Various stuff, pt. 2

Now it's cooled off a little bit, so I decided to some blogging while I'm editing a short story for Isku. It's written by some high school guy and it's a very grim and violent story about kiddie porn. Quite tough. There are some problems with the language, though, and I thought I should send this back to the boy.

I was drinking booze last night. I was quite prepared for it, but then I found out that nobody wanted to go with me. Well, Jussi was at Anjalankoski and Juhis in Budapest, so they had pretty good reasons not to go.

At long last I managed to get hold of one person who said "yes" - an old friend from the university who's spending the summer in Turku. We went out for one or two and then headed for Dynamo, the city's coolest nightclub that is built in the old wooden house. It's generally a great place and I like to hang out in there - provided I have friends. Anssi started quite early to hit on women and vanished and left me with some people he knew, but whose names I'd already forgotten. I can blame myself totally for this - I could've been more social.

I was waiting for my friends, Tero and Susanna, to come out of the rock festival, Ruisrock, but then at 01:30 only Susanna came in. She said that she's lost Tero and wanted to find him. I said that I'm bored here and wanted to go with her. We found Tero and walked him home. I then went home and picked up some kebab on the way. I felt quite sad and alienated from the cheering crowd. After all this it was very nice to come home and find Kauto and Elina sleeping cozily next to each other.

Something else also happened. I met briefly a woman I know by sight and whom I know to be a psychiatrist. Now, all the shrinks need shrinks themselves, but this one needs it bad. I had written a short article for a newspaper supplement about men's underwear. I'm first to admit that it was shallow and all that, but this woman attacked me like I'd done something bad. She said it was ugly and I'm greedy to do this kind of thing for money. I said I don't want to discuss this in her terms and walked out very much pissed off. I never found out what she was up to. Certainly not a good way to pick up a guy.

***

I didn't have much of a hangover, so we went out for a lunch. Kauto was a pain in the ass, though. He's learned how to get off his chair and tries to get on the table, also in restaurants. We had to eat in turns and follow the boy around. He did this several times at home, too, and at dinner we almost got mad. We have to put him in leashes tomorrow. (Is that a correct word?)

Later on we went out to a park. Kauto was so happy to be able to walk around and dig his hands into sand. It was too hot, though, and we had to leave home pretty early. Kauto felt hot when we got back and was a bit irritated. He needs more company than he did, say, two months ago when he would play by himself when we ate, now he needs company and entertainment. He doesn't yet eat same food with us and usually he nags at a piece of bread while we eat.

Tonight we ate some licorice candy while we watched TV and Kauto got his hand to it and ate one of them! After that he started shouting every time he saw us eating candies.

By the way, we were watching a short documentary on collecting and collectors. We were furious. All the collectors in the show were rich folk who collected old silver and other boring stuff! We would've thought that they would've interviewed at least one person who collects seventies cloths or plastic toy cars or more pop stuff like that. Now collecting seemed like an elitist hobby for the rich and beautiful (well-kept housewives they were). And the talk about collecting - how blabbery can you go? (Is this a word?) All the same tired stuff about ecology and the joy of finding and all that. You'd think someone would come up with something original. (And what ecology is in antique fairs, with dozens and dozens of dealers driving from all over country to some warmed-up hall, and with people driving there in their cars?)

And I swear to God that I'm going to kill the next director who plays goddam dixieland when there's some old stuff in the picture? This is a disease, spread already too far, and I've seen it happen too many times. What the f**k does dixieland have to do with the silver from the 1700's? The whole goddam program was like an ad for the antique dealers. And none of the collectors interviewed was ready to admit that they are just some walking syndromes who have nothing better to do with their lives. Almost all the serious collectors I know are just that.

(Er.. would I be willing to admit that? Hell, here goes: I'm just some walking syndrome who has nothing better to do with his life.)

***

I've been reading crime novels by one Philip Daniels. Anyone know him? Anyone ever read anything by Philip Daniels? He's a British crime and thriller stalwart who started out in the late fifties writing cheap hardbacks for such publishers as Jenkins* and Robert Hale. He has also written as by Peter Chambers and Peter Chester, and he has a P.I. series about Mark Preston. I've read one of those (Jail Bait, 1983) and it's pretty much okay, but too short. At the moment I'm reading Goldmine - London W.1. (1979), a caper novel. It's okay this far, but I'm waiting for a late twist. Earlier I read Cinderella Spy (1984), but its ending was just too abrupt. But clearly Daniels is one of the better second tier British thriller writers.

Okay, enough of this. Time to go to bed. Hope you made it through here.

Oh, by the way, with Mika Lietzen we put a blog about Finnish cover illustrators. It's yet very new, but check it out at

http://suomenkuvittajat.blogspot.com

* There seems to be a vanity press called Jenkins nowaday, but I think it's not the same house as the old Jenkins that dealt with genre lit.