Drum'n'bass evening@Venue

The biggest difference between Tampere and Helsinki rave parties are in security arrangements. At Venue, there were 4 security guards present, one of them huge freezer-refridgerator combination with tattoos. They had radio phones. At one point in the evening, one of them pimp walked into the bar room, shoulders wide, his whole body language screaming "I guard here!"

In Tampere, there were less guards, they tended to be regular guys - just taller, they didn't have special equipment and they mainly stayed on the background.

When exiting the bar at 03.45, police patrols and guards were visibly present around Kamppi. I took a taxi home, since the night routes of buses were cancelled for Christmas. When I mentioned the taxi driver about tighter security at Venue, he first emphasized that in his opinion any conflicts should be solved primarily by talking. Immediately after that, he played his part in reifying the badass violent reputation of security guards by telling how the steroid beasts have very short fuse, how a customer died in the hands of a security guard, and how he the taxi driver himself had 4 years of karate training.

Probably Helsinki night is more dangerous, as all night shifters feel the need to emphasize their capability for violence. I have to admit that I don't like Kamppi and railway station late at night. I wonder if it is due to diversity, or because larger density of people directly means larger amount of scum per square kilometer.

Next opportunity to see the top pole dancers of Tampere

This time in more classy setting, and without misleading advertising. Hat tip: Ashta.

Satanic mass@Klubi, Tampere

Cavus, Behexen and Mayhem played a gig at Klubi yesterday. It's disturbing how much I liked it. I mean, satanic metal is for the schizos and adolescents who think it's cool to be bad, right?

First, Behexen lit up some candles and started an intense ritual of witchcraft, enchanting the audience under their spell, creating a serene atmosphere to get intoxicated and ponder fundamental questions like Why do I want to live instead of killing myself? or Why doesn't this show just stop in everyone bursting to laugh at it, and are the same tricks used to delude us every day?

Something in the evening created a whole which immersed like nothing before. Maybe it was black metal's fast, monotonic drumwork and its novelty. The dedicated audience. The witchcraft theme taken first to its logical conclusion and then over the top.

Mayhem is a good showcase of what happens when spirituality starts to wag the dog. The band had five members in the beginning of the 90s. One committed suicide, another was murdered by a third band member who went to jail, the fourth one resigned and only the fifth one was left to reinvent the band with new musicians and more professional attitude.

The old band's antics were so batshit crazy that they cross the parody horizon, and then some. Here's Panu's feeble failure to parodize metal:

Zombie Metalissa sun pitää niiku osata olla zombi jo eläessäsi. Zombi on niiku pystyynkuallu ihminen joka kulkee hei sillai niiku ropotti-rops eikä oo niiku missään kontaktissa niiku todellisuuteen. ... Zombiuteen kuuluu vittu että sun pitää olla vittu lähellä kualemaa, niin lähellä ku vaan voit.

One of Mayhem's dead band members was called Dead:

He (Dead) didn't see himself as human; he saw himself as a creature from another world. He said he had many visions that his blood has frozen in his veins, that he was dead. That is the reason he took that name. He knew he would die.

Wow, he could see into the future!

Before the shows, Dead used to bury his clothes into the ground so that they could start to rot and get that "grave" scent. He was a "corpse" on a stage. Once he even asked us to bury him in the ground - he wanted his skin to become pale. During one tour with Mayhem he found a dead crow, which he collected and stored in a plastic bag. He often carried it around with him and would smell the bird before performing, in order to sing "with the stench of death in his nostrils."

Now you may say "But yoga-style new age spirituality is different, because it aims to heal people!" The harmful beliefs of new age spirituality, like homeopaths opposing H1N1 vaccinations, are masked under the veil of healing. Should this mask make large audiences to buy their lies, the lies may cause more damage than the openly repulsive satanists.

Mainstream music is by definition something that you hear from many channels. This familiarity breeds boredom and contempt in me. Nowadays all the good and original stuff is made by bands on the fringe that I've barely heard about. By the way, this good fringe is not just metal, here's a sample of twee by When I Was 12.(Hat tip to 1000 Sparks.)

Hopelessly Romantic Harmonies from Kate Kell on Vimeo.

A clarification

At some point in my life, I got bored of drinking beer and went to the dancefloor, gradually developing a way to move my body to unknown rhythm, especially at electronic music events where dancing is the main thing and dancing alone isn't creepy as in discos.

Then I found the parapara style, and it was love at first sight. It is a Japanese dance form where the emphasis is on simple and fast hand movements, there are ready choreographies for songs and everyone dances in the same way. It is one of the few dance traditions that can be directly applied to the modern dancefloor.

In India, my standard daily routine after work was to go to gym and stretch hands by repeating parapara videos. When I returned to Finland, I taught myself improvisation with any music by just playing something on Winamp and doing some parapara moves.

Nowadays, I got zero inhibitions to go to the dancefloor with confidence. I wasn't making just any pick-up attempt, but trying to find a dance partner.

There was a time when "Saanko luvan?" was a standard opening. But judging from the really repulsive vibe that I got from the evening, and the complete lack of positive reaction on their behalf, this approach is by today's standards too enthusiastic and crude and has to be preceeded by complex and unintuitive things like personalized negging.

Why I don't usually go to bars to chase skirt

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
- Albert Einstein

The Way of the Pickup Artist would be to just go and get repeatedly rejected until you get comfortable with the appoach anxiety and find some working methods to start conversation.

My take is that it might perhaps be beneficial for me to repeat last night's attempts once a month to benchmark possible progress of social skills. It would also aid in conquering approach anxiety (a big factor which made me fail last night's surprise opportunity to witness seduction.)

However, Game is not very relevant when the issues I'm dealing with are the lack of eye contact and 2-line conversations.

The Lost in Music night was fun. Last night wasn't.

A different kind of bar evening

Today, I went to Inferno nightclub, a heavy metal disco. I went to pick up women (anticipating mainly rejection) as opposed to dancing (the main thing in electronic music events) and drinking beer (the main thing in non-discos.)

So, my plan and goal was that I'll propose to 3 groups of women, get rejected and leave the bar.

My first proposal didn't count, since the girl just ignored it, probably not hearing it.

The second proposal was to a group of 2 women with jacket (jakkupuku), as opposed to some rock/metal-spirited garment. Naturally their clothes were black, after all this was a metal nightclub. A song started which they liked and they went to dancefloor. I asked one of them if she wanted company for dancing. She said generally that this dancefloor is free-for-all. I said "great". Then I started to dance, trying to make eye contact with her, but she rejected me by moving opposite to her girl pair and dogmatically maintaining eye contact to her. I exited dancefloor after 3 minutes.

In the third case, there was a pair of girls. One of them got picked by another man, and one was looking bored. I went to ask her if she didn't feel bored to stay in place while others danced. While doing this, I noticed that she was probably older than me. I didn't hear what she answered, but she didn't raise from her chair.

The third case was again with the other girl from the jakkupuku group. She was dancing alone in the floor while the second girl was already sitting at a bench. I went to dance in front of her, trying to establish eye contact to start some chat ("You need company for dancing?"). She looked the other way and after 30 secs I went away.

Having reached my quota of 3 girl groups, I went to toilet. A man there started a chat. He asked how my evening was going, and I told that 3 groups of girls rejected me as a dance partner and after further inquiries that I was bored and open to suggestions. He suggested that I should join him and he would introduce me for some of his friends. After me showing enthusiasm he emphasized that I should behave smarter and less enthusiastic and talk less. I followed him.

Then the bad luck stroke. He went to talk to the same 2 jakkupuku girls which both had rejected me. When this tall, handsome man went to their table and laid his hands on the table, smiling, the girls returned with eye contact and the interested smile which I see in photographs all the time but which is never directed for me.

Now I had the opportunity to witness seduction by a natural alpha, but I failed even that. I said that I got rejected by exactly both of these girls, and I probably should leave. This violated his explicit instruction to act more smart and talk less. So I exited the bar...

Despite lack of success, this was a better result than my earlier bar evenings. When me and the natural alpha exited the toilet, a man entered it. This man had been dancing alone in the dance floor, trying to dance opposite to the girls, oblivious to their rejection and lack of reaction. The natural alpha laid some insult towards him ("idiot") probably for his dance floor behaviour.

This bar evening was the first time someone noticed I was making a conerted attempt to pick up girls, and enlisted my support for his own efforts, although I failed at giving this support due to drunkenness and situational factors.

Earlier, that alone-dancing idiot would have been me.

Lost in music

Waltari played at Lost in Music festival in Sputnik. But the best band once again was a semi-unknown one, Pitbull Terrorist. My reaction to Waltari itself disappoinment, the same as for most bands I last heard and liked when young.



Pitbull Terrorist is the Cause For Effect of black metal. Both PT and CFE have very short songs which game the listener's expectations - first forming expectations and immediately breaking them. They sound extremely fun when drunk - still able to analyze how they break patterns but not disturbed by their lack of own message.

Cause For Effect was the warm-up band for Canatata Sangui, a band which actually has things to say. Social constructionism had a big effect on my worldview when I was younger, and Cantata Sangui is one of the few bands that sings about constructionist themes. It's the one band whose lyrics I like most. (There are other bands which make greater music, and still others which strike a good balance between music and lyrics, and still others which are not that good by any standard but which successfully express their original message with the skill they have.)

Budapest: Good place to get some pussy

A review says "smoky, loud, small, crowded - and unapologetically so."

A better "bar" evening

This evening I achieved two conversation openers, and wasted only one hour.

Timeline of events (skip if you're in hurry)

After a lazy day I went to gym until it closed at eight. After eating at the Chinese restaurants which has replaced Atig Pizza (the meals are big and cost about 9e but it is not as fast as fast food. Overall, a good place if you're genuinely hungry, you get a big and healthy meal for a slightly bigger price.) I went to a party. I had talked with the organizer before and wanted to try my new social skills with him. I also wanted to dance to stretch my hands after gym training.

I entered at the same time as a man and a woman. After ordering I opened conversation:
me: "Have you been in this kind of sweg events before?"
he: "No, we just came here to wait for bus."
me: "Good way to spend a few mins...anyway, they don't usually have it here, it's usually at vastavirta or klubi."
After this the talk ended and they went to a table.

I waited for an hour for the dance to start. It didn't. After sipping the beer for one hour I left the bar.

In the bus stop, timetables had been torn away. I commented to a girl near the time tables "Of course _Saturday's_ time tables have been torn away!". She replied "Nii." Then I noticed that the electric display showed that bus would arrive in 10 minutes - enough to walk to the next bus stop. I realized that having opened the conversation I could ask the girl to accompany me in walk to the next stop, but 30 seconds has already elapsed, so the opening had "closed".

Initiative and implusiveness

Both conversation openings were exercises in making implusive initiative based on context. I want to practise impulsive initiative.

The two big differences between me and the men in relationships in India were exactly that they talked more and made more initiatives. If I become fluent in the game of talking and in making impulsive initiatives, the gap between me and them becomes much smaller.

Also, they say that impulsiveness is attractive to women.

I also missed one opportunity to impulsive initiative. When dancing didn't start at bar, I should have simply walked to some group and asked them if they want to dance to drive boredom away. A polite "no" or silence would have been the worst outcome, since in a dance music event the proposition would have been reasonable.

Didn't you just say you don't like bars...

I achieved the conversation opening in the first 2 minutes and just wasted the next 58 mins. The bottom line was positive only because I cut the losses, not because the bar gave much value for money and time spent. Stretching hands was necessary anyway, so having failed to do it at the bar I did it with some pp videos at home.

Things I hate in bars

Last night was both unusual and usual. It is unusual for me to go to bars (go & pool with male friends don't count). When I do go it always reminds me why bars suck.

1. Going there alone. Boring. Dancing makes it a little fun.
2. Hangover. The next day is lost.
3. Remembering all the little drunken mistakes.
4. Watching how everyone else seems to know something about bar behaviour which I don't.
5. No contact with the opposite sex (eye contact, for example). This is the advertized benefit of going to bars and bearing with the downsides, but in fact it never realizes.
6. Vague feeling that clever advertizers are manipulating me out of my time and money and giving back nothing but frustration.

After staying away for a few months I forget these and conclude that it must be better to spend the evening in the middle of people...in the middle of opportunities...which never realize.