High Energy American Internet Marketer Wastes Zeal on Shy Scandinavians

If Marty Browman had it all to do over again, he surely never would have embarked on his fateful trip to Finland. He knew that Finland is a small Scandinavian country with a population of approximately 5 million who are legendary for their shyness, reserve, and love of raw salmon. What he didn’t know was that behind Finland’s fairy tale exterior lies a land just waiting to gobble up the likes of unwary Internet marketers like trolls hunting tasty goats who cross their bridge.

Browman, who owns an e-commerce site selling what can only be described as face spackle for wrinkled women, was advised by his life coach to make a list of the 100 things he would like to accomplish before he died. Browman impulsively put “visiting Finland” on his list, an adrenaline-fueled choice caused by watching a giant slalom/herring race during the most recent Winter Olympics. Deciding that vicarious living was not enough for him and urged by his life coach to “push outside your comfort zone and find your happy place!,” he set out on his journey.

He should have noticed that, of his 5,000 close and personal friends on Facebook, very few represented the Scandinavian countries and even fewer accepted his plan to “hook up and drink up!” with them once arriving north. He sent boastful e-mails to the Baltic region chockfull of testimonials from freakish-looking women with unnaturally stretched faces announcing his very special “Sparkle with Spackle!” boot camp, but these resulted in zero registrations. Oh, the folly of poor bereft Marty! Had he researched Finland first before taking his trip, he would have learned that the Finns are more likely to indulge in self-effacement than facelifts, and that’s a fact.

Aside from one wild night spent drinking moonshine vodka with the locals of a rural town—a stop-over on the way to Lapland, a province of Finland—and dancing the humppa with great abandon, our Marty was not having a very good time. Finally, once in Lapland, a very old and wise reindeer herder stopped his trancelike singing, or yoiking, long enough to extol to Marty:

“Let me explain something to you—and this is an absolute truth. In Finland, a man looks at his shoes when speaking with a friend. After 20 years, while talking with his friend, he will then look at his friend’s shoes.”

Marty realized the verity of this statement and that if everyone was looking at shoes, no one would be looking at faces and so, who would care to buy his “product”? Was this smarmy swami of spackle going to renounce his pushy ways or simply book the first flight out of this god-forsaken no-prospects land? One will never know; Marty was last seen walking through the forest on his way to the sauna and was never seen or heard from again. Whether he evaporated from the intense heat of the sauna or was simply carried away by the strong Arctic winds remains a mystery. All that is known is that in the dark of the icy winter, at the time of the aurora borealis, the northern lights flash an eerie fluorescent green; legend has it that this is Marty, who has returned to share a sad goodbye with all his Internet marketer friends.

graphics: iStockphoto.com

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