Saturday, May 12, 2007

The things that escape you - Markku and the conscripts

Phil from Finland for Thought has been interviewed by him. He's a MySpace friend of my (Finnish) daughter. (In fact, he's now a MySpace friend of me, admiring my R2D2 picture.)

But I'm missing half of what is going on when Markku speaks.

Much of Markku's unhinged humour hinges on hyper-literal translations of Finnish words into English. For instance, the "morning comb" mentioned in the title of the TV programme is a reference - completely lost on foreigners - to conscripts nearing the end of their service, counting down the number of mornings that they still have to wake up in the barracks: traditionally, the spikes on a plastic comb are used to help count off the remaining days to freedom. The "empty" comb is then tossed away.

So if you're looking at a Finnish conscript, see how messy his hair is.

P.S. Speaking of MySpace, you may (or may not) want to see what I said there about hockey, as well as what I said about Tracy Simers and salami snot (and no, the two topics are NOT related. I don't think.)

markku

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