Dear Mr Joseph McVeigh

Thank you for your messages. At the university we have now widened our
interpretations of the Government Decree on University Degrees and altered
the e-form so that both English and Finnish can be entered into the
diploma supplement the way you wished. A new, corrected DS has been sent
to you by mail.

Best wishes,
Hannele Markkanen
Legal Counsel
University of Helsinki

It completely took the wind out of my sails. You are probably as surprised as I am by what it says, but allow me to clarify. After only a few emails, the University of Helsinki’s Central Administration has recognized a problem and solved it. Just like that. Perhaps being a private institution isn’t completely a bad thing.

This is good news for every language student because the university’s old policy was to only write Finnish or Swedish in the “Language(s) of instruction/examination” section of all diploma supplements. This meant that if you studied Russian in Russian, French in French, or English in English, however ideal and actual that may be, your diploma would not say so. Case in point, here’s what my English Philology diploma supplement looked like:

With the exception of my Finnish minor, all of my studies were done in English. So I just couldn’t understand why my diploma supplement said I had studied in only Finnish.

My main problem was what other people might think this meant. If you were an employer or another university, or just a person that can read, what would you think this meant? That I had studied English in Finnish? I would think that. This would definitely cause some problems down the road.

So I took my diploma supplement into the Faculty of Humanities Office and asked them to change it. They told me that, unfortunately, there was nothing they could do. I could either have it say Finnish or Swedish, the two official languages of the University of Helsinki. When I told them that it’s wrong, they said sorry, they’ve had others like me before, but the central administration has so far refused to change the policy. That means that any student in any language department will either have Finnish or Swedish as their language of instruction. That is, until now.

I realized that the fault here did not lie with the Faculty of Humanities, but with their powers that be. Yet when I contacted the Central Administration of the university, I was told, “Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about changing the Language(s) of instruction/examination in DS. According to the decree (558/2009) and University`s decisions, we are allowed to give BA-degrees only in Finnish or Swedish.“ I wasn’t told that helping me would require them to change such a wonderful decree, nor that they could help me but they weren’t going to (both of which would have been closer to the truth). I was simply told what the decree and decisions said, as if they were handed down by god herself.

Of course, this made me angry. If the University of Helsinki is not in the business of changing mistakes, I thought, then why didn’t I get a perfect score in all of my classes? And why is our tax money paying the salaries of a board of directors who are overseeing perfection? Hell, why not just give me a doctorate while we’re at it? I prepared for the fight.
I sent more emails to the rector and his secretaries. No replies. My next courses of action were more emails, calling the office (if I could find a number), writing to the paper, and then, thank god it didn’t come to this, legal action. Going in to the office was not an option because they don’t list an address or hours on their website.

And then, just as I had got all ready for the long, slow process I thought was coming, I received the email above. And it was settled. Just like that. I couldn’t believe it.

So thank you, University of Helsinki Central Administration, for not living up to your reputation and for showing that mistakes can be made as long as they are corrected.

Consider Phlebus by Iain M. Banks

I should have known. The term “consider Phlebus” comes from our old friend T. S. Eliot. And on the very first page of Iain M. Banks’s Consider Phlebus, there is a quote from The Waste Land. It was stupid of me to pick this book up, right? Well, yes and no.

As the lead to this article says, Consider Phlebus was a strong influence on the Xbox game Halo, specifically the design of some of the Halo worlds. Fans of either this book or the video game would immediately notice the similarities, but that’s about as much as they need to be mentioned.

Instead, there are two amazing things about Consider Phlebus. One is how unbelievably boring the first two-thirds of it is and the other, conversely, is how enjoyable the last third of it is. Considering what the main character goes through, the monotony while reading it is striking. In the first 150 pages alone, our hero experiences:
- Being executed by drowning in a septic tank
- An explosion in the wall of said septic tank
- An attack on his spaceship
- Getting hit by a ray blast or something (whatever it was, it was supposed to be lethal, according to the other characters)
- A fist fight to the death
- A raid on a temple with some heavily-armed monks, in which no fewer than four other characters bit the dust
- A giant spaceship hitting an even gianter iceberg while he is walking on it (imagine the first scene from Spaceballs, except not funny)
- His spaceship crashing into the ocean, in which another character dies
- A three kilometer swim to shore
- And another execution, this time by being eaten alive (he actually ends up losing a finger so… that counts, right?)

His is Bora Horza Gobuchul, but it should be James John Bruce Bond McClane Wayne, the Highlander. And although that list sounds like a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie marathon on TNT, it was really difficult to read. I mean really bad. It wasn’t so much about where the plot was going, but that it seemed to be taking forever to get there. I marked out one paragraph to illustrate the leaden flow of Phlebus, but after reading it again, I think I’ll spare you.

And then, somehow in the final third of the novel, Banks manages to turn the style completely around. I read the last 150 pages of Phlebus within a day. I could have read it straight through in a couple of hours, it was that interesting. I don’t know how he did it, but he did. And I don’t know how my feelings about reading Consider Phlebus went from thinking it would never end to hoping it would never end.

Phlebus is Banks’s first sci-fi novel, and the first one of a series. It is also credited with reviving the space opera sub-genre of science fiction literature. But even his fans will admit that it is only interesting to those who have read his later works, especially those later in the series it kicks off because reading Phlebus feels like going from an opera to a ZZ Top concert.

Both of which, however, are better than reading T. S. Eliot.

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

Here’s the inner cover blurb in my copy of The Loved One:

The Loved One is a nightmare induced by the unfamiliar diet of Southern California. That region, where all men are displaced persons, is unique in the splendid elaboration of its graveyards, and to these Evelyn Waugh turned for solace and inspiration during a brief visit. Against the background of embalming-rooms and incinerators he has contrived a neat tragedy of Anglo-American manners which we hope will amuse and instruct curious readers of both nations.

How fucking awesome does that sound? Nightmares? Graveyards? Fucking incinerators? And some SoCal hating? Holyshityes.

The Loved One may be a short novel, but it is full with jabs.
At Southern California:

“Sir Ambrose, in accordance with local custom, refrained from listening.”

At female habits of the time:

“In Aimeé’s bathroom cupboard, among the instruments and chemicals which are the staples of feminine well-being, lay the brown tube of barbiturates which is the staple of feminine repose.”

At the English, in which the main character’s love interest describes his Un-Americaness:

“I do not mean just his accent and the way he eats but he is cynical at things which should be sacred.”

And at Southern California again:

“No one in Southern California, as you know, ever inquires what goes on beyond the mountains.”

But The Loved One is more than just a series of barbs. They are merely amusing (and sometimes honest) reflections in a well-told story. The plot does indeed center around graveyards, as that is where all of the main characters work. And it is a tragedy, but the most amazing aspect of Waugh’s book is the way he makes the gruesome images of death and corpses seem so plain. By doing so, the reader’s attention does not stay focused on the darkness of the setting, but on those ever present themes of love and loss and how people deal with them. A funeral home setting is perfect for this parallel and I’m surprised it is not done more often.

Waugh does an excellent job with making a short story not seem scant. The main characters are well rounded, there are supporting roles to help their motives along, and he doesn’t revel too much in unimportant scenery. On top pf that, his story of two men fighting over one woman, a story which has been told a thousand times, does not sound trite. His brutal honesty in describing everything was a refreshment of sorts and made what could of otherwise been a simple love story into an enjoyable frolic through the graveyard.

Up next: Either The Road To McCarthy by Pete McCarthy or Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. I haven’t decided yet. Readers?

What is a good comic? It should have memorable characters, a unique style and a world view. Personally, I think a strip should never be very long, it’s supposed to be a quick read, but this doesn’t mean longer dialogues don’t work. At least Qwantz aka Dinosaur Comics (which I’ll also call DC) is quite a trip with the highly intellectual shit-talker T-Rex in the lead. But I confess: I have the attention span of a goldfish, I actually need to focus to read T-Rex’s turns, but when I do, it’s usually worth it. The webcomic has been around since 2003, so it seems a bit hopeless to start listing any of the themes featured in it here because many have to be left out! I simply have to trust you to find out for yourselves. You should enjoy T-Rex’s rants if you’re a language student, particularly a student of English, as language is one of T-Rex’s absolute favorite topics. Others include philosophy and T-Rex, with his sidekick the Utahraptor, makes it seem so cool I almost wish I hadn’t had my philosophical crisis in the middle of my matriculation examination and given the subject up for good. T-Rex also likes to give (bad) advice. Follow it at your own risk and report back whatever the result.

But what about the artwork since that is what immediately springs to mind when you think of comics. DC is a good example of how creative you can be without ever changing the form of the strip. So while T-Rex’s opinions change from one comic to the next (and sometimes from panel to panel), his pattern of stomping on a log cabin and a woman never do. This whole idea of using the same artwork over and over again is prevalent in many Internet memes, but I won’t go into that here. There are many good ones, in fact, so many it would be possible to print them all out and make a pile so high it would probably reach the Moon.

Dinosaur Comics is a Canadian creation and the next one on our list is also based in North America, but on the side of the border belonging to US of A. As the creator of DC is a computer programmer, it’s interesting to note that the man behind the immensely popular XKCD used to work for NASA. Basically, he used to work on robots, now he works on comic strips, and I can’t think of a more interesting career trajectory. In XKCD, the mostly unnamed characters are stick figures with no faces which leaves me, a former art student, in awe of how well they still convey different kinds of emotions. All in all, the comic is very simple and bare, but occasionally features very detailed panels to make a point or to give some food for thought. What partly contributes to the success of DC and XKDC are the constant referrals to popular culture. Everybody can laugh at mainstream phenomena such as gaming, movies, music, and, our pet peeve: social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Like DC, XKDC features all kinds of topics, namely “romance, sarcasm, math, and language” as it says on the site where it is published three times a week without fail. The strip comes with a warning about strong language, unusual humor and, to the horror of students of the Faculty of Arts, advanced mathematics. (Usually though math is featured in a way which doesn’t require a PhD in astrophysics, not even a puny Bachelor’s Degree.) All of these features come together to create a completely original mix of thoughts, lessons, observations and philosophies. Besides sharing common themes, readers and a completely original view of the world, both XKCD and Dinosaur Comics have plenty of merchandize for their fans. From t-shirts to stuffed animals, you are spoiled for choice. The lessons here is obviously this: with a little initiative and creativity, you can surprise everyone and especially yourself by making a living with something like comic strips. You don’t even have to get your work printed by a publishing company, you can simply put up a website.

So far I’ve simply looked into rather recently conceived strips, and I must mention at least one classic. This comic strip first appeared 1985 and features a 6-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger and partner in crime. It’s of course Calvin and Hobbes, a dearly beloved and sorely missed comic strip which finished in 1992. The strip celebrates the power of imagination as Calvin often deals with his everyday problems (such as gym class, teachers and his parents) by relying on one of his heroic and adventurous alter egos. This kid sure can improvise: among other things he has attempted to get out of a math exam by claiming the question was against his religious principles. Try that with your next linguistics exam if things get rough. Calvin is extremely precocious and he demonstrates this by using big words and engaging in political debates with his father. There is no filter between Calvin’s brain and his mouth, so whatever thoughts he has come out of his mouth, damn the consequences. And there is not a person in the world who doesn’t wish that sometimes, just sometimes they would be able to voice their opinions with no regard for others. Shameless egoism can be found in everybody. Still Calvin isn’t without a conscience: he does apologize to Susie Derkins, a classmate and a crush, after calling her names.

What partly explains the popularity of Calvin and Hobbes and its place in people’s hearts is how easy it is to identify with Calvin. He connects with the child in all of us. He struggles with his grudging respect for his female counterpart Susie, he doesn’t like school and he is much more interested in spending time with his best friend who to everyone else is nothing but a toy tiger. Bill Watterson, the creator of the strip, has said in an interview he wanted to juxtapose the adult reality with Calvin’s reality and it is up to the reader to decide which is truer. As if anyone with a child’s heart is going to question Calvin. Hobbes has a mind of his own which often leads him to pull pranks on Calvin. The prevalence of fantasies in Calvin and Hobbes has led to many academic responses, mainly psychological analysis. This makes this at the surface lighthearted and simple strip very adult, profound even. The mystery of life and death comes up in the strip often, and it’s no accident that the protagonists are named after two philosophers. Of course, the beautiful hand-drawn artwork helps, too.

What to me sums up Calvin and Hobbes, right after flight of fancy, is creative sabotage. You can be a little deviant, just be a bit more original than a whoopee cushion. What all of these three comic strips have in common is that they’re inspirational, original and read by different kinds of people. They are what you might be tempted to call *special*. There’s a lot of bullshit (for lack of a better word) in this world, and comics deal with it efficiently and you might even get a few good laughs out of it. Besides, reading comics is a cultural contribution! It’s art.
If you aren’t familiar with these strips and think you might enjoy reading some or all of them, they can be found on the Internet. I had to leave many goods ones out, unfortunately, but y’all are free to comment and tell me which of your favorites I failed to mention.

“Never argue with a 6-year-old who shaves.” – Calvin, of his all brawn and no brains classmate Moe

SUB's finest, doing what they do best. Editor of BTSB on the left.

We embarked for Jyväskylä (Seed Village, ha-ha…) on Friday morning, with the weather providing us a cooling blizzard. Soon enough our very own charter bus was filled up with 35 merry SUBbers, a merry merry driver, and a magnust(?). Extra thanks to Anna Kamula, without whom I would’ve cried many times when trying to make this trip happen.

When the clock struck twelve our level merriment was slowly starting to peak: juicy sounds of bottles uncorking echoed in the monster of a bus. Halfway through the bus trip we rehearsed THE SONG (omg) which was to become the winning performance at the dinner party on Saturday. Anyhoo, tö trip wos guud antö bas wos guud tuu.

Later we found ourselves in Jyväskylä, in a school gym waiting for whatever the organizers, Magna Carta ry, had in store for us. The evening continue with a tour of the city in an amazing race sorta way. And even later we all got naked and went into a poorly lit, extremely hot and crowded wooden room, made it even hotter, and pretended to enjoy. Awesuuum. The first night was filled with wonders beyond imagination, if only I could remember them.

On the way back some of us were very, very tired.

The morning after was greeted with glee (PAR-TAY!), when a gym full of raggedy students slowly woke from their peaceful slumber and started freshening up for the day. After we had got naked and wet and rubbed some TLC on our bodies, the breakfast was served at the school gym. After breakfast we had lots of time to hang out and get ready for the lectures, which were filled with ‘no nonsense’ facts and national socialist discipline. Later we like totally owned the dinner party with our sick-ass performance yo, fo’ shizzle. All the singing, toasting and drinking led to an oddly euphoric feeling and the majority of us crawled to Free Time –nightclub, where the beer was cheap and the ladies willing :D. For some, the night never ended as the entire school trembled under the shrieks of people who thought they could sing. These tantalising sirens made sure, successfully, that no one would fall into the abyss.

Next morning, after a good nights staying awake, I ate my Chinese take-away again in the loo, and also learned where I’d put all my Salmari during the night. The bus picked us up at noon and off we went. The trip back was a lot calmer, go figure, but we had a bunch of laughs and memorable moments, which was the theme of the Meeting altogether. When I got home, I was greeted by two Swedish blondes and the weekend ended up happy.

The editors of BTSB once said that they'd be accepting pictures of pets, so here's one.

ps. be on guard next year for this event, I wouldn’t miss it for a thing.

pps. Trololololollolollolooo

Pictured: something that has nothing to do with the gothic novel.

Now, while I’ve gone through a teenage goth phase (Fine, it wasn’t really a phase. [Fine, I'm still going through it.]) and lived to tell about it I have still kept some of the music I picked up during that dark point in my life to heart. I still retained some appreciation for the darker side of things, so a proseminar class titled the Gothic Novel seemed perfect.

We were given reading lists, we were given an introduction to the terms most important to the gothic novel and some history on the development of the style. I then started reading the first of the novels on our reading list: The Castle of Otranto. After having read the novel and having had time to digest it I have come to this conclusion on it: The Castle of Otranto sucks balls.

Written by Horace Walpole and released in 1764, The Castle of Otranto is considered the first gothic novel. Thus it had the pleasure of laying the groundwork for latter gothic novels. It painted scenes of dark castles, underground passages, supernatural events and mysterious happenings and thus established what the gothic novel was supposed to be about. Also, from a modern perspective, it is a veritable cliché storm.

Yeah, that's more like it.

Now, let me make one thing clear: I love clichés. There is a reason for them being used: they are easily recognizable and instantly give a work of literature a place within the field. Within The Castle of Otranto we find examples of all of the following: a woman faints when caught by a sudden turbulence of emotions, a man accuses another man of crimes the other man did not commit, the other man is revealed to be an orphan, suddenly a priest rushes in to testify that the man falsely accused is in fact his long-lost son and that the priest is actually a nobleman fallen from grace.

Now, Horace Walpole can be forgiven for this: these things were not clichés at the time of writing the novel. One could even say that Walpole was the one who established these things as being part of the gothic novel and thus was the one who inadvertently made them into clichés. However, when all of the aforementioned events take place within the space of two pages it makes for a novel that is jarring for the modern reader to appreciate. It’s a cliché overload.

Getting past what we today consider tropes so overused that they would only be touched in works of parody (or The Bold and the Beautiful) one is drawn to Walpole’s narration: the narration is overwrought with coincidental events which are never given ample explanation or rationalization, (Where do all these giant-sized weapons and pieces of armor keep coming from? It’s a mystery!) what the story fails to portray with a proper emotional response it replaces with overtly verbose passages and there is a certain sense of the author telling and not showing.

Not exactly what I had in mind.

That last point I think deserves some reiteration: one of the first things taught in any creative writing class is that you should show, not tell. You’re not supposed to tell the reader that the tentacular monstrosity from Dimension X is really scary, you’re supposed to get its scariness across by describing the gnashing of its teeth, the wriggling of the tentacles and how you can still hear the cries of its victims from its disturbingly freudian mouth. Judging Walpole’s work on this basis he’s not getting any marks. Observe this passage which describes a heroine in flight from a villain and the thoughts that go through her head as she hurries along:

“The lady, whose resolution had given way to terror the moment she had quitted Manfred, continued her flight to the bottom of the principal staircase. There she stopped, not knowing whither to direct her steps, nor how to escape from the impetuosity of the Prince. The gates of the castle, she knew, were locked, and guards placed in the court. Should she, as her heart prompted her, go and prepare Hippolita for the cruel destiny that awaited her, she did not doubt but Manfred would seek her there, and that his violence would incite him to double the injury he meditated, without leaving room for them to avoid the impetuosity of his passions. Delay might give him time to reflect on the horrid measures he had conceived, or produce some circumstance in her favour, if she could – for that night, at least – avoid his odious purpose. Yet where conceal herself? How avoid the pursuit he would infallibly make throughout the castle?

As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind…”

Yes, we are definitely getting a sense of these thoughts passing rapidly through her mind. This passage best illustrates Walpole’s failure in conveying emotion: we are told what characters are feeling (and oftentimes the characters themselves will tell us) yet no attempt is made to use the literary medium to aid that description. When trying to describe a character’s hurry you generally don’t want to use sentences which run on for many lines, you want to use short rapid-fire sentences.

However, for all my critique, the point still remains, that The Castle of Otranto was the first gothic novel and thus deserves some praise, even if that praise is only towards the fact that the novel helped establish some of the most mocked clichés of the gothic novel that we know and love today. The point still remains, that if The Castle of Otranto was an album by The Cure I’d rate it alongside their eponymous album. Man, I still have bad dreams about that one.

Next time, join me as I delve into Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, the novel that laid the groundwork for such great modern works as Scooby Doo and X Files.

Lateness, as we all know, is the pleasure and privilege of students. It is with us in all aspects of our brief (or not-so-brief) student lives: we guiltily sneak into the backs of lecture halls in medias res, blush ever so slightly as we hand the overdue books to a disapproving librarian, sneak around the Department corridors like that creepy little midget in Mission: Impossible to turn papers in late.

As with all the pleasures in life, moderation is the key here. Letting things slide a bit every now and then is one thing, chucking your self-discipline altogether is another. Then again, there is the option of becoming That Person Who’s Always Late. You know, the one who gets invited places 15 to 30 minutes before everyone else, so that no one has to wait around for them. BTSB encourages occasional tardiness, but being late is a subtle art and there’s an etiquette: job interviews, first dates, movies theaters? Unacceptable. Parties? Expected. Nothing is more annoying than a guest who is right on time.

That being said, being constantly late is not an attractive quality in a person, but for us students it is a small luxury that we know is not going to be around forever. As our carefree youths slip from our grasps, being late becomes less and less acceptable. Most of us land jobs where staying up late, sleeping in and stretching deadlines will become a thing of the past. The luxury of running late should be relished, now, while we can.

Belatedly yours,

Maria Koistinen and Patrik Renholm
Editors

Technorati Tags: tardiness, btsb, headline

Watch a few videos of Henry Rollins on YouTube and you’ll notice something – the man has some pent-up aggression. Whether he has reasons for it is not for me to say (although it usually seems like he does). But I will say this: Henry Rollins is intense. And his aggression comes out in many ways, sometimes insultingly, sometimes humorously , and sometimes sublimely tragically.

The thing about Henry Rollins is that he certainly has a way with words, which is good because I don’t think I could accurately describe Eye Scream. So I’ll let Henry do it himself. On his website, he says:

Work on Eye Scream started in 1986. I was crossing America constantly and experiencing the morality shifts, attitudes, and rituals in different parts of the country – the difference in the way people were in the Bible Belt as opposed to New York City, the way blacks and whites interfaced, the intolerance of homosexuality, the morality plays. I started to become aware of how brutal the country is and how much ferocity, cruelty, and oppression are inherent in the culture and how much of it was in me. I wanted to document it and create a book that brought the whole thing to a boil and see w here it left me off. In the summer of 1995, I finished the book and started to edit. Re-reading the manuscript over and over, I realized all the things I had picked up over a decade of playing Devil’s advocate and it was inspiring because it clearly defined who my enemies are. As an American, I feel it impossible not to be infuriated by the way things are and have been. I refuse to be happy about the day-to-day and go along with it. There’s too much spitting in my face and too much spitting in the faces of people who don’t know any other way of life. This book is brutal, and at times, funny. I know that I will probably get a ton of shit for Eye Scream. Enjoy, or better yet… don’t. — Henry Rollins

But that is one of the interesting things about Eye Scream. Rollins’ blurb seems at odds with the book. The style of his explanation is focused, while the book is all over the place. In his spoken word stints, Rollins has a talent for being poignant, but funny and edgy at the same time. In Scream, on the other hand, Rollins is ranting and rambling, shocking but without context. And worse of all, it is repetitive. Or so I thought.

The amazing thing about Eye Scream is how my opinion changed while reading it. At first, I felt it was shocking just to be shocking. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason and certainly no structure. After about sixty pages, I went online to see if the story was going to get anywhere. That’s how desperate its insanity had made me; how much I felt like I was falling down a pointless rabbit hole.

Fortunately, except for Rollins’ review (which certainly helped), I didn’t find anything else online because after plugging away at Eye Scream, I began to realize a few things. The repetitiveness of the rants, which seemed to be the book’s major fault when I started reading it, is actually the most powerful aspect of the work.

I believe repetition can sometimes breed complacency, or numbness when it comes to repetitive accounts of shocking stories. This then makes you wonder how such shocking things can have no effect on you. Think about how much thought or emotion you devoted to the earthquake in Haiti compared to the earthquake in South America (donate here).

But the repetitive articles in Eye Scream, which make you feel almost nothing, stand in stark contrast to the ones that are really powerful. You wind up plodding through the mud when BAM! you’re hit by an article that fires on levels. And I mean that. There are some very amazing, concise, and revelatory parts of Eye Scream.

The only bad part about the book is that most of the rants are so raw that they verge on being simplistic, which in my experience is not typical of Henry Rollins. And yet while the insight that is encouraged here is raw and emotional, rather than intellectual and calculated, it causes the after shock to be profoundly self-reflective, as if the extrovert of the narrator brings out the introvert of the reader.

The shocking nature of some of the rants makes reading Eye Scream akin to watching Requiem for a Dream. In a way, I’m glad I experienced it, but I would not want to experience it again. In Eye Scream, Henry Rollins yet again caused me to think, only this time it was in a totally different way. Instead of mixing facts with his own opinions to lead me to a conclusion, as is common in his spoken words, his book made me open my own eyes.

Up next: Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

While a person of lesser cognitive skills may assume that this is a problem that needs to be rectified I am a more lateral thinker: instead of trying to develop mnemonic devices and building systems of reminders the best solution is to shift the blame somewhere else. Thankfully, science seems to side with those with terrible memories and here’s four reasons why:

1. The Arbitrariness of Any Timekeeping Method

Sure, your significant other may claim that your relationship started on the 5th of May 2006, but that’s only the view according to the Gregorian calendar, the internationally accepted civil calendar, which is so arbitrary that a day needs to be added into the year every four years to bring it in line with the astronomical year. Even worse, these days a leap second is added into our timetables some years to make sure that our timekeeping adheres to reality, and these leap seconds need to be added at an ever-increasing rate over longer periods of time.

Pictured: A person who used the Gregorian calendar.

Also, assuming that everyone in the world should adhere to a solar calendar when there are many cultures that use lunar calendars is downright shortsighted. Be a bit more open-minded.

2. The Theory of Relativity

Time as we experience it is simply an illusion. As Albert Einstein theorized, when he wasn’t inventing rock ‘n’ roll and failing math tests, our perception of time is entirely relative and, to put it in terms that should be accessible to everyone, totally wack, dude.

Imagine, for an example, that you suddenly started moving away from your significant other at a constant speed of light on your anniversary. To you it would seem as if your partner was stuck in that moment in time since the light reflecting from them would never reach your eyes. If you did this for an entire year, you could be forgiven for assuming that it wouldn’t really be your anniversary since from your perspective your significant other would still be celebrating your last anniversary.

This theoretical situation is known as Einstein’s Mindfuck and while not exactly a valid excuse for forgetting an important date it’ll certainly distract your significant other for long enough for you to come up with a way to escape them at the speed of light.

3. Time Travel

Not at all like this.

Time travel as we know it from movies like Back to the Future and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure has been all but proven to be impossible (just ask Atomic Robo), but there still exist ways in which the future could have inadvertent effects on the past. According to science, a possible answer to why the Large Hadron Collider has malfunctioned on several occasions could be that the LHC is so abhorrent to nature that special particles are being sent from the future to sabotage its work. In a way, someone or something in the future knows what the consequences of activating the LHC could be and wants to stop it before anything happens.

If this is possible (and who are we to argue with scientists?) it could prove to be the most effective excuse for forgetting absolutely anything and everything.

“Honey, I know it’s our silver anniversary today, but my mind was tampered with by particles coming from the future.”
“Muffin, I know I should’ve picked up the kids from school today, but you know how it is. Future-particles.”
“Yes sir, I do realize the horrible consequences caused by me taking a nap while on guard duty at the nuclear missile silo, but I was being bombarded by particles from the future.”

If this were to become general knowledge it could very well signal the end of civilization as we know it. Well, at least we’ll know who to blame it on. Future pricks.

4. Refuge in Existentialism

This excuse is not for the faint of heart and should only be used under very extreme conditions. In a way it could be said to be the culmination of all the above excuses.

The long and short of it is this: how do we know anything is real? How do we know anything exists? What does an anniversary even mean if we can’t even be certain of the existence of the other person? What is the purpose of it all, really?

I seem to be using pictures of Keanu Reeves a lot as of late.

While successful use of this excuse may lead your significant other to reconsider their adamant stance on anniversaries and remembering them it also comes with the risk of completely alienating you from society in general. It also comes with the risk of experiencing the world in slow motion, a nearly expressionless face and saying “whoa” a lot.

All in all, with these excuses by your side you should be able to at least fool your partner for long enough to make them forget about your transgression for the time being. At least you’ll be safe until Valentine’s Day or their birthday comes along.

(Editor’s Note: BTSB does not recommend the use of any of these excuses in any relationship, real or imaginary. BTSB does not take any responsibility for any perceived damage to said relationships caused by the use of these excuses for purposes other than entertainment. It is the view of BTSB that a healthy relationship is based on openness, honesty and communication. With that said, can I please stop sleeping on the couch now, honey?)

So, for those of you who weren’t lucky enough to attend (and for those that did attend but maybe have difficulties in remembering everything… ), here is a summary of what happened:

The dinner party started with cocktails at 6 pm. We organizers managed to get some sparkling wine before the dinner, as our caterers were super-efficient and helpful. When we got to the tables, there were greetings from other student organizations and gifts (The Bunny with the Giant Teeth was our favorite!). The dinner itself started with a crème ninon soup, i.e. fancy pea soup. We tried to eat our soups before they got cold, but we were singing so much that we got to experience what cold pea soup tastes like (still delish). After finishing the soup, SUB’s president Essi gave a speech, which was inspiring and more importantly, had a “Friends” joke in it.

There was an intermission before the main course and during the main course, there was another speech by our honorary member Juha Töyrylä; it had jokes, too, and it was bilingual, which was the unofficial theme of our party (and rather a big issue at first! Finnish or English, which one, which one?!). Ah, the main course: we had chicken (or tofu for veggies) with potatoes. There was plenty of it and it was very tasty. Thought it seemed not a lot of people got to really taste the main course; they were way too busy singing! After the main course, we had another intermission before the course that everybody had been waiting for: dessert.

For dessert, we had chocolate cake (due to some party people with a sweet tooth) with strawberry melba and whipped cream. It was just as good as it looked and was the perfect ending to a wonderful dinner. We had a musical performance by Hanne Rouvali and Leissi after dessert, which ended the evening on a high note, as we all got to sing along with the amazing singer. Throughout the dinner, there had been a lot of singing, so we were a bit husky but enthusiastic gang singing along to ”Easy”.

After the dinner, we moved all the tables out, carried all the plates and cutlery upstairs and got the after party going (we must’ve walked those stairs millions of times, at least Naukkis felt like her calves were stiff as boards the next day!). We had two DJ’s, Patrik and Klaus, who took turns to ensure that both got to take part in the partying as well. The after party consisted of dancing, drama, deep conversations and organizers running around trying to keep everything together. The official after party ended around 4 am, after which people decided to go upstairs to Lingva to continue and let us clean up Alina with a few little helping elves (thanks to Klaus for cleaning up the Batman-bathroom, that was a man’s job!). The fiesta in Lingva went on until 11 am, with people lurking under tables and being found in the most peculiar places. Fanni, Satu and Naukkis stayed later to clean up Lingva and talk about the party; we were very tired but happy, it seemed as though everyone had had a great time!

All in all, the Anniversary party was a very successful event, and we hope to be there as guests next year! A big thanks to all the people who helped us, especially Satu, who gave her heart and soul to the project as the ”crafts” person, but whose help extended far beyond just shopping for cardboard and tulips, thank you again! We hope the party was as memorable for all of you as it was for us!

Saara Naukkarinen and Fanni Dunderberg

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