The Corner Blog

World News Still Draw General Public’s Attention

Rainer — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:11:40 +0000

(STETSON) According to the annual research by Harrison-Stetson Institute the General Public is still quite interested of international news and current affairs.
While the Finnish public was intrigued about the culture and rites of a long term French minority organization (Masonries Reveal Their Secrets in France), supporting the import of less less mainstream foreign artists (“Uncle-Brush” Having Tight Schedule in Finland) and analyzing the long term effects of global warming (Researchers’ Mistakes Have Increased the Climate Confusion), their counterparts in UK were reading about discriminatory airline policies and the effects of social media on them (Kevin Smith Thrown off Southwest Airlines Plane for Being “Too Big”), analyzing the global effects of climate change through political measures (Utah Delivers Vote of No Confidence for “Climate Alarmists”) and about the socio-phychologic effects of new social media fronts (Online Voyeurs Flock to the Random Thrills of Chatroulette).
“The reaction we got of the original survey we started few years back was so good, especially the interest on the methodology we were using, that we decided to expand it to cover multiple fronts. This time we analyzed the reading habits of UK and US population in addition to the Finnish ones and we found out the results are quite alike — people are interested of world news and politics. Especially about climate change”, Harrison Stetson, of the Harrison-Stetson Institute, explained. “Though the US counterparts were also quite interested of the domestic affairs”.
The General Public in US expressed interest on analyzing the effect of religious views of the constitution writers in relation to the modern legislation making process (How Christian Were the Founders?) and on the globe-economical effect of the European Monetary Union’s currency and it’s political effects (The Makings of a Euromess).

On the interview to CB General Public agreed on the in-depth analysis of Harrison-Stetson Institute, but also reminded that “The Olympics is on and you’re standing in front of the TV”, while quickly typing chatroulette’s address to google hoping that facebook would’ve fixed it’s login page this already. “Have you seen the latest photos of the 9-year old samba queen? She’s a bit of a crybaby but boy do I want to see her grow“, General Public concludes the analysis while wiping drool from lips.

In other news a school collapsed in Haiti killing several children and almost 20 people have been killed in a train crash outside Brussels.

Local Man Surprised of Valentines Failure

Rainer — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:29:11 +0000

(ANYWHERE) Local Man’s Valentine’s Day surprise turned out to be a surprise for him when it didn’t get the reception he was expecting. “I had prepared the surprise carefully and took care she wouldn’t find out anything before the V-day. Just dropping hints that I had something planned”, Local Man explains, “We spent several evenings in the pub planning this with my mates for her. They all thought it was an excellent idea”.
The surprise consisted of blindfolding Local Man’s girlfriend, who requested with rather strong emphasis to stay anonymous, taking her to Local Man’s local pub where she was greeted by a choir of Local Man and his friend’s singing “Happy Valentine’s Day” roughly in the tune of “Happy Birthday”.
“I feel so disappointed. We put so much effort and planning into this. We even muted the footie and had few pints before to remove the stage fright”, Local Man unravels his feelings after few pints, “I just don’t understand what went wrong”.
Local Man’s girlfriend refused to give any comments before storming out of the pub.

Desperately Seeking Duvalier

Rainer — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:51:40 +0000

(PORT-AU-PRINCE) Upon the recent tragedy in Haiti, the Haiti Reconstruction Coalition, formed as an international venture lead by EU Foreign Affairs and USAID, has started to look for a suitable person to oversee the reconstruction of Haiti. Once again the international attention has concentrated once again to a familiar name in the history of Haiti — Duvalier.
Duvalier’s family has long ties with Haiti and members of the family served the country through political efforts, some even reaching presidency. The first Duvalier to reach this level was François Duvalier, acclaimed doctor and well known for his fight against tropical deceases such as malaria, yaws and typhus, which earned him the nickname “Papa-Doc” — Father Doctor. He was also well known opposition member openly protesting against the 1950 military coup. He was elected as a president of Haiti on a black national platform on 1956 and was succeeded by his son, Jean-Claude, on 1964 who was known for his ambitions for democratic reform through political acts of releasing political prisoners and easing the freedom of press.
“It’s because of these qualities, the history of Haiti and the heritage of the Duvalier family that we thing the modern Duvaliers would be suitable to lead the reconstruction of Haiti”, the spokesperson for Haiti Reconstruction Coalition explains, “We’re confident that the Duvalier family would be more than willing to take the task of taking care of Haiti once more and oversee the new birth of the country with the means of New Millennium approach to Duvalierism”

Corporation™ Runs for Congress

Rainer — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:50:39 +0000

(WASHINGTON) Following the recent US Supreme Court desicion of implicitly giving corporations the status of a legal person through granting them the right freedom of speech, aka First Amendment, by determining political funding being “kind of expressing ones freedom of speech“, as was concluded on the ruling, Corporation™ announced that “to further express it’s freedom of speech Corporation will run for congress in the upcoming elections taking democracy to next level“.
Corporation™ spokesperson backed the decision by going through the analysis they had made on the current electoral and lobby based decision making process and the results where paying for a candidate, often a non-Corporate™ person, was a non value-adding activity and also the most fragile step on the whole process. “We realised that in the long run it is more efficient and practical for us go to congress directly without using a proxy through a either of the parties. This way we can offer customised solutions for our voters, and we get synergy benefits through the existing brand awareness and marketing campaigns. We can direct the savings directly to our customers, our voters — the people” faceless Corporation™ spokesperson concludes. “We call it — the Democracy 2.0!”

More accurate news from the NYT

Shocking News: Heroin May Harm Your Health

Rainer — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:48:39 +0000

(PALPABLE) Due to the recent health contraints with heroin doctors are recommending, “for real this time”, drug users to stop heroin usage.
“I recommend all drug users to immediately stop using heroin and contact the health officials”, Scottish epidemologist Johnny McObvious stressed.
The Scottish health ministry is also warning that also other injected drugs may be harmful for the users’ health.

More accurate news from The Guardian.

Lucidity awards 2010 starting strongly

Rainer — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:16:26 +0000

(PLAIN SIGHT) Lucidity 2010 awards, competition for creating a statement either oblivous or with no informational value, has started strongly this year. So far we can mostly thank the Finnish editors for the strong start on their commentary of the New Year’s Eve’s shooting incident.
The current leader is “coldblooded murderer himself is responsible for his actions, and the issue should not be pointed to the ethnic group he represents” which has been written to almost every singe editorial . Runner-ups include “remember that Finnish people have also committed horrible bloodsheds” from Iltalehti, and “it is impossible to tighten security measurements in public places so much that no-one could not hurt anyone else” (Savon Sanomat) and “incidents like this can only be prevented by taking action before they happen” stated by the Interior Minister Anne Holmlund.

A honorary mention has been granted for US president Barak Obama for publicly connecting al-Qaeda to the Christmas Day’s bomb plot. “It appears that the [bombing suspect] joined an affiliate of al-Qaeda, and that this group — al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula — trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed to America.“. The honorary mention was granted for publicly stating this week after al-Qaeda had announced they were behind the plot. The interviewed al-Qaeda PR spokesperson, who wished to stay anonymous, stated that the current mood in the PR department is “quite down and people feel their communication efforts are not appreciated“.

Head Start with Fireworks in Espoo

Rainer — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:23:10 +0000

(SELLO/ESPOO) New Year’s fireworks started early this year in Espoo. According to the local police officials a Middle-aged Man decided to start celebrating New Year several hours in advance in shopping center Sello, even though police announced earlier today that anyone violating the new firework regulations would get fined. “The target is to protect the general order and safety“, the chief commissioner explains the new doctrine.
Police is suspecting a middle-aged father of a family for the head start. Early start on fireworks resulted on deaths of five other people and the middle-aged man. “It is important for everyone to wear safety goggles. We suspect that with the proper safety preparations, like safety goggles, all this could’ve been avoided“, chief commissioner finishes and corrects the position of his safety goggles.

Islamistic Terrorist Organizations Announce Gradual Disarmament

Rainer — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 12:29:21 +0000

(GENEVE / SECRET AFGHAN CAVE) Switzerland’s “minaret election” was only a month ago and already Islamistic terrorist organizations have announced their gradual disarmament and seizing activity on the international terrorism front. On the statement by the International Coalition of Islamist Terrorism, ICIT, relayed through al-Qaida’s PR network, was said that “armed resistance is futile against direct democracy and the spread of radical Islam has now become impossible“.
ICIT statement reminds Western countries that stopping all terrorist actions suddenly would hinder the local micro-economies relying on arms and drug trade and thus “a gradual disarmament is required, but all major terrorist attack plans have been frozen”. “A good example of the gradual withdrawal is the latest “attack” on December 25th: we imposed the threat, but no-one got hurt. This seems like a win-win situation for everyone”, al-Qaida spokesperson explains what the actually gradual disarmament means in practice.
Taleban has promised to co-operate unconditionally with the newly elected government and that they have started to forge their arms into ploughshares. Hamas and Fatah on their sides stated they will now start Middle-East peace talks “for real”. Around the world people have been picking flowers with their toes and have hugged each other.

Christmas is Cancelled Until Further Notice

Rainer — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:39:28 +0000

(Korvatunturi)The weak economic downturn isn’t affecting just employers and employees of housing and banking companies. Also traditional businesses are reporting bad news. The latest addition to closures was Father Christmas (XMAS), aka SantaClaus, who sent an application for bankruptcy earlier today, just on the eve of Christmas. According to the papers filed “Santa” has outstanding taxes and salaries. Santa also owns to suppliers for goods manufactured between 2007 and 2009.

According to the officials thousands of elves haven’t received sufficient payment for their services and Santa was only paying to them in “goods” which they had to sell or trade to feed themselves. The Officials are also investigating Father Christmas for allegations of child labor, racial discrimination and for numerous copyright infringements.

The spokesperson for the elves and the co-founder of the Secret Village, inc., Shiny Upatree, stated that the bankruptcy didn’t come as a surprise for anyone who even cared to look at the business model of Santa. “Both Bashy [Evergreen, inventor of the ToyMachine®] and me warned Santa several times that we can’t continue this way much longer. The business idea, though nice, well, it sucks — big time. You can’t just give away your products for free and expect it to work. I mean, where do we get the money for all the crap we make — not to mention licensing fees? Nowhere that’s where!, Upatree ranted, “We were first wondering where we were getting the funding from, but eventually realised that we’re living on air. At some point we were sure he was running some sort of a ponzi scheme”.

Upatree reminds that though Santaclaus may not win the entrepreneur of the year award, he never mentioned any harm to anyone and tried his best always. Upatree refused to comment why he decided to join forces with Santa if he felt the business idea was not up to par. “Even if everything fell down like a deck of cards it was rewarding to work with Santa; he loved the fanmail and took every single customer experience as his own. That was probably his demise as well: he only got good feedback so his sense of reality faded away and was replaced with illusion. He tried to please and satisfy everyone, but it’s just not possible”, Evergreen adds.

Santa Claus has withdrawn from publicity and refuses to meet members of press or give any statements. Initial hearing of the bankruptcy application is scheduled to take place on the early 2010. All deliveries and orders for this year have been frozen and Christmas has officially been cancelled. What will happen to the business of Father Christmas remains an open question.

Climate Summit Reaches Conclusion

Rainer — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:43:01 +0000

(Never-Never-Land) The international Whether-Weather climate talks in Copenhagen has finally reached a consensus. According to the latest results the summit was a success as none of the participants was actually satisfied with the results and everyone agreed that none of the expectations were met. According to General Consensus (Pangea) “some sort of memo that may, or may not include the agreed goals, would be drafted” based on the agreement.
“We all agreed that global warming is a bad thing and caused by our actions, though natural variation can’t be completely ruled out, and this time we really need to take actions against it, though not in a way that could hinder the national economies or that would give negative impact on economic stimulus packages that are currently, or possibly in the future, tackling the global recess… sorry, economic downturn” the general secretary of UN, Ba Ki-Moon explained the results, “All countries have agreed to really-really take part to fight agains global warming this time and reach the goals that few years back were considered catastrophic, though we have not agreed on any sanctions for countries that do not comply with the Copenhagen agreement”