Pity the fools

From Bizarroblog via the marvellous Relentlessly Optimistic.

6 year olds are hard to impress

A discussion with a six-year old:

6 Yr-old: "Do people eat other people?"
Me: "No, not any more but there used to be people who did - they are called cannibals."
6 Yr-old: "What do cannibals do?"
Me: "Well, they eat people."
6 Yr-old: "Yeah... but what else do they do?"

MyDavidCameron.com

My house is something of Star Wars fan zone these days due to younger members of the family, and having watched Clone Wars this evening (just an elongated episode of the TV version really - disappointing) this tickled me by connecting up to the earlier UK politics flavour to my day.



MyDavidCameron.com | More annoying than you can possibly imagine

Nothing stops the parcel guy

This is a screen shot of the UPS tracking record of a parcel coming from the UK to here in Helsinki. It seems to have met with some volcanic activity along the way, but not for very long. Keep on truckin' dudes.

The EU wants your babies for war

So the EU's web "portal" (that sounds so 90s doesn't it) Europa has had a make-over, theoretically making it easier to find the stuff you need from the millions of pages they have. This is what now it looks like:


Blah, blah, blah... all for the good I'm sure. But I want to know what the hell is going on with the little Euro silhouette people down at the bottom of the page? Check this screen grab:


Now lets zoom in on those kids:

So what the hell is with baby number three? I'm telling you - that is a baby in a kevlar with night vision attached:


So that is what the ESDP is all about: the EU wants your kids for the battlefields of Afghanistan. Someone better tell the Irish No Campaign.

British humour on Finnish posters?

The posters have gone up for "Brüno - the movie" in Helsinki. I read on Twitter yesterday that my favourite movie reviewer, Dr. Kermode, is refusing to see it on the basis of the poster alone. I'm not sure if it is the same one as this, but probably as I can see his point. Anyways; I was just wondering about the cultural resonance of "Achtung!" in Finland. Finns seems to get British humour very well - for older Finns when they say the British and Finnish sense of humour is very similar they normally base this on one thing: Benny Hill. Looking at some classic Finnish comedy movies, I can kind of see how they would get to that conclusion. But many younger Finns seems to greatly enjoy what I think of as British humour - be that Peep Show, The Office, League of Gentlemen, Smack the Pony, or The Thick Of It - all of which have been or currently are on Finnish TV, along with older classics from Black Adder to Monty Python.

But doesn't the "Achtung!" on the Brüno poster rely on British comics and war movies of the 70s and earlier for its comic value? For Brits of at least my (and Baron-Cohen's) age, if not younger, the word "Achtung" can only be followed with one other, and that is "Spitfire" - U2's best efforts not withstanding. Finns have their own war comics that still seem to be selling well today (and that could be the subject of a whole other post...), but I don't thinks the baddies in them would be yelling "Achtung Spitfire!".

Perhaps Brüno is reclaiming the comedy value of "Achtung!" in this Europeanised era for the whole of the continent? Brüno, we salute you - a potential contender for European of the year perhaps.

Funny things on the Radio

It shouldn't really be that funny but I heard Senator Orrin Hatch on the NPR breakfast news say "crap" on Friday. It's not that rude, but not what you normally here on NPR news. There was a split second after where you could just hear his brain processing: "oh crap, I just said crap on national radio. Do I apologise? Do I plough on and hope no one noticed?" He ploughed on manfully, but we did notice Senator. We just like you more now for speaking your mind. Is Senator Hatch often this plain spoken.

Even more delicious than that was the BBC FiveLive news reader who on earlier in the week announced to a shocked nation that North Yorkshire had tested a nuclear weapon. You can hear the announcement here. The confusing thing is for anyone who remembers the 80s, is that it was always the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire.

Getting sidetracked is not a crime

I was meant to be researching the about to be released European Commission position paper on future financial regulation structures for the EU. But I ended up watching this:



It is easily done.

If the BNP weren't a bunch of liars...

<--- this is what their election flyer would say.

I was tickled the other week to see that the BNP's flyer was rather easily shown to be deceptive and stuffed full of photos taken from photo agencies, rather than of British people who really are voting for the BNP. The one real Brit featured, a former soldier, in a photo on the flyer said he was outraged that they used his picture and that "they are scumbags and I'd never vote for them in a million years."

I'm not quite sure who came up with this wonderfully amended and rather more accurate version on the left - I saw it on Pickled Politics - but big up to whoever did the original art work; it is a work of art indeed. Click on the flyer to read it in full size.

The frequent flyer's lament

It is probably just an etiquette or perhaps aesthetic matter, but camera phones means that often we now find ourselves in places where a few years back we would have never thought of photography. So yes, the following was snapped from a toilet cubicle wall at a busy international airport. But the writer remains, oh so right.

Divided by a common language

From the country that brought us warnings on the side of coffee cups that the contents could be hot, one would think that calling toilet paper "Bath Tissue" could be a legal minefield.

Dear Sir,

Today I tried using your "bath tissue" as tissue in the bath and found that it turned into a huge lump of soggy, disintegrating, pulpy mess that blocked my drain. My attorney will soon be contacting you to discuss a settlement offer to cover the damage to my plumbing and the mental anguish caused by your poduct.

Yours etc.

Unconvincing

Seen at Brussels airport last weekend:

And with it being stuck on the side of those "special" cubicles where they take you for a "special" search - it's actually a bit scary.

I'm an April Fool

The front page of EUobserver.com currently has two lead stories:

"Russia does not rule out future NATO membership"
and
"EU pushes male all-body shaving as response to crisis"

I've spent too much time thinking about Finnish security policy and I'm now terribly confused as to whether one, both or possibly neither of these stories are April Fools' day jokes. Thus is the inherent discomfort of the postmodern condition.

Consultants

I was until recently of the opinion that taking the piss out of consultants and business people for their ridiculous use of jargon went out of fashion, maybe, five years ago. But today it seems that the Local Government Association in the UK is criticising its own members for now using exactly the same jargon. So perhaps the joke is hip once again. My pondering (blue sky thinking) on this matter was sparked by a day I spent recently with consultant who was organizing (facilitating) some planning (strategizing) for my work (business unit). The consultant appears to be a thoroughly decent person working hard to get a bunch of slightly suspicious and generally snarky researchers to work better together. This is probably a quixotic quest as getting researchers to cooperate is normally the proverbial herding of cats. But anyway, this is just to say that the consultant is a perfectly nice person before I begin to make fun of them. So, the day proved that consultant-speak isn’t just of invented comedic characters like in the Office or similar; they really do actually speak like that.

I got to the point where I just started writing down my favourite phrases. Readers will have to decide what they think the consultant meant by them, I will offer what came to my mind when I heard them. Resulting speculations on the state of my mind are not welcome.

• Firstly we have “stakeholders”. I was willing to let this one fly at first because I do see a use for the term, but it came up again and again (plus its usage is criticised in the article linked above). By the end of the day I came to the conclusion that the word stakeholder should from now on only be used by people who build fences or who are vampire-slayers.
• Next – “breakout groups”. Presumably a breakout group is subdivision of mass prison escape attempt. Think The Great Escape (“Let me come with you. I can see. I can see perfectly…”).
• Then “concrete action points”. These are presumably those big concrete lumps you see in Baghdad that GIs can use to return fire from behind when targeted by insurgent snipers.
• And finally – “collective internalisation”. This is clearly something that should only be attempted by experienced and highly paid porn-stars.

V is not always for Victory

Stockmann, the department store in central Helsinki is an institution. In many ways, Stockmann is central Helsinki. I've heard stories from Russian friends that during the Cold War, Stockmann was famous in the Soviet Union, as a place reachable for a lucky few where all the luxuries of west were available. It might be apocryphal but some Finns claim that some Soviet citizens actually believed the capital of Finland was called "Stockmann". Stockmann, the biggest department store in the Nordic countries, is a very international place. All the staff members wear name tags with little flags below their names showing which languages they speak - just about everyone has the Swedish flag and the Union Jack, but Japanese, Russian, Spanish, French and German flags are also common - plus other more obscure languages. And in the shop, you'll hear a veritable babel of languages being spoken by customers - particularly in the summer tourist season. This just makes it even funnier that they managed to pick such an inadvertently amusing current window display.


The corner window of Stockmann, next to the Aleksanterinkatu tram stop, is famous as the site of the annual Christmas display - something people bring their kids to come and see. But currently it is a display for Nike - under the slogan "V is for Victory". Behind mannequins wearing classic Nike tracksuit tops, are three giant photos of some footy player wearing the same top and giving the "V for victory" sign. Or at least I suspect this is what the marketing department thought he was doing.

But unfortunately he isn't, rather Stockmann has presented the good people of Helsinki with three large photos of a young, shaven headed, man giving them the "two fingered salute", which to all Brits, Irish, Aussies and Kiwis is basically the equivalent of telling them to "fuck off".


I wish I could say I was shocked, insulted and upset - perhaps enough for Stockmann to send me a gift voucher to help me recover from my mental pain and anguish. But actually it's the funniest thing I've seen in ages, and completely made my Monday morning.


So thank you Stockmann for inadvertently brighting my day and one other thing...

Dreams of my president

Nope, not that one.

This (from YLE) is possibly the weirdest news story I've read in ages, and somewhat disturbing on many different levels:

Tarja of Dreams Is Pragmatic

published yesterday 05:13 PM, updated yesterday 08:03 PM

Image: YLE

President Tarja Halonen tends to appear in people's dreams as a sensible, down-to-earth figure. Since Independence Day last December, citizens have been able to submit descriptions of their president-inspired dreams to artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen.

The dreams venture is part of a communal artwork project about Finns’ relationship to the president.

The 60 dreams that have been reported to the project to date all relate to the down-to-earth nature of the president. Dreams include Halonen drinking coffee in a hut, giving advice at a market square and sitting back and relaxing on a sofa.

If you are dreaming about the President in other ways, you're unlikely to write it down and send it to some artists are you?!?

Phrase of the day

I've been reading too much Security Studies theory today, and somehow this made me laugh.

"BYO Subtext"

Joss Wehdon interview by David Bianculli on Fresh Air, NPR.

He was talking about lesbianism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it works for constructivist international relations theory as well I think.

Diversifying Harry

(Photo: Prince Harry in one of his better moments, on active service in Afghanistan) Years ago, I think I was in Manchester - so that's like eight years back at least, I was listening to Nicky Campbell on FiveLive. For some reason they were discussing the then still rather young Prince Harry. To their amusement, they found out that the girl who was doing work-experience with them had a best friend who went to school with Harry. So they got her on mike and Nicky asked the immortal question - live, of course - "what does your friend think of Prince Harry?" Without hesitation she replied that he didn't like him at all, he is really racist and is always going on about "Pakis". A brief stunned silence descended on the studio, before Campbell in a slightly forced upbeat manner said something along the lines of "umm, errr, interesting. Now! Lets go to the travel news!" I was quite surprised that the next day this wasn't front page news in the tabloids, but perhaps it just shows tabloid hacks are actually working mid-morning and not listening to talk radio.

So, it is perhaps no surprise that Harry in recent months has shown himself to be such an insentitive prat. Maybe, as some of his defenders claim, he isn't actually racist. This is quite possible, but of course if he isn't racist, he very clearly is immensely stupid and insensitive to other peoples feelings and his own public position.

So I just love the idea that Harry is being sent on a diversity course. As someone who has, in the last year, had to sit through too numerous management training sessions and the like, due to a minor crisis in the workplace, I'm pretty certain that these type of consultant run sessions are at least the third circle of hell. The Prince clearly deserves to suffer the experience.

I hope you find what you are looking for friend....

Occasionally I check out how readers come to this blog. You can see what link they clicked to get here; often this is from search results on Google. Today someone visited after googling:

www.beard.it + gay

I don't even get why that would find this blog - the search found my gay penguins post of some years back, but what that has to do with presumably Italian beards, I have no idea.

A not-about-Gaza post

I've been asked to blog something about Gaza for work, and I've wanted to say something about it here as well, but I haven't yet. It's all too fucking miserable to be honest. I think Hamas have shown themselves again to be zealots who don't care who gets killed - including their own kids - if it makes their bizarre point. I think the Israeli leadership has shown itself to be crass and willing to play politics with other people's lives. The IDF has shown itself ready to use massive force recklessly and then to lie about their civilian killing mistakes - even when they surely were just that, mistakes. Too many pro-Palestianian protestors around the world have turned out to be religious zealots who are surfing a new wave of religious anti-semitism or ridiculously cockeyed anarcho-leftist types who are all about teenage posturing and are in it for the ruck as much as anything else. And too many of the pro-Israeli voices are ridiculously screaming "I'm the victim here!" which just makes them look foolish to any disinterested observer as the IDF artillery pounds Gaza and F16s and Cobra attack choppers swoop overhead. Meanwhile the Israeli people get further away from ever being able to live without fear and the Palestinian people continue to get pissed on from a great height. I wish I didn't care and that most people didn't deserve better, but they do - both Israelis and Palestinians.

Anyway, my day was hugely improved upon when by mistake on Youtube I found this:

One can not loose all faith in mankind when somewhere in Tokyo there is a man who dresses up in an Imperial Stormtrooper costume and dances for apparently no reason at all. Tokyo Dance Trooper, I salute you.