Porn for everyone

« A smiling skull in Hagelstams Bookstore. A row of skulls depicting the Hagelstam family tree were there for Halloween and have reappeared for the holidays with festive hats and skull porn. Yes, that picture behind the happy skull is really what it appears to be. Antique porn for every fetish bound in leather. It makes you briefly wonder what kind of porn your grandfather enjoyed just before you take a fork to your eyeballs to remove the mere thought of it. »

Last year, Helsinki lost a stately old willow tree in a freak storm. The city decided to leave it be and see if it would sprout in the coming spring. In October, the stump was declared dead although enough material from the tree was saved to grow some saplings so the tree lives on. The Sanomat mentioned this week that there is now a small booklet, Vanhan Piilipuun Alla available at the Helsinki City Museum with stories about the tree and pictures over the past 100 years. Perhaps they'll plant some of the saplings grown from the dead willow in the new Kampinkeskus when it's done.

We spent all day Saturday watching all of the Lord of the Rings extended DVD editions with friends of ours in one 13-hour marathon. The movies and company were great, even if I did feel like a Hobbit towards the end of the day. The new material in Return of the King was good but it didn't complement the movie as well as the previous 2 extended editions had. I think there should be some sort of medal that one should receive for managing to make it through all 3 DVDs within an 18-hour period of time. I went to sleep with the visage of Gollum speaking like Yoda, maybe because the last time I sat through a trilogy in one sitting was Star Wars which also had a short, green creature with a raspy voice. "My pressssious you are!"

I was leafing through Deko, a new magazine that is mostly just pictures and design voyeurism that I suspect won't last very long, when I saw a little blurb about giving a fairly useless object d'art, a mini Alvar Aalto dish in the famous lake shape, a purpose by using it as a cookie cutter. I decided to give it a try and my analysis is that it is the most ineffective 15 euro cookie cutter anyone could ever purchase since the glass edges are far too thick which renders it unable to make a clean cut no matter how thick or thin the dough is. It would be much easier if someone just made a 2 euro cookie cutter in the same shape. Maybe use the dish as a cheese dip mold....perhaps there should be a contest to discover an actual useful purpose for these little tourist trinkets. :)