I feel vaguely guilty, almost daily, for not updating this blog as often as I’d like to. And my initial reaction, every time I feel that twinge of guilt, is to do something else, or to focus on something enormously unnecessary, or to just stay motionless in whatever space I happen to occupy, monitoring my thoughts and emitting a slightly worried sound every time one arises or passes by. One thought, that is. Although it’s not always “one thought”, sometimes thoughts flap by in vast flocks, sometimes they surface in a suave team of carefully selected participants, and sometimes they hobble along in quiet solitude, not exactly sure were they entitled to exist in the first place, or has there been a misunderstanding somewhere. Sometimes they fail to appear at all, irredeemably and in a most comprehensive manner. Those times are peaceful times.

But peace never lasts.

My peaceful existence was interrupted abruptly a few minutes ago by a ringing phone. The caller presented me with an unsurpassable chance to really take control of my life (well she didn’t actually use that expression to be precise) and join a “sock club for men”, presumably with an option to start receiving an absolutely smashing pair of socks (or just one sock?) every month until the end of all time. For a stunningly reasonable price. Alas, my intelligence momentarily eclipsed, I let the unsurpassable pass and politely declined the offer, clearly against my better judgement, and will now never know  what I will be missing on from now on, every month, until the end of times and possibly beyond. Would those socks have been amazing? Would the act of wearing a pair of those socks elevated me to another level of understanding and illumination? Would some of the socks have been embellished with pretty colours and/or decorations? Would I even have received a pair of socks entirely free of charge?? A multitude of questions, wildly stampeding across the barren desert of no answers.

But back to the vague guilt. Maybe I’ll find it easier to update more often and expel the guilt more regularly if I start segmenting and subtitling things, like I originally did. Then it would be just like filling out a form, nifty and practical. “What pissed me off today: everything; what filled me with joy today: can’t remember, maybe nothing did.”

RECENT REASONS TO NOT FEEL ENTIRELY NEGATIVE:
We’ve been putting things together with my old band L.A.M.F. for several months now and tomorrow we’ll play a gig in Helsinki. I’m pretty excited about it. I’d never have thought it would come together again this easily. It’s been nice rekindling old friendships and the atmosphere is relaxed and smooth because this time we are under no pressure to succeed and make the band bigger. There’s been a cross-swell of  emotions as we reminisce about “the old times” but no hard feelings have arisen, at least none so far. We had a fair bit of turbulence between us way back then but way back then was 15 years ago. I hope the gig goes as well as the rehearsals have went. And I hope I can be bothered to check out the few cover songs I’m supposed to check out and play tomorrow, at some point before actually getting up to perform. This might not happen. Then again, I’m pretty confident I’m able to stumble through a Sex Pistols song without proper knowledge of how it goes, wouldn’t be the first time.

Here’s us performing on Finnish tv programme called “Jyrki”, back in 1996, all sleek cheeked and lithe.



RECENT REASONS TO NOT FEEL PARTICULARLY POSITIVE:
I haven’t had the time to cook proper weekend dinners for awhile and last weekend, when I finally had the time, was faced with a surprising and unexpected case of “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. Suddenly I wasn’t able to prepare edible dishes anymore and this wasn’t discovered until the food was already served and nothing could be done about it. My lemon-sprinkled chicken breast stew with spinach and rice emerged from the oven entirely not tasting of spinach and suppressingly tasting of lemon, with the chicken tasting of nothing at all and the whole grain rice tasting just bad and way too al dente.

The next evening I aimed to redeem myself with a seemingly safe choice of beef tenderloin and honey covered root vegetables. I must have been abducted or gotten caught in some sort of a time warp in the middle of it all, because what I now brought from the oven to the table was a selection of seriously undercooked beetroots, carrots and yellow turnips, accompanied by a presumably medium+ filet mignon that in reality was far beyond well done. It was horrible and serious cracks appeared in the polished area of my self esteem where cooking skills are kept, or rather the sad remains of those skills as it now seems.


RECENT EXPOSURE TO WRITTEN WORD:
The boring and long-winded Black Sabbath biography “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” by Joel McIver where the author endlessly recites the cities the band played in and the songs the albums contained. If there is deeper content within those lists it’s hidden so deep I haven’t spotted it so far. I’ve never been much of a Sabbath enthusiast so I’m not that familiar with their career but I’m sure a lot more gripping tale could have been woven from their mishaps and undertakings. The book presents them as jovial and talented fellows but also gives an impression of a bunch of simpletons who quit and rejoin the band on a regular basis, and, during the eighties, slowly transform the band into a laughing stock with an endlessly changing line-up, weak album releases and a dozen unwisely chosen singers.

The good thing about the book was that it made me dig out my almost forgotten old Sabbath albums. “Master Of Reality”, in particular, is utterly brilliant. I also checked out some of their live performances on YouTube and was delighted to discover, amid all the silly prancing and bouncing around that Ozzy Osbourne’s later day stage presence mostly consists of, some serious gems. Look at the energy and passion of this one, shot in Paris on 1970. “The mighty Sabbath unleashing War Pigs”, says the description, saying it all.

After a neatly sorted out November things went into a bit of a hyperdrive and suddenly I no longer felt the desire to update this blog, nor had the time to do so even if I wanted to. After having sacrificed many a free evening on the altar of driving school during the past autumn, in a feverish and at times ridiculously remote hope of someday acquiring a proper drivers’ licence, things finally reached a conclusion of sorts as I actually got one just before christmas and was smacked on the face by the brutal fact that I now was entitled to drive a real motorised vehicle in a genuine traffic environment, on an open road, among other cars! All this before I had reached my forties!

So I went out and did what I now was entitled to, and continue to do so on a daily basis, boldly facing up to insanely demanding challenges like changing lanes smoothly and finding my way to my actual destination, without the engine dying every single time the lights go from red to green and I release the clutch without revving the engine enough, and without driving 20km per hour slower than everyone else all the time. Herculean efforts I have only partially succeeded to overcome so far, with the aid of my dauntless and tenacious 2008 Suzuki Swift 1,3 GL, pictured below stuck in a snowbank on my doorstep.


I have also actively rehearsed with two bands these past several months. Sinisthra played a gig in Helsinki a few weeks ago, to the general satisfaction of many of the people involved I’d say. It’s still roaring, it’s still writhing and it’s still reasonably full of fire, with just enough songs good enough to make up a show long enough to keep the listeners happy enough to stay and maybe nod appreciatively. It’s good to be part of something like this. Here’s some pics by Tina Solda. On some of the pics we occasionally look like a real rock band that plays gigs regularly, releases records and might even be interviewed by music press, instead of a bunch of oiks from Lohja who strum their tunes in constant fear that someone spots out how wobbly it all sounds and how unlikely it is that we all finish the song at the same time. The magic of photography.


The other band is my old punk band L.A.M.F., of which nothing much exists in the internet to link to. We put out some albums back in the 90’s, did the rounds with variable success for a few years, and then it all sort of imploded. The times changed, the personnel changed and the overall interest waned. Now we are resurrected, at least temporarily, and it feels mostly good to be back. We’ll be playing a gig at the end of this month in Helsinki, and maybe more gigs later on. I’ll write more about this later if I happen to feel like writing more about this.