Rememberment

It's my summer holiday now, and I'm kicking back. For the next couple of weeks, my updates here will be more brief. So, instead of my usual wall of doom and gloom, here are some of my most played tracks from recent times. Which, of course, will mostly be all doom and gloom. The Pretty Reckless remains a criminally underrated band, although their recent touring with AC/DC should change that at least some. This particular track from 2021 serves as a chilling prophecy for what is happening in the USA right now. Speaking of criminally underrated bands, Nothing But Thieves always finds itself represented in whatever new playlist I create. VANT is a British alt-rock band. Their lyrics often deal with the darker side of humanity, which kind of resonates with yours truly. I don't think they've released anything new since 2018, which is a shame. The Blue Stones always manages to scratch a certain itch in my brain. This is their most recent track and I love it. LEAP is another Lo...

My first school year was over, and it was time again for one of those childhood summers that seemed to last forever. There would be lots of time spent collecting butterflies with Matti, the neighbour's kid, as well as many nights of staying with my cousins at their farmhouse. And of course, another Free Church summer camp with my dad. I also had to finally try to properly learn how to ride a bicycle. I still had my training wheels on which was rather embarrassing. Not that there was much anywhere I could ride my bike anyway except for our own dirt road and the yard, as there was yet no bicycle lane next to the dangerous main road. Our cat went missing that summer. One day, she was just gone. She had gone missing before, sometimes for a few days, but always came back eventually. Not this time. We spent some time searching but in vain. I was sad, but at least we didn't find her dead by the side of the road. Our family also got invited to a wedding. The groom was another adult rel...

A number of nice things started happening in Finland after the Second World War. Our heroic veterans wasted no time making babies after getting back home, and soon the nation had to really roll up its sleeves in order to deal with the sudden surge of Boomers. A Finnish Boomer ( Homo perceles ) in its natural environment. The coming decades saw huge investments in education, housing and infrastructure. The country also underwent rapid industrialization in order to repay the massive war debt and to create new jobs. Our maternity and children's clinic system founded in the 1920s became standard and spread all over the country, and mothers started giving birth more often in hospitals than the sauna. National vaccination programs practically eliminated a number of diseases that used to kill lots of children, and the overall rapid improvements in healthcare and education contributed to Finland becoming one of the safest countries in the world for having kids. Because it was no longer nec...

Mom was born some 11 months after her dad came back from the Winter War. The family was poor to begin with, and war didn't make things any easier. Everything was scarce except for children, who were taught to help with chores from an early age.  Having lots of kids was necessary, as chances were not all of them would survive. When Mom was a bit older, she got a baby brother. One night, her mother woke her up. "Come, put your hand on your brother's face" she said. "Can you feel how cold he is?" and my mom did as was asked, and judging from her expression when she told me this, was properly traumatized by the experience. But more children came, and life went on. Mom grew up fast and became tall for a girl, enough so that other kids started making fun of her at school. "So tall she can't hear her own fart" they said, and Mom started to take a hunched posture in order to hide her stature. School wasn't much fun otherwise either - the teacher wa...

I was 14 or 15 at the time and loved to just sometimes hop on my bicycle, show up behind a friend's door and ask if they wanted to hang out. One such time I went to see if Tony would be up for it. His mom came to answer the door with a serious look on her face. "Hey there. You should come again another day. Tony can't be with you right now, he's having one of his headaches." And they weren't just any kind of headaches. To be clear, "headache" doesn't give it quite enough credit. What we're talking about is  the most painful condition there is. Nobody seemed to know what was going on, certainly not the doctors. The pain was horrible and painkillers were useless. The attacks came at the same time each day - for a series of days and weeks at a time - and then it just stopped, sometimes for a longer time and sometimes shorter. A couple of years later, still having found no explanation to his recurring mystery headaches, Tony started spending mor...