How to Be a Panu
As there are so many Panu fans out there, as well as ostensible Panu-haters who in their heart of hearts admire Panu, while unable to admit it openly, I herewith supply them with a generous wealth of information about HOW TO BECOME LIKE ME! The guide has been written in English, although at least an Irish version will soon be available, because knowing languages other than English is part of being a Panu, but if you are just aspiring to become a Panu, you still most probably only understand English.
Being a Panu is comparable to belonging to an exquisite and original culture not found outside Panuland (for the time being, this ancient, culturally rich, and civilised country is located in Turku), and consequently, I have modelled this Guide to Panu-ness on the example of my friend Mark Rosenfelder's culture tests.
You saw it on TV? Well, I have no TV to see it on...
- You are vaguely familiar with most Finnish and international pop singers who entered show business before 1985 (since that year, you have been living by yourself without a TV set). Newer arrivals you find rather difficult to place. However, if you happen to listen, say, more recent Finnish rock music, chances are that you don't find it that disagreeable. You do appreciate Aki Kaurismäki's films because they remind you of the world of your childhood and because they show people speaking formal, literary Finnish even in situations where no genuine Finn (with the exception of yourself) would. However, generally speaking you have no pop culture preferences you would feel strongly about.
- You have little idea about the rules of any ball games. You did watch ice hockey with your Grandpa when you were young, but these days you find the behaviour of ice hockey supporters so disgusting you boycott the game. However, if you would be socially compelled, you would certainly be able to watch a game of ice hockey right through without getting bored. You do take a liking in basket ball for sentimental reasons, because it was the only ball game at school you did enjoy playing. You do understand that there should be people addicted to watching NBA games, because even you must admit it is a spectacle worth seeing when a two-meter-tall and rather heavily-built black guy jumps high to score two points.
- You are still so unaccustomed to leading a normal working life that you put up with lower pay and shorter vacations than most people at your age would, although you do think that trade unions, strikes, and that sort of thing are part of any civilised and democratic society and should be supported as a matter of principle.
- You do not taste alcohol, smoke cigarettes, smoke pot, or use other kinds of mind-altering drugs. You have been drunk once, and you have consequently acquired an intellectual understanding for why some people want to get pissed or stoned, but you still prefer reading and thinking as the most suitably mind-altering methods: you certainly feel rather drugged and hallucinating after reading a little Jorge Luis Borges. You think of your teetotalism as part of a noble family heritage you are proud of, and resent all insinuations about it as a symptom of your being a slave of your upbringing. If you were visiting India, you might take a sip of some bhang beverage as a local delicacy, but then you would most probably not be aware of it containing cannabis.
You are an atheist, but I am an intellectual
- As a member of Lutheran church, you most certainly believe in God or at least trust and hope that there is some kind of universal justice up there to see to it that our struggle down here is not in vain. The life and death of Jesus does mean "the greatest story ever told" to you, and you can be reduced to tears by some aspects of it. However, you think of Devil, Heaven, and Hell mostly as metaphors, and you have certainly experienced all of them in this life. You do find religious fanatics irritating, but organised atheists you despise as a bunch of religious fanatics only marginally distinct from, say, Christian fundamentalists. You most certainly think that being an atheist or an agnostic is nothing very courageous nor original in the world of Finnish academia, and you have little love lost for anyone who is naïve enough to think the opposite. You do admit that it might be otherwise in other countries.
- You do eat a hamburger at McDonald's sometimes, but feel guilty about it.
- You own neither a telephone not a TV. When you still were the poor Bohemian, you could afford neither, and now you prefer to spend your money on Irish and Spanish books.
- You do not consider insects, dogs, cats or monkeys to be food. You could think of eating a guinea-pig, if it really is an Andean delicacy, provided that you were visiting Perú.
- It seems natural to you that telephones, railroads, airlines, and liquor traffic are not privately run. The recent move towards privatisation of such businesses makes you very unsettled and angry, and although you would never commit an act of political violence yourself, you think it is quite understandable that somebody would be enraged enough to detonate a bomb in protest against the privatisation craze. You have experienced it in your own life in a very concrete way that privatisation means inferior and deteriorating standards of service, and you just hate young people who actually believe the contrary. You think of young anti-globalisation activists as the salt of Earth, the warriors of justice, and the hand of God, although you are too old, too shy, and too Finnish to actually join them.
- You find a multi-party system natural, but you are increasingly frustrated at the corruption and cheap publicity stunts of politicians. You wouldn't mind a couple of genuine alternatives. However, you infinitely prefer the current situation to an American-style two-party system, which you would not be able to tell from a Soviet-style dictatorship. You think much of the global problems ultimately derive from the fact that Americans have no genuine democracy and never need to negotiate a workable compromise between half a dozen of different viewpoints.
- You expect Socialism and even some kind of Communism to be seriously defended, because such defence constitutes a vital part of societal dynamics and
political balance. At the same time, you would prefer Communists to admit that Soviet Union was a dictatorship and that Solzhenitsyn and the Medvedev brothers do not exaggerate its atrocities substantially; and you feel too settled or too bourgeois to really believe in any kind of Utopian alternative in politics. You think that you actually never departed from your grandparents' broadly liberal views, but that ideas perceived in other parts of the world as liberal are in Finland often denounced as loony left, so that people of natural liberal leanings tend to consider themselves leftist radicals, and be regarded as such by substantial parts of society.
- You might feel uncomfortable sitting next to a black-skinned person in a crowded bus, but then you feel uncomfortable sitting next to anyone in a crowded bus. You have friends and acquaintances who are more dark-skinned than the average Finn, and if they are girls, you probably think it makes them look more sexy. You think this whole racial issue has been inflated too much, and, being a Finn, you just hope that people would have the good Finnish manners to calm down and not to exaggerate.
- You think most problems could be solved if people sat down and thought clearly by themselves instead of repeating hackneyed phrases.
- You hope you will never need to take anybody to the court. You have yourself been once sued on dubious charges by an ex-girl friend, and the experience is still haunting you.
- You have a more or less fluent command of Irish, Swedish, German, Polish, and English; besides, you have a working knowledge of Russian and Modern Icelandic, and your Spanish does certainly exist. You also find Czech, Slovak, Upper and Lower Sorbian, Faroese, Scots Gaelic, Norwegian, Danish, and Catalan intelligible enough not to feel really "foreign". At home, you have text books in more exotic languages, from Persian and Basque to Hindi and Somali, and you try to learn them, but progress rather slowly. You tend to think that multilingual people are inherently better persons than monolinguals; but you know personally several monolingual persons of great integrity and honesty, as well as quite a lot of multilingual jerks. You think people who boast about their "foreign friends" are ridiculous: making friends with foreigners is commonplace.
- However, you cannot stand anyone who only speaks English. You think a monolingual English-speaker is one of the world's greatest evils, and your deep disdain for Americans is based on their being so ignorant of other languages (and so negative towards Spanish, which is one of your favorite languages, although you still do not speak it very well). You think that small languages should be preserved and developed to meet today's and tomorrow's needs, and you hope your contribution will help Irish to survive.
- You do not complain about taxes. Why should you? You find it much more irritating that you get so little in return for your taxes these days. There should be a strong state able to give value for money, no tax cuts.
- School and university should be free, at least for talented paupers like yourself. But rich bastards should pay twice for anything, or be shot on the spot. ("Rich bastards" are everybody with richer parents than yours, which means pretty well everybody else at the university.)
My opinion and the wrong opinions
- The date comes first: 14.2.1995 (and YOU can never forget the letter with that date)
- The decimal point is a comma. Only hopelessly Americanised traitors use a dot.
- A billion is a million times a million. Only hopelessly Americanised traitors say it is a thousand times a million.
- The Second World War was a sad and sordid business where decent people were often forced to take sides with thugs, scoundrels, and dictators. You think that your people should stop celebrating loudly their participation in the war, because killing, even when you have no other choice, is never worth celebrating. You are not a pacifist - in fact, you are such a very vindictive and spiteful person that it is almost unChristian - but you preferred community service to armed conscription because you could not identify with the militant nationalism of Finland today. However, you are also rather angry at the Russians for not admitting the atrocities their partisans committed against Finnish civilians, and you certainly do not trust their good intentions.
- You expect marriages be made of love, but you have less and less idea of what love is. You are not married, and these days you seldom desire any girl enough to fall in love with her. You do have occasional sex about twice a year with a well-selected female acquaintance, but as you have never lost your old-time religion, you feel guilty about it. If it were an option, you would certainly prefer to fall in love again.
- If a man makes love to a man, he is a homosexual. Knowing Finnish women, it would probably not be a bad idea after all. However, gays are mostly as dull and uninteresting as men in general. On the other hand, you think it is always fun to speak about girls with Lesbians; and the majority of the women you have slept with have been bisexuals. Probably sleeping with you is as much of a perversion as sleeping with another woman; but you have the good humour and sound self-relianceto find this rather amusing.
- If you are introduced to somebody in Swedish, you'll call him or her du. In Finnish, it is more tricky: you always feel like an idiot addressing an unknown person, because there is no etiquette. Most other languages have a standing rule to live by, and that is one of the reasons you feel less inhibited about speaking foreign languages to strangers than about doing it in your mother tongue.
- You prefer foreign films to be subtitled. Only children's programs are probably to be dubbed.
- You expect to be able to deal with government officials without paying bribes. You could not afford to pay the bribes anyway.
- If a politician has been cheating on his wife/her husband, you'll yawn and turn the page. Who would expect them buggers to do anything else anyway?
- You have no credit cards, and you would not consider a person having one to belong to "us".
- Labour Day is on the First of May.
I like Trek, but I am no Trekkie
- You like sci-fi, even space-opera, if it is well-written (Louis McMaster Bujold, Iain M. Banks), and these days you admit that you even like Star Trek. However, you take it as it is, harmless entertainment, and lunatic Trek fans who behave like religious fanatics scare you as much as religious fanatics of any other kind. You do appreciate the Klingon language as an inside joke between linguists, though.
- You did study history at school, but you only took an interest in it at the university. You think history should probably not be taught at school at all, because all those provincial patriots and fatherland fanatics from Ostrobothnia who come down here to study history will destroy the children by teaching them militarist crap about Finland in the Second World War. Teaching religion would be much more important, because it at least would stimulate moral and ethical ponderings among young people.
- You do not trust the Finnish Army, and you are genuinely scared of reservists' organisations who regularly make openly anti-democratic noises. You would like to ask the Chief of Staff if his army is going to protect you when a gang of your compatriot gun-buffs is coming to kill you.
- Your country has never been conquered by a foreign nation during its independence. However, when it belonged to Sweden, it was at least twice occupied by Russian troops - the second time, 1809, it was annexed to Russia. You understand that there are people who are proud of what they themselves accomplished during the war, but you don't like the way younger "patriots" try to bask in the light of heroism emanating from granddad's grave.
A proud man is a lovely man
- You are yourself proud, though, of your granddad having been a Member of Parliament during the war. Indeed, as the grandson of two elementary school teachers belonging to the first-ever generation of higher-educated native speakers of Finnish, you regard yourself as one of the best your country has ever given birth to: the third generation of people of humble origins who loved learning for its own sake, a truly self-made man, neither an ignorant peasant nor a decadent city gent. You feel obliged by this nobility, of course; and that is why you think it is your sacred duty, say, to help people learn better Irish.
- You measure everything in metric measures, and cannot understand Anglo-Saxons who still cling to their impractical avoirdupois system.
- You have no idea whatsoever of living in the countryside, but you think it is deplorable, because if you had, you would have a keener ethnological eye for visits to the Irish Gaeltacht.
- Comics means above all Finnish comics with an ironic or realistic slant. Your brother is a comics artist, and you appreciate his work.
- You don't have an idea of who actually appears on the talk shows these days. The Finnish talk show hosts, however, are all so bereft of anything resembling skill and professionalism that you are happy to have no TV set.
- Although a native speaker of Finnish, you think of Finno-Swedes as your own people, and other native Finnish speakers as more foreign than the foreigners, as they speak the same language as you, but think the wrong way about everything. You are also very irritated by the military barracks slang contaminating the Finnish (and the thoughts) of young people. You think Swedes from Sweden are mostly quite OK, but somewhat naïve, as their country has not a trace of the oppressive, violent, and thoughtlessly cruel mentality of Finland. You certainly do not think they are all homosexuals, as most male Finns seem to believe. You are prejudiced against French (as you do not speak their language), but in favour of Spaniards. You most certainly fancy some Spanish girl who has been helping you learn her language.
- The police are armed, but not with sub-machine guns. You are afraid the Americanisation of our society will put the sub-machine guns into their hands, however, if the forces of Good don't soon change the way this society is heading.
- If a woman is a little plumper than average, it probably makes her look better. You cannot stand those anorectic top-models, and you suspect that they constitute another destructive influence American ideals have on our society and values.
- The biggest meal of the day is in the afternoon. In the evening, there is tea and books.
Even I would make a better president than that bugger in Helsinki
- You think that your kind of people is not listened to enough in Helsinki. Hell, is there any kind of people those bastards do listen to, with the notable exception of industrialists and American economists?
- You don't care much about what family somebody comes from. It is nowhere near your family anyway, as regards civilisation, culture, and love of learning; and other things - such as money - do not matter anyway, provided that the person is not riff raff. Just about everybody else than you is riff raff, of course, but that's OK if they have the good manners to kowtow to Your lordship.
- You have little interest in ballet, but opera music is beautiful. You like theatre, but you actually go to one only when invited.
- You think a state church is a good idea, as far as it is a decent Lutheran one. The way those Catholic priests, cardinals, and other petty dictators behave in the unlucky countries where their erratic doctrine is still going strong is absolutely disagreeable, and although you are active in the Irish language movement, you do, in your heart of hearts, have something of an emotional understanding for Ian Paisley's attitude towards the Catholic church. Still, you personally know devout Catholics (no Finns, of course - probably Poles and Irishmen) who you like and appreciate. You still feel bad about the fact that your conservative friar friend Mícheál Ó Conchúir succumbed to his cancer just before you visited Ireland for the first time.
- You remember the names of all capitals in Europe. Leaders you probably cannot name.
- You are familiar with Mafalda, Lucky Luke, Corto Maltese, Milo Manara, Guido Crepax, Gotlib, and Moebius.
- You think welfare grants are part of any humane, civilised, and democratic society. Young people who mouth phrases about "every man for himself", you consider as today's equivalents of Fascists and Stalinists, the ultimate enemies of decent and righteous life. You have yourself survived for some time on grants, and are proud to have shared the misery of the poor man - an honour you feel unworthy of.
- You probably often come late for an appointment. You feel bad about it if it is a personal meeting with someone you like. As regards the others, however, they should have the good sense to be grateful that Your Lordship deigns to meet them at all. You might find it politic to apologise, but this is what you think, deep down.
- If you are talking to someone, you might be somewhat uncomfortable if the person approaches you nearer than the standard Finnish altercation distance (far, far). If the person is a beautiful Spanish girl, you certainly don't mind (provided that she is a non-smoker). It's her culture, after all...
- You very rarely show up at anybody's place - people usually show up at your place. When invited, however, you seldom bother to change clothes, although you do take a shower.