Where's The Gloom?

I now continue my self-centered blog--but I repeat myself--from Helsinki, Finland.  I add the country name to my location because, when I was having my dog Scooter cleared for travel at the TSA post in the international terminal of Chicago's O'Hare Airport, the security officer, after learning that my dog's final destination was Helsinki said to him, "So you will be learning German!"   Ah, America; where Knowledge is King.  And we reject all royalty.

After I explained to the TSA agent that Helsinki is not in Germany but in Finland--or, to use its formal name, The Netherlands, I had my last American dinner for the next 7 months.  Pizza.  Naturally.

             Aside from learning that very special lesson in geography, my flight out of Chicago provided me with very useful intelligence about how to scam innocent people into treating me with friendliness and helpfulness.  But let me continue my tale from its beginning.

Want to be treated better than you deserve?  Of course you do.  Because, frankly, sufficiently depraved, loathsome and despicable tortures necessary to treat you as you truly deserve have not yet been devised.  And, compared to me, you are Saint Augustine.  So believe me when I say that any method that worked for me would come up aces for even a disgusting and horrible individual such as yourself.  And boy oh boy, did this method ever work for me!

When I showed up at O’Hare Airport--located in a town where “friendly” means they only give you the finger with one hand—I knew with absolute certainty that every cost and fee I had been told I would have to pay would be less than half of the costs that I would actually encounter, and that I would have a prolonged fight just to get the seat I had already paid for.  And that, despite my repeated telephone confirmations that my dog could travel with me, they would discover at the airport that there was some rule that they could not transport a dog of his breed, or his weight or his eye color.  (As you can see, I am quite the happy-go-lucky optimist.)

I still believe that all of my demented, depressive expectations would have been well founded—except that my dog is cuter than a teddy bear.  “Oh, he looks like a little lion!” the woman at the ticketing counter exclaimed.

 

So, of course, she told me that I did not have to keep him in his travel crate, but that I could walk him through one of the busiest airports in America on a 15 foot leash.   And, of course, she changed my seat assignment to an aisle seat on an exit row.  And did the same thing on my connecting flight.  And charged me $100 less than what I had been quoted for shipping Scooter.  Of course.  And as for Scooter's behavior in one of the busiest airports in America, well, you need to understand that Scooter has never met a stranger he didn’t suspect of being a chain-saw murderer:

What Scooter sees:

 

 

 

What the rest of us see:

  
          

Well, to my delight, Scooter chooses that moment to engage in his first ever charm offensive.  I swear, he could have given lessons on adorable-ness to little girls in pigtails.  And I made sure everybody knew, “He’s with me.”  (It just now occurs to me that Scooter may have always known how to be adorable and charming, but was saving it for deserving people.  How unlucky can I be?  To end up with a dog capable of moral judgments.  Even worse, one capable of accurate moral judgments.)

 

Nonetheless, we arrived safely in Finland without Scooter's fiendish plan to find a more likeable master coming to fruition.  And Finland was happy to see us!  And I'm sure you've already guessed what "us" means in that sentence.  As my fiancée Raija points out as she introduces us, "This is Scooter!  He's so sweet!  Don't you just love him?   .  .  .  And this is my fiancé.  He came along with Scooter."  Damn right I did.  As the musical geniuses Poison wisely observed,"Every rose has its thorn; Just as every bridge has its troll;  And every dog has its prickly, troll-like master.  But ice-cold vodka will help you tolerate him."

 

The first weekend we were here, we went to a World Village Festival.  It was great fun.  Except for this strange object in the sky.  What happened to the gloom and depression I had been promised?  Here is what I mean:

 

Sunshine!  Blue skies!  People wearing shorts!  People smiling!  I've been bamboozled!  I even have a smile on my face!  Or a pained grimace.  For me I'm not sure that there is a difference.  What can I do?  Must I surrender to being happy?  I will be running a half marathon this weekend.  I still have the hope that I can find real misery in that activity.  Please, if you have any compassion, take a moment to send me negative vibes.