The Loved One made some remarks, doubtlessly very accurate and apt from her point of view, about me compulsively repeating certain behavioural patterns every time she pointed a camera at me. I have no idea what she’s talking about.

The Fuengirola Zoo was something quite remarkable indeed. There were no bars anywhere in the area, and by this I mean bars of the kind that are used to make cages of, not the kind where refreshments are sold in. This tiger was lying amongst the ruins of some ancient temple or other, presumably digesting a bunch of foolhardy tourists, and gracefully let me take a photograph before continuing to lie perfectly still, slowly digesting, unaffected by anything.

I’m aware that holiday photos of animals in the zoo are almost as boring as photographs of general scenery. This does not prevent me from putting up a photo of two warthogs with evil gleaming eyes. There’s always a place for a photo of a warthog (or red river hog, to be more precise. I think they're warthogs anyway), especially one (or, in this case, two) with evil gleaming eyes.

Check this out! General scenery! With palm trees!

Highlight of the week was the Saturday night. We went dining out in a place called Casa Florido, with a chef who’s worked in various Michelin Star-restaurants and with no other customer than ourselves. The three-course menu was absolutely delicious, beautifully served on glass plates with an above-average bottle of local tempranillo. Compared to the quality of everything, everything was ridiculously inexpensive. Afterwards I took the Loved One to the nearby moonlit beach, kneeled down and asked her to marry me. The answer was “yes”, as the picture above might subtly indicate. Which was nice.

THIS WEEKS’ BOOKS OF CHOICE:
I took two novels and two Sandman graphic novels with me to Spain so I wouldn’t run out of things to read. Of these, I read a dozen or so pages of George Carlin’s “Brain Droppings” and didn’t bother taking the others out of the suitcase. Also some 80% of the clothes I took with me came back unworn and used only for wrapping the wine bottles into. Now, as I’m back home, I’ve been idly leafing through “Brain Droppings” now and then, appreciating the casual aforism I find to my liking (“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls”) but mostly it tends to veer too much towards bashing the American culture and their habits, which is probably very fitting and sharp but also very uninteresting to me as such.

I accidentally read the book about Nightwish as well. If someone asked me to explain why I did something like that I wouldn’t have an explanation. Their music has never touched me and their story wasn’t very interesting. Reading books like this is probably something a person is prone to do on the fourth week of his summer vacation when he has decided to do nothing very remarkable at all. Normality is restored next week when I will return to reading thick epic novels in foreign language and wondering what was the meaning of that word and what has happened during the last five pages.


THIS WEEKS’ SOURCE OF BEWILDERMENT:
A few days ago I was meeting up with my friend mr. Leinonen to go and see the new Batman movie. Being a bit late, I hastily emerged from the tube station and headed for the movie theater when I laid my eyes upon something quite unsettling indeed: The Wonderpizza vending machine. Right next to the more usual machines you get soda cans and chocolate bars from. I had to stop to see what was all this about. The machine wasn’t in the operational mode yet, it just stood there, functionless and with no evident explanations of what was to come and what kind of stunts was the machine expected to perform apart from supposedly baking a pizza. This was utterly baffling and after the movie we had to return to give it a closer examination. No text anywhere to tell how to operate the machine, all the buttons marked with unintelligible symbols one could only guess the meanings of. No prices visible and not a clue what kind of fillings were available. Pushing and shaking the machine availed to nothing. Everything was nicely shrouded in the veils of mystery. Until today I ran a Google query of “Wonderpizza” and the search results, effectively but also unfortunately, removed the shroud from this particular mystery.

I’m now, rather unexpectedly but not entirely unhappily, entering the fourth and final week of my summer vacation and can honestly say that the stressed-outness mentioned on the previous post is presently only a distant fleeting memory. I’m also quite certain that I’m thoroughly unable to fit in anymore when it’s time to return to the kind of work you actually get paid for, in actual money, instead of this “writing down a word then another word then another until they form a sentence”-thing which sometimes feels like very hard work, although usually not, and only very seldomly if ever leads to the kind of situations where I’m paid in actual money for what I’ve written.

A close friend of mine called me a few days ago and asked if I was interested in coming up with an albums’ worth of lyrics for a project he’s starting up. The concept as he explained it sounded very good and challenging and as I haven’t got anything relevant to focus on at the moment, with all the needed Sinisthra lyrics completed, I accepted and am now wondering if I’m able to deliver what I promised to deliver. It’s an all-stars kind of project involving various well known Finnish metal musicians and I’m happy to have a minor part in it.

That was the mandatory musical activities blah blah part. The situation of Sinisthra remains unchanged so there’s no need to further whine about it now. As soon as I’ve written and posted this, I will step outside on the streets and sell the album to the first person in the music business I stumble upon. Here’s some holiday photos.

It’s been a lousy summer in Finland so far with unreasonably low temperatures and heavy rain almost daily so it was lovely to stop complaining about the weather in Helsinki and fly out to Costa Del Sol for a week. One might find a thing or two to complain about the weather in Spain as well if one was willing to (but is not at the moment) with the temperature rising to 40 celsius in the afternoon, but we welcomed it all with open arms and immediately after arriving at the house we were staying in, removed most of our clothes permanently. During the hottest hours I was forced to consider what else to remove after removing most of the clothes already and still feeling uncomfortable, and the only option seemed to be to remove all of the clothes and try to avoid getting your private parts sunburned. This somehow restricts the amount of photos I’m prepared to put on display here since as far as aesthetically pleasing sights go, a naked and sweating 38-year old male who doesn’t work out regularly (but is planning to start any day now) isn’t up there in the Top 100 of Wonderful Things To Ogle At.


Here’s me with a map, assuring the Loved One that of course I know where we are and yes the place where we’re heading for seems to be located just around the corner. The amount of one way streets and cul-de-sacs caused a lot of distress and after going astray you couldn’t take shortcuts but had to retrace your steps and start again. The streets took a hapless tourist to unexpected places and heightened states of frustration and although clearly leading from place A to place B on the map and on the way crossing several other streets, never seemed to do so in real life. This reminded me of a theory presented by Robert Rankin in one of his books. If you take a map of the world and try to wrap it around a globe you’ll find out it will not cover the whole globe. These bits that are left out are called Forbidden Zones and you can only enter them if you have the special means needed to do so. The book is probably called “Raiders Of The Lost Car Park”, I can’t be bothered to check out right now. Look it up if you felt your curiosity aroused, and while you’re at it, check out the whole bibliography of mr. Rankin. There’s good stuff in there.

We were very fortunate to have a bicycle at our disposal. Otherwise the trips to local supermarket would have taken more than we had in us, what with all the 6-litre bottles of drinking water and other liquids we carried into the house and poured into ourselves to stay alive in the heat. The local supermarket had a selection of very reasonably priced wines, starting at 1,15€ a bottle. We were not brave enough to try them out. The ones we tried out, starting at 3€ a bottle were all unreasonably horrible but the reds went well when poured into sangria and the whites went well when poured down the kitchen sink.

The Spanish albarino white wine is utterly lovely and I hunted down numerous bottles of it in various locations from around the town. It’s quite expensive compared to other types of wine they have on offer, mostly costing over 10€ a bottle but I was happy to fork out the money when I found a bottle I was looking for, and extremely happy (as the picture shows) when the opposite of getting short-changed happened in one liquid store. The price was 11.95€, I gave 12€ and the clerk at the desk gave me 8€ back instead of the 5 cents I was due. I opened my mouth to rectify the situation, then quickly thought again and only uttered a heartfelt “muchos gracias” and left the store. God rectified this a few days later when I was charged an outrageous amount of money for two beers at the local zoo. Thanks, God. Keep the change.


Here’s me, all out at sea but enjoying it very much anyway, and suddenly remembering that Sinisthra has no recording contract. And later on, here’s also me, The BBQ Master Of Wieners And Other Stuff That’s Easy To BBQ, suddenly having forgotten that Sinisthra has no recording contract.

My fingertips are all typed out now. And, judging by the amount of thoughts sloshing around in my head, there’s still a lot to write out. This writing out of thoughts is now rescheduled to take place tomorrow since now I need to go outside for a bit. Summer seems to be happening outdoors at the moment and I don’t want to miss its’ happening entirely.

THIS WEEKS' BOTTLES OF CHOICE:

I’m sure one is not supposed to feel this stressed out after the first week of one’s summer vacation. And normally I wouldn’t but now I do. Of course the weather this year seems to leave a lot to be desired for with a genuine full blown summer still waiting somewhere in the wings, with a strong possibility of not making an decent appearance at all, and of course I’ve worked so hard in my day job, particularly for the last few months, that it takes a while to recover and actually start relaxing and recharging. But the stress mostly, or to be more precise, completely stems from the unsure situation of Sinisthra.

We’ve been recording for a week now and had to pull the plug for the time being because the negotiations with record labels turn out to be more tedious and time consuming than I’d had ever imagined. We won’t continue the recording until everything’s settled and clear and the papers have been signed, and I’m paying the studio tab of 1000 euros for now. This puts my mind at ease (of sorts) because I won’t have to worry about an inflating studio bill that might fall into our own hands for the rest of my vacation now. This would have gravely affected my upcoming holiday trip with a loved one, too. But now we can flutter out, without worries, to her father’s unoccupied house in Spain for a week of careless basking in the sun and all kinds of other unhurried and lovely activities that will make people very happy for me (or alternately bitterly jealous) once I get to tell everyone just how great a time we had. As I’m sure we will.

This brings to my mind (because he just spent a week in Crete) the subject of a personal blog of my personal and closely esteemed friend mr. Leinonen. He’s been promising a “grand opening” of his blog since March 2007 and seemingly continues to do so with no further visible results. This unactivity is unbearable, of course, and maybe putting a link here pushes him over the final edge and he starts to actually update his blog. Here’s the link again, just to be on the safe side. And here.

Here too.

Let’s see what else I’ve got in here to get off my chest. Not much it seems. Sinisthra has been the focus of my attentions lately, to the point of regularly finding myself awake at 5 AM grieving over things in sweat-soaked bedsheets. This hasn’t left much room for indulging myself in any other kinds of things I usually indulge myself in. I’m really really looking forward to spending next week in the lap of Fuengirola. Oh and here’s a link to mr. Leinonen’s blog.

THIS WEEKS’ SOURCE OF BEWILDERMENT:

This illustration, coupled with it's title, just somehow speaks to me. The language is unintelligible of course but it still speaks. I could say that it communicates some deeper meaning but I won't since that would sound very pretentious and wouldn't be true, either. I still like the picture and I like Simon Drew's other pictures too.





THIS WEEKS’ BOOKS OF CHOICE:
Just confused myself with “A Book Of Bestial Nonsense” by Simon Drew. See above. This person’s works might require a closer inspection, at some later as-of-yet unclear date. Which might never come. Officially I’m still very occupied with Tim Powers’ “Three Days To Never”. I put it aside for awhile to pick up something a bit lighter to read in between session at the studio and ended up going through the entire run of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics once again. This choice really hit the spot as they say and now I’m wondering what to take with me to read in Spain because “Three Days To Never” is a massive-ish and heavy hard cover opus I’m not prepared to carry with me to the other side of Europe just to find out it requires more concentration and attention than I have to spare when the temperature rises to 35C.

THIS WEEKS’ BOTTLES OF CHOICE:
Yalumba Y Series Pinot Grigio. With pinot grigio it’s always quality time in my opinion. The qualities might vary but usually they stay on the positive side. This was especially nice, from Australia, and will be purchased and enjoyed again, definitely.
Devil's Rock Pinot Grigio from Germany was very nice too and was served in a demanding situation of the loved ones’ father coming over for dinner. It went well with smoked rainbow trout and held up after the dinner too but somehow still didn’t quite live up to the standards set up by several other pinot grigios I’d had recently so this one doesn’t make it on the to-buy-again list.
I’m looking forward to sampling the other pinot grigios on offer in Finland too but as I’m likely to bring a suitcase full of albarino and vinho verde from Spain it’s going to take some time before I get around to that.

Those were white wines. I haven’t had that much red lately but, looking at the drinks cabinet and wondering what to have, just popped open a bottle of Graffigna Malbec from Argentina. I haven’t paid much attention to red wine recently but anything made of malbec feels like a safe choice. And so it was. This didn’t really knock me over with it’s bouquet or the actual taste but I got what I expected to get. A warm fuzzy feeling inside and the conclusion of not buying this particular brand again but still finding it good enough to say that argentinian malbecs are my favourites among red wines now.
Sadly, because of the shrinking of the Sinisthra recording budget, I didn’t get to acquire the too-expensive-to-just-buy-without-a-good-reason Amarone I was planning on having with Make in the studio as a reward to ourselves.

Torres Santa Digna Cabernet Sauvignon Rose from Chile rewarded me with the knowledge that even though it might be dubbed the best rose wine available in Finland, it still doesn’t mean that I can’t find it utterly and confusingly horrible and not fit for drinking at all.