Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Mobile Phone throwing championship

No, this isn'tsomthing done in urban Amerioca as people realise what cr*p they're signed up to with Sprint. Rather, the world mobile phone (or cellphone if you prefer) throwing championships are held in Finland.

Writer Risto Etelamaki said mobile-phone throwing -- which originated from Finland's national strength in the sport of javelin throwing -- combines recycling philosophy with play.

"The sport is also a symbolical mental liberation from the restraining yoke of being constantly within reach," he wrote in his book "Funny Finnish Pursuits."

Finland, home of mobile phone giant Nokia, boasts one of the most mature mobile phone markets in the world, where people pay for pizzas, parking and tram tickets using cellphones.

It's not actually the weirdest of the summer competitions either. There's swamp soccer, there's milk pail sitting, wife lifting:

Organizers say the wife-carrying contest is rooted in the legend of Ronkainen the Robber, who in the 19th century tested aspiring gang members by forcing them to lug sacks of grain or live swine over a similar course.

Another notion is that it stems from an even earlier tribal practice of wife-stealing, in honor of which many contestants now take up the challenge with someone else's wife.

Those hundreds of Finns who vie each year to keep their behinds longest in nests occupied by some 40,000 ants are, it is claimed, actually following an ancient health ritual -- one which keeps all their senses alive.

The real reason they do all of thios though is that the winters are so appalling that they'll do anything to get outside in hte summer.

Õr at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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