2007, the Year of the Toilet

To back up the tin magic at New Year's, I had my fortune read from the Housewife’s Tarot today.

My card for 2007 – the Seven of Wands.

I shall face challenges akin to cleaning a toilet with a toothbrush (although it seems I'm lucky enough to have seven at my disposal), yet I have the power to flush down any usurpers to my porcelain throne.

Porcelain throne, eh?

Now I know: 2007, the Year of the Pink Toilet.

Hunting the Shit Gnomes

I went into the bathroom to find His Lordship staring fixedly into the corner next to his litter tray. All of a sudden, he would pounce on something before returning to his vigil. I thought he’d found the lair of the silverfish; but no, he was attacking thin air.

As he cocked his ears at the skirting board, I finally cottoned on: he was hunting the shit gnomes! He could hear their music as they mocked him with jigs way down in the woodwork.

I returned after a few hours work to find him still crouched there, as intent as ever on that same few square inches. How nice to be so easily amused. Other things he spends hours hunting include fluff, cracks in the wall plaster, quarks and the shadows of his own ears!

Some time later he wandered into the study and over my laptop, pausing to give it a disdainful look that seemed to say, ‘Huh, so you’re still staring at that little screen, eh?’

Touché kitty, but at least I don’t gawk at my own toilet!

Parking Lot Pizza

Have you ever wondered what it is about junk mail pizza ads that makes them all look the same?

The multitude of pizza joint ads that – far too regularly – pop through my letter box will without fail contain ten clashing fonts (at least one of which is comic sans), hideous clip art and garish colours topped with a generous sprinkling of spelling mistakes. Is there some Miscrosoft pizza ad template that everyone’s using? Or could there be something about hideous visual design that actually sells more pizza?

My absolute favourite is the place that thinks the best way to boost sales is to eschew the clipart and actually picture the place – albeit looking out from the back of the premises onto the car park on a slightly overcast day … oh yes, and with a Finnish flag :)

Lord Jekyll and Kitty Hyde

Another saddo Saturday night in with cameras and computers peels away the layers of cuteness to reveal the true nature of His Lordship Kitty Beast Sutekh the Destroyer.

If you dare, the resulting scenes of pure evil can be viewed by clicking on the play button below or here (sound essential).



Especially for steve & taikataika ;)

Pimping My Cat

What beats fake boobs? Pussy in the bath!

Due to many factors, including widespread illness and poverty, I’m home on a Friday night pimping my cat on Flickr.

After I added this photo of His Lordship Kitty Beast Sutekh the Destroyer to a number of cat pools on Flickr, it racked up views and favourites like no other picture of mine has ever done before – quickly outpacing even my previously top ranking post rat bathing horror photos and m’s fake boobs.

So this week, I’ve made it my (sad) mission to get as many views as possible. This has involved entering Kitty in the Bath – and now some other cat shots – into all kinds of pools and view record clubs. We have, unfortunately, started to plateau in the mid-300s.

Support my cause by clicking this link, and view plenty of my other new cat shots while you’re at it :)

Sick, sick, sick

One of those times when everyone and everything around me is sick, sick, sick – including myself – and not all of them necessarily in a head cold that will be over in a few days kind of way.

Worried and miserable.

His Lordship Kitty Beast

Apart from the danger of people thinking I named my cat after recent Finnish Eurovision winners Lordi, Lord remains quite a fitting, if maybe incomplete, name. He did indeed turn out to be quite the gentleman. By which I mean he seemed perfectly mannered and friendly on first acquaintance, but then turned out to be a mischievous cad with a penchant for random acts of minor evil and destruction. And he cheats at cards.

After many vain attempts to rename him in advance from photographs, I decided to wait until he arrived to see if any appropriate name would be automatically generated from his personality and behaviour. The natural ways of referring to him in writing turned out to be ‘His Lordship’, to m ‘Have you a visual on Kitty?’, and to the rats ‘Don’t worry, the Beast isn’t here.’ His Lordship Kitty Beast? I think not.

The other night we had an evening of Tom Baker Doctor Who; a joint mission for the English contingent to relive our childhoods and the Finnish one to get acquainted with the series. It was an excellent evening that ended at 3:30 a.m. with the police ringing the doorbell, but that’s another story.



The point being that we watched the classic Pyramids of Mars with one of my fave Dr Who baddies: Sutekh, Lord of Destruction.

Yes, you can see where I’m going with this. Unless Sir stops his evil plans, he will be christened. As you can see from the photos, I caught him in some unguarded moments, plotting to take over and destroy the world. Starting with the hall rug.

COD (Cat Order Delivery)

Meeting His Lordship off the Tallinn ferry turned out to be a rather surreal experience. To begin with, the rendezvous was set for a somewhat dubious sounding location: the far end of the long-term car park at the out of the way Helsinki west terminal. All was deserted when we arrived and the temperature was quickly plummeting below zero; though probably preferable to the alternative warmer cloud cover and rain. A couple of occupied vehicles were dotted about waiting for something, but who knew what. It wasn’t until one pulled up with a cat carrying box in the boot that we were convinced of being in the right place. We hid from the biting wind in the meagre shelter provided by the ticket booth and hunkered down to wait.

In a good half hour, all we’d seen was a handful of taxis. The creeping cold had reached mid-shin. How long does it take to get through customs with ten cats? No idea if the ferry had even docked. Not even sure what kind of vehicle I was looking out for. No contact number. It felt more like a drug deal going down than a cat collection!

A stream of taxis and cars finally started to pour down the road. One of the last, promisingly an estate, turned into the car park and made straight for us. The back seat and boot were piled high with cat boxes! Turns out the passenger ferry had been delayed by a cargo ship.

First up was distribution of the kitty passports. How long, I wonder, before acquiring a human passport requires microchipping and vaccination? Next came the transfer of the cats from their transport boxes to their new owners’ boxes. Kudos to Miia for transferring about ten cats in the open boot of a car in the middle of nowhere! Not one even looked like it was anywhere near escaping.

A short taxi and train ride later, I released His Lordship next to the litter tray. All else could be discovered at leisure, but these co-ordinates were (to me) the most vital. I expected His Lordship to spend the next few hours (or at worst days) hiding under various pieces of furniture. But no: his first mission was to investigate the litter tray, followed by a full exploration of his new territory and a quick snack! A lot of shedding of white hair on the sofa ensued as he posed himself for much petting, purring and photography. Sleeping was naturally done on the bed.

I was gobsmacked. You don’t expect that from your ‘normal’ cat, let alone one rescued from a shelter. I guess as he was given to the shelter and never lived on the streets, he remained trauma free. But still!

Full complement of His Lordship photos here.

OMG that’s a dress!

The imminent arrival of His Lordship has meant I’ve been cat proofing my flat these past two days. Some reorganisation, but basically a lot of bloody clearing up! Although I hate housework, I like the feeling of throwing junk away. This time, I was ruthless: if I came across food or toiletries I hadn’t seen in a year, I tossed them out. I lost count of how many trash runs I had to make. Excellent.

I was also finally forced to go through a pile of ten-year-old clothes I used to keep in a suitcase that I loaned to the Players for the move. The things I used to wear… Even scarier than some of the clothes themselves was finding garments I thought were longish tops only to remember they were dresses!

I must be getting old.

Hello Kitty

Not so many years ago, the family cat was expected to live off table scraps and do its business in the neighbour’s garden. The arrival of a twenty-first century indoor city kitty, however, requires the following – essential – items:

Carrying basket, litter tray, litter, scoop, scratching post, brush, bed, blanket, mouse toy, ball-with-bell-in-it toy, table tennis balls, harness, plastic mat, wet food dish, dry food dish, water dish, wet food, dry food, dried fish treats, cat nip treats, teeth cleansing treats, normal treats, rubber gloves and a plastic container to hide the biotrash from inquisitive whiskers!

Luckily, I already had an old blanket to donate and a cat basket prop I bought for I Need a Sister, one of the short plays I was in for our FELT IF 2004 festival. It’s a bit small for His Lordship maybe, but hey, cats never sleep in their own beds anyway, do they?

Day By Day

My photo project for 2007 is to take exactly the same photo every day of the year.

When things change gradually, it seems that they don’t change at all; but during a single year, just the seasons themselves cause immense changes. This hidden change is what I hope to capture.

A downtown park combining city bustle and nature would have been an ideal subject, but to ensure that I get a photo for every day, I had to pick a site very close to my home, which is unfortunately in a supremely dull and scenically unimpressive area. However, to supplement the seasons, there is construction going on next door (the pink, cream and brown tower blocks in the background are where I live), which should at least bring a little bit more, er, life to the series.

It’s a pity I didn’t start this when the forest was still standing, so as to capture the whole process. Although that would have been a bit difficult: one morning I walked to the railway station to go shopping and when I returned a few hours later the forest was gone!

You can follow the series here. At first, I guarantee extreme dullness, but it might start to become interesting in about June :)

Tin Magic

2007 trickled in damply, but in good company at Anna MR’s time-honoured New Year’s party, complete with traditional Finnish tin magic.

For the uninitiated, here's Tin Magic 101. Step one: Melt the tin (actually ninety per cent lead!) horseshoes in a special ladle on the stove.

Step two: Once the tin is completely liquid, throw the tin into a bucket of snow. Water will do if there isn’t any. At the crucial moment, everyone has to close their eyes, turn away and shout out the person's name. Collect your tin from the bucket, or peel it off the floor if you happen to miss the bucket.

Step three: When everyone has their tin shapes, the fortune teller of the evening uses a candle to cast shadows of the tin onto a wall from various angles. Interpret the shapes to predict your fortune for the year.

Mine resembled a castle on a hill and various things acquatic. Anna MR’s looked remarkably like an old man sitting on a bench. So, tell your fortune from that!