Mio the Tiger

Icebucket challenge: random people and celebrities, doing it to increase the awareness of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Based on Wikipedia it is one of the most common motor neuron disease that causes problems in  muscle control, speaking, swallowing and even breathing.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis) 

The people challenged are suppose to pour a bucket of ice water on their heads or make a donation to charity. The idea sucks for two reasons: first, people are more into having their 15 minutes of fame than donating to charity. Second, it doesn't promote the ALS. Sounds that there's a virus spreading on internet. My question is how do you make a viral campaign like the Ice Bucket Challenge?

I looked into the question and it seems that you need a few ingredients to create a great campaign. Make it personalized. Think about Coca Cola, they created a campaign in which people could get their names on bottles. People loved the idea as it was special to them. Make it unique. Think up something stupid enough to reach the masses, something special, new and fresh. Involve well known people. Involve people that people idolize that people love. If Tiger Woods does it, I would do it too, right?

It's Autumn now. Cannot deny that. It has been raining for three days and the temperature has dropped for ten degrees. It's time to get the butt up and start doing duties that have been forgotten during the boiling summer days.

That's what people want to read. How someone exercised at gym or bought a new pair of shoes. How everything is safe and sound (and fashion nowadays.) Yesterday, the world finished with the renewable nature resources for the rest of the year. It was 19th August yesterday. The resources were wasted two weeks faster than in year 2000. 

How to write a story without a topic? That's what I thought today when I opened my laptop and browsed on internet. How do authors like J.K Rowling, or J.R R Tolkien made up the stories? They created fantasy worlds that didn't exist before them, fantasy worlds that some people are fanatic about and try to live on the real world! I even heard that once J.K Rowling revealed Harry Potter will die, the author got death threads from the fans of the books. After, Harry got a blessing and Potter lived "happily ever after".. 

Take a closer look, Harry Potter books' has the top positions 2-8 (exclude 6th) on the best selling volume of all time. Also, the film called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 that is shot based on the specific book, is fourth on the list of highest grossing films. It seems that Mrs Rowling had some sort of idea what to write about..?

What about J.R. R Tolkien then? He made up the books during the Second World War and the trilogy enhanced its popularity in the 2000's.  J.R.R Tolkien's series of the books has been sold more than 100 million copies. To mention also, Harry Potter and Philosophers' stone has crossed that limit. Lord of the Rings movie series also made a great financial success and won a handful of awards. 

There's a fitness boom in Finland. Everyone wants to be fitness, go to the gym and have overdoses of protein rich food. Grocery stores are full of protein bars, drinks, puddings, quark and isotonic drinks that people buy even though they don't do too much sports.

First, there was a trend called "karppaus". The diet consisted of protein rich food, fats, and little or no carbohydrate. The boom was dedicated to oversized people to lose weight. I heard that the diet worked rather well, if one followed the regimen. At the same time with Karppaus there was a boom of being skinny. The skinnier you were the better.

Back to the current trend, muscular body and gym. Personally, I believe that the trend is better than being just skinny or avoiding carbohydrates that our body needs to function normally and to create energy. However, the issue annoying are the fake-fitness-people. They rarely ever have exercised but wear a tick make up, squeeze their booties into extremely tight leotards and pretend that they workout. How annoying is that? Do I pretend that I play trumpet and go to the orchestra?

On April or at last on May students start to desperately look for a summer job. A job to earn enough income to survive the next fall at Uni and/or eat cheese macaroni. Feeling anxious, they send several job applications with a copy of CV. Most student's CV is a short list of their previous working experience at grocery store or at a cleaning company. 

The next phase is to send the letters or emails to companies and pray for the best. Some lucky ones get calls or emails from the place asking them to visit for an interview. Stressing for the job interview outfit, printing the reference papers and appearing the right may start. 

After interview, a few lucky (= clever?) ones catch the position and rest of us suffer with short employment periods, govenrnment's financial aid or are just trying to carry out for a few summer courses. well penny ain't easy to get.. At work you start to think of whether all the stress was worth of doing the crapy work at a crapy salary. Best of all are the sunny days when the thermometer indicates 32+ at scandinavian latitudes and you sit at a cashier earning 8€ per hour.

The other weekend I visited at a well-known festival. The heat, the sound and the pissed people create the atmosphere, sounds familiar uh? Well at the time I was looking for a loo to relief myself. I queued and followed people passing by while noticed a short cut to the festival toilets at the other side of the column. I quickly moved to that side of the toilets and luckily dumped into a free loo. Great yeah? Man I was happy, I would make it to the next gig on time. Step into and shortly heard talking from the next toilet. Two people had squeezed into small, dirty toilet to have a chat or..? Person one: "Okay..".. "Where's your panties".. Another one: "Shiiit! I dropped them into the toilet bowl" The first one: "..well you don't need them anyways.." I did the necessary and got out. After the episode overheard I started to think of panties. 

Africa! Hot as a desert, cruel nature and a pride of lions. Two lioness and four cubs, no male around. Two of the cubs are born white. Albino lions, first ones survived alive in two decades.

Why are people fascinated by extraordinary, but afraid of differences? We draw prejudice about people, issues, places and the world based on our lives. White lion may be the pretties cub in the Africa or the odd ones out that shouldn't have born. Mio the tiger, an ordinary boy with blue eyes, white skin and African roots, or a girl from Ipanema that knows Swedish.