Saturday, January 06, 2007

Very funny ads.com: March of the Emperor

A great ad from Canal Plus, one of the funniest I've seen in years.

Link here: http://veryfunnyads.com/ads/24990.html

Friday, January 05, 2007

The singularity

More from Wikipedia.

Are you afraid, or would you like this?

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Currently listening to

El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labrynth)

The last of the three movies by Mexican directors being released at the end of 2006. I'm still undecided which one I like the most, Children of Men, Babel, or this one. All of them are beautiful, but I have to give a lot of credit to Guillermo del Toro for such a vivid imagination and such a beautiful photography throughout the film.

I'll buy all three, and surely hope all of them win Oscars.

Totoro!


Totoro!, originally uploaded by Chiva Congelado.

If you have the chance, check out this beautiful Japanese movie. It is very touching.

Star Wars quote of the day

I was explaining that many of the people studying with me haven't seen Star Wars.

"Hey, now I know why capitalism is so screwed", somebody else said.
"Why?"
"They haven't seen Star Wars, so they don't know anything about evil empires"

It's still above zero

In case it wasn't obvious, it was a record-breaking warm month of December in Finland.

Hell froze over when Lordi won Eurovision, so probably all the heat is now above-ground ;-)

New Year drunkenness

I had in a previous post written something about Nordic drinking habits. I think that things have gone downhill since I was last time in Finland for New Year (about 6 years ago). New Year's Eve was spent with friends. We walked to the top of a hill to see the fireworks crackling around the Helsinki Metropolitan Area and then went to a party in town (all in all, a nice evening).

However, when going back to where we were staying around 4:30 a.m. I was stuck not only by the amount of drunken people (after all, it's New Year, right?), but the depths of their stupor. One girl literally stumbled and fell accross Mannerheimintie, and we came back and lifted her up so that she would at least be safe. That was not the only one, on Jan. 1st after going to the movies we found a teenager sitting in a staircase, completely lost. After some negotiation, we left him there.

What's wrong with a society if it is widespread that people drink until they lose consciousness?

Suomessa

Tajusin kun olin siellä että loppun lopuksi minusta tuli aikuiseksi kuudessa vuodessa Pohjolassa. Olen iso ja vähän tumma, kuin ruisleipä ;-).

Harmi että sää oli niin surkeaa... =P

Yeah, as if you're going to see this while driving

Driving in Finland is a lot of fun. You have lots of signs but sometimes they don't even get it right. This picture was taken in the summer, now you can imagine how visible is this in winter...

Sometimes marketing gets it wrong...

You've all heard the stories about the Mitsubishi Pajero (which is not sold with that name in Spanish-speaking countries because then it means the Mitsubishi Wanker), the difficulties when translating slogans and so on...

Eating in a corporate canteen, I noticed that in a drive to improve service they also changed the names of their different sections, so "World cuisine" became "Be global", the vegetarian section became "be green", etc. The problem is that the grill section became "be grilled". I wonder why it looked so empty. ;-)