Independence day of Melancholia

It is another sad day in human history and it is also the independence day of Finland.

So gather around, you little pear cheeks, while a very disturbed person tells you about the miseries of life, history, death and everything.

One of The Sad Stories of the north is the tale of The Winter War (Talvisota). Finland and Soviet Union had some disputes with the borders and it suddenly escalated to war. Finnish casualties were great. More than 25 000 soldiers were left dead and more than 50 000 wounded, some for life. That's almost fifth of the army's strenght of  350 000.

It was also a sad ending for many young lads of the Soviet Union too. Soviet Union lost more than 100 000 men during that cold winter, and almost 200 000 of the Mother Russia's children were somehow wounded. That's about a third of almost a million soldiers.

So that page of history probably left some bitterness on both sides. War never changes, only the people who speak about it.

Bitter bard takes a little break now. Here's a clip of Studio Julmahuvi's art movie "Roudasta Roospuuttoon" (lenght 4:16), with English subtitles for those who like to talk and otherwise socialize all the time.


Frozen bard comes inside and continues the story, now enlightening the mystery of Finnish melancholia with some world known facts.

They say the wiser you are, the more worries you have; the more you know, the more it hurts. There are two depressing sides on that rusty coin. First of all, being the Lutherian state that Finland is, every quote is full of dark submission to the soon coming death of all life. Did I mention the suicide rates? No, I'll come back to that later. Anyways,  if one at least  takes seriously "the wiser...more it hurts"-statement (from Ecclesiastes), one understands the suffocating pain of knowing too much, cause Finns know it very too well. That's the other depressing side: Finland's literacy per cent is 100 %. That means every dark truth, that can be read and understood, can be done so by the Finns everywhere. Just listen to this love song.

 Him - Join me in death (best Finnish love song ever in circulation)

Maybe Finns are not the heaviest drinkers by European standards, being outshadowed by Czech and Irish. Latter being the low self esteem counterpart of Finns by it's own merits. You still have to remember that Finns drink it all at once and have a bigger suicide rating per capita than the early mentioned two beer states.

Here is Rich Lyons making few comments about it


And here's a quick version from Swedish poet (Anglo sax may refer to him as a comedian) Robert Gustafsson to those with shorter attention span (also with english subtitles).



How do Finns celebrate this day? Well, president throws a party to his closest friends, protegees, mentors and campaign benefactors using taxpayers money, and the rest of the country gathers around a television to watch that party live. It's covered by the national broadcasting company narrated with two languages (Finnish and Swedish). Before that there's a big military parade which still fails to one done in North Korea. Between those two spectacular shows, Finns watch war movies about the The Winter War.

There is some irony in that celebration; The 6th of December is also the St. Nicholas day.

Spotify thinking of moving to Dublin

Spotify might be locating in Dublin, if we are to believe Irish Central's headline - and why won't we. Dublin might be a good place for an international company operating in digital business. Dublin already accommodates firms, which you've probably heard before, like Google, Twitter, Facebook and Zynga.

Spotify is a music streaming service which has about 20 million subscribers. Spotify's revenue model is based on subscribers paying a monthly fee to gain access to millions of music tracks on Spotify's servers. There are also free accounts, which include advertisements broadcasted between tracks.

Dublin has a significant amount of foreigners (13 % according to CIA - The world factbook) which gives companies reasonable amount of language specialists, which is sometimes required for big companies to appear local where ever they offer their products. I can talk from an experience, for I am about to start at one of these big companies, and although my work language is english, my daily duties will involve a lots of finnish.

The irony of Spotify possibly basing their operations in Dublin, is that Spotify, although available in UK, is not available in the Republic of Ireland.

Before Jedward

Just before you get to see the Eurovision finals, you should see this. Before Jedward there were John and Edward performing in the X-factor 2009. Here they are performing Ghostbusters. I have to grant, that they have attitude, which probably appeals to certain kind of stereotypical Eurovision fans.

Eurovision: Jedward should take David Bowie and Teletubbies on the stage

Ireland's this years contestenders for Eurovision song contest is Jedward. When I saw them earlier this week performing to get their shot at the finals I thought they were some kind of a mixture between David Bowie and The Teletubbies.

Let's see what they performed at the Eurovision semifinals.

Okay. They are full of the right kind of cheerfulness. Now let's see David Bowie performing Starman decades ago.

As you can see, there is that same kind of glittery and colourfulness in Bowie's act as well as in Jedward's act. But there is something still missing. Now let's see The Teletubbies and you try to figure out why I see the connection between Jedward and Bowie-Teletubbies-hybrid.

I actually think that Jedward's performance is a good one, but they should enhance it with little more Teletubbies and people will hear a lots of twelve-points-goes-to-Irelands tonight.