takopupitike

a christmas carol

Stave 1: Marley's Ghost

Scrooge knew he was dead? Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. "Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! "Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"

said Scrooge.

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied. "Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

demanded Scrooge. said Scrooge.

Scrooge replied.

"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "It's not my business," Scrooge returned. Marley's face. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. "Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the room.

"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. said Scrooge, raising his voice. asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

"I don't." said Scrooge.

"I don't know," said Scrooge.

"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. "You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.

"I do," said Scrooge. "You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. Scrooge trembled more and more.

"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. said Scrooge.

"I will," said Scrooge. Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.

"I -- I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.

hinted Scrooge.

It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. Scrooge stopped.

the mourning primrose: trailer

the mourning primrose

november 16-18 (one weekend only, don't miss it!)

'nuff said

it's strange not to be on stage.

the players are putting up what looks like a great show on nov 16-18:

i didn't audition because i couldn't be sure about traveling; as it turns out, i wouldn't have had a problem. on the other hand, it'll be great to see one of the group's productions from the audience!

and it should be good fun. more about it at finnbritplayers.com/themourningprimrose

i guess there are better ways

nothing i could say would add anything. just.. watch:

music by rebecca clamp

video by field marshall huzz

OH. YES.

the rude mechs' stage version of get your war on is coming to finland.

FUCK YEAH.

i'm going in on Sat 13 Oct. come along.

(reviews below)

]]> "A history lesson that sprays scorn liberally (in both senses)...a slick production...devilishly deadpan actors...in the vein of of the slacker comedies of Mike Judge [and] the satire of Jon Stewart" - The New York Times

"One of the smartest and funniest plays I've seen in a long time. Go out and buy a ticket right now." - CurtainUp.com

"contains some of the funniest ridicule of a president and his policies I've ever heard on a stage...a hilarious grasp of absurdity...both retro and devilishly au courant...the live-theater equivalent of a wildfire" - The Washington Post

“Rarely has political theatre so enmeshed the sardonic and the sincere...Rees’ comics, faultlessly realized by the cast and director Shawn Sides, are antic, paranoiac, and trenchant.” - The Village Voice

“a gleeful retrospective of Rees’s work...with a wry humor that manages to feel both fresh and pointed.” - The New Yorker

"delivers some of the most cogent and hilarious criticism of six years of the war on terror available in any entertainment medium today" - Show Business Weekly

"Get Your War On is in the motherfucking house, and it is glorious. I laughed my ass off, but maybe only to keep from crying and tearing chunks of my hair out." - The Philadelphia Weekly

"The show was fucking hilarious, but five years and two days after 9/11 and nearly four years into Iraq, I kind of cried, too." - Philadelphia City Paper

"fast-paced and ingeniously choreographed laugh-a-second romp...a healthy release of nearly incessant laughter. (There’s just one word to express the audience response on the night I saw the play: howling.) - Gothamist.com

"Director Shawn Sides choreographs the interplay among the projected images — important dates, bits of clip art, silly graphics — with a giddy precision that would make Busby Berkeley proud. This frenetic, faux-primitive approach is both a plausible equivalent to and a sly continuation of Mr. Rees's clenched-jaw minimalism." - The New York Sun

"fiercely literate...satirical, ironic, and generally pissed-off" - The Washington City Paper

"Inspired...quick-witted...no-holds-barred, genuinely pissed-off theater" - DCist.com

" a 70-minute brilliant and sardonic blitz" - The Austin American-Statesman

"a liberation of one's political soul in a cleansing explosion of laughter" - The Austin Chronicle

"A performance not to be missed!" - The Daily Texan

"a tightly wound, high-precision performance of political-comic-strip hilarity!" - Austinist.com

"it strikes sparks to ignite the beaten-down, dark and dormant liberal-radical left that has been licking its paws too fucking long!" - The Austin Chronicle

"Liberals are such immature, repugnant people...The Taxpayers probably got boned again...Oh, these whacko liberal theatre groups and their hateful hijnks!" - choice comments from NewsBusters (Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias)

nostalgie

found this bourdieu classic today while looking for, well, it. felt like pilfering and sharing: sort of like a pirate jesus.

it maps what people (a french 70's cross-section) drank, ate, listened to, watched, drove, etc, mapped on high-low overall capital (vertical axis), with predominantly cultural capital on the left (where you find academics and such), and predominantly economic capital (aka parvenu schmucks) to the right.

love it.

click for full size.

for fuck's sake

current foreseeable travel plan:

and that doesn't include holidays.

it just occurred to me that

2007

happeningfish was accepted into the country's leading theatre school, and heard of it, like, yesterday. how about buy her a drink or something next time you see her

uh huh so you got in

uh huh

WTF you really got in!!!

it's too awesome to handle!!!!

this is me handling the awesome

i think you'll do .. All right

kaikki normal. Yo where you at?

hier. i'm in your country scorin notches on your beermat

i don't think germany is good for me

also..

flibble?

out of mind autoreply

i'll be in and out (mostly out) of the country till maybe september, so expect late-night hotel-room blog entries poking fun at local customs: your standard fare from your friendly neighbourhood sad asshole.

i've got nothing to add or indeed say today so i present to you an alleged separated-at-birth photo pair:

(culprit)

it's that time of the year again

3 days till we go on stage.

it will RULE.

more here

i think this is going to be awkward at best

this ->. might be a good point to stop reading this entry, what follows below is very much about matti's head and what goes on therein. thanks for stopping by.

]]> since i've all but given up my privacy with this stuff, might as well be generally honest. let's see what comes out of this.

a while back i started liking a song again that for a long-ass time, for reasons unclear to myself, made me too uncomfortable to even hear it. what is that shit?

anyway. i see things in magical terms, recently. not in terms of any literal belief, but as things things and people having powers and tendencies and properties you don't have words for. your language-mind and common sense tell you it's not real because of where we draw the line from real to silly superstition, but then somehow we accept that "ennui" can exist or "guilt" or "love". that's the level i'm talking about, here.

which weirdness is something i take on board in a big way because it's something like a raw feed of what you are in the world. a new sense. and actually listening to that shit gets you into funny places, mentally. that's where it gets unexpected: you essentially start thinking magically. and every once in a while your conscious mind just grabs you by the shoulder and does this one-eyebrow-raise thing as if you're turning yourself into a kid or a savage and he's worried, but you know, fuck that guy: you know better. we're looking at something invigorating, here. it's so not fucking coincidental that the root of "enthusiasm" comes from being possessed.

you never think you're actually guided by ideas stronger than you, because they are how you see things, not what you see. for as long i remember, it turns out, i've been basically controlled by a vague christian-shaped guilt over maybe teetering on the brink of some temptation or other. usually laziness, doing unhealthy things, shit like that. and there's been the illusion that by consciously trying you could somehow make a difference in what you do (which is strangely common) but its even more surreal corollary that it makes a difference that you worry. (what the peril really is is never known, and that's a crucial part of the illusion). yet even as i thought this, i could have sworn it was nothing like me.

then it kind of sneaks on you and wham: fuck that karmic nag. you do actually like to do the things that are good to you and others. you won't make a dent in your bad habits by worrying about them. you, as the you you experience you are, are not you and you are especially, emphatically not the decision-maker w/r/t what you do.

the mass of humanity so far has lived a messy, exhilarating, dangerous and vile existence, you know, so far.. and until you as the contemporary part of that tidal wave have a desk job and hobbies in a calendar. you. the latest chapter of mankind's existence—depravity, illness, murder, war and eurovision—you worry about like smoking. if you actually were connected in your sheltered life to things that make a difference, which means your actions would obviously and directly shape or take lives, or yours was directly at stake, you wouldn't keep yourself up at night by trivial stuff.

and so then you kick back about it. what if.. could you be completely immoral if you tried? gave it a shot? gave yourself license to become your private little sociopath? does a temporary small-scale epiphany have the momentum to really subvert your adaptation into society? hell no. you end up noticing that your instinct is nothing if not to be good and kind to your fellow man. and in that realization there is one more distinction: you don't care so much about their feelings (as that would lower you both), but something that's behind that. like their elán or something.

and that's the magical shit.

(note - if you read this and feel a compulsion to call my bullshit or something, comments on the blog being broken you are welcome to drop a line at here)

i still have nightmares of the vappu picnic

apparently i'm ... "it"

i sort of love this. people of the technically-grown-up variety who a few years back in all likelihood made snide remarks of kids on teh internet are now writing voluminous screeds on this and that all but daily, and generally being kids about it in the process.

i was hit by another blog tag. this time: "five things you obsess about".

sorry anna, this kid is jaded and has a penchant for the conceptual. i will list one thing i obsess about:

1. cat macros. i mention this simply because it's impacting my productivity today. i can't stop going through that shit.

the rest i would like to crowdsource. as in help me out, here. YOU tell me what i obsess about. tell me at keltanen@gmail.com or with the "drop me a line" thingy top right if you want to be anonymous. i'll add them here.