Jackass
Playlist of Jackass
In the 1590s Marshal Klaus Fleming nearly separated Finland from Sweden. However, free Nordic bönderna (peasants) of East Bothnia had defended their homes without any "professional help", and therefore every bondjanne thought that it wouldn't have been any improvement if they had had to support Fleming's mercenaries like serfs or bondsmen and rose in rebellion. Although uprisings had been put down in Nokia and other battlefields, where cannons were against clubs, Fleming died soon after his triumph over peasants, and Swedes sneaked back under Duke Karl's leadership. Below on the left you can see how Duke Karl is abusing the corpse of Klaus Fleming, and on the left Fleming's mercenary-bastards are sacking the rebellious peasant village in Yorks...East Bothnia. In subsequent years after Fleming's death every spare Finnish man was called up for military service in the Swedish Army and sent to overseas to take part in Protestant monarchs' campaigns against the Catholics among other adventures. Finally, there were only young boys and old men left to defend the homeland that was completely conquered by the Russians for the first in the history during the period of the Great Northern War that was remembered as the Great Hate, and the whole of East Bothnia was destroyed by the Russian Army in order to prevent any Scandinavian counterattack. Didn't William the Bastard...Conqueror raze Yorkshire to the ground for the same reason?
When I was seven years old, I became a divorce child, because my official father had a problem with "pink elephants". On the left below you can see his hilltop home farm on the map. You cannot avoid the impression of a coffin. Is this some kind of literary joke, where I'm supposed to find myself as "Oliver Twist" who has been taken care of by the undertakers? Due to "my father's" alcoholism, the house in the middle of this estate has been like a corpse at the state of decay - or the manor of Addams Family.
The Stonewall Jackson House at 8 East Washington Street in
Lexington, Virginia is the only home that the famous Confederate General Thomas
Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson ever owned. Jackson and his wife, Mary Anna
Morrison, lived in the house while he taught at the Virginia Military Institute
before the Civil War. The house, a Registered National Landmark, is owned and
operated by the Stonewall Jackson Foundation.
The works of Aleksis Stenvall (Stonewall) are the foundation stone of the Finnish literature. You can also fight behind paperwalls as you can see below. Mr Stenvall or Kivi was the spitting image of a radical reformer Philipp Melanchthon. We probably wouldn't have any written Finnish language without the Reformation, although the Lutheran Swedish Government wanted to put a ban on even Finnish hymn books.
A Chinese peasant would sooner hit the road and beg until the crisis is over or starve to death with his family rather than sell his land. I shall not inherit "my father's house": my very own Father Karamazov recently had to sell his private kingdom to Mr Jari Stenberg (Stonemountain) for one million FIM, because the property known as Strandängen or Rantaniitty yielded only empty beer bottles in my "father's" time. After the deal was closed, the prodigal ex-landowner said goodbye to his former home town by offering free cognac to everybody in a local restaurant. The bill of this "noble" act was alone 10 000 FIM. However, Father Jack is not landless any more, for he has bought a new house and a piece of land in Estonia. Booze is much cheaper on the other side of the Gulf of Finland; maybe they'll understand his thirst better over there.
On the right above you can see the farmyard of today's Strandängen. The time of such a decline and fall that you can see below is obviously over under the new master. Nowadays you can occasionally see Mr Stenberg riding an ATV around his bankruptcy estate.
Cromwell (D: Ken Hughes, 1970). Pictures first, explanations later, confusing, isn't it! It's good to be a king? On the left at the bottom of the montage above you can see one of my early summer memories from the 1970's. I stand next to my foster mother as one of Oliver Cromwell's pikemen ready to witness King Charles' beheading. After his father's execution future King Charles the Second escaped from England as "Mr Jackson" with the help of Catholics. Maybe this a monarchist or rather anti-monarchist plot, where I am supposed to find myself as King Oliver the First of Finland as soon as I am old enough to be an object of apprehension! Then on the left below a woman who is standing next to me would be my queen: her name is Elizaveta, and she is a sailor's widow and common whore from St. Petersburg who wanted everything from me, but she wasn't willing to share anything with me although I had to share her with other men. Lisa, tell me do you see before you a king? This tired, sickening man, this country oaf, crude in speech and manner? This rough fellow, does he display the bearing of a king? How would you define love? Isn't love just courage that we all need when we try to overcome our lack of confidence while walking a tightrope between our fears and hopes? When we have that courage, we are ready to make sacrifices in order to achieve what we desire, but I would be such a disappointment, and I am not worthy of anybody's efforts or sacrifices. Anyway, what is a difference between a friend and lover? You don't just leave a friend!
Once Finland almost became a kingdom. In 1918 Kaiser Wilhelm's (see him with crown prince on the right above as an exile in the Netherlands after the War) brother-in-law, Landgraf Friedrich Carl von Hessen was elected the first king of Finland as Väinö the First, but he had to abdicate before he was even crowned, because Germany lost the Great War. Otherwise Wolfgang, King Väinö's son and crown prince of Finland, might have become the Prince of Käkisalmi, for Käkisalmen lääni in Karelia would have been Finland's counterpart for Wales ("käki" means "cuckoo" in Finnish...hmm...König-король-Korela-Käkisalmi). Later Wolfgang served in Germany's Austro-Bavarian Alpine Expeditionary Forces in Lapland, Finland's Scotland, during Hitler's Arctic War, but only bloodsucking mosquitoes were stamped on his memory - blood is thicker than any usurper's water(loo). Now old Finnish Käkisalmi and old Prussian Königsberg are "legally" part of Russia and have new alien names.
They say that every time when the Turkish Sultan paid a visit to a Christian church, the visited shrine of some community was converted into a mosque. Something like this happened in the former USSR when Stalin went on a visit to a church and the house of worship was converted into a movie house. I get board every time when I go to a church. Maybe I would feel differently if the others next to me in a row were my family and the rest of congregation was my community, but now I am just a stranger who's only occasionally happy in a movie theatre where I can see my distant mother on the screen among other stardust.
"Mikochka, could you help me with little money? Syd...mother is already waiting for me. Mama, he said 'nay' this time! I'm finished with him. Let's do some shopping and find another sucker."
Pay Caesar what belongs to Caesar and be a sucker anyhow? I see perverted family values behind the instability of the human race. Why does a bar-fly have children? Responsible parenthood is the only solution! All stable communities are composed of happy families. These solid communities are like lifeboats on the stormy sea. Unfortunately there is not enough room for everybody in the ark and occasionally some drifting outsiders from the beerhouses manage to shake the boat. Although Stalinism and alcoholism are the same sickness, I don't only mean despots like Stalin: sometimes an ordinary hired hand start to slander his fellow colleagues in order to promote his own career. The only difference between an upstart member of a working community and agitator is that a political demagogue attacks against different groups in stead of individuals. And I have cursed to be one of these buzzing flies around the honey pot. Or am I too cynical? Basically, all agitators are just little attention-whores who need a hug. Anyhow, I believe in families in stead of "lonely and alienated supermen with huge egos.
Top left below you can see Per Svinhufvud (means literally "swinehead"): he was the major king-maker - kuninkaantekijä - the mastermind behind Finnish monarchist dreams in 1918, and later the third President of the Republic of Finland. President Swinehead's image was very macho; for example he was a good shot. As you can see below, there is amazing resemblance between him and you-know-who, and since the Freemasons seem to make everything possible--
Maybe it was a wise thing to decline an invitation to become the king of Finland in 1918. Just think what happened to Emperor Maximilian, the head of French puppet regime in Mexico: they shot him like a dog in 1867 (left below). Situation was also still pretty unstable in Finland, 1918 (right below).
Could I be actually related to King Väinö of Finland? On the left below you can see one of his ancestors, bigamous Landgraf Philipp von Hessen. On the right below you can see me as a 14-year-old boy, and there is some resemblance between us. Everything seems to match except the ears. On the other hand my god-damned ears look somewhat deformed. Since even a primitive Indian tribe was able to distort the growth of their infants' skulls with planks, it shouldn't be too difficult to manipulate my growth with modern means.
Below you can see the family tree of King Väinö's. Since it's the official pedigree, you won't find any bastards hanging from the branches.
A Finnish newspaper "Helsingin Sanomat" invited "Väinö IV" to Finland in 2002. HRH Prince Philipp was taken to the National Museum of the Republic of Finland where they showed him his great-grandfather's crown. First "Väinö IV" said that "how nice item, just like from Disneyland", but when a reporter asked him to put it on his head, Philipp angrily replied: "Are you mad? It doesn't belong to me!" How sensible of him, but on the other hand this Teutonic prince doesn't have to claim his real parents in the middle of TEUs (container size) and Buckfast tonic wine tanks.
Since the Great Northern War had ended so disastrously to Sweden-Finland in the early 18th century, the autocratic constitution was blamed for the catastrophe and changed to the parliamentary system in which a king was only an inert symbol and rubber stamp without any real power. Since the former absolute leader, childless King Karl, had been killed in action, his Hessian brother-in-law, King Väinö's great-great-great granduncle, became a new king as Fredrik I of Sweden. On the right below you can see the royal family. Fredrik's and Ulrika Eleonora's marriage was childless, but the old goat had four illegitimate children called Hessensteins with his young mistress, whose name was Hedvig Ulrika Taube. On the left below you can see Hedvig, who has been dressed up as a nun, but habitus non facit monachum.
A new conflict broke out east of Sweden when the vindictive Swedes declared war on Russia in 1741. At the earlier war the Swedes had fought like lions to the last Finn, but the Finns didn't have any more stomach for fighting. Finland was again conquered by the Russian troops, and the winter of 1742-43 was remembered as the Winter of Hussars in Kauhava and everywhere else around East Bothnia, the Yorkshire of Finland, for many Hungarian mercenaries of the Russian Army left several bastards behind. The Peace Treaty of Turku moved Finland's boundary line backwards to the next broad river and made the relative of Tsarina Elizaveta heir apparent to the Swedish throne, for King Fredrik didn't have any legitimate children. Hedvig's and king's four children were just two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the author of Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique, would have put it into words. What a hypocrite this Swiss Rousseau was: he wrote a famous idealistic book about the proper upbringing of children, but yet he sent all of his five own - and mother Thérèse's - children to orphanages which were real death traps at that time! Later this "perfect father" and egocentric maniac wallowed in self-pity and had a nervous breakdown: he thought that an international and malicious conspiracy against his person had focused their attention on him. All this sounds frighteningly familiar, and even one of Rousseau's favourite novel characters was called "Julie". Julie Andrews' fabulous life and career have been a parody of Rousseau's life and ideas: this poor and seriously paranoid Swiss thinker's native country, Switzerland, where cuckoo clocks and chocolate are only good things, as Orson Welles once said, even became the second homeland to Julie and Blake Edwards in the 1970s. Below you can see maps from Yorkshire to East Bothnia, one of Rousseau's books that were more dear to him than his own offspring and me as a fresh 19-year-old conscripted recruit standing in the middle of my brothers-in arms in the artillery-boot-camp of an obsolete army.
Superman The Movie (D: Richard Donner, 1978)
Am I too harsh to the author of "Julie Or The New Eloise"? After all, La Nouvelle Héloïse was "The Sound of Music" of it's own time: Rousseau's Julie of noble birth becomes a perfect wife and mother in spite of her indecent affair with private tutor, and she dies like a saint. Too often we just label other people as "paranoid crackpots", because it makes us to feel that we are something special unlike our "subjects". So, he sent his children away, but maybe he had a good reason after all? On the last day of November, 1939, soon after the first snow flakes, it started to rain bombs from the sky to all over Finland. Although the Soviet Government announced that their pilots are "the greatest humanists of the 20th century who won't attack against the civilians", the first victim of the first air raid in Helsinki was a seven-year-old girl who was standing at the bus station. Thousands of children were labelled and sent to peaceful Sweden without their parents. When these little evacuees later returned to their homes in impoverished post-war Finland, many of them were shocked and wanted to go back to their foster parents, where they had had everything. Julie Andrews has been the best of all mothers to some, and the worst of all mothers to me, but do I just miss her money? If so, this greedy bastard won't deserve any sympathy. It's easy to idealize somebody who's far away from you, but you can't just tolerate anybody in the same room with you for a long time. Anyway, without loving and caring parents children easily become insecure, suspicious and even paranoid "truth-seekers" in a treacherous world where any little detail can be a clue. How could you trust in your government if you were not able to trust in your own mom and dad?
Queen of England has actual and official birthdays: it's more convenient in that way. Below you can see Mr Väinö Jack, Mrs Helmi Jack and Mr Pentti Jack: they are officially if not actually my paternal grandparents and father. They say that Pentti is such a drunkard loser, because his mother Helmi died too early - she had bad kidneys. However, Pentti was already in his ten's when this tragic loss affected him.
King Väinö of Finland was married to Margarethe, England's Queen Victoria's granddaughter, and Margarethe means "pearl" in Greek just like Helmi means same in Finnish. At the bottom below you can see Princess Margarethe and her six sons around her. Dr Mengele would have loved this family, for there wasn't one but two pairs of twin brothers: before Auschwitz it was a rear opportunity to carry out a post mortem on twins who have died simultaneously. Nevertheless, two of Margarethe's boys were butchered at the Great War.
Why so many twins? Too much seafood? When you have seen one sardine, you have seen them all! Not quite so, for all twins are not identical: for example my foster mother and Markku, her elder brother, are twins. On the left below you can see them, and between the twins is Betty, their gloomy-looking granny, who cradles in her arms the twins' newly baptized kid sister. Most people are happy when they love their spouses or consorts and nurse their offspring, but occasionally some silly Bonaparte or Hitler turns the whole world upside down, and we can again feel sorry for ourselves.
On the left below you can see Kaiser Wilhelm in Constantinople. "Big Brother" - as Princess Margarethe called him in her letters - is monitored like Winston of the latter-times. It seems that there cannot be any fake drama on the royal silver screen without real experimental suffering that the dramaturges of the court can observe. This may not be relevant, but while the loyalty of the rest was bought cheap for Turkish delight, the Turks were the only nation whose soldiers' indoctrination completely failed in the Communistic prisoner-of-war camps during the Korean War. But then again all Turkish soldiers, who took part in the crusade against the Yellow-Red Peril, were professional soldiers, and it might have been different with the Kurdish conscripts, although Saladin, the champion of the Arabs, was actually a Kurd. After all, Chinese even succeeded in brain-washing their former emperor. Nowadays red capitalist Chinese would execute the emperor-citizen without any waste of time, make out an invoice for the bullet, remove the executed subject's useable organs and use his coffin as a billboard. Mozi would have been excited about such practicality.
In a movie called "King Rat" (D: Bryan Forbes, 1965) starving Englishmen's - "who take their royal family very seriously" - allegiance is almost bought for an egg. After 1809 Russian czars were also the grand dukes of Finland. Coexistence between two different countries under same sovereign went smoothly, although once a Finnish post office refused to accept Alexander III's personal mail, because the letters had Russian stamps, and as the punishment of this "insult" the Finnish postage stamps were replaced by Russian ones. But then Nicholas II and his advisers thought that it's wiser to put all the eggs to the same basket, although the Finns were extremely upset, for they absolutely had no desire to become Russians. The Finns used to be extremely loyal, and when their royal family came on a visit to Finland, hardly any protection was needed. But when a forsworn dukelet, who wanted to be just the emperor of Russia, was deserted and murdered with his family, the Finns couldn't have cared less and some of them pinned all their hopes to Germany. Besides there weren't any more Finnish battalions that could have intervened when monarchy burst like a soap bubble in 1917, since the Finnish Army had been dissolved as an act of one-basket-policy. Now Finland's Independence Day is ironically Saint Nicholas's day, the 6th of December. The Bolsheviks finally caught the egg-basket and started to mash eggs without producing any proper omelette. It's also so ironic that the Nazis declared Estonia to be the first country in Europe which is completely free from Jews, although many Estonians were exiled to Siberia from their native country by Josif Stalin like the Israelites by the king of Assyria, while people from all over the Soviet Empire moved to Estonia and took exiles' place as modern Samaritans. Below you can see the soup bubble party on the steps of barracks in Helsinki-Malmi Airport: I'm the shortest blond in the back row, and the tall blonde of the front row, whose gums you can see, is really a girl called Tiina or Tina unlike another tall blond called Petri or Peter behind her.
So much for Santa--
Jackasses as far back as to grandfather--but at least I can think: if you were kind to all creatures, even the smallest, your body wouldn't even kill microbes and you would die of the next feverish cold. Although any disease that "Mrs Goldstein's boys might take" is not an issue here, you could think that why it wouldn't mean anything to the most of you if I said that there was no god, but if I claimed that such a disease as AIDS doesn't really exist, but you all silly sentimental believers have been fooled, many of you would be extremely upset. Maybe we need to put our trust in something without any serious questions, and we certainly need compassion as Buddha would say. Therefore take zookeeper's advice and keep the faith like Julie Andrews keeps her little secrets from you. Cetera iam fabulosa.
Below you can see me between Pentti and Marje Jack, those who are my official parents. You don't need much imagination to find their marriage from movies "Star!" and "Darling Lily": a young uniformed man from elsewhere comes to serve at the air force base and hastily gets married with a local girl. The usual story follows: a girl gets pregnant, Jack drinks too much and they get divorced. After "Star!" Robert Wise produced "The Baby Maker" (1970) and directed "The Andromeda Strain" (1971). In the latter movie an errant satellite crashes to earth near a remote New Mexico village. After this, the recovery team discovers that almost everyone in the town are victims of a horrible death, with the mysterious exception of an infant and an old homeless man. The survivors are brought to a state-of-the-art laboratory where the puzzled scientists try to find a unifying factor between an innocent child and an alcoholic man in order to determine the nature of the deadly microbe before it wreaks worldwide havoc. The only fact that I take as a confirmed kill is that Julie Andrews is my true biological mother, the Blue Bird. They told me that Pentti's ancestors came from Scotland to Finland many generations ago. Although his hair is pitch-dark and he looks rather Hungarian like some kind of son of Count Dracula, he might even be my true father, for I don't have any father complex to tell the truth, because I'm not a pink homosexual. However, they have made him so disgusting and irresponsible character that I seize on every suggestion that he is not my real father.
Before I was born and grafted onto the family tree of Jacks, Pentti Jack - although he had a daytime job - tried his luck as a part-time shoe shop keeper in Kauhava. The shoe shop was called "Sopukenkä". His mother-in-law, Anni, guaranteed the loan, and after the bankruptcy two thirds of in-laws' home farm was sold in order to pay to "Hungarian hussar's" creditors. Julie Andrews has appeared as Marie Antoinette several times on the stage, and I think that she has also presented herself as King's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, on the screen. Below on the left you can see the second son of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette of France. He became dauphin at the death (1789) of his elder brother. In 1792 the revolutionists imprisoned him with the royal family in the Temple. After the execution (1793) of Louis XVI, the comte de Provence proclaimed the dauphin king as Louis XVII, but he remained in prison until his death. Finally the boy was separated from his mother, and a member of the Commune of Paris, Antoine Simon, often called "the shoemaker", and his wife guarded the dauphin, Louis XVII, in prison. Cruel treatment by his jailers was said to have hastened his end. Although Markku's (Marje's twin brother) daytime job happened to be a prison warder while his hobby was local commune-politics, my lot hasn't been quite this hard: I nearly died my boots on in 1991 as I shall tell in the next chapter of Pain - and it wasn't "too much brandy" - but I survived unlike the Soviet Union that was supposed to be practically the perfect society in every way. But did the presidents of her fan clubs vote that Julie's cradle should be empty too?
Below you can see me with some of my first and second foster cousins in the 1970s: I'm the barefooted boy without any shoes.
Hmm...it seems that this time I was the tallest among little blonds and blondes. Below on the right the girl who holds a doll in her hand is future Queen Marie Antoinette, and on the left above & below the girl next to me is actually called Mari. In certain day and age, you never know when you might be abandoned by loved ones, or business colleagues if you just wanted to change your financial situation. Therefore, maybe you should leave a trail behind in Hansel & Gretel style. Hansel & Gretel is in essence the story of children transcending their immature dependence on their parents and overcoming their Oedipal difficulties. In this context the reliance on bread crumbs at the beginning of the tale signifies a regressive oral fixation, a fixation which culminates in the gingerbread house, locus of ultimate oral temptation. So don't use bread crumbs for your trail but pebbles, pink chewing gum, cigarette butts, chalk markings, dead rats, chocolate, nails or ten £$€ notes. Es ist nicht alles Pfeffer, was beisst.
The death of Louis XVII has often been disputed; it was rumoured that someone had taken the true dauphin from prison and substituted another boy in his place. Evidence, however, has long indicated that the boy really died in prison in 1795, and historians, for the most part, have disregarded the lost dauphin theory altogether. In 2000 geneticists announced that they had compared DNA from dead boy's preserved hearth with DNA from members of the royal family and proved conclusively that the child who died in prison was indeed dauphin. Well, I found out in England that the only thing that most people knew about Finland were Finnish rally drivers, but isn't Michael Schumacher a German? Below you can see "the zenith of French glory", Kaiser Wilhelm following car racing and Kaspar Hauser - or is it the victorious hero of the battle of Jena - who is planting the new forest; Finns are also very good at forestry.
For the sake of comparison below you can see me between Moritz, the present landgraf of Hessen-Kassel, and Julie Andrews. I must say that Moritz has his ancestors' ears, and I don't see much resemblance between him and me. Landgrave is a respectable although divorced hotelkeeper in today's Germany. So mother, with whom did you sleep with or was it artificial? Who has renounced his son? You may say that the next thing to do would be to compare DNA sequences, but I hope that you understand that this conspiracy leaves me only archaic means to find out the truth, or I would really need impartial help or the full and straight confession from them. I could afford DNA test, but I'm afraid that the bought proofs would be convenient for the highest bidder.
When Moritz von Hessen or Maurizio d'Assia was in his ten's, his mother, Princess Mafalda of Savoy, died in Buchenwald concentration camp as a prisoner in an air-raid - as betrayed Germans said - on August 27, 1944. Mafalda's capture and death was the price of sunny Italy's surrender like the destruction of Monte Cassino, but her children had been given sanctuary in the Vatican. As if this wasn't enough, American soldiers stole "the heirlooms of the House of Hesse-Kassel" after the war. Well, to the looters belong the spoils, and, in fact, Otto von Hessen, Moritz's uncle and Queen Victoria's great-grandchild, was a loyal Nazi. I don't know if any "Pink Panther" was among the precious hidden stones that were taken as the booty from the wine cellar of Kronberg Castle, but I guess that Mr Blake Edwards, "Miss" Andrews' present husband, can provide all the jewellery she needs. However, Julie, if you ever needed a kidney from a close kinsman, you could have one of mine, your son's, although so far there hasn't been enough charity in me to donate even blood, and therefore prisoner number in stead of my blood group deserves to be tattooed on my skin.
A true story, the synopsis of "Spoils": 1945 – Kasteel Kronberg, buiten Frankfurt, is nu een countryclub voor Amerikaanse officieren. De cynische kolonel Jack Durant en de beeldschone luitenant Kathleen Nash ontdekken de kroonjuwelen van Duitsland – meer diamanten, robijnen, emeralden, saffieren en parels verzameld tesamen op één plaats buiten de Tower van Londen. Nash en Durant stelen de juwelen en brengen ze naar New York, waar ze te maken krijgen met gangsters die de buit ook willen veroveren. Het wordt nog erger als Princes Sophie de diefstal van de juwelen ontdekt en haar beklag doet bij het Amerikaanse hoofdkwartier. Zullen Nash en Durant, met de gangsters en het leger achter zich, trouw blijven aan elkaar en aan het afgesproken plan? Of zal de één de ander verraden?
After her divorce I moved with Marje Jack to an apartment that we, as lodgers, shared with another divorced single-mother and her daughter. On the left below you can see me celebrating May Day with Kirsi, our landlady's daughter, on the balcony, and must say that we look like the reunion of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. In those days I received a diary as a birthday present from my foster grandmother, and could you imagine what was the first thing that a nine-year-old boy wrote to that book since he was only male living among females: "Sometimes, especially when Kirsi wears bikini, I wish I was a girl." One day my dear Uncle Ari found the key of my locked diary, opened it and read everything. I was so embarrassed that since then I haven't kept any diary. Nevertheless, the closest thing to transvestism that this otherwise straight Glen did was wearing a kilt at a school party many years later.
Awaking Fat Beauty?
