#577 Party on Finland

You think you have it bad.
You could be living in Finland. Sometimes I think it might be cool to live in Midnight Sun-land grazing with the reindeer.
But not often.
Recently I read how Finland was the top nation in the world for cellphone ownership. Which I guess makes sense for a country whose main manufacturing claim to fame is Nokia.
As has been proven in underdeveloped third world countries, cellphone towers are a lot cheaper to build than infinite miles of phone cables. Permafrost is a real bear for laying cable. No wonder the wireless revolution found Finland at its heart.
Still, as they say, you can take a boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.
Or as we say around here: You can’t take the Okey out of Hoquiam.
A sure way to tell about a place is the types of celebrations and festivals their people have. We have Lakefair. Although many see it as the annual gene pool stirring for our outlying communities of Bucoda, Oakville and Pe Ell, it’s still ours and we love it.
Finland has the annual Mobile Phone Throwing Contest. Mobile indeed. Points are given for aesthetics and choreography. Apparently, frustration over missed calls and dropouts is universal. And it’s natural to stylize those things that aggravate us the most.
Witness the human body’s response to disco music.
But Finland ain’t all that modern. It’s also the proud retro-chauvinistic host of the Wife-Carrying World Championships. Forty men race through 250 meters of obstacles, including a pool, each carrying his wife. The winner gets her weight in beer. More people would enter, but one of the obstacles is carrying the wife’s shopping bags in Finland’s only mall.
Perhaps that explains the many Finlanders who choose to take part in Pamplona’s annual running of the bulls instead.
Speaking of which, maybe it’s a northern climate thing. Because in Montana, on August 1 through 7, they have the Annual Testicle Festival, where 15,000 cowboys go n--, um, crazy, and consume 2.5 tons of former bulls’ prairie oysters.
I guess, in perspective, Finland ain’t that bad.
America ya gotta love it