Sminking in Helsinki

Residents on their way to work in Helsinki two weeks ago were surprised to get handed free copies of a local tabloid – but unlike every other day, this one was full of good news! The fake paper was printed by Finnish activists, inspired by the New York Times Special Edition. But while our NY Times was dated six months ahead, these guys got a bigger crystal ball and published a paper dated in 2025. You will be happy to learn that Finland in 2025 is nearly carbon neutral and only fair trade products are legal. Also, fox farming has been made illegal. Fox farming? The foxes were just a small part of the ink given to animal rights in the paper: in fact the front page of the paper had not a single photo of a human face on it, but instead sported three separate pictures of foxes, chickens and a cow, all giving the reader the hairy eyeball. The focus on animals was in no small part down to one of the participating activist groups: Animalia. They also saw to it that the role of meat production in climate catastrophe was given its fair share of ink.  (A 2006 United Nations report found that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined. Oops, I better back off of those reindeer steaks and pledge to be a veg!) Like many northern countries, Finland is very good at eating meat, so the issue is no small potatoes here.

So, I arrived just after the fake paper was handed out. The folks who put the paper together also started the Lens Politica festival, where they graciously premiered The Yes Men Fix the World. There was endless press interest in Survivaballs… we spent some serious time wandering around bleak places scaring dogs for national news crews - whose hosts were not beneath wearing survivaballs. But all that aside: the festival was great, and we had a workshop where local ideas were hatched… stay on your toes Nokia!

One more thing:  I learned a new word: smink. It means 'make up' in Swedish. But it has been adapted to English and is now being used a bit like a less smug and less self-serving version of ‘blag.’ It can be used as a verb 'to smink', a noun 'a smink', an adjective 'sminky', an adverb 'sminkingly' etc.  I’m not sminking.