I fell in a bush today..

..but it didn't stop me from writing a new blog post. 

Verkkokauppa sent me my new drawing tablet, which took a while to get used to, but I think we're going to be friends. Just fine for my doodling.

I missed the Olympics opening ceremony AND the Olympics closing ceremony, but that isn't going to stop me from writing an Olympics-inspired post, either.

Okay, it's kind of a far-fetched connection. But when I watched an Italian (Rossi) shoot 99 luftballons clay pigeons out of 100, I started to think about all the different kinds of sports, and came to the conclusion that Finland's share requires further investigation. 

About a month ago I watched a video on YouTube which started like this:

Okay, so there wasn't a cow. But they were totally serious about it and either didn't know or didn't care about how silly they looked. This sport is wife-carrying and I am proud to announce that Leonard (also known as Ari) and his wife are going to take part in next year's wife-carrying championships after I pointed out that they have the best possible setup. The couple in the documentary-style video I watched weren't actually husband and wife - they met each other on a wife-carrying forum, people.

One thing they apparently won't budge on, though, is the serious expression you must wear the whole time, like it's totally a sensible sport.

I saw an exhibition about the sport below at the museum in Kuopio. I don't know much about how it started, but this is what I choose to believe happened:

Anthill sitting is a thing. There is a world record. I don't know anything else.

Of course, Finland is (in)famous for its sauna championships. The sauna is usually a relaxing place where you sit peacefully in a dark, hot room while your friend smacks you with a whip. But then at some point, this happened:

Then it wasn't fun anymore. The last tournament saw a Russian guy die because the final two contestants took it far too seriously and passed out. The Russian guy had taken painkillers beforehand to deal with the pain (always an indicator of fun) and had to be dragged out of the sauna, where he died after convulsing. The Finnish guy went into a coma for two months. In spite of that, I promise saunas are nice and relaxing, and don't result in death or coma if you use them properly... hey, where are you going?

Boyfriend mentioned that there's also wellington boot (my British for "rainboot") throwing - made, of course, from Nokian rubber. Instead of drawing a picture, I give you: The Boot Throwing website. Read the poem!