Yellow fiction

Chosen headlines from a Finnish yellow paper for today:

• Äänet kaivoksessa huolestuttivat Chilen mainareita jo ennen turmaa (“Sounds in the mine made the miners worry even before the accident”; here the Finnish word could just as well be “voices”)
• Lady Gaga osallistui salaiseen seremoniaan ennen Suomen-keikkoja (“Lady Gaga took part in a secret ceremony before her Finnish gigs”; I almost wrote “before his”, which no doubt is psychololological or something)
• Eversti olikin perverssi sarjamurhaaja (“The colonel turned out to be a pervert serial killer”; I can’t quite replicate the mind-boggling casuality of the Finnish formulation)

The sad thing is, much in the manner of such papers everywhere, those stories aren’t quite as interesting once you dig into them.

If only…

* * *

“Hello miners! This is the invisible, intangible mine safety gnome! Would be a good time to take a holiday now!”

“Yes yes! Machu Picchu’s looking good this time of year!”

“Buuuuuu—”

“Don’t listen to that guy! He’s evil! Evil I tell you!”

“Yes he is!”

“—uuuuyyyyy Snickersssss…”

“I grant it is a bit hard being an invisible, intangible pink mine safety gnome, but do you have to be a sellout too? A shill for the candybar industry? They don’t even have a kiosk here, you moron!”

“Moron!”

* * *

“And this flag, what’ll I do with it?”

“Wipe.”

“You Finns are crazy, you know that, right?”

“It is not craziness. It is a feud of the ages.”

“Sigh. But to have to wipe with your neighbors’ flag to get to perform…”

“What, you mean they don’t do the same in Sweden and Russia?”

“What? No! Absolutely not!”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, unless this ought to be my manager’s job, no.”

“And we were so sure! So sure that if they could, they would.”

“Isn’t this a bit… petty… anyway?”

“Well… It came up in talks. After midnight. In a sauna. And we were drunk. And there was this big silence. And then Jari said… ‘Do they realize every time they’re skipping us, they bastards, nothing performing here, they’re insulting us, they are, they’re wiping their asses with our flag?’ And come morning Pekka calls me and says, ‘You know what Jari said they do, that seems like what foreigners would really do; let’s do it too!’ And now come to think of it Pekka does own a flag-making business and has a… a… excrement consuming smirk? …so maybe you have a point and that was why the, the Back Street Boys were not happy.”

“Weird Finns.”

“You’re the one to say.”

* * *

“You got a new CO?”

“Yeah.”

“Any good? Smart, snappy, fulla drive and charisma?”

“No. A pervert serial killer.”

“What?”

“Makes me take a long look in the mirror, you know. We’re about killing people, but it’s wrong to do it during the peacetime, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

“And we should use guns. Not jell-o.”

“How… how do you kill someone with jell-o?”

“Slowly.”