Drunk History... a la Patrick.

So, I've had about a liter of of Martinique rum and Coke/French Antilles rum and Pommac so far tonight. I've also started reading Whiteout by Greg Rucka, which is an upcoming movie starring Kate Beckinsale. If you have never read anything by Rucka, I highly recommend Gotham Central.

Anyway, the first few pages of Whiteout state that the Nazis laid claim to an area of Antarctica by dropping thousands of metal swastikas from an airplane. I didn't know if this was fact or "artistic license," so Becky did a search for me on the internet. Sure enough, the Encyclopedia Britannica claims that it actually happened in 1939. I am amazed by this, especially in light of Hitler's vision of Berlin as the capital of the world.

Wow, that's ridiculous.

Watch as Megan Callahan tries to keep controversy alive.

Irony Defined.

Here is an interesting non-scientific poll of Fox News' viewers.

Hanging Out Downtown.

It was a really nice day yesterday so we decided to go hang out in downtown Oulu. This wasn't a well planned excursion, so we didn't leave until about 3p. When we got there, we first had a hearty and healthful lunch at Hesburger (the Finnish version of Burger King). We followed that with a stroll through the market square and examined the wares being sold by the local shopkeeps. Unfortunately, a lot of them were already packed up and gone for the day. Here are some pictures of us posing with the statue of the rotund policeman in the market square.







Near the market square is the public library, so we decided to check out their selection of books in english. We were also going to get library cards while we were there, but forgot to bring our passports with us as official identification. We browsed for a little while and I decided that they had a decent collection of novels from both major genres (science fiction and other). We also found the graphic novel section but it was minutes before they were going to close, so we didn't get a good look at what they had.

After the library, we headed for the park and the little cafe located near the center of it. We each had a baked good and a cup of tea while sitting outside and enjoying the weather and scenery.

Here's Becky happily knitting a pastel sock in the sunshine with her cup-o-tea.



Here's the scenery near the terrace of the cafe.





Here are a couple of shots of the fountains in the Oulu River.




Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera died so I didn't get any pictures of the beautiful flowers throughout the park. I also didn't get pictures of the U.F.O. landing, the clown handing out 500 Euro bills, or the cloned velociraptor eating children. We may head back to downtown today since it's supposed to be nice again. If we do, I'll bring some freshly charged batteries and capture all the excitement.

Comedy Extravaganza: Final Day

Lewis Black is going to wrap up the comedy extravaganza. I love this guy. I can't remember if I first saw him on a stand-up special or doing Back In Black on The Daily Show. I did manage to see him live in Birmingham and I got to meet him afterwards. It was a lot of fun.

Here is Lewis Black live on Broadway. It's an oldie but a goodie.

Comedy Extravaganza: Day 3

Today's comedian is The Amazing Jonathan. I remember first seeing this guy on Lounge Lizards at Scott's parents' house years ago. We still bring up this guy's jokes from time to time.

Some of the routine was edited out of the first video, probably because you can't have drug references and Alan Thick in the same show.








Sometimes magic sounds like tape...

Comedy Extravaganza: Day 2

Today's comedian is Demetri Martin. I first saw him on The Daily Show and the graphs he made always cracked me up.



Here's a good one to listen to:

Comedy Extravaganza!

For the rest of this week, I will be giving you a taste of some of the comedians I enjoy. "Why," you ask? "Eh, why not," I reply. It gives me something non-work related to do and everyone likes comedy, right? So stay tuned!

Today's comedian is Daniel Tosh. I saw him once on Comedy Central and he left a big impression on me. Here is his Completely Serious special.

This Looks Sweet.

Here's a new trailer for the upcoming game Spider-man: Web of Shadows.

A Latitude Difference of 32 Degrees.

So, I'm listening to Morning Editon on Alabama Public Radio via the internet and they just said that it will be 97F and feel like 105F in Tuscaloosa today. I sure do miss hanging out at the pool on those super hot days.

The temperature here has maxed out at about 60F today and since summer is winding down, I doubt it'll get into the 70s again this year. Bummer.

Free Comic Books.

If you are interested in reading the latest Batman or Alan Moore's Watchmen but don't feel like paying for them, check out www.freecomicbooks.org. You can download zipped scans of tons of different comics for free! If you are using Firefox, I would recommend installing the Adblock Plus extension before visiting the site because there is a lot of annoying advertising.

Enjoy!

Update-o-rama.

I haven't blogged about what I've been doing in a while so here it is in a nutshell.

Earlier this year, Heikki and Eija (Heikki's wife and one of my collaborators) bought a lot on a small island near Oulu. They plan on building a summer cottage there and recently came across a newspaper ad for a disassembled log cabin. Two Saturdays ago, I went with Heikki, Eija, Heikki's son Ollie, and Ollie's friend to a cottage on a lake south of Oulu to examine, stack, and prepare the logs for shipping to the island. It was a two hour drive with five of us crammed into a small Audi (about the size of a Ford Focus). We got there and proceeded to stack and tie down immensely heavy logs for at least 5 hours while fighting off extremely persistent mosquitoes and biting flies. Ideally these logs would have already been stacked correctly by the owner who was selling them. Instead they were essentially thrown into a pile with some rocks underneath to keep them off the ground. Some of the logs were also missing the all important letter-number identifications needed to be able to put the cabin back together correctly. These things could be overlooked though since the logs we saw were still in fairly good condition (i.e. they weren't wet and rotting) and the price was low (it's my understanding that purchasing logs for a cabin is very expensive).

When we finally finished with the last of the logs, I found out that another set at a different location needed to be stacked and bound as well. Needless to say, I wasn't too thrilled about that. When we arrived at the second location we found that the final logs consisted of the critical, and ridiculously large and heavy, floor beams and attic support beams. These logs were in terrible condition. They were completely wet and rotting from not being elevated off the ground and from a shoddy tarp covering them. After seeing the condition of these logs, the deal was called off and all that labor was for naught. From what Heikki told me, the logs could only be used as firewood now, since the key logs are very expensive to replace.

Overall, it wasn't a bad experience though. I got to see a part of Finland that a lot of people don't get a chance to see. I got to hang out with Heikki, Eija, Ollie, and Ollie's friend, who are all very nice people, while taking in some beautiful scenery. I met and had a good conversation with a really nice German guy who was visiting his friends for the summer. I even learned something about log cabins. Not too bad.

Moving on, last Friday Becky and I went to Q-Stock in Oulu. She beat me to the punch and already wrote something about it on her blog here. It was a lot of fun and there were some good bands that I haven't heard of before. We managed to hear the end of Blue Frequency's set and they sounded pretty good. We also saw Entwine and they were a really rockin' band.

Here I am enjoying the weather and a beer at Never Grow Old in downtown Oulu before heading to the concert.



Today, Becky and I left work early to go see The Dark Knight. I have been waiting on the edge of my seat for this movie to be released since the day I saw Batman Begins in the theater. Thankfully, I wasn't disappointed. It was a great film and Heath Ledger's Joker was outstanding. He was truly frightening and every bit as intelligent and psychotic as in the comic books. For me at least, Heath Ledger's Joker stole the show.

Watchmen.

I read the Watchmen graphic novel because it won some awards and it was considered by many as a great and pioneering piece of work. I wasn't terribly impressed.

The movie, however, looks AWESOME! Maybe I should read it again.

Indeed.

Where do you stand?

Err, it's a little big. Sorry. You can take the quiz here.

Superhero Creations.

Here are a couple of characters I've made.

Daylight (not the Stallone movie).

The amount of daylight in Oulu is steadily decreasing (since we are past the summer solstice) and it's kind of a bummer. We are now down to less than 20 hours of daylight. It looks like we lose about 5 minutes of daylight per day. If you want to track our sunrise and sunset times along with the number of daylight hours we have per day, go to this site. The numbers are directly below the Oulu 5 Day Forecast.

More Super-Nerdy Procrastination.

The best thing about role-playing games was always creating your character (Seraphim can back me up on this). They always had so much potential... until they were immediately killed by dysentery or a squirrel with a +1 Acorn of Bludgeoning. Well Marvel.com now has a similar online experience where you can create your own superhero.

Here's one I created:




Let the time wasting begin...

Drunk History.

Thanks to Brooke for sending me a link to Drunk History. Here's Vol. 2, my favorite.

Colbert.

In case you missed it, Steven Colbert was running for president in the 2008 election, but dropped out in November of 2007.

In the Marvel Universe, however, he is still in the race. Check him out:





Check out the NYC subway advertisement as Frank Castle, a.k.a. The Punisher, battles a doppleganger:



For more Colbert Easter Eggs go here.

I plan on supporting another candidate in 2008 though: