The Best of the Decade: Ten

Posted on December 21, 2009 by Risto

The Aughties are almost over, and what a decade it was. We lived through Big Brother, reality TV’s emergance in general, the Bush era, five Olympics, and were disappointed by the true 2001 Space Odyssey.

None of those things made the Best of the Decade list here at ristopakarinen.com. Instead, I will count down my Top Ten stories in the last ten years, in five different categories, between today and New Year’s Eve. Get the RSS feed, or check back every day. Now, you can search the archives for your own favorites if you want to, but the Official List is here.

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Scotch on the rocks

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Risto

Specialists from New Zealand plan to recover two crates of Scotch whisky left more than 100 years ago by the polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and trapped deep in Antarctic ice.
– New York Times, November 17, 2009

Ladies and gentlemen,

Well, who am I kidding? “Ladies”? Good one. Gentlemen, welcome to the New Zealand Explorers’ Club. It is that time of the month again, and I am happy to see so many of our distinguished members here tonight. And even happier to see all the rest of you! HAA!

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Checks and mates

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Risto

Dear Hannes,

Last night after you’d fallen asleep, I had one of my hockey games again. We lost, which is never fun, but I scored a goal which is always fun, so all in all, it was more fun than not.

Skating is so much fun. When I was eight or nine, a little older than you now, I used to dream that it’d get so cold in Helsinki that all the streets would freeze over and I could skate to school. Skating was so much more fun that walking, or running. (For some reason, inlines don’t do it for me).

But I did have to to walk to school and back. If I didn’t walk with my best friend, I was always kicking pieces of snow and ice, and after school I’d play ball.

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How I kneed her

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Risto

Ten years ago today, I put my hand on J’s knee when we were sitting at a bar just around the corner from the office. The bar, Krokodil, was a gay bar that served cold beer and good food for the people that could fit in the eight tables it had.

We were there, a group of us, and at some point, late that night, I rested my hand on J’s knee, a gesture that – I have been told later – sent shock waves through her body. At the time, I was unaware of this.

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Fine land

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Risto

Today, Dec 6, is Finland’s Independence Day. I will spend it on a ferry to Sweden. How appropriate.

I have never been as Finnish as during my first two years living in Sweden. I moved to Sweden in April, and by Christmas, I was an ultrafennomaniac. I read only Finnish classics, I listened to Finnish music, and I basically spent my weekends on those ferries, going back to the old country, to the old hood and the old buddies.

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The News

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Risto

They say that the more something changes, the more it stays the same. In case you’re wondering who “they” are, the answer is Huey Lewis and the News, who had that line in “I Know What I Want“ on their Fore! album.

I can now tell you that the reverse is also true. The more something stays the same, the more it changes.

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Yes, we can

Posted on November 29, 2009 by Risto

Who came up with the ‘all you can eat’ concept? It’s a very dangerous one, that’s for sure, for two (obvious) reasons. First, there’s the financial aspect. The price is fixed so that just one portion of rolled salmon doesn’t seem to make any sense – especially since the buffet is all pizza. But even with all-you-can-eat-pizza, eating just one slice is madness, when the unit price of one slice is a fraction of the buffet.

So, the more you eat, the cheaper it gets.

(Or, as with my old company which arranged a ‘bonus lunch’, the more I ate, the bigger my bonus).

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Benchmarks

Posted on November 27, 2009 by Risto

Remember a while ago when I wrote that “[t]here is no place – and this is no exaggaration, simply a fact, so I repeat it: no place – a Swede can’t set up a bench, or hasn’t already done so”?

Yeah, the other day I went for a walk and thought about how I said that, and how right I was. I think I may have even said it out loud, “that thing you wrote about the benches last summer, on July 14, that was so right on, it was so true.” The thing that made me remind myself of that piece was a bench that I saw on my way to the mall.

This one:

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Writers block traffic

Posted on November 24, 2009 by Risto

Apparently, I suffer from some kind of an early winter blues. That’s not very unusual around here, and I am sure there are physiological reasons for that. The lack of sunlight, the lack of warmth, and then, at the other end of the spectrum, the lack of the cold, too, the cold that would make it a real winter, and give us snow which would make everything a little lighter again.

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You are my destiny

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Risto

In 1959, Paul Anka played at the Linnanmäki theme park in Helsinki, and the country went nuts. “Paul Anka at Linnanmäki” became a catch phrase to describe a wild and crazy herd of people. It was Beatlemania before there were the Beatles. He was a teen idol, a pop star in an era when there weren’t any.

At the same time, he was still rooted in a tradition that was different from the one that the Beatles and the Stones and the rest came from.

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