rafael pyton

People of the planet; call me U.N.C.L.E.

Welcome to the world, baby girl. It was the 28.10.2008, when down in NZ, little daddy-bro and mama E went from two to three. I love her from pictures; ’tis the cutest tiny girl you’ll ever see.

Tiny? 4 kg! And 55 centimetres of pure glory. Ooh, and you should see her puffy cheeks - the little lady simply melts my heart. I am dying to meet her. Dying!

Blimey. I am having such a major bout of baby fever right now! I want babies! Many babies! Boy babies, girl babies! Babies, babies, babies!

Do you remember the time when Radiohead was your favorite band? I remember it very well, and it takes me back… fresh out of the army gates, myself and two Swedish pals borrowed my dad’s black Saab, and set course for Denmark; more specifically, Roskilde.
It was the summer of 1994. I remember doing the driving from Karis to Copenhagen until a six-pack of elephant beer made me hand over the wheel for the final bit. I also happen to remember getting stopped at every border on the way back; I had the filthy look of rock festival written all over me - prominently sporting a t-shirt with a big marijuana leaf on it might also have had something to do with it. Ah, youth. [The Customs Department in Turku almost took the Saab apart in their search for 'funny' substances].

But what happened in between was even better. A small band called Radiohead had come to Roskilde, since they were getting some airtime on radio with a little song called Creep.
Some time mid-gig, rocking out in our heavy Dr Martens and army hair, we realized that they were rather good. Before the concert was over, I declared it the best live performance ever. Radiohead had arrived.
Later, we kept running into singer Thom Yorke in the festival area. Perhaps we were stalking him - it is possible, since we were happily wasted all festival long. It is amazing how terrific Tuborg tastes after 8 months of green beret torture.

Back home, I preached the word of Pablo Honey. A year later, in 1995, the second full-length album Bends was released. I can safely say that I have never listened to anything so much in my life. For the next half decade, Bends was the very best my ears could imagine.

Flying on your motorcycle, watching all the ground beneath you drop… yes, the best line from the album was written for me. LITERALLY.

In 1997, Radiohead came out with OK Computer. Critics still call it the greatest rock album of all time. Yes, better than Sergeant Pepper’s. Personally, I always thought that Bends was slightly more beautiful than OK Computer, but as the 20th century crept to a close, Radiohead was the biggest band in the world. They had come far since that night in Roskilde.

But what the funk happened?

In the process of trying to re-invent sound, beauty became agony. I kept a brave face, kept buying their albums - and the albums kept collecting dust. Yet, even though I didn’t listen to them, I convinced myself that Radiohead is so great, it must be me.

No more. While I started losing faith many years ago, the last drop came in the shape of their latest album, In Rainbows. The hapless critics hail it, of course, even calling it more accessible than usual. Wow, nice.
But I’ve finally had it, and will now proceed to commit sacrilege - o, never thought it would came to this - so, here we go: Radiohead is shit! I can not bear this whining crap anymore! I’d rather listen to white noise; at least that is coherent. But this.. this.. this jagged paranoia on an empty belly, this irregular sound of headache & stress, this birth-giving and fork-scraping, this psychology of impotence, it no longer fits my ear.

They lost it. They won’t find it again.

Hmm. Felt good.

I don’t even know what to say. I am so happy I can’t think straight, sit up, or lie down. Seventeen points down coming into the last two races. It was not going to happen - but it did. It really did. Or I’m dreaming… but don’t you dare wake me up!

I knew about Kimi Räikkönen long before he got into F1. I remember reading about his karting career, liking his style, thinking that this is the one, the next one. That he had a huge passion for motocross only confirmed it - tough enough, fearless, full of hate for second place. Yes, every awesome attribute was in place. The Iceman was created for speed. He was always going to be my favorite.

I know I gush like a Japanese schoolgirl. Shamelessly loving it, too.

Eventually, even if it takes some time, the fastest man will win a championship in the end. And… I told you - told you told you told you - he would at the beginning of the season. Ok, I lost faith about a trillion of times on the way, but in the end, I am not the one who owes someone a bottle of vodka [A bet taken at season's start; you know who you are!]

Brazil, Interlagos, 2007: excitement spelled out. I managed to watch the whole race without coronary incidents, although, in retrospect, it would have been smart to have had the ambulance on speed-dial. Never did the racing seem quite so tight, nor the last laps quite so long.
Well, you saw the race, so I’ll stop laying down rubber. The smoke has cleared and the champagne is being gulped down by the right people. Now, go back to your party - I do not condone sobriety tonight!

Most wins, least talking, fastest, coldest, hottest, best and most deserving. You can only go WOOHOO for so many times, but… WOOOHOOO!!! Kimi is world champion of the world, the whole world, the only world.

I have yet again ended up in Tallinn, not so strangely enough - and this time I’m staying for a couple of weeks… [now, why did I put three dots after that sentence, as if to suggest something?]

Anyway, since I am working on a novel, geography is circumstantial. As a bonus, the apartment we are babysitting is a deluxe design in ballroom shines slash modernist lines; Vienna ballroom meets MoMa, mates [as in copulates]. Oh, it’s pretty big, too - there is an olive tree in the bedroom.

Funk! I always wanted an olive tree in my bedroom! Now I will just have to get one!

About that novel - a half-mad teenage adventure story for adults - I cracked the 100.000 word barrier yesterday, yeah, went right through the fucker like it wasn’t even there… and you gotta ask yourself, do you feel good about that? YES!
Shouldn’t be long now before I unleash the first part of The Interzone trilogy on unsuspecting publishing companies. Oh, they certainly won’t know what hit them - but… if that is good or bad, I refrain from speculating.

Such is the update on life in general.

Since it’s my blog and I write what I want to [melody: It's My Party], I thought I would celebrate my mother. We all should do it more often; mothers are what makes the world revolve & evolve. Shame on you if you only remember yours on Mother’s Day.

According to the proverbial story, genuine love rarely strikes twice. But for the first time since my father died over eight years ago, my mother is finally happy again. Earlier this year, she met a terrific man - I am very fond of him myself - and as of this week, they live together in a beautiful white villa in the wondrous idyll of the archipelago.

If it sounds like a real-life fairytale, you heard me right. It is, and she deserves it, happily ever after. She’s stood by me throughout time, supported me beyond means, sat by my hospital bed week in week out; I owe her my life in so much more than one way.

Mum, what you have done for me is something I will never be able to repay - but I still intend to thank you eternally.

Love, the firstborn.

It will come as no surprise to you to learn that I don’t believe in horoscopes. While I may be a freak with a superstitious streak when it comes to luck - and the more omnipotent kind, bad luck - horoscopes are please, no thank you, but the neighbours might buy something.

The position of the sun, the moon and the planets are pure astrophysics. Astrology, on the other hand, is a hoax the size of religion, and almost as successful in fooling generations of populations.
That celestial bodies in infinite space could influence the course of our individual human affairs, of you and me and love and hate and the color of our shoes, is a pretty wild deal. I think I’d rather buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

Yet, as I spent half a night trying to refute horoscopes to my girlfriend, it struck me how incredibly skilled the chart-makers are with adjectives.

I am a TAURUS. According to Wikipedia, I am thought to have a calm, patient, reliable, fair, loyal, affectionate, sensuous, ambitious, and determined character. Generally, there is something distinctly sensual about the appearance. The Taurus person is resourceful, thorough, dependable, responsible, placid, stable, comfortable, solid, earthy, strong, money-oriented, practical, productive, cautious, musical, and artistic. They can also be stubborn, indulgent, insecure, acquisitive, possessive, rigid, stodgy and slow, and prone to hedonism, laziness, inflexibility, habituality, jealousy, and antipathy.

Eerie. Apart from musical [can not play an instrument to save my life] and jealous [seem to be practically immune to heavy jealousy], what you read above is a good slice of me… hey, hold it! Before you laugh, I conducted an experiment; I wiki’ed every star sign to see if they don’t just make ‘em one size fits all.
The result was that while they all fit me to some extent, and while a predictably fair deal of the adjectives are the very same but appear under different aliases, Taurus still gets closest to the eye of the bull.

Thus, I’m faced with a very vague but strange sensation of why, well why not? In the name of fun and games, that is. Life is an amusement park, in case you didn’t know - although many of us get firmly stuck in the tunnel of horrors from time to time.

In the end, the only confession I can offer is this one: I like to believe in things I know are not real - intellectually, you can pull off believing in fiction and Santa Claus - whereas I find it extremely hard to place any faith at all in the kind of supernaturalism many others take violently seriously, such as gods and predestinations and a life after death.

Ha! If the judges won’t give it to me, I’ll take it some other way! Yes! Yes! I will take your silver plate for everything you have, I will take it every which way and all the way, all the way to Interlagos!

Justice. Yesterday, she was a nasty cunt. Today, she a tender virgin mistress.

Hamilton-mania has just been temporarily quelled. What makes it even sweeter is that it came in the form of a rookie mistake - on the way into the pitlane, none the less. Oh, stranded in the gravel like a beetle on its back, la la laah.
Admittedly, it took me quite awhile before I dared express my joy in the loudest way, because I kept waiting for that Mercedes tractor to come and lift him out…

Better wet than dry, a wise man once said.

One GP left; sure, Hamilton will probably come through in the end, but ‘probably‘ is still beset by an infinity of opportunities. Balls have been curved worse before. The momentum of the poll is turning, turning, turning…

Lewis Hamilton — 107
Fernando Alonso — 103
Kimi Räikkönen — 100

May the FORZA be with you! My Kimi-For-Champion campaign is poised for the final, the finale, the battle royale.

For the love of the bottle; Winos In Veritas has been comprehensively overhauled, updated, amped and oomphed!

-> Finger your bald mouse: Winos In Veritas!

Hang your hang-over out to dry. It was never this easy to drink well.

We are truly a superpower of driving!

Heikki & Kimi, two Finns on the podium of the F1 Fuji GP, making a sandwich of winner Hamilton, who became the mushy filling in the greatest Karjalan piirakka [pirogue] ever baked!

If it was up to me - and it never is but should be - I would keep all F1 races in the wet. Certainly, the drivers don’t like it, but can you honestly feel sorry for anyone making a trillion bucks PA? Indeed - so crank the entertainment up to eleven and crack open the skies. Wash away the boredom with some dirty dancing racing; this is what the public wants! We want action! We want lions at the Coliseum! We want nasty gladiator fighting and loud thunder slash lightning!

Lucky rookie Hamilton all but clinched the whole caboodle - ignore. He, like the terror that was Ol Shoe, is a pathological winner, and you can’t touch those. But it would be nice to see him stall his car just once…

None the matter. The world is run by the unipolar force of superpower Finland. Obey. OR we shall send our drivers to invade your country.