I love about mystery stories. I think it’s because they are immune to being kitschy. It seems that the more tackier a mystery can be, the more I want it. The shady gentlemen, the clever yet unconventional detectives, the femmes fatales – I can’t get enough of them. If a mystery has these things, I will read it.

But I have a tough time writing or talking about mystery novels. I feel like I should admit that it’s a lowbrow genre. I mean you’ll never see a Noble being awarded for a series of mystery books (Right? I haven’t done my research.). But at the same time, the features that can make a highbrow novel unreadable, can make a mystery all the more enjoyable. Mysteries, in my view, can easily get away with stereotyped characters and cheesy dialogue. In any other sort of genre, thrillers included (Hi, Dan Brown!), these features will hurt the value of the writing. In mysteries, on the other hand, they are expected and encouraged, in my view at least. But on to the case!

The Fellowship of the Frog starts out with the murder of an undercover detective at the hands of the Frog, the mysterious leader of an ever increasing group of tramps. The Fellowship, so called because of the frog tattoos on the members’ hands, has become so expansive that they threaten the international affairs of England.

The Frog sprechen the Deutsch?

Enter Dick Gordon and Elk, the rozzers on the case of the Frog. Gordon is dashing, Elk doesn’t play by the book. Gordon wants the girl, Elk wants a promotion. In other words, they’re perfect for me. But the questions they have to answer are many:
Who is that strange American who keeps turning up at interesting places?
Who is the Frog and how can they stop him?
Is the Fellowship of the Frog really the coolest name for mystery novel? (Yes. Sweet baby Jesus, yes.)
Will Dick Gordon and Miss Bennett be able to live happily ever after?
Is Elk’s mangling of important historical dates funny way to round out his character? (Ugh, no.)
Will all of these questions be neatly wrapped up in the end? (You better believe it. The Frog is no match for my rules of good mystery writing)

I don’t see much point in running down the whole plot for you. After all, you’re either going to read the Fellowship of the Frog, or you’re going to read a mystery like it. Besides being an enjoyable read, there’s nothing about Fellowship to really set it apart from other mysteries, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. One of the things I liked best about the book was most likely due to the time it was written. Apparently, in 1920s mystery novels, a man didn’t merely sit down, he “dropped with a sigh to the Chesterfield”. Also, in Frog-ravished England, facial hair is whiskers, telephones are ‘phones, and omnibuses are ‘buses. Ah, those were the days.

Fellowship does have some short-comings, though. One of the most obvious is the way it has only two female characters – a safe, gentle one and a dangerous, provocative one. Guess which one the detective gets in the end? This two-women-only syndrome isn’t as bad as it is in the Bond films, but it’s very obvious that these women are not really characters at all. The one oohs and aahs, the other woos and wails. But I suppose novels like Fellowship weren’t really written with women in mind.

For those of you that are interested, Fellowship was made into at least one movie (as were 160 of Wallace’s other books, including King Kong). I can’t say whether the dialogue remains true, but I can leave you with some of the original.

One of my favorite lines from Fellowship comes in a character’s description of Lola, the appropriately named saucy female of the story. He says to her, “… I like you. There’s something about you that is very attractive – don’t stop me, because I’m not gong to get fresh with you, or suggest that you’re the only girl that ever made tobacco taste like molasses…” If a guy complimented you like that, girls, would you stop him?

I didn’t think so.

Up next: Eye Scream by Henry Rollins

But people who are into cars do suffer from stereotypes like these two: either you have to live in small town, wear a baseball cap at a jaunty angle and listen to senseless pop-trance-techno vomit, and on weekdays, you stand around smoking cigarettes and, on weekends, you drink, drive and hit a tree. Or if not that, you are a man who treats women like disposable items.  Attitudes like this can mostly be found in people who take everything too seriously, especially themselves, and the very core thing about cars is that you shouldn’t take such an uptight approach to them.  They are pretty silly, after all.  Boxes with wheels attached to them.

Don’t for a second think that it is somehow predetermined whether someone likes cars or not.  ‘It’s a boy!  Go buy the duvet with the cars!’  Nah, forget about all that, especially you ladies.  For example, I wasn’t born this way.  Sure, as a kid I’d inhale deeply every time I passed the gas station near my home, but that’s just because I liked the smell.  In fact, for a long time I almost loathed the act of driving a car and for that I blame the dreary Ford Focus diesel that I sat in all through driving school.  It took almost two years before I actually began to enjoy turning the steering wheel and feeling the car respond.  I suppose the turning point from disliking cars and driving to loving it began with Top Gear, a hugely popular British motoring show that has viewers who don’t even like cars that much, they simply enjoy the show.  Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, with their antics and creative metaphors made me understand why some people think cars are so wonderful.  And before I knew it, I was one of them and quickly began to collect my favorite cars in that imagined Garage of Dreams every gear head has.

A whole new world opened up for me when I started paying attention to cars everywhere I went.  It’s great to not be bored if you have to wait for a late bus when there is always the possibility to see something interesting cruise past.  In the bus, I always sit on the left side by the window.  Can you guess why?  I like to carspot, and I’ve seen some pretty interesting ones like Aston Martin DB9s, Bentleys and a couple of Audi R8s.  But my favorite is still the Porsche 911 (see the pretty picture) and, lucky for me, there are plenty of those adorning the streets of Helsinki and they never fail to put a smile on my face and make my heart skip a beat or two.

I’ve found driving to be one of the best ways to get rid of stress.  Last spring, when I thought I was about to die of pressure about two weeks before my University entrance exam, I was belting up and down the highway in a gorgeous Mercedes with the sunroof open and I forgot all about linguistics, literary analysis and the Anglo-Saxons.  Sure, I did most of the work on my own, but that car fueled me, it had its part in getting me where I wanted.  Taking a walk in the forest would have only made me think of tree diagrams.

Still cars aren’t something you have to enjoy on your own, sitting in your room and circling the best candidates from the latest used car magazines.  The Car is a social thing as I came to realize as soon as I became a bit more outspoken about my affinity for it.  Two of the latest fun conversations with total strangers include a man in his sixties I met on a frozen car park as he was checking out a red Jaguar.  We had an interesting chat themed British cars versus German cars.  Another chance meeting was at a Humanisticum party when a friend of mine, with me in tow, decided to approach a couple of young men in their fetching pink overalls.  I don’t think I would’ve been able to hold down such a long conversation with them without my soft spot for car engines.

Don’t even get me started on the endless possibilities of sitting in traffic lights and looking over at the driver next to you.

But I’m not just talking about an object.  To prove a point, I refer to the finale of the American TV show Six Feet Under.  Why do you think one of the best TV series ever made ended with the youngest of the Fisher family driving a car through a barren landscape with glimpses of the future shown to the viewers?  It’s a metaphor.  The highway of life.  We’re all speeding, idling and cruising through life.  I’m one of those people who believe cars can transcend themselves to being something much more than just its physical matter.  It hasn’t happened to me yet with any car, but I sat on the passenger’s seat when my brother drove his beloved BMW for the last time before selling it.  So yes, I believe that German lump of metal was much more than what it appeared.  He stills asks about it occasionally.  ‘Have you seen it anywhere?’  Even my mom cried when she gave up her first car which was a banged up Datsun.

And if that’s hard to believe, think how difficult it is to throw away your favorite pair of jeans or shoes.  They are worn, they stink even though you’ve washed them and they’ve lost their original color and look, but you love them anyway.  They are not just jeans or shoes.

So what is The Car?  A box with wheels.  A fantastic conversation topic.  A thing of beauty.  A lump of metal and a metaphor.  It’s one big bundle of joy.  What matters isn’t what a bunch of engineers put together in a factory in Germany – or Japan or the US if you swing that way – but what you experience with it.  And it doesn’t hurt if the badge on its front oozes with prestige.

Technorati Tags: cars, brands

Picture possibly related. I have no idea what's going on.

For the past few weeks, major Finnish newspapers, the political blogosphere and sizzling tabletalk at UniCafés have raged with the brand called Finland. As a vigilant watchdog of the Finnish media, BTSB feels an urging responsibility to contribute to the heated debate. We, as future opinion-leaders, have our own suggestions for Jorma Ollila and his posse in the Finnish Brand Committee. The BTSB think-tank has brainstormed without a break and here, ladies, gentlemen and those-in-between, we present our export lodestars to polish the Fineish, ahem, Finnish Image.

Alcohol

Salmari is soooo nineties, but another traditional, and trendy, stimulant has been scandalously neglected up to this day. That is, our very own Lonkero – looking like lemon soda, a taste that even young Spaniards could enjoy and a history as a landmark of the olympic spirit. And let us not forget Brandy Lonkero, the cool summer drink for decades to come! The tender fruity taste is pleasing to quaff, no matter where you come from. Strong liquor, like Salmari or Kossu, for instance, are less accessible to the general public, equipped with weak to average taste buds. Conquering Asia would also be a piece of cake with these drinks – who on Earth could stop legions of Japanese businessmen from sipping a drink called Tentacle?!

Bureaucrats

As we all know, Finland is the model student of the European Union. Nowhere else, including Brussels, are EU legislation and directives so fanatically followed than in the Land of the Thousand Lakes.

The European Union is in desperate need for law and order. The state of curved vegetables, racist candies and children choking on Easter Egg toys is unacceptable in the rest of Europe. What this continent needs is Finnish bureaucrats – those valiant over-enthusiastic men and women in their ill-fitting grey suits and with deep creases on their foreheads. Let them gaze over the atrocious heaps of European groceries with their piercing looks, making the world a better place to live for us all!

Culture of Not-Winning

Brazil, the United States, Austria, Ireland and Sweden. Countries for winners. Years of success in sports and the ever-important Eurovision Song Contest (hence Ireland, ignoramus). But there is something Finland has to offer to these successful countries: The noble feeling of getting one’s ass kicked is the backbone of Finnish mental growth.

Nothing makes you grow as a person better than losing a bitter fight and the process of coping with your defeat afterwards (see A for Alcohol). As we Finns know, life isn’t meant to be fair and every member of the global community should recognize this fact. Screw gurus of positive thinking and self-help guides, welcome losing coaches and grumpy wise-asses – that’s what this nation is made of and every other should be as well.

Design Architecture

Nothing can be said of Finland without mentioning design. Since the world is going to end in 2012 anyway, now it is time for the rest of the world to wake up and understand the potential of disposable university architecture.

It is time for Finnish architects to fly like swans with blue and white wings to the far reaches of the world and infest the cities there with university buildings suited for the challenging environment of the end-time. These plastically beautiful miracles of architecture cannot withstand wind, rain or snow. They crumble like cookies, leak like election finance explanations and get moldy like Finnegan’s Wake in the humanist library. When the first judgement day hurricane hits, these buildings collapse neatly and orderly, leaving a convenient space to dig your bunker into. It is also handy that all the whiney and politically conscient university students are blown away (literally) from hindering the survival battle of the end of the world.

We could also throw in some Finnish railroad hi-tech: trains and tracks function perfectly, except in the extremely rare cases of a) snow, b) rain, c) cold, d) hot, e) many commuters. Who even needs to get anywhere as the end is nigh?

E for Axes (What? There’s an ‘e’!)

Romans had their gladius, the Japanese their katana and the Scots their claymore – each a powerful extension of a warriors peni… Ego! But Finland far surpasses these weapons of war with our very own unisex multitool: the axe.

For centuries, Finnish axemen and -women have ruled the wilderness from Karelia and Ostrobothnia to the far reaches Lapland, clearing away inconvenient wildlife (and an occassional neighbor or relative) that hinders the advance of civilization and good family values. Furthermore, the axe is almost as essential to communication in Finland as is the Nokia cellphone, one just can’t do without one.

One might argue that the axe was already used by the neolithic homo sapiens nowhere near Finland, but that is completely beside the point here. To successfully enter the ranks of true country brands, Finland must make a few creative historical interpretations to suit its own purposes. And what better place to start than the almighty axe!

F for Finnish Demigod

All the previous items are ready to be unleashed upon the world and make the brand called Finland soar like a white-tailed eagle, but BTSB has one final component to serve as the proverbial cherry on top. In Finland, there is one man who appears to be approaching perpetual motion, defying the afterlives of all religions by simply not giving up, ever. He’s ready to face any challenge Superman and Batman combined couldn’t handle, at least in his own opinion. That man is Paavo Väyrynen.

Paavo is the ultimate powerhouse in just about everything (or can you argue with a man who has read all of Dostoevsky over a single weekend*) and will most certainly relieve other nations from any woes they might come up with. He is the true symbol of relentless aspiration for greater glory and tireless improvement of one’s self-image – Finnish Sisu defined.

Paavo is ready. Is the world? He’s up for grabs. Ready to go. For free! Any takers? Please..?

Kaisa Leino and Esko Suoranta

*) Editorial note: Further research has shown that what Paavo meant by ‘all of Dostoevsky’ was ‘the books that were at my local library at that time’ and ‘at least some of them, you know, skipping the dull parts’.

Technorati Tags: finland, brands, alcohol

When I was a teenager, I got into chaos theory (yes, I was that cool). It taught me two things. One, I should not be a mathematician and, two, statistics can be misleading so you should always be wary when someone tries to use them to prove their point.

I’ve been putting off writing this review of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers because it made me so angry while reading it. Halfway through, I wanted to toss it out the window. I thought this rage might go away if I let his points sink in a while, but it hasn’t. I still can’t think or write coherently about Outliers because of how stupid it is. So if this article is disjointed, excuse me and blame Gladwell. All you need to know is that if you have even the slightest ability to think logically, you should not read this book.

Outliers is Gladwell’s attempt to explain success by combining statistics with stories of natural talent, hard work, and opportunity. His basic idea is that talent and hard work alone are not enough to make anyone great at anything. If that sounds obvious, it’s because it is. For some reason, Gladwell is utterly amazed that hard-working, talented individuals statistically do better than the rest when given an opportunity. This is the first part of Outliers that angered me. He just can’t get over how talent and determination are not the only factors in achieving greatness.

The second part of Outliers that I found offensive was the patronizing tone Gladwell uses. It’s as if he expects the reader to feel ridiculous that they didn’t think of something so obvious. Like, hey, write a book about everyday facts of life and make millions. Touche, Monsieur Malcom.

Then there’s the italics, the icing on the crap cake that is Outliers. Don’t get me started on Gladwell’s use of italics.

Gladwell starts Outliers with some eerie stats about how most of the players on the two best junior hockey teams in Canada are born in the early parts of the year. He claims that if you look at “any elite group of hockey players […] 40 percent of the players will have been born between January and March, 30 percent between April and June, 20 percent between July and September, and 10 percent between October and December”. This is based on work done by a Canadian psychologist and it sounds amazing. Gladwell, however, says it’s not because young hockey players in Canada are grouped by the year they were born and so kids born in January will be older and more developed than kids born in December. These bigger kids will then get scouted to play for better teams where they will receive better coaching, thus giving them an advantage to better develop their talents. What’s the real reason that Gladwell’s claim is amazing? It’s not true.

Gladwell says (with those fucking italics, in case you didn’t notice, dummy) that “any” elite group of hockey players will fit the Outliers/Canadian whack-job shrink model. So just out of curiosity, I decided to look at the rosters of the teams Gladwell uses to “prove” his point, the Medicine Hat Tigers and the Vancouver Giants. Guess what percentage of the players were born in the first three months of the year. Less than 40 percent for both teams. Shocking, I know. How about the 2010 Canadian National Olympic team? They’re pretty elite, right? The percentage of players born between January and March is 13%. That’s not quite 40%. And on six randomly chosen NHL teams (the first six on the nhl.com scoreboard when I looked), the average percentage of Canadian players born between January and March is 26%. Point is, Gladwell is a hoser and the theory is bunk.

Not letting simple facts stand in his way, Gladwell next adds other examples of “opportunity” to his young Aquarius Canucks. He explains that having to play eight days a week in Hamburg made the Beatles a better band. This is the so-called 10,000 hour rule you may have heard about. 10,000 hours is apparently how long it takes for a naturally talented person to become really great. Hence the Beatles went to Germany, played all day and all of the night, and then hit it big in the US. This works if you’re a Beatle, but Gladwell conveniently fails to mention what to do if you’re a Rolling Stone, a Beach Boy, or a Jackson 5. Basically, Gladwell spends tens of pages to say what three words can: practice makes perfect.

The way that this is profound news to Gladwell is, as I’ve said before, irritating. At this point in the book, his don’t-you-see tone, his italics, and his shock and awe at the obvious really got to me. The next chapters on opportunity were more of the same. He actually writes, “successful people don’t do it alone. Where they come from matters. They’re products of particular places and environments.” No shit, Sherlock. Being born in Canada instead of the Caribbean was a big help to Sidney Crosby’s hockey career. When children or stoners find this stuff amazing, it’s ok. They have excuses. What’s Gladwell’s? Who knows, and really, who cares? (In case you were wondering, Crosby was born in August)

The rest of the book reads like it was written by someone who was caught in a lie and then trie to lie their way out of it. Chapters Six and Seven continue with more of the obvious. The basic idea is, well, pretty basic: people from certain cultures act a certain way and these cultural rules can lead to problems when their cultures clash. To sum up, when in Rome…

In Chapter Eight, Gladwell argues that Asians are better students than Westerners for two reasons. One, the way they say numbers makes it easier to do simple math in their heads. Two, rice farming is a year-round, painful job which demands determination. Therefore, centuries of growing rice to survive means lots of determined Asians. Gladwell even tries to pitch ancient Chinese sayings against ancient Russian sayings to prove his point. The one that he relies on (and leads the chapter with), “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich” goes up against the Russian “if God does not bring it, the earth will not give it.” Number of days in a Chinese year = 354. If he botched the Chinese saying so bad, chances are he botched the Russian one too. I wonder why didn’t he just use a good old English saying like “no pain, no gain”. Oh, right.

Gladwell also lists international test scores to prove his point that since Asians have better number-words and sayings, their students do better on tests. But there are two reasons why he’s full of crap here. First, mainland China doesn’t even take part in the test he uses, but that doesn’t stop him from saying “the fact that Taiwan and Hong Kong rank so highly suggests that the mainland [China] would probably also do really well”. Yes, and because Sweden, Finland, and Russia do well in international ice hockey tournaments, one would think Norway is also good at hockey. So go ahead and bet on them this Olympics. (On a side note, in the very next paragraph after the quote above, Gladwell admits that no one knows if students in northern China are any good at math. But that’s not enough to stop a little speculation, now is it?)

The second reason Gladwell is full of it in his surmises is because he only mentions one of the two major international student tests, the TIMSS test. Why wouldn’t he give the results for the other test, the OECD’s PISA test? Well, simply put, because he’s a hack. But more importantly, the results from the PISA test don’t exactly fit his conclusions. The top ten countries in the math section of the PISA results is full of countries with awful sayings and no history of growing rice, like Finland and Canada.

Wait a minute, if the Canadian hockey players born in January were also doing well in the PISA test, then that means… nothing. That means nothing.

That’s the major problem with Outliers (besides those italics). Gladwell tells about some interesting people, cultures, and anomalies (and misleadingly begins a terrible book off with hockey), but when he tries to tie these things together, he runs into trouble. The relationships between the different aspects of his theory are strenuous at best and so they make his conclusions seem false (which they are). The sheer obvious nature of all of this is the last nail in the coffin for Outliers. It’s too bad because this book came highly recommended and I really wanted to enjoy it. Maybe Gladwell’s next book, tentatively titles Shit Rolls Downhill, will be better.

Up next> The Fellowship of the Frog by Edgar Wallace

So I had to look nice: a freshly-ironed white shirt, one of those black ties that are constantly going out of style and making a come-back — I wish they’d decide already. I brushed my hair, and I brushed my teeth, and I brushed my coat, and I brushed my shoes, and I used separate brushes. I looked ever so professional, what with the creases on my trousers and the reflection of the sun shining from my feet.

I wondered, who’d be there. Probably the critics — you can easily recognize those by their little wrinkled foreheads. Some husbands, dragged in by their wives. Art students and other dodgy characters with those hideous scarves. Wondered, if there’d be women. Those intellectual women that can pull off wearing red lips without looking like a slut. Or perhaps they do look like sluts, it’s just that you know they’re not. I think this kind of deception nicely foreshadows any kind of relationship you may try to have with intellectual women.

I’ve got two sisters, you see. Their IQ combined is something of three hundred and one. They had this ridiculous crush on the same boy. He lived two blocks to the south and built railway roads in other people’s attics. He died snorting coke till it came out of his nose. Our house was a very gloomy place back then. I moved out shortly afterwards, and, I s’pose, it got much better in the course of time. Liz decided she’s a lesbian, and Beth converted to Islam. She’s happily widowed now. And yes, my name’s El, and our father’s always been in love with our mother. I don’t remember her much. She’s living somewhere in the Amazon, saving the forests. At least, that’s what our father used to say to explain why she didn’t write to us. She couldn’t possibly do that to the trees.

Anyway.

I missed the train. The next one was in a quarter of an hour, and I was late, and I was even later. When I got near the theatre, there was this wrong kind of anticipation in the air, or maybe it’s just the smell of Chinese across the road. The hall was empty, and I started feeling dreadful, because, well, one’s not supposed to come late for an execution. It just doesn’t work that way.

Mine had been scheduled for nine. And it’s a very good time, they’d said. They’d really had to work to squeeze me into that slot, ’cause otherwise it’s Birmingham, and the facilities there aren’t nearly as good. I was appreciative. I was also late, but it hardly could be helped. I’d been late all my life, why should I change my habits because of death.

They were pissed off. Said the crowd got hungry and left. Said there’s far too much competition in the field these days, what with the situation in the Near East, Middle East, Far East and Antarctica, where they’d discovered a cannibal penguin.

So they gave me an axe and said I should do it in my own time. The axe was nice and shiny. I bet you could really split hairs with that. Modern art kind of crap with a smooth white handle. I was impressed. They clearly put so much thought into this whole procedure, and I blotched it all. Oh well. But still, it’s nice — doing work with pros. It was almost like I wasn’t doing this for money. Don’t get me wrong, the money was good. It was good indeed; it’s a pity I couldn’t do this twice. But, they said, a joke is only funny the first time around.

They said I should remember to put the video onto YouTube. Said they hoped it would score high, and then they could put that achievement on my tombstone.

Said I should give the food I had in my fridge back home to my neighbours, for it’s bound to go rotten in a few days, and just think of the smell. And it’s not like I was going to need it.

Said the bathroom was the preferable place. But do take the wet clothes out of the washing machine, should you have any. Then they pat me on the back and left.

My college mate Danny’s always watching those videos on his phone while travelling to work. Pictures of those drowned, war victims, post mortems of the Victorian time. He says there is beauty in death. I say that I can’t understand it. I mean, I know what it is, I got straight A’s in Biology. And I know that it does exist. I just don’t get how something that once was can be there no more. It’s like a miracle but reversed. I guess you never get used to it, and then it’s your own, and then it’s too late.

Anyway.

Shall I proceed?

Technorati Tags: short, story

BTSB’s brand is one built around the common ground between the majority of its writers and readers: being an English major. Now, no matter what you may think you know of English majors, they are a varied bunch and thus BTSB is representative of only a minority of people studying English in Finland. If one were to build a model English major in the vein of Dr. Victor Frankenstein based simply on the content of BTSB the said chimeric creature would have at its disposal the weapons of geekery, cars, dinosaurs and a smattering of English literature.

While this may have the unforeseen effect of making our brand very schizophrenic we here at BTSB believe that it is our strength: with the varied interests of our small clique of expert writers (whose ranks even you may join by getting in touch, hint hint) we may cater to the extremely varied tastes of people insane enough to choose English as a major. That is our brand promise here at BTSB.

Marketably yours,
Maria Koistinen and Patrik Renholm,
Editors

Technorati Tags: brands, btsb, headline

Another thing I learned at the course was that, apparently, I look like an English major. I was quite taken aback, as well as surprised, by the comment made by a student of Asian and African studies; a fellow humanist and a linguist. Still I can’t help wondering what an earth does an English major look like.. Is it someone with piercings, loud voice, and too much to say? Or someone who makes a spectacle of themselves? Maybe the stereotypical English major is a twenty-something girl with a ciffon scarf, and a red skirt to go with it? Perhaps it is someone who likes hip hop, too big pants, and wears extravagant make up? Or a Monty Python fanatic with idiotic jokes only a fraction of people get?

I took the liberty of sharing the anecdote with two fellow freshmen who both said they’d also been labelled as English majors only by their appearance and character. From a freshman’s point of view the world of English majors is full of unique people. It is, however, true that most English majors I have met during this first year of studying English at the University have been open-minded, more or less loud, blunt, straight-forward, social, and just plain nice. We don’t all like heavy metal, most of us don’t have any radical piercings or tattoos, we most certainly don’t all like Monty Python, some of us like American English and some prefer English English over other varieties. Some of us are participating in organisational activities, others just go to lectures and then study at home or at Alexandria without much interest in SUB.

In conclusion, I don’t think there is much common with us English majors apart from the fact that we do all share a certain interest in the English language. (And don’t you agree that it would be incredibly boring to have a solid red mass of SUBbers wandering the halls of Metsätalo?)

After all, you are unique – just like everyone else.

[tags]sub, subliminal messages, english, brands[/sub]

This week’s entry: Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot

Mr. Eliot and I have had our run-ins in the past. We first met over his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the title of which made me want to vomit. Mr. Eliot did nothing with the contents to make me feel any different. We next saw each other over his poem The Waste Land, which had enough foot notes to make even the dumbest kid in the class realize that all the modernist mumbo jumbo about “bring poetry to the layman” was a total crock. Was the satire supposed to be criticizing the pompous Victorians by being even more pretentious than them? I had to vomit again. Eliot most likely pissed himself by alluding to the ancient Sumerian god of wet cotton and stinky denim, which he then explained in a footnote, of course.

But I believe that everyone deserves a third strike, so I decided to give Eliot one last try. [Editor's note: The real reason the Mr. McVeigh bought Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot is because it cost only twenty-five cents. Do not let him fool you into thinking his morals or a forgiving attitude outweigh his cheapness. He will buy anything for twenty-five cents. Anything.]

With a title like Murder in the Cathedral, it would be better if Eliot’s book was a Perry Mason novel. Then again, so would a lot of things. Instead, Murder is a boring play about the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket. Fortunately, it is a short and boring play about the assassination of Becket. It’s the difference between watching an infomercial for an hour and watching an infomercial for a day or, say, between reading Prufrock and reading Waste Land.

All of the reviews for Murder agree that it was a “high point in T.S. Eliot’s dramatic achievement,” but sometimes “drama” is a nice way of saying that despite having knights, a king, an archbishop, an assassination, and a true story, there is no reason that anyone should ever read this awful, tedious, shitstorm of a play. Again, good thing it’s short.

Eliot starts the play the characters who make up the Chorus, a gaggle of townspeople who feel “some presage of an act.” Let me guess, Becket’s gonna get it. No shit. This would be excusable if Eliot only did it once. But just like they start part I, Eliot drags them out to start part II (of only two parts) with more tired lines like “we wait and the time is short, but waiting is long.” Whoa. Deep, man.

If you didn’t think those lines were Nobel worthy, how about
What day is the day that we know that we hope for or fear for?
Every day is the day we should fear from or hope from
A Parkinson’s sufferer doing the robot would be less disjointed than those lines. You have to reread them just to realize how idiotic they are. And no one should have to reread lines like those.

But I can’t say the whole play is bad. The most famous line from the work, “the last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason,” is really great. The only problem is it’s surrounded by really terrible prose. It’s not so much a diamond in the rough, as it is a speck of gold in a dung heap.

I’m sad to say that Eliot’s stilted Murder did not change my feelings for him. He still sounds dry and unimaginative to me. The play was written on the request of a friend for the Canterbury Festival in 1935 and it sounds uninspired and half-assed. I really have no idea how anyone finds his works interesting. Was there no one else writing poetry in the first half of the century? One second thought, don’t answer that.

Up next: The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The year 2010 will mark some changes in the way things are being done here at BTSB, which goes hand in hand with our complete change in editorial staff. Our update schedule, which has been quite hectic at times, will begin to solidify, thus allowing us to bring you new material every month. As our new methods become more and more routine so too will our quality and academic excellence become more and more reliable.

This new year also marks the beginning of an entirely new feature on BTSB: SUBliminal Messages, a column run by the talking heads of SUB’s board, giving the readers a better perspective into the inner workings of our beloved student organization and academic life in general. The column will be provided to you by a new writer every month coinciding with events under the jurisdiction of the people in questions.

We hope that this year will cement some new traditions for BTSB and also help us bring some new writers into the fold. This is the year when BTSB will become even more a magazine written by students, for students.

Wishing you good fortunes for this new year,
Maria Koistinen and Patrik Renholm,
Editors

Technorati Tags: 2010, new year, editorial

Lots of things are changing at the University of Helsinki, and I suppose you all know that the English Department no longer exists, but we are a part of the Department of Modern Languages. As this year goes on, we get to learn a little more about what these changes mean. We are lucky and priviledged to have three SUBbers in the Department Council (laitosneuvosto), so we’ll be the first ones to get the news and have a say in the matters that concern us all.

We don’t call ourselves Suur-SUB in vain. Little by little we have taken our place as the biggest and most beautiful student organization in the Faculty of Arts. I suggest we keep doing what we are doing and have some fun doing it!

Have a great year and see you at school!

Essi

Technorati Tags: 2010, subliminal messages, sub