How to use superlon

Today I'm feeling so ancient I'm presenting you a Superlonian relic of some sort.

The first public appearance of superlon.
It's light. It's dust free. It's elastic. It's easy to cut and glue.
Click the photo, turn on the volume, light your fires and fasten your seat belts.

Superlon Mystery 23: Wife is a lemon and I want my honey back

Ella Salmon: Eiseemi! I can't believe what I see! Mamma's little robbie is back!
Eiseemi Laxi: Hello mother.
Ella Salmon: And who is this tiny friend of yours?
Eiseemi Laxi: He's the police off..
Ella Salmon: Yes dear, how nice. The police took him away.
Eiseemi Laxi: Who?
Ella Salmon: Your Daddy, darling bud of mine.

Eiseemi Laxi: But Stejar saw him sailing on the sea.
Ella Salmon: How sweet, my cutie. Does your little buddy like to taste my fishloaf?
Stejar Strahl: That sounds delicious, but..
Ella Salmon: And how are my sugarcube's piano lessons?
Eiseemi Laxi: I'm not playing anymore. But Stejar saw him...
Ella Salmon: That is so nice. Mummy is so proud of her little robsy.
I have just baked some artichoke pastries.

Eiseemi Laxi: My father hated them. He said once he'd love to smash them all.
Ella Salmon: Sweetie, I will wash your mouth with a soap like I washed your father's, that toad. Oh yes, he piled them high, into a ten turtle stack and then he left...
Eiseemi Laxi: Mother?
Stejhar Strahl: He took my Mama Zucchini, too.
Ella Salmon: That's nice, darling. Do you want to taste my terrapin tart?

To be continued...

The 100th blog post and some surprising presents

Apparently I have written 100 mainly uninteresting blog posts since January.
Hip hip hurrah.
Here's the cake.

Recently I've also got two quite unexpected presents.
I was writing earlier about my Granny's radio and felt sad it didn't work anymore. Last weekend my Mum's old friend phoned me if I'd like an old radio. They were just throwing it away, but suddenly remembered me.



So here it is, with a green blurry light and a soft tone. I found just one channel, but it is something to listen to whilst I'll be without Internet.

Today I found these two old, beautiful books, somebody had thrown away. The other one had some interesting and handy reparation tips for the old houses.



Few pages of The Everyman's Dictionary (1948) were folded, marking these things:
- the plant collection
- mathematical signs
- platonic love
- the suffragettes
- a fox

Inside of the book were also three small notes, typed with an old typewriter:
- Traditional Logia.
- The Absurd World.
- It is or it isn't, everybody has to.

Superlon Mystery 22: We're just two lost moles swimming in the fish soul

What Eiseemi Laxi saw, was an empty and soaked bark boat.
They had used Stejar's undershirt as a sail.
Eiseemi had a fly in the eye.
Eiseemi Laxi: Oh friend, wish you were here.

He took a closer look at the fish net lying on the beach.
Eiseemi Laxi: Oh well, at least some fish is here.
Stejar Strahl: No fish, just me and the four ninjas: da Vinci, Buonarroti, Sanzio and di Niccolò di Betto Bardi.
Eiseemi Laxi: Stejar! How are you?
Stejar Strahl: Not bad, I met your Dad.
Eiseemi Laxi: You too? Where is he?
Stejar Strahl: He said to me "I can walk with my hands" and I said to him "I can walk with my socks" and Mama Zucchini said to me " why don't you walk with your socks then" and pushed me into the water.
Eiseemi Laxi: So you aren't happy then.
Stejar Strahl: No.
Eiseemi Laxi: We will release the too teen turtles and have a tea with my Mum.

To be continued...

Send me some money, please...

...I want to buy the camouflage t-shirt!


(and the bottomless scrubs)

Oh why, oh why, did I spend all my money for buying a rotten house?

Superlon Mystery 21: No Stejar, oh why

Early in the morning Eiseemi Laxi woke up.
The tent was empty as the historian's purse.
A mild scent of Mama Zucchini's hand-cream was the only memory left of Stejar Strahl.
Eiseemi Laxi had a strange feeling inside his stomach, so he decided to go fishing to the Lake Pitycaca.

Eiseemi Laxi: I am the unhappiest robot in the universe.
Every time I see a friend, the friend sees something else.
There is not any fish left in the lake.
Just an empty lake.
See-no Monkey: I'm here, but you can't see me.
Eiseemi Laxi: I can see you.
See-no Monkey: Can you? I can't see anything.
Eiseemi Laxi: What are you doing in the bottom of the lake?
See-no Monkey: I'm stuck in the Iseeu Salmo-salar's turtle-net.
Eiseemi Laxi: My Dad's what?
See-no Monkey: Is he your Dad? Then I can't see you.
Look! There's a giant salmon behind you!
Eiseemi Laxi: As if. You don't fool me you ... where did you go? Monkey?

The lake was calm again. Eiseemi Laxi wasn't.
Eiseemi Laxi: Oh Stejar, why? I even made your favourite banana-porridge today.

Suddenly he saw something floating on the open water.

To be continued...

hard work hallelujah

The fox weekend chronicle

Saturday

Work

It is raining. I choose this day for the gardening.
I have always wanted a big backyard. A place where kids can play and where I can sit under the apple trees.
Now I have it. A place where kids can play hide and seek and I have no time to sit under the apple trees, where the kids are hiding. Obviously.
I have a huge garden full of Bishop's weed, Quackgrass and nettles. Suddenly I realize the essential idea of the container garden.


Play

A wants to play croquet. He finds one mallet and uses J 's hand as a ball. J wanted to take a look at the spider sitting on the rock,
but we are soon looking at the spider smashed on the rock and a very purple finger instead.

Leisure

I'm staring at the telly and can't believe what I see. I want to share this once-in-the-lifetime experience with somebody, but the whole village is sleeping.
Even the street lights are off. One man drives an old Cadillac far in the distant and shouts hard rock hallelujah. I live in the very hip and groovy place, obviously.


Sunday

Work

It is a sunny day. I choose this day to see what should be done with the house.
There is a hole in the roof, the stairs are broken, the house needs painting, the floor of the sauna is broken and
the outhouse is almost collapsed during the winter. Suddenly I realize the essential idea of the Ikea BoKlok house.

Play

A wants to play the snake charmer and uses the water hose as the snake. J's head is too close, unfortunately.

Leisure

Sauna. The cubs test what happens when you pour a bottle of shampoo on the hot sauna oven.
They are pretty amazed to see how fast the white liquid turns to be the black smoke.


Monday

Work

It is a hot day. I choose this day to dig a ditch. The house stands on the clay soil. Suddenly I realize the essential idea of the asphalt surface.

Play

J wants to play baseball (the Finnish version). He seems to be very good at it. A wants to pick all the balls. No broken fingers, no crashed windows,
no dead pedestrians. I am still amazed.

Leisure

We sit in the hot car in the overcrowded motorway. I miss the countryside living already.

This is it

I'm going to spend my money and time on this.
I bought her house.
The one my Grandpa built with his own hands.
The one she learnt to love.
I bought the window to look at the invisible through it.
Or the garden.
I'm going to plant my own flowers between hers.

This summer I will sit in the kitchen again
and tell some stories to my kids.

Back to the herstory

My Granny was practically Mom for me, so of course I rebelled against her.
I didn't want to hear what she said and suddenly she couldn't anymore.
First she lost the vision from her eyes, then her ability to speak. It was my turn to tell stories to her.

I always wondered why she didn't want to visit Carelia. It came possible to make short journeys there around 1990, but
she didn't want to and I couldn't understand why, because that was clearly what she had always wanted to do; to go back.
Well, she was 80 and I was 18.

Last year we buried her and I made my first journey to Russia. I packed myself into the bus full of cheerful pensioners and crossed the border to history.
At first, the tiny historian in me was overwhelmingly excited. It was like I had jumped back to the 30's.

The bus went along the bumpy roads. Grey houses on the endless fields. Women washing their clothes outside, in the sunshine. Small children feeding hen.
Cows, geese and goats standing across the sandy roads. When we stepped outside from the bus, I smelled a mixed scent of the sea, roses, lilacs and dust. I thought it was just like it had been earlier, but when I walked in the village I noticed everything had changed.



The houses my ancestors lived in were burned, but the houses built after that were in poor condition.
I saw burnt wood, broken tiles, old log houses painted in turquoise, backyards full of broken cars. I saw rose bushes and flowers growing alone in the fields, marking the places where my relatives lived.



I had a lousy map with me and I tried to find the exact place where
she once lived. I was looking for the trees standing on the beach, but there were no such trees anymore. I walked and walked, but couldn't find anything. I was standing in the middle of some poor farmer's stamped field. Looking for what? A piece of glass from the window?



I took a photo of the place. It's just a field near the sea. I don't know what I was searching for. If there hadn't been the war, maybe I would live somewhere there. Or maybe not. I would had moved away. My Mum wouldn't have been born in the train and she probably wouldn't have met my Dad. I wouldn't exist at all.

I saw so much beauty. I saw so much poorness. I visited Terijoki and saw the remains of the old villas on the beach. The broken statues behind the wild bushes. The posh new houses near the beach. The closed doors to the posh beach Hotels with swimming pools. The tiny art historian in me wept and listened to the ghosts. I walked on the empty beach. It is something I had never seen before.
The Northern Riviera. Trust me, it was once. I walked in the low water until I was told not to do so. There aren't any swimmers left.



I realized why she wouldn't want to see that. She had a beautiful vision of eternal summer in her head.
She wouldn't have wanted to see what was standing on the place where once was a school.



She wouldn't have wanted to see what was standing on the place where the ships were once built.



She wouldn't have wanted to see the happy children bouncing outside the village cinema, what once was the new mighty church.



I looked at the happy kids bouncing. I tried not to think what a masterpiece of architecture was ruined behind the happy kids, who suddenly stared at the silently crying old people.
It was both intriguing and shameful. What was I doing there, staring at their lives?
All these years I had thought what would happen if we could have it back. If it would be possible, we would take their homes and lands. The children didn't know. Their parents and maybe grandparents were born there. It was their home now.

Now I'd like to listen again

My granny had two large books.
Like I said, she never read anything, but these were full of old landscape photos toned in sepia.
I learned to read before I was four years old, because she borrowed enormous piles of books from the library, just for me.
I remember how we sat together at the kitchen table. She used to look at the pictures in her books whilst I read mine. After that she stared at something invisible through the window.
Sometimes I noticed she was biting her lips, but she never cried.

She showed me some pictures and I didn't quite understand her, but I loved her stories.
She told about the sea and the ships my ancestors built and sailed with.
She told me how she played with her friends on the beach and later listened to her gramophone under the birches.
I laughed at the funny sounding names of her friends, Julius, Hugo, Hermann, and she looked at me strictly and bit her lips again.


She told me about the artists passing by the village, heading to Terijoki.
She told me about the funny, peculiar villagers.
She told me thrilling stories, like how she accidentally found the smugglers bottles or quite boring stories of how she had to work as a child in the fields.
She told me about the excitement when she moved to Vyborg, the biggest city she knew.
She told me about the cafe she worked in. She told me what she wore when she had her first dance with a soldier. She described the music the orchestras played in the Monrepos park, so well, that I almost could smell the scent of the roses.

I always wondered why she had left all that. The house on the beach, horses on the fields, white tablecloths drying in the wind, her brothers playing
their accordions under the giant lilac bushes.
Why should anyone leave the eternal summer?

When I was older she told me why.
She told me about the coldest winter she had seen. The quite sudden order to leave. The voices of the planes flying too close.
She told about the animals left without care and the photographs burning inside the houses.
She told me how my mother was born in the train and she had no clothes for the baby.

But I didn't listen to her anymore. I was too old to sit with her in the kitchen, listening to the same old stories.
They had told us about the war in the school anyway.

Mummo

My granny was a woman of principle.

She
1) Never drank wine, because she hated the idea of the strange feet smashing the grapes.
2) Never read a book, because her mother said it was pure silliness for a girl.
3) Never bought anything from a shop, which had a very, very far and distant relationship to the Communist Party.
4) Never forgot her home, which was cruelly taken away from her during the war.
5) Never forgot my grandpa who died 35 years before her.

She always remembered to
1) Feed the cats, hedgehogs and her tame crow called Aaro.
2) Make so much food nobody could eat.
3) Watch The Bold and the Beautiful, because Ridge was such a hunk.

She had the most beautiful brown eyes.
She had the most unique talent to tell stories and make everybody laugh.
She was a woman who made the priests blush.
She was the woman who raised me.

The second Sunday of May

I had an once-a-year chance to sleep til 10 am.
I got a lovely breakfast.
I got three red roses.
I got lovely presents, hand-made by the cubs.

It's Mother's Day.

Pre-birthday post-literary rant post

Pre-birthday post-literary rant volume 1

I haven't read John Irving's latest novel Until I Find You, so actually I should be quiet.
No, I'm not.
I just found out he has taken his main character to Finland.
What he founds out seems to be something like this:
1. Helsinki is a bad place for everyone with low self-esteem.
(Ok.)
2. Women in Helsinki don't shave their armpits.
(Did I say burn your razors? Forget it.)
3. Women in Helsinki aren't beautiful, they're sprightly.
(Dear Mr Author, I would say kiss my cutey cute cute butt, but I think it would be rude.
Oops, I said it. Oh well, I sold all my copies of your books two years ago anyway. Ha. Was that too brisk?)

Pre-birthday post-literary rant volume 2


We had the Book and Rose Day (World Book Day) on Wednesday.
If following the original Catalonian tradition, man gives a rose to his loved one and woman gives a book in exchange.
Excuse me?

Man gives a rose (3 €) and you'll have to buy a decent book (30 €).
What if it would be a World Home Appliance Day?
Man gives you a blender (30 €) and you'll have to buy him a dishwasher (300 €).
World Vehicle Day?
Man gives you a Lada (3000 €) and you'll have to buy him a BMW (30 000 €).
Ok . You got the idea.
I didn't even have a rose. Nor did I give any books.
So this was just a hypothetical rant by a sprightly Helsinkian.

Pre-birthday post-literary post-rant thing

After having anything where you can add the prefix post, you should stay in bed and light a cigarette.
I quit smoking 434 days ago.
So I kind of ------ - ----- instead. * I think. Bloody expensive rant.

* If you were awake late or early you saw what I did.

Superlon Mystery 20: Ultimo tango a Superlonigi

They woke up.

Stejar Strahl: What is this light alley? Why are we suddenly here?
Eiseemi Laxi: These shabby streets are so familiar. I think I was born here.

Mama Zucchini: Hello, I bet you can help me. I am a lost visitor from the republic of Thermoplastica. I am looking for a bet.
Stejar Strahl: The casino is near the beach.
Mama Zucchini: Me beach? My cousin will come.
Stejar Strahl: Your cousin Will comes to gamble too?
Mama Zucchini: No I am looking for a pet to sleep.
Stejar Strahl: A pet sheep?
Mama Zucchini: Yes, cheap is fine.

Eiseemi Laxi: Stejar, I think she wants a room from the Turnip Continental...
Stejar Strahl: Be quiet, fisher-robot, she is pretty as a bobby.
Eiseemi Laxi: Oh yes, Bobby Bacala kind of pretty.

Stejar Strahl: All I know I have a pet bee in a gage.
Mama Zucchini: That's so romantic. Yes, I do.
Stejar Strahl: You do? Do you mean you want a bee?
Mama Zucchini: Yes I want to be with you. I will show you my auntie Melongena's shop. She sells so lovely rings.
Eiseemi Laxi: My auntie, Bea Vulgarus, once said to me: "Always check out whether you dive into warm water or hot porridge".

To be continued...

The Husky Diet

This week I 'ave mostly been eating:

1. courgette
2. liquorice
3. cat poo
4. rice crackers

Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem

The restlessness of the springiest vixen.

Nonlinear travelling

It has been an extremely hot and sunny weekend in Helsinki.
After swimming and bicycle-riding the cubs wanted to travel somewhere.

A: I want to fly to France.
J: Not to France. You can't even speak French.
A: But I want to go to France. There are so many boats there.
J: But in England there are many...erm...black holes!
A: I want to go to Africa then.
J: Ha ha. You have to jump from an airplane to get there.
A: But I am an African boy. How didn't you recognize me? My name is Fideliscasterix. *
J: You're not from Africa. You are just...Mrs Piippola. **

J runs away, A follows furiously. They quite accidentally
cross the border of DNGNTRL (definitely never go near the road-land).

Me: Come back NOW!
No answer.
Me: Come back NOW or you'll ever... erm...
[deep thinking: you will ever see any movies / eat strawberries / have friends / travel anywhere...]
Me: Come back NOW or I'll shout!
[not so deep thinking: but I am doing it already]
Me: Just come back.
They come back.
J: Sorry, forgot.
A: It wasn't me. It was the bubble-gum in my mouth leading.

* I don't think A (3) has any connection to Cuba, though.
** Mrs Old MacDonald.




J took the photo of his artwork: How to make a Swiss flag by eating an apple.

Superlon mystery 19: Their World Is Full Of Smashing Bores

Lieber Sandmann flew them to the Gates of Lemon.

Stejar Strahl: What does this sign mean? Not suitable for under age of 3 or over 3?
Eiseemi Laxi: Never mind the sign. The tormentor of the insomniacs is already gone back to Demokratisches Dreamland Realm.
If I were you I'd be more concerned about the dog above you.

Raisin-faced doggy: Mosh your heads to drop the sand!
Eye-liner doggy: It's time for lemoneye!
Stejar Strahl: Thanks a lot, we are quite thirsty...
Eye-liner doggy: I meant put the slices of lemon on your eyes.
Raisin-faced doggy: Go on. Talk to the Hand!

Eiseemi Laxi: I can't see, somebody turned out the lights.
Stejar Strahl: I'd rather be running in sleepsand than lying under this drooling thing.

Never Clever Hand: You want the ring?
Stejar Strahl: Yes!
Never Clever Hand: Ring, ring, the happiest find of them all!
Eiseemi Laxi: But it's a wrong ring!
Never Clever Hand: Ring, ring, I stare at the phone on the wall.
Stejar Strahl: We were searching for a green ring.
Never Clever Hand: It doesn't matter what it looks like. Use your imagination. It is the core that matters.
Stejar Strahl: Well, Hemmo Mikko never wasn't so fussy anyway. And he is quite happy with his Swedish ponylove.

Never Clever Hand: I promise you with this ring, you will find your thing.
Eiseemi Laxi: Actually I'm quite bored of the rings. Could you help us to find my turtle?
Never Clever Hand: It's inside of...

Raisin-faced doggy: Lights on, lemons off.
Eye-liner doggy: Waky waky!


To be continued...

D'où venons nous? Que sommes nous? Où allons nous?

Sopwith-camel's post here made me think of how much I do own things, which don't actually belong to me.
Things, which I have saved and filed, without knowing who owned them and why they were finally thrown away. It made me wonder why am I saving all my and also other people's things around me. Is it because I am afraid one day there will be no-one interested in what did happen to me when I was alive?


Approximately ten years ago I got to see how one life was thrown away in one afternoon, in huge black bags.
Inside of those bags were one woman's photos, her clothes, her letters, her silver spoons. "We thought they were worthless", I heard afterwards. I don't want to say what they did to her antique furniture, because it might make me cry.
Over ten books of photos containing her and her husband's journeys to different countries were trashed, but I managed to get their Plan de Paris - book.



Sometimes I just sit and think who were the people behind all those objects I own. Who was Signe and why did she write all those sweet letters to Einar?
Who owned and broke the clock? Who drank all the lemonade? Who ate the candies and filled the box with buttons?


I love stories and the lifes, which don't belong to me. I love to make up different stories of unordinary lifes.
I listened to my granny's radio when I was a small girl. I remember reading the names of the distant cities and wondered who lived somewhere out there.
I still remember this line:
Leningrad-Warzawa-Ylivieska-Helsinki-Paris-Moskva-Berlin-London-Brussel-Toulouse.



The wooden box is my favourite. I bought it from the flea market.
Before getting it's way there, it spent it's life in a house where Bertolt Brecht lived for a while. It's empty, but it tells stories to me.

Siljas, lines and stationary junk

Date: The first of May-weekend. The national let's all be heavily drunk and violently cheerful-weekend.
Location: Somewhere in the countryside, where the streets and shops are empty. No restaurants nearby for hungry visitors.

Mum takes us to the petrol station.
The building is huge like a Silja Line ferry, the floating shopping-centre, crossing the sea to Sweden. This is a stationary ferry.
Only thing referring to cars is a museum vehicle standing inside a giant glass box.
Far away, in the middle of the muddy field, someone sells old cars.

The interior is full of flashy lights and misleading signs. Noisy combination of Muzak and karaoke in the smoky and non-smoky air. Shelves bend under cheap cosmetics, glossy magazines, handmade clothes, fatty snacks and wooden souvenirs.
Small boys bang coins into the noisy machines.
Bigger boys dressed in leather waistcoats, dance brotherly together.
Lonely hearts sup beer. Families, dressed in their best clothes, eat quietly.

101 ways to make a steak with pineapple. Funny looks are given when I offer four fishburgers, which arrive fast and odd-tasty. Mums old friend seems to be a part-time waitress.

Suddenly I realize I have taken the dog with us. It stares at me and begs irritatingly.
Me: Shoo there, sit down!
The family with solemn faces stop chewing. They stare at me with their icy blue eyes, mouths open.
I stare at the dog which is actually a stuffed wolf.
I look around. One stuffed, small bear guards the toilets.
A head of a deer hangs above the pizza-oven.
One sad black grouse sits under the plastic tree.

A girl with a tangled, elf-like hair isn't stuffed. She stands near our table in her boyish outfit and nude-coloured high-heels.
J: I'm 5.
The elf-girl doesn't say anything.
J: I'm 10.
The elf-girl looks at him.
J: Look, I can count. [counts 19+5 and 18+7]
The elf-girl looks at him bit longer.
J: I can almost do headstands.
The elf-girl: I'm Silja.
J sticks his hand into the wolf's mouth.
Silja leaves.
J: [whispers] Somebody just said behind my head that I love her.


Oh, I'm in love too. Especially with my new vintage bike. Countryside-camping here we come!