fees of connecting the broadband (apparently about €50) and I even got a new ADSL2/WLAN-modem/router for free. At the time, I thought I would return home during late June, and so I asked the Internet to be connected on 18th day of that month.

On 5th day of June (when I was already back home) I got a call from Elisa; they were marketing a new broadband connection (25MB) and wondered if I would like one, for the additional price of €2 per month till the end of the year, with no commitment to stay with the plan. The person on the other end of the line didn't really seem to know what he was doing and several times I thought he was actually working for one of the competitors or tried to speak me into doubling my bills. After getting the gist of it, and after seeing that I was agreeable, he got better with his service (if not with his work) and even shared me few ways how to easily switch off the plan with minimum trouble when the year was up.

On 18th day I got a text message, proclaiming that my Internet was now connected, have a nice day. After trying different configurations for hours (new modem, old modem, switching the lines etc) without anything tangible to show of my efforts, I went to sleep. The next day I called the Customer Service again (finding out that (1.) I was supposed to have 1MB connection till they would separately upgrade my account on 4th of July and (2.) Elisa's definition of "line of eight minutes" meant the same as "wait forty minutes") trying to explain that the fucking Internet does not work.
After explaining that yes, I have some minor knowledge with technology and that I suppose I know how to connect the modem to both power and phone socket and yes, the Green Light indicating working ADSL-connection seems to be missing. The Customer Service says that perhaps he COULD send someone to check the wiring. But most probably the problem would be between the keyboard and the chair, and if so, you are the person who will pick up the bill (I find out that the bill is €70/hour). And somebody would probably come around during the next two days.

Two days later, there still wasn't any light in the modem. It was Wednesday and 21st of June. New call to the Customer Service (and forty minutes of elevator music later, thank God the line was only eight minutes long, I don't know how long I could have survived) I find out that "two days later" means 26th or 27th of June. Midsummer, you understand.

Today, on the 26th of June, I get call from my Father. Apparently the papers for my new 25M connection just arrived. To his apartment. New call to Elisa ("the line is over 20 minutes long, please hold the line, you can also go to our web page for service") and everything seems to be in order. Apparently the cable man is currently going trough the wiring, and yes, the upgrade should come to my address.
Two hours later call from the very friendly cable man explaining that the wiring had been set improperly and should now be fixed.

Now waiting for the 4th of July, when my Father might very well get a new, much better, broadband (though the Customer Service disagreed).

EDIT: The letter to my father indicated (and the Customer Service agreed and corrected) that while the new connection (which apparently is either 24M or 25M depending whom you ask) was coming to my address, the bills were going to be sent to my father.

What the hell is wrong with organized religions?

I have been thinking of religions lately. Partly because of this entry (I was linked by my friend Vlad, who apparently has rather good grasp on things I like), partly because couple of Jehovah's Witnesses came to visit the Residence the other day. I was not around, but apparently they knocked on each flat door and asked from which countries the inhabitants are from. They then gave Watchtowers and Awake!-magazines in the languages of the countries mentioned. So now I have religious magazines in Finnish and English on the kitchen table.

I don't much base for organized religion. I trust the scientific approach as far as our normal life goes, and I quite agree with the idea of evolution and Newtonian physics (yes, I know they only apply as long as the objects travel slower than 10% of speed of light). When we step outside the area that can be observed and verified directly by our senses, I get a bit unsure. They say that it all started with a Big Bang, which seems like a sensible conclusion from the known facts. The same goes for post-Einstein physics. They say it allows pretty much everything from time travel to reaching distant stars in days. This may very well be so, and I do know that CD-players would be impossible to manufacture without Einstein's theories.

But when you start to think about it, REALLY think about it; the universe is so huge and big and infinite. There are no borders but it expands all the time. And every material is coming from the same spot and has just spread around. There may be evidence to support it - and I do want to believe - but it's too big. And the same goes for the religious alternatives.

But to be honest, I'm not very concerned. Some days I feel that there might be something out there, and on some days I don't. In general, I feel that it's more important to know what's inside than outside. And whatever you believe, they are your beliefs and don't really belong to anyone else. If I discover something that works to me, the last thing I want to hear is that I'm wrong. Incidentally, Lutheran church (at least in Finland) is pretty cool with the subject. Apparently they (we?) have priests who don't believe in Hell. And priests that only believe in God as a symbol for human goodness. And priests that don't believe that women can be priests, which pretty well shows the other side of the tolerance-argument, but I digress.

I do read about other religions; believes often tell something important about the culture and the person itself. And so I was reading Finnish Awake! at the kitchen table, while I was eating my breakfast müsli. I admit that I dont know much about Jehovahs Witnesses, other than they go from door to door and nobody seems to like them. It's all very vague.

There was a longish article in Young people ask-series titled Why is it wrong to date in secret?. It was basically the moral story of Jessica, with additional quotes and explanations from the Bible. Jessica's story goes as follows;

Jessica had to do a choice. Everything started when one of her classmates, Jeremy, told he was interested in her. Jessica says: "He was very good looking, and my friends said that you will never find a guy as honourable as him. Many girls were interested in him, but he only had eyes for me".

After a time, Jeremy asked Jessica out. She tells: "I explained to him that I am a Jehovah's Witness, and that I could not date anyone who was not a Witness. But then Jeremy got an idea; we could date without telling my parents.

[...] Surprisingly, Jessica accepts Jeremy's idea. "I was sure that if I dated him, I could make him love Jehovah", she says. [Then] Jessica [...] heard about another Christian girl in the same situation. "When I found out that she had ended her relationship, I knew what I had to do", Jessica says. Was ending the relationship easy? No! "He was the only boy who I had ever truly cared about", Jessica says. "I cried every day for weeks."

Jessica also knew something else: she loved Jehovah, and even if she had gotten sidetracked, she genuinely wanted to do what was right. In time, the pain went away. Jessica tells; "my relationship with Jehovah is now better than ever. I am really thankful that he gives to us at the right time the kind of guidance we need."

(From Herätkää!, June 2007)

The girl cried for weeks and imagine what the boy felt like. I don't really know what the teaching of the story was - other than "cults are bad for you, mmkay?" - But I'd like you to imagine what it would be like if there is no Witness community on the area. The article also mentions that dating is forbidden altogether if the people aren't old enough to marry and prepared to do so after relatively short dating.

Religion is what you make of it, what you believe in. You can try to convince others to believe in the same way, but it's rather inhuman to make people live in a way that makes them unhappy. Denying something purely because somebody says you should does sound a bit perverse for me, just because somebody may have probably said something against it, possibly, 3 000 years ago. As such I really like the relaxed attitude of the ground-level Lutheran church; the higher ups are not as much fun (few years ago they fired an employee for being gay).

I am, of course, a product of my society, and of my generation. People talk about traditions, values and history. Personally I think that for them to carry on, they should have some other things for going for them than just age. And not everything old is bad, but that story sends chills down my spine. Actually, I felt pretty bad for few days. The worst thing is that they didn't even think Jeremy's feelings were worth exploring. The only important thing is that Jessica had gotten closer to God!

Diary

Memory is a terrible thing. It alters and simplifies our recollection, making us heroes of our own lives. We forget our failures. Different occasions merge together and sometimes the timeline of events goes all topsy-turvy as our brain tries to make stories out of singular events.

My first venture into keeping journal wasn't voluntary. I was seven years old and I had problems with learning to write Finnish. I had been out of the country for two years, studying and reading in English (as well as one aged six can). Coming back to homeland and learning to write in language with different grammar proved to be problematic. My mother bought me a calendar book and forced me to write an entry for every day, even though I had very little interest in doing so.

First time I tried writing one voluntarily was when I was ten. I was spending my summer in Nicaragua, and thought that it might be a good idea to record events from a time that would surely be unlike any other in my life. After the first two weeks, the entries started to get shorter. After three weeks, they were just a list of verbs. Soon I stopped completely.
I tried again four years later, for the same reasons as above. The entries were longer, but during the two and half months I only got twenty pages into A5-notebook. I spent weeks without writing anything - though to be fair, the summer was pretty uneventful.

During this time in my life, I was sure that I was already emotionally as adult as I would ever be, and that the memories of those days would never fade. Thus I didn’t keep a diary, a thing I can’t deem as good or bad. The memories did fade, but I suspect that they were nothing in particular I would want to remember. On the other hand, this was the time of my life when I created many of the quirks I now have. Would be nice to know why I originally avowed not to use alcohol or why I disliked a person whose company I three years later looked quite forward to.

I wrote my first long, emotional text when my first relationship crashed. I was feeling awful. For reasons I don’t remember I opened Notepad and started writing. I must have filled two or three pages, and I remember how it surprised me that I couldn’t lie to myself as I did in my head. Half-truths that made sense in my mind looked so thin on paper. I had to tell my feelings and situation as a story, which forced me to question things you normally brush over in your head, as you are more occupied with the present state of affairs.
I wrote for two hours, after which I password-protected the file. I probably have the file still somewhere on my hard drive, but I have not taken a look. While I was more truthful, I have no illusions that I would have been any less naïve.
Reading the file again would also surely hurt, if for different reasons than then. Written word always reflects the ways we think – never more than when we write about our personal problems. I am not sure I want to face the person I was then – even if it would be a moment of growth as a human being.

Last summer I got a book from my mother with hard red covers and full of blank A4-pages. Mum meant me to use it for drawing – I was just finishing my fourth book – but I found the paper was too glossy for that. The ink didn’t stick to the paper needing up to five minutes to dry.
The book rested on my shelf for few months till I found myself depressed by worries of the future, family and matters of heart. I could not separate the feelings in my head, leaving me unable to function. I was in sorry state for few weeks till it occurred for me to take the book down from the shelf and start writing.
This was over half a year ago, and to date I have finished 107 entries. Some of the entries are written very carefully, with every alphabet carefully placed precisely where intended. Some are written hurriedly, with big and half-formed words scrawling over the pages like fat snails. But I kept writing about my experiences, thoughts, worries and hopes, even when I was tired, sick, angry or feeling my heart would burst from grief.

It helps to write things down when you have a problem; just having it on paper changes it to something more akin to to-do list. Matters of heart become solid, making them easy to touch. Often writing it down even offered solutions that were earlier nowhere to be seen.
It helps to write things down even on a normal day; you never know when you want to know of some detail that would otherwise escape your memory, or remind yourself how you felt about different people.
And finally, it stops you from making stories out of your life. Going trough the pages you can see what was important to you then, and how you felt about different subjects. Seeing how things unfolded gives you a change to learn of them more effectively than by just recalling.
Alas, it also offers exellent list of mistakes you make. Where you trusted the wrong people and where you made a mistake that only manifested months later.

But, all in all, I love my diary with red covers. It has probably improved my life more than any other singular item ever in my possession.

What did I want to be when I grew up?

This is a looking-back post. In a way, it's a decade report about where I was ten years ago and where I am now. I think it's very personal text about, basically, how I became me. You might wonder why I write it here, on a public blog (ha ha) where anybody (hah) might see it instead to the privacy of my own diary journal. I leave you with that question for now, and give answer at the end; after reading these things about me, it might make more sense.

I imagine all of you have seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The film has a part where, with flashbacks, we learn how Jones became archaeologist, how he started to fear snakes, how he got named Indiana and where he got his style.
And you could see all this from following him on one important day of his life. Somehow it was so easy. You are a kid with no plans of future, and then you experience something important and suddenly you know who you want to be in twenty years.
In real life, it all happens gradually and is - at least it was for me - full of pain.

Ten years ago I was doing my last days at lower compulsory school. Back home the summer between lower and upper compulsory school is pretty much the difference between child (12) and a teenager (13).

I was not well liked. My family had moved to the town a year earlier, and I only had two friends in the school; I suspect they might not have liked me very deeply, and only were in my company because you have to have something to do during the breaks. After the summer, I did not see them again.
There were over 38 people in our class; our home class was an old (and small) gymnasium, built in the fifties, which had fallen in disuse after they had built another school building next to ours to accommodate the growing student body. I could not name half the people in my class.

Imagine me then, in the early summer of 1997. I was often ridiculed for my choices in clothing (dictated by comfort), when the "cool guys" wore hip-hop jeans with wide enough trouser legs to get the whole waist in.

Upper compulsory school was not nice either. Around me everyone was reinventing themselves, becoming hiphoppers, beauty queens, rockers, jocks.
And I was lonely. The people I knew earlier had gone to other schools. I wasn't able to make any connections to new people during the first two years, and so I sat next to classroom door waiting for the teacher arrive. Sometimes I read novels, sometimes history or geography.
The lack of social contact had left me awkward and shy, and the fear that somebody would stop me in the middle of too long explanation had gotten me to the habit of talking fast.

Because I was not "in" in the popular culture of the time, I hated it. Backstreet Boys, radio hosts, programs in television. Media in general. If somebody asked, I was more than happy to share my feelings. I hated being me; disliked kid who was nervous of doing the wrong things in case it would be noticed and somebody would make jokes, or hit me on the back.

I got friends, and I got to upper secondary school. Most of the more brainless people were filtered to the ranks of the unemployed and the student body of vocational school. Life was better, but I was still very tightly wounded. I had started to define myself by what I was NOT, leaving me a bit hollow. I didn't drink, and I didn't smoke. I didn't go outside on Friday-evenings but stayed home. Perfect wallflower.
I got few friends, the first that I actually retained after I got out of school. Some of them smoked, some of them drunk heavily, one had interesting ideas about relationships.. But most of all they were happy to listen to me even if I didn't make much sense, and introduced me to things that they thought I would enjoy. I got much more relaxed and happy, and started thinking that maybe it wasn't important to be like everyone else or blend to the background. I started imaging what kind of person I would like to be.

Four years later I think I'm nearly there. I have forced myself into situations that I have wanted to do, but earlier felt were too rowdy, unfamiliar or just afraid of. I'm more open about things I like and seldom bother to hide my interest in things that take my fancy, were they cartoon shows for kids, graveyards or human body shapes. And I stopped making excuses to cover myself.

Maybe all this is a small thing for someone else.. maybe to others deciding these things is easy. It wasn't for me. I started thinking how much I had changed, and I wanted to have it on black and white. Words and printed text have more power than thoughts, even if you are only speaking to yourself. That's why diaries are such a powerful tools.

I always thought that when speakers came to the school talking about things being easier when you are older, that they were lying. That the feeling on the background would never change. I am happy to notice I was wrong.

The one with tech-porn

Good day again, my friends!
Yes, it has been a while, and I'm fairly certain I don't have any readers - at least I don't get any comments. Some tech-things related to my life;

#1. GAIM is now Pidgin. Apparently AOL didn't like the fact that GAIM and AIM sound the same (even if GAIM predated AIM), so with the final of version 2.0 out, they changed the name. I think it works rather well, and I like the fact that they have hidden protocols out-of-view in the GUI. It looks pretty, slim and efficient. This is pretty much what I would hope ICQ or MSN would look like. My only problems with the program (apart of the fact that Skype and Google Talk isn't supported) is that there is no VoIP, meaning I still have to have MSN Live Messenger (that overbloated piece of shit... pardon my French) on my computer.
For those who it may concern; yes, I find the program stable. Meaning that the crashes are way less regular than those of MSN LM and that it handles net outages in very courteous manner, unlike it's predecessor GAIM 1.5

#2. I found Google Reader. Everybody else might have gotten on with the program months ago, but this was a new find for me. I haven't really gotten used to RSS/Atom-feed - I found the notification systems of tried programs very clunky (I might have done something wrong) - but this changed everything. Basically it treats blog posts in a similar manner than Google Mail treats email, giving the impression that the posts are sent to YOU, instead of YOU going to THEM. Of course, this is the whole basis of the RSS-feed, but it only today clicked for me. Removing ten bookmarks from the side panel (which I always keep open) meant that I don't have to scroll anymore. And I don't have to obsessively go through the links when I'm bored and can't motivate myself to go outside. So it's great.

#3. I heavily stripped down my account at IRC-Galleria. Mainly because it had changed from it's original function (user database of Finnish IRC-users) to MySpace Finland. Again, the customer profile has changed; from Internet-savvy 20something to trendy 12-16 year old. The site has also changed from group hobby to serious enterprise. Of course, I think it's great that the people get money from their hobby-turned-work, but the increase in ads, competitions and change in userbase made it rather embarrassing to log in at public places - or ,indeed, to even have an account.
The name of the site also has caused some problems as regular users think they are "ircing" when they are using the service. When corrected, they emphatically admit that there is this thing called "irc" but that these days the word mostly refers to the site. Sometimes they suggest that old-fashioned ircing should in fact be called "mircing". The new usage of the word is even spreading to newspapers (who are unaware of the history) and common consciousness trough the interviews done with site users. But I digress. Let us just say that the greatest monument of the change is that they now have an information sheet for concerned parents, who come to the site while researching the activities of their children.

#4. I installed Picasa, mainly because of my leave from Finland destroyed my FTP-account (that was part of the Internet-subscription) and the computer magazine (named MikroBitti) that gave me another one merged with audio/picture elitist mag named Hifi, changing the reader focus outside my area. You can probably gather that I no longer have subscription.
I'm sure that the company thought it was sensible move, but I'm understanding that many of the readers feel differently. So, put together with #3 I had no place where to put my photos and pictures for show. Basically it's a (very good) photo organizer that you install to your hard drive, and from where you can upload stuff to your Google account on Internet. You have one gigabyte for pictures and ability to create infinite amount of photo albums, which you can choose to keep private or "half-public", for your friends. I suppose you can use the service without installing anything, but don't quote me on that. Anyway, my account can be found here.

#5. Greasemonkey. I have been aware of this few weeks. The idea of Firefox ad-on which modifies the way individual sites look like with scripts didn't really speak to me, until I heard of few very good examples.
It is excellent on occasions when the site-developer won't for monetary reasons (removing ads), user-reasons (script does something not in the interest of mainstream user, like removing comments from YouTube) or legal reasons (like Google Image linking to pages and not individual pictures). Sometimes the problem is purely mistake on the site's part; Google Mail has incorporated several features first brought up in the scripts.
The scripts also work in Opera, and some in Internet Explorer 7 (God have mercy on the idiot who actually uses it from free will).

So, what have you been up to? Want to link me to something cool?