Pahkasika

Nine years ago my favourite magazine was cancelled. I haven’t really paid my respects to it in proper way, so here, have an entry. When I was just a wee little critic, I spent my days reading this legendary magazine.

This magazine was called:

Pahkasika started as a kind of an inside joke between students, even it’s name (warthog) was chosen just because it sounded funny. The creators didn’t really plan to do more than one episode of it, but they noticed how people actually wanted to read it and it grew bigger and bigger. It established itself fast as a quirky humor-ridden and Finland’s only humor magazine. It was like Finland’s own Mad, only that Mad sucked when compared to this as they were not able to be so incredibly politically incorrect than what Pahkasika could be.

How politically incorrect were they? Well, how about dead baby jokes:

The "understanding the world"-one is my favourite

Or how about picking on people’s disabilities?

Super disablo!

This goes on for several frames, so let's jump straight to the conclusion

Translation note: the finnish word "vammainen" clumps mental and physical disabilities into the same term, so to keep the intended mood of the story I use the word "retard"

Even Lassie wasn’t spared!

Not even Lassie, people!

And as the last example of the incorrectness.. nazi jokes.

They even have tiny little swastika flags!

What’s strange about these nazi jokes is that they are thrown in so lightheartedly. They call Hitler “onkel Adi” and it’s apparently a children’s show or something and they just casually watch it on TV and then it is not mentioned ever again in the comic.

The comic those jokes come up is “Hemmo Paskiainen” (Dude Bastard) a series that ran with the Pahkasika for the majority of the magazine’s life and now that Pahkasika is no more, Hemmo Paskiainen still goes on. The comic goes around Hemmo and his father Armas Paskiainen (Darling Bastard) getting into trouble with various different characters. I fucking loved that comic, and still do. Some of the strips don’t even tell a joke, they are just dark and I’m left with this awkward feeling in the pit of my stomach.

This isn't even the worst. This just was the easiest to translate.

But mostly it made me feel all dirty and bad for laughing. And I loved it.

Anyone who says I was a bad person even before I laughed at this joke will die.

If it’s something finns know how to do, it’s dark humor. The dark overtones were overwhelming in the whole history of this magazine.

I always wanted to see Tom kill Jerry but.. oh my god not like this! Not like this!!

This one is probably the worst:

Oh, and I read both of these stories when I was in elementary school, so if anyone wonders why I’m this fucked up..

Shut up, I was a pretty baby

Though, they really managed to deliver dark jokes that made you laugh more than they made you feel bad. Like “Big Sleep” tablets “for the whole family” because “Every human has a right to avoid slow and painful nuclear death!”

Or this article about “How to be a good person”

You can just imagine what they suggest..

And here’s Pahkasika’s prediction about the future of our porn magazines. They have noticed a trend for harder and harder stuff so they think this is inevitable:

Necrotica - corpse porn's special magazine!

..but then again, I find this band absolutely hilarious:

Small note: DO NOT GOOGLE PICTURES FOR THIS CD I SWEAR IT’S NOT WORTH IT, google Goblin Cock instead, that band’s cover for “Bagged and Boarded” is hilarious!

But back to Pahkasika. And especially to the comics that ran with the magazine. Hemmo Paskiainen was just my personal favourite but they had others like..

Jurpo – a strip comic that relied on the punchline

Vanhat Herrat (The Old Gentlemen) – a few-pager that usually carried on an obnoxiously stupid plotline when these two men thought they were being rightous and charming.

Miihkali – it relied entirely on text. It read like a children’s book but would often tell a rather dark story, even that it was never nearly as bad as the other comics and skits on this magazine.

I wish I was that calm when falling head first into shit!

Pahkeinen (Dammit)- A bland and boring strip comic about an old man with a funny name.

And last but not the least

Peräsmies (Fartman) – strip comics of alternative lengths and every joke was a fart joke. Made me giggle as a kid.

It was a comic entirely revolving around a pun. You see, Superman is “Teräsmies” (fun fact! Superman is Steelman in finnish teräs = steel mies = man) so this guy is Peräsmies. The comic was still surprisingly long-lived. It “died” with Pahkasika.

Not all of the comics revolved around farts, sex and other variants of low humour. Some of them were honestly clever or had an actual message.

Like the comic where a little kid is born who can do ANYTHING from the very start of his life, he gets cloned and humanity turns into slobs who can’t even tie their own shoelaces.

Or this

You are the papers

Or this:

These kind of things kinda take you by surprise after all the joking and darkness. Or okay, these are dark too, and they’ve not prevented any wars or brought humanity closer to world peace, but this kind of thoughful things broke the mindless browsing of the book and created this certain kind of atmosphere.

They were a great tool in constructing the magazine, and made Pahkasika even quirkier.

There’s no other like Pahkasika. Only thing that goes kinda near this sort of humor is Myrkky, but they can’t bring the funny bodily function jokes with style! They just make things so obnoxious that you can’t help but smile just so it would go away, but Pahkasika brought the potty humor to almost intellectual level and broke actual taboos, unlike others. Come on, what other magazine YOU know that made jokes about necrophilia becoming mainstream? Vampires and zombies don’t count.

Many people remember Pahkasika in different ways and I remember how it made me laugh at things that I thought were impossible to laugh at. It was dark, it was funny, it created it’s own branch of humor and it must’ve been one of my greatest influences.

I will miss you for the rest of my life, Pahkasika

Rest in peace. I loved you.

Sources:

Pahkasika – Kymmenen kirjainta johon voit luottaa

Hemmo – Iskän poika

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahkasika_(lehti)