[Herra Tohtori]

"Your levity is good. It relieves the tension, and the fear of death." -T-850 model 101

Anyway... There's a quite melancholic (but not overly IMO, considering the subject) song made by a band called Sir Elwoodin Hiljaiset Värit. It's Finnish, so I had to come up with an emergency translation, 'cause I did want to post it here but it wouldn't have had quite the impact if it was just Finnish. The song is called Kymmenen tikkua laudalla, roughly "Ten sticks on the board". I don't know if any of you are familiar with this game, it's basically a variation of hide-and-seek where ten sticks are bounced onto air and the seeker has to gather them onto the board and during this time, the other players get out of sight... it's a bit more complex than that of course (children's games always tend to be), but that'll suffice for now.

So, here goes. Original lyrics: J. Lehti (Finnish lyrics can be found in multiple places through www, for example here


Ten Sticks on the Board


Father standing on the beach with a gun in his hand waiting for the tempest
Mother holds little sister on arms, when the sky at evenings turns purple in a way strangest

About my brother I last time heard when a letter came here from a weird land
Told he was all right, but that the situation there, too, looked unbelievably bad


:;This ten sticks on the board and gone
We're hiding at the last of the beaches alone
And nobody's looking for us more, this is empty and pointless chore
And the wind just whispers: "Everyone out of hiding"


Uncle has somehow lost something, he's sitting in the annex laughing, crying
Accuses both Satan and God and claims: "now we're being punished for our sins"

It's awful quiet in neigbour, a week ago the curtains were closed there
Father told not to go there, said: "what they've done, theyr own business it is... our concern is here"


:;This is ten sticks on the board and gone...


I'm only a seven-year-old but I do understand already something
When the TV is dead and I heard the newsreader in the radio crying

They're talking about some cloud that still is on its way towards us
Little sister asked: "How many days until Christmas?"
And father was wiping his eyes, father was wiping his eyes

:;This is ten sticks on the board and gone...



Powerful words, I'd say. I hope I've managed to conceive at least a bit of the Finnish text's energy into the translation. Finnish people here, tell me what do you think about it. I first heard the song quite young, and while I didn't understand the meaning of the words themselves quite accurately, I did get the impression that the people the song tells about are ****ed up quite bad. Only after many years I understood just how bad.

Ironic, isn't it? 15 years after the cold war was essentially over, the risk of nuclear war is still there. Even though it's still quite unlikely IMO, it still sends shivers down my spine. I can only imagin how people felt during the Cuban missile crisis.

Urgh.

[aceofspades]

My former Social Studies teacher once said that when he was a teenager he often didn't believe he would live into adulthood.

[Flipside]

Yeah, my parents said it was pretty nasty, no-one knew if they'd be alive the next day.

For my part, I remember the late 70's, when tensions were still high, and the Nuclear Air-Raid siren near me malfunctioned and went off at 2am one morning.

That was the scariest night of my life. The only time I've felt like that since was when the London bombs went off, since I was on the tube about a mile and a half away from one of the explosions.