Hello,
Welcome back. And welcome back to me, too. Here I am again, the keyboard warrior, the kitchen table columnist, the – dare I say it? – blogger.
It’s not my first rodeo, and it’s not my first blog, either. In fact, this year marks the 20th anniversary of my blogging, which also coincides with Son’s 20th birthday. My first blog was called “Name That Baby” and it chronicled our expecting life, and the life of Wife and me as new parents.
And so we came to Christmas Eve and the end of the advent calendar. Thanks for reading!
Merry Christmas!
And it’s time to hand out the Best of 2016 awards to myself again. This year, one post, three categories.
Listen to this: the good people at podcastomatic.com have built a cool robot. It’s got red eyes, and a long face, but the best part is that it’s got a manly voice, and they have trained it to read these blog entries out loud. (Maybe yours, too.)
So, click below to open the feed in iTunes, or, this link if you use another RSS reader to get the audio files.
Enjoy.
– Webmaster
I’m sorry, but there will be no Top 10 New Year’s countdown this year because Mr. Pakarinen says he’s been too busy to write up a list, let alone go through the archives. Frankly, I think the reason there’s no Top 10 list is that he just couldn’t find ten good stories.
Sure, there was this. And this was OK, but you know what I mean?
So, rather than have you go through some old crap, he’s going to hide under the covers and say he’s been “busy”. With what, you ask, and I don’t have an answer.
Anyway. He’s also told all us interns that we can take a long break over the holidays, which tells me there won’t be major updates here, if any. There’d better not be if he first tells us that we can take some time off. Like, suppose he, against all odds, should get a half-baked idea for a story, am I then expected to come in and type the story and post it for him? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Unless there’s a bonus in it for me. I mean, I do things for money. Don’t you?
Merry Christmas to you all.
– Webmaster
Hey kid,
I don’t like foul play, man. I saw you, dude. I so caught you, and you know I did!
And if there’s something that I hate even more than foul play, is seeing my kid getting the short end of the stick because of your foul play, kid.
Sure, it was a game of tag on skates, so you’re technically right: nobody got any end of any sticks. But, that’s not really here or there. The point is that there are rules to the game, and you cheated. See, I saw Son touch you, and I don’t care if your Dad is the manager of the team, and seems to have pretty darn hard shot, when my Son tags you, you stop. Boom. Just because he kept on going to the other direction – he’s still working on stops – doesn’t mean you can pretend he didn’t touch you.
This time, it was just an evil eye I sent your way. And when I made you say “please” a few times when I got your ball from the snow, I was just warming up. I heard you the first time. The first time after I made you say it. Before
– – –
Summer’s here, and I’m cleaning up Mr. Pakarinen’s files. Today, I found this unfinished blog entry from January. Not sure where he was going with it, but I think it perfectly demonstrates his pettiness and superiority complex, and it’s only fair that the world gets to know what kind of a man I have to work with.
And hey, he’s no David Foster Wallace so I’m not going to add any footnotes, but please note that
1. He stopped writing in mid-sentence
2. at 200 words = lazy.
/Webmaster
Dad used to use old military tricks on us kids on the hockey team. At one point, he would try to create peer pressure so that we’d police each other, instead of him coming after whoever did something silly. And, yes, kids do silly stuff.
So, the news came out today: Link.
Now, when Mr. Pakarinen feels all uncomfortable and awkward about something, who does he call? Me, that’s who. So:
Let it be known to the world that Mr. Pakarinen, your resident writer, has won third prize in the column category of the Pearl Awards, a competition organized by the Custom Content Council, the leading association for the custom publishing industry in the United States.
That’s America, people.
People, people. People, people, people. Tsk, tsk. Two years ago, I was given a big budget and a lot of time to come up with the new, improved ristopakarinen.com. So, I spent four months in Italy, eating and drinking well, four months in India, hitchhiking through the country in a very Gandhi kind of way, and four months in Indonesia, eating and drinking well, and just as I touched down at the Arlanda airport on my way home, I came up with The Idea:
I would build one site, Home, for all of Mr. Pakarinen’s writing and blogging, links to his books, his projects, and such, another site, Puckarinen, dedicated for his hockey-related writing, and a third subsite, Risto Twist-o, for his “funny” fake news clippings.
Home would be home, the centerpiece, and the rest would follow naturally from there. I rolled up my sleeves, created three folders, and three RSS feeds, made a cup of coffee, and sent Mr. Pakarinen an email, asking him to test the new concept.
He liked it, a lot. We rolled it out the same day, and have never looked back.
But now, I realize that some of the readers of Home might also like what’s on Puckarinen, but don’t find their way there. And wise verses. And to post everything on both sites would “totally undermine the whole purpose of having the separate sites,” as Mr. Pakarinen told me.
In other words, I’m just here to remind you to check out the links under “Ristart” in the navigation, or click here to see the latest by Puckarinen.
By the way, I wrote a book, “Eat, Sleep, Drink” during my travels, and I hope it will be turned into a major motion picture some day.
Mr. Pakarinen is off to the IIHF World Championship 2010 tournament in Cologne, Germany so I wanted to give you a heads-up about the fact that there will be hockey stuff here as well. Hope you enjoy it, even if you’re not a big hockey fan. He usually keeps it pretty light, so let’s hope he’ll write mostly about things that are non-game related, because, really, those who care can just log on IIHF.com and see all his stuff and because – this is just my opinion – that stuff is so much more interesting.
Just a reminder, you can follow him on Twitter as well. (His latest tweet is also posted here, you’ll see it in the left sidebar).
– Webmaster
