Mustard Friends

Right now I'm just mad that this Finnish comedy song, Sinappitutut ("Mustard Friends"), based on a viral surreally bizarre Finnish internet event, is only available to enjoy in Finnish because it is truly a classic of all time. The group Kalevauva.fi typically makes their comedy songs out of quotes from the Finnish website vauva.fi (baby.fi) (so Finnish mumsnet?), but this thread occurred on a different messageboard.

Basically what happened is that a woman asked the board at large at what point in a relationship they became Mustard Friends, and then everybody else was like "Became what?" and she acted like it was a term everybody knew but she had just made it up, and insistently maintained an attitude of innocent confusion while explaining that she obviously meant the kind of friends who know each other well enough to comfortably eat mustard in front of each other. Everybody thought she meant various different kinds of euphemisms, but she actually felt that there's something inherently dirty about mustard, the condiment, something unromantic, that makes it inappropriate for a woman to eat in front of a man she's in a relationship with, and as a result, she herself employs various strategems to surreptitiously get mustard when eating condimentable foods, without asking for mustard and making it clear that she wants to eat mustard. The thread kept going for a long time due to a minority of earnest and well-meaning seekers of truth trying to work out any logic or reason and failing.

Antiques update: MIL's Cousin Lotta & her Von Knighthood husband

have carted the Venetian parcel-gilt racist statue torchiere away with them and committed to also buy the secretary desk and the neo-Rococo gilt mirror with a rooster finial, as well as a miniature (for train travel) bar set (of four decanters and twelve tiny cocktail glasses, all engraved, in Art Deco style brass holders in a fold-out wooden case). They think it will make a good 40th birthday present for their son this year: apparently he likes cocktails. Lotta also took an amethyst parure - necklace, ring, earrings - to have it valued at a goldsmith near where they live. They're going to have the mirror valued too, and they've already given us a thousand bucks for the torchiere and the desk.

Wax's aunt Pu is supposed to take the pair of Jennylund armchairs off our hands, which would almost make the bedroom livable again.

I've met them most recently at the funeral, of course, but going through MIL's box of old photos recently, I had images of them in the 1970s at the forefront of my mind - wedding and christening snapshots and family parties taken by both MIL and FIL (they were university friends of MIL & FIL). Of course I said, "I recognized you from the photos!" and Von Sir said "But we were at the funeral anyway" and I was like "Oops yeah...". The truth is I don't really remember anybody from the funeral, it was just a blur of old people in black.