Madness Reigns

One of my favourite bands is the American heavy metal band Savatage. I have all of their albums, save for one, The Dungeons Are Calling. I ordered a bunch of CDs, including Dungeons, from an online CD store. However, the package I received did not contain Dungeons. Instead they'd sent a CD featuring music by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.

Let's review:

• Did receive not ordered CD featuring music by Norwegian 19th century composer Edvard Grieg
• Did not receive ordered CD featuring music by American 80s heavy metal band Savatage

How on earth is it even remotely possible to confuse the two? I figured the two CDs' article numbers must be similar, but no! I've checked the store's website, the article numbers are not even close!

Here's an interesting coincidence, though: One of Grieg's most famous compositions is In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt. One of Savatage's most famous albums is Hall of the Mountain King, whose title track is based on Grieg's composition.
However, I did not order Hall of the Mountain King. Had that been the album I ordered, I could possibly understand the mix-up. The album I ordered was called The Dungeons Are Calling. No Grieg reference there whatever.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like Grieg's music, the compositions for Peer Gynt in particular. But that wasn't what I've ordered. The Grieg CD was much cheaper than the Savatage album. Not a good trade-off for me, seeing as I'm being charged for the Savatage album. Time to raise hell with the customer service, in other words. I except to receive the right CD within the next six months. Stay tuned. On second thought, don't.

Note: the title refers to a line from the lyrics to Savatage's Hall of the Mountain King: "Madness reigns...in the hall of the mountain king!" Indeed.

Internet Apocalypse Now?

Via Slashdot^[1] I found this disturbing article:

World Cup streaming to cause network meltdown

The BBC's decision to stream all its football matches live on the internet has been greeted with joy by UK fans, but could cause massive headaches for the country's network managers.

...

"This will generate a huge surge in network traffic, eating into the bandwidth available to run business-critical applications effectively."

This is becoming a bit silly. It's bad enough most of the entire world^[2] screeches to a grinding halt every four years to watch a spherical object being kicked around. Now I won't even be able to check my mail everytime Romarionaldona gets a yellow card?
I'm probably sounding more negative to football than I actually am. It's enjoyable to watch, I suppose. But not at the expense of the world turning! I'm drawing a line in the sand here, people!

Proud Finn as I am^[3], I have to point out how ahead of the curve we were on the issue of Internet destruction. Professor Hannu Kari of Helsinki University pinpointed 2006 as the year the Internet would end already in 2001, according to this Ars Technica article. Although, Dr. Kari seems to credit the predicted demise to assorted malware and spam rather than football.

Of course, this could all be propaganda from the anti-network neutrality lobby. In the interest of being fair and balanced, the pro-network neutrality lobby, aka the good guys, are over here. I'm sure you can't tell whose side I'm on.

^[1] Yeah, yeah, whatever. I'll read /. if I want to.
^[2] Save for the US, but you guys got the Superbowl.
^[3] Well, after Tony Halme/Ludwig Borga won a seat in the Finnish parliament, I typically pretend I'm Swedish.

ER: DNR

I watched ER the other night, for the first time in a few years. I haven't missed much, it seems. It was a mind-numbingly boring episode. Why haven't they cancelled the show already?
It was pretty obvious what was missing from the get-go. Paul McCrane.

For more than seven seasons, Paul McCrane played Dr. Robert Romano on the show. Really, it was his pricky badassiness* that made the show. Not an original cast member, the then quite crappy show would never be the same after McCrane joined the cast in 1997. Okay, it was still quite crappy, but at least Paul McCrane was in it.
Fast forward to 2003. Apparently McCrane asked for too much money, as his character was killed off.
Bad decision. It was bad enough they had to chop off his arm** in an earlier season, they had to crash a helicopter on him?

Oh well. Apparently McCrane guest stars as a villain in the latest season of 24. Can't wait for it to hit Finnish TV screens. Is it wrong to root for the villains?

* Yes, it's a word. At least it is now.
** Yeah, they did it for real, I'm pretty sure. It's called method acting.

Happy birthday!

Yesterday, on June 3rd 2006, the Montenegrin parliament declared Montenegro independent, following a referendum held on May 21 in which 55.5% voted for ending the union with Serbia. Big fan of self-determination as I am, I can only say congratulations to the people of Montenegro.
In many respects, Montenegro already enjoyed a large degree of independence, but it's nevertheless welcome news.

People a lot smarter than I have speculated as to how this may impact the future of Kosovo. Personally I'm of the opinion that full-on independence is the only way to go.
Kosovo's status is set to be determined before the end of this year. We'll see what happens.

Truth Doesn't Hurt

Okay, this blog is not turning into the Al Gore fanblog, but seeing the Friday box office estimates, I can't resist commenting on it.

In my last entry on Al Gore's global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, I noted the three day estimates for last weekend was very impressive. In fact, they turned out to be even better. For the four day weekend (Monday was Memorial Day in the US), the Truth took in $367,311 in 4 theaters.
This weekend, the Truth expanded into 77 theaters, and according to Showbizdata, the documentary took in an estimated $412,000 this Friday, good for ninth place. The Friday numbers indicates an overall weekend well over a million dollars. A very impressive number given the still very limited theater count.

In other box office news, X-Men 3 took a nasty 77% drop from last Friday. I predicted the movie would end up with about $350,000,000 in my previous post. Obviously that's not going to happen now.

Monday evening update: For the entire weekend, the Truth took in $1,356,387 according to Box Office Mojo. Very impressive.

Language of the Week: Occitan

This is the first installment in a series I hope to be able to post on a weekly basis. I've posted these before in another forum, but sadly they've been lost to the ravages of time. Or a faulty database. Or whatever.

In my studies I came in contact with the language that is subject of tonight's edition of LotW, Occitan. Having never heard of this language before, I began thinking about the sheer number of human languages that currently exist. Africa alone is the host of thousands of languages! That gave me the idea to further study what other relatively obscure and just plain obscure languages there are out there. Hence this entry you're reading now.
The question is, what language should be defined as "obscure"? My rule of thumb is that if the language in question is spoken as a first language by a majority of people in at least one country, then for the intent and purposes of these blog entries it is not an obscure language. Thus, I won't be writing about Finnish anytime soon, even if it's not a widely spoken language. On the other hand, the Sami languages spoken in northern Scandinavia may be the subject of a future installment.

In this, the premier edition of LotW, we're taking a look at Occitan.

Occitan is, like its close relatives French and Spanish, a Romance language, primarily spoken in southern France, northern Spain and northwestern Italy. Some 2 million people speak Occitan as their first language.

There are several dialects of Occitan, which are sometimes considered separate, distinct languages.

Occitan is mutually intelligible with Catalan, a language spoken in northeastern Spain and the subject of a future installment of LotW. The two are occasionally considered variants of the same language.

For further reading, I suggest checking out the English and French Wikipedia entries (Caveat Emptor: Wikipedia's reliability is mixed at best, but it should nevertheless be a good starting point).
And if you feel so inclined, why not check out the Occitan Wikipedia entry on Occitan? It is actually quite readable if you know a bit of Spanish or French.
Other recommended sources are OccitaNet and Omniglot.

Random Thought of the Day

Is beloved Pokemon character Pikachu named for the renowned Spanish painter Pablo Picasso? I always thought they resembled one another. Not to mention, one is an artist, and the other is...uhm...art.

A Convenient Truth

I'm a huge statistics nerd. I'm also a movie buff. In addition to that, I have a keen interest for politics. Ever so often, I get to combine the three. This entry is one such occasion.

This weekend Al Gore's global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth opened in limited release. According to Box Office Mojo, the movie took in an estimated $266,000 in four theaters over the weekend. Let's compare that with with another movie that opened this weekend, X-Men: The Last Stand. In 3,690 theaters, it took in an estimated $107,000,000 (these are three-day weekend numbers; Monday is Memorial Day in the US which essentially makes it a four-day weekend).
Of course, that's comparing apples to oranges. The Truth is a documentary. About your imminent death, no less. Not exactly blockbuster material.
The most profitable documentary ever, Fahrenheit 9/11, took in $119,194,771 in its entire (American) run. X-Men almost took in all that in a weekend.

The strategy for the release of the Truth (and many independent movies) is to build up word-of-mouth by first opening in limited release, and then expand into more theaters as the movie's reputation grows. With Hollywood blockbusters, it's the exact opposite; they open in as many theaters as possible in order to take in as much money in the first weekend as possible. That is to minimize the effect of bad word-of-mouth getting around too much and having too much of an impact on the box office (although, the X-Men flicks have typically been well liked, and I don't think the latest one will be an exception).

Where the Truth goes from here is anybody's guess. It did extremely well in it's opening weekend, and it's been getting excellent reviews pretty much all around. If it catches fire, it can be this year's March of the Penguins (the second most profitable documentary ever, with $77,413,017 in US box office). My prediction* is that the Truth ends up with about $25,000,000, good for third most profitable documentary ever.
And X-Men will end up with about $350,000,000.

* It should be noted I'm horribly bad at predictions.

Thomas Kretschmann: Typecast

I watched Der Untergang (Downfall in English) the other day, and lo and behold! Thomas Kretschmann plays a supporting role as a military officer of the Wehrmacht. Again.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane.
It seems Kretschmann's career as a Nazi officer begins in 1992, when he co-stars as Lieutenant Max Luedt in Norwegian movie Krigerens Hjerte. Apparently he does well enough, as he lands the part of Lt. Hanz von Wistland in the classic WWII movie Stalingrad the following year.

It takes quite a few years, but eventually Hollywood notices. In 2000, Kretschmann stars as as submarine captain in Jonathan Mostow's audition for Terminator 3, U-571. Roman Polanski then brings Kretschmann back to land in 2002's The Pianist, in which he plays Captain Wilm Hosenfeld.

2004 turns out the be year of the Kretschmann, when he manages to play a nazi officer in not one, but two movies about WWII. The first of these is the aforementioned Der Untergang, in which Kretschmann plays the part of SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein, brother-in-law of Eva Braun. The second movie is straight-to-DVD hit U-boat (also starring the one and only Xander Berkeley).

Where does Kretschmann go from here? Who knows. Kretschmann's turn as a green vampire in guilty pleasure Blade II suggests a way for him to escape typecasting: Lots and lots of make-up.

New Lordi Members, part one

Last week, Finnish monster rockers Lordi did what no one thought possible. They won the Eurovision song contest. Finland won the Eurovision song contest. It's been a week, and I'm still unable to quite believe it. Finland?! Eurovision?! Song?!
Suffice to say, Hard Rock Hallelujah is the new Finnish national anthem.

This is, however, bad news for Lordi. They've peaked. Their new found euronational fame will consume them. Ultimately, the band will fall apart and album sales will dwindle to Corey Feldman numbers.

The good news is that this is utterly preventable. A band member throws a tantrum and leaves the band? No worries. Much like Van Halen remained a successful (if suckier) band when Sammy Hagar replaced David Lee Roth, it's merely a matter of finding the right person for the job. I happen to have the perfect replacements lined up already.
Following these suggestions, I'm confident Lordi will continue to be successful for years to come.

The first replacement is...Fidel Castro.

(Castro is the guy in the middle.)

To be continued...

Would someone please think of the children?!?

I remain hesitant as to whether I should reveal where in Finland I live.
Not because of a desire to remain somewhat quasisemianonymous, but rather because I don't want to out this great city of mine as a Scandinavian Sodom and/or Gomorra.

Having lived here for about five years, I today made a startling discovery. I was taking a walk when I passed what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary office building.
The second floor housed the regional school board. The bottom floor housed a strip club. I kid you not.

I don't consider myself to be particularly conservative. But this hands-on approach to sex ed. just crosses the line.
There is a silver lining, though. If things don't work out upstairs, you can always apply for a job downstairs.

And the Oscar goes to...The Hoff!

One of the highlights of the DVC movie going experience was the movie trailers. Apparently there's a new movie, Click, out soon starring David "The Hoff" Hasselhoff aka The One True God. For some reason the trailer seemed to focus more on Adam Sandler than The Hoff, but I assume it's because they don't want to spoil too much of the movie.
Sandler is apparently also the only one to get top billing, which may seem like an affront to The Hoff, but in reality it is a testament to The Hoff's star power. He's so instantly recognisable that the advertisers don't need to identify him by name.

This will be The Hoff's first movie appearance since his scene stealing performance in 2004's Dodgeball.

The Da Vinci Bore

So I saw The Da Vinci Code the other night. 2.5 hours in a movie theater, and my ass hurt. I suspect there's correlation between the two. Anyway, the movie was alright for what it was. Ron Howard has done better flicks.

I've read the book, and a few of Dan Brown's other novels, and color me unimpressed. Honestly, I have no idea what the controversy is about. Brown writes B-rate conspiracy thrillers. They are decent reads, but clearly not the second coming of Christ...okay, poor choice of metaphor. My bad.

It seems as if it doesn't take a whole lot to become a famous author these days. Witness the Dan Brown model for sucess:
1. Write bad novel, pretend that it's been thoroughly researched and based on facts
2. Throw in a bit of Jesus in such a manner so as to piss off the Catholic Church
3. Laugh all the way to the bank

Even I could pull that off! So, without further ado, I proudly present the synopsis for my own novel:

JESUS vs. PREDATOR
Remnants of an ancient alien race lies buried beneath the icy surface of Antarctica. A team of archeologists, to be played by Playboy playmates in the movie adaptation, discovers them and unwittingly unleashes unmitigated evil upon earth; evil the likes of which mankind has never seen, at least not since Steven Seagal's last movie.
Only one man, and one man only, can defeat this evil. That man is Pat Robertson. He prays a hurricane to Antarctica, which destroys all aliens and magically makes all homosexuals straight. The day has been saved, praise the lord!

Okay, you might say that there's nothing particularly offensive to Christians, Catholic or otherwise, in that synopsis.
But I would think considering Pat Robertson to be Christian is as offensive as it gets.

Algore4prez

Occasionally I shall comment on the political goings-on in that global superpower located on the North American continent. And when I'm done calling for Stephen Harper's resignation, I'll have a few choice words about the USA as well.

It's never too early to start worrying about who the next leader of the free world will be. Assuming there's still a free world to lead by January 20th 2009, my money is on former Vice President Al Gore.

I'm not a big fan of Hillary Clinton. She's a bit too eager to compromise her ideals to get a few more votes. Paying lip service to the far right ain't gonna win you the presidency, senator Clinton; the far right will not vote for you anyway, and you will only have succeeded in alienating your base. True, the same critique could be levelled at Al Gore and his presidential run of 2000. But the new and improved 2006 version of Al Gore is badass.

Clinton has been the presumptive Democratic nominee for quite a while now. It's hard to keep track of all the people who are either considering or have already outright said they're running. John Kerry has apparently been running since about November 5 2004, as has John Edwards. And a bunch of other guys are running as well. None of them stand a chance against the Clinton juggernaut.

Except Al Gore. He could pull of a Nixonesque comeback.
Then Vice President Richard Nixon, narrowly defeated by John F Kennedy in 1960 and then spending years in the political wilderness only to return and win the presidency in 1968 in the midst of an unpopular war. 40 years later, history may repeat itself. Although, Al, a word of advice: If you hear anything about a break-in at the Watergate, don't get involved.

Al Gore's new documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, is generating a lot of buzz. I submit that we need a guy in the White House who cares about environmental issues. The current tenant clearly does not. Gore not only cares about the environment, he made a friggin' movie about it! Now that's commitment.

While Gore claims not to be interested in running, he has yet to unequivocally take himself out of the running.
How's this for a ticket: Al Gore and Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold. Heck, I'd move to the US and apply for citizenship just to be able to vote for that ticket.

Keen-eyed readers will probably realize that I'm not American, and may wonder why I would care at all. To which I say, why shouldn't I care? This is the leader of the free world we're talking about, after all. We would be living in a remarkably different world today if Gore had won in 2000 instead of that other guy, wouldn't you say?
Not to mention, American politics is infinitely more interesting than Finnish politics.

Keen-eyed readers will probably also notice I haven't mentioned any potential Republican candidates in this entry. Too which I say, don't make me laugh. George Allen? Bill Frist? No. Just no.
And John McCain? Doing the same triangulating BS as Clinton.

Finally, as we all well know, Al is also the inventor of the Internets (yes, both of them), and for that he shall have my eternal allegiance.
Unless he decides to invade Finland, in which case I will be slightly upset.

In the beginning...

Greetings, and welcome to my blog.
The average lifespan of a blog is said to be a couple of months. I'm hoping I'll have the time and motivation to stick around a bit longer than that.

So who am I? I'm a 20-something, left-of-center kinda guy living in Finland. Stick around, and I might tell you a bit more. Or not.

I'm not planning on writing long ass entries that would make Ayn Rand seem a bit pithy. I shall keep my commentary succint.

Well then, enjoy your stay here.