CROSSING THE FINNISH LINE

I suppose you could call them a bunch of tossers and they would not be offended. I’m talking about the entrants to this year’s World Mobile Phone Throwing Championships (the sixth such event, no less) which were recently held in the Finnish town of Savonlinna, possibly better known for its annual opera festival (where mobile phones are banned).

Some of the entrants in the World Mobile Phone Throwing Championships managed to achieve impressive distances of almost a 100 metres – which suggests they may have been prompted by a telesales call from a mortgage company, or a text message to say the mother-in-law is coming to stay for a week or two.

This year's major winner was Mikko Lampi from Finland -- there were contestants from eight countries, with 61 of them taking part in individual categories and 33 in team events.

Mobile phone throwing is not the only non-Olympic sport to be found in Finland, which in July also celebrated its thirteenth national and ninth world Wife Carrying Championships at the little known town (unless you happen to be an avid wife-carrying fan) of Sonkajarvi.

This event has deep roots in the local history: in the late 1800s a brigand named Rosvo-Ronkainen is said to have accepted into his gang only those men who proved their worth on a challenging track. In those days, it should be pointed out, it was also a common practice to steal women from the neighbouring villages.

The original track winding in the rough terrain with fences, rocks and brooks has been altered to suit modern conditions. Run over a 253.5 metres, the minimum weight of the wife to be carried must be 49 kilos. Not married? No problems – carry somebody else’s wife, as long as she is more than 17 years old.

While we are on the subject of championships, Llanwrtyd Wells in Wales has just staged the 20th World Bog Snorkelling Championships, an event that means swimming through a peat bog without using conventional swimming strokes. Bog snorkelling in Wales has attracted competitors from as far afield as Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Zambia.

Mobile phone throwing, wife carrying, bog snorkelling: do I detect a new (Nokia sponsored) triathlon in the making?

RELIVE THOSE DIRTY WEEKENDS

I have just received an e-mail from the Hilton Hotels Corporation marketing people saying its amenities are now for sale.

At first I thought it was a subtle attempt to get me to pay for all those miniature bars of soap I have walked away at Hiltons from Arrhus to Zurich over the years – but this was a bigger deal.

For the first time in its 80-year history, the hotel chain is making its custom-designed, in-room items available for purchase, offering guests “the opportunity to re-create the experience of a Hilton guestroom at home” – they threw in the word ‘luxury’, but they would, wouldn’t they.

According to the guys at Hilton, the new Hilton to Home programme (which has been trade-marked) provides “a vehicle for consumers to purchase, via the Internet and printed in-room collateral, plush Hilton guestroom items, including the ultra-comfortable Hilton Suite Dreams mattress and box spring, luxury Hilton Serenity Collection bedding items, the Crabtree & Evelyn La Source bath product line and the exclusive Hilton Family clock radio."

Are you getting excited about all this? Jeffrey Diskin, the senior vice president of brand management and marketing for Hilton obviously is. This is what he has to say about it all:

"Our guests enjoy pampering themselves with superior amenities during their stay and they often enquire about how they can purchase their favourite in-room items, be it the pillows, bedding, or even the bathrobe. Now for the first time, we are providing our customers the chance to indulge in our guestroom experience in the comfort of their own homes."

Want to relive that wet night in Aberdeen, when the room service got the order wrong, or that dirty weekend in Paris, or Vienna? Or maybe you want to live the hotel life and throw towels on the bathroom floor after a single use.

Hilton will make your dreams come true: just get your credit card ready, go to the new Hilton at Home website for complete product details and pricing information -- and before you you can say Conrad (or Paris) Hilton you can be refurnishing your home -- and, hey, here's an idea: you could also be half way to opening your own Hilton-style bed-and-breakfast in Billericay, Little Rock, or Wollongong.

There may be a downside to all this: I can imagine phoning a Hilton at some stage to make a reservation, only to be told that the room is available, but it’s unfurnished as there has been a run on beds and wardrobes.

Meanwhile, there are unconfirmed reports that Ikea is going into the hotel business: check in, pick up your flat pack and off you go to your room.

LACK OF COMMUNICATION

Have you noticed that the more advanced we become with communications systems, the less we actually communicate. Make a phone call, and you get a voicemail. Send an e-mail and you get an automated response – maybe something like this:

* You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you would not have received anything at all.

* I will be unable to delete all the unread emails you send me until I return from vacation on 20/9. Please be patient. Your email will be deleted in the order it was received.

* Thank you for your e-mail. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first 10 words, and $1.99 for each additional word. Ask now about our special attachment opening rate.

* The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connections and is therefore unable to deliver this message. Please reinstall your version of Microsoft Windows and start again.

* Thanks for your e-mail, which has been placed in the queuing system. You are currently 351 in place and should receive and answer within 6 weeks. If your message is urgent, please contact me by telephone and leave a message on my voicemail.

* I will be out of the office from 16/09 until 23/10 for medical reasons. As from 24/10 please address your messages to me as Kate instead of Ken.

And as far as voicemails are concerned, my favourite is still:

“Hallo, this is Krishna Kelly the mind reader. I am unable to take your call right now. Do not leave a message. I know what it’s about.”

BATTLE OF THE BULGE

How long will it be before America’s powerful National Cattlemens Beef Association get their act together and draw up battle plans for dealing with the Californian cleavage clan who call themselves the Vegan Vixens?

Led by a carrot crunching and lettuce loving sex bomb with the unlikely name of Sky Valencia, the Vegan Vixens are not a vegetarian basketball squad, but a group of models and would-be actresses who have turned vegan lifestyle into a television series -- Charlie’s Angels meets the Cabbage Patch Kids.

"Party with the world's sexiest vegan girls while they arouse your senses and put you under their spell," runs a seductive trailer for the series. "It's like no other show you've ever seen."

The series started off on Californian cable channel (where you can also watch a programme called Exotic Erotic Balls, but I won’t go there), and has spread to other states. Naturally, the American press has been having a field day with it all: the New York Daily News has dubbed the Vegan Vixens "the soy of sex”.

Whether the Vegan Vixens will succeed in titillating, tantalising and ultimately transforming obese burger bingeing American males into a brigade of slim-line broccoli munchers has yet to be seen, but they seem to be having fun trying – and are making some steady merchandising money with their aromatherapy skin candles.

No Vegan Vixen Diet Book yet, but you can bet the last pea in the pod that it’s only a matter of time

TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR OUR TIME

I am indebted to the Guardian Newsblog for bringing the Public Service Leaflet on Blog Depression to my attention. It's a must read.

In the meantime, I thought it useful to remind all you bloggers out there of the Ten Commandments (as adapted for the blogging world).

Thou shall not have any other blogs before me

Thou shall not post any graven image (it takes up too much bandwidth)

Thou shall not take the name of my blog in vain

Remember the blogging hour, to keep it holy

Honour thy father and thy mother (don’t knock them in a blog)

Thou shall not kill (or recommend terrorist actions in a blog)

Thou shalt not commit adultery (so much time blogging, chance would be a fine thing)

Thou shall not steal text from another blog

Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbour (or Bill Gates, George Bush, Tony Blair and so on)

Thou shall not covet thy neighbour's blog

SIZE DOES COUNT

Plans to make a 750-metre-long sandwich along a roadside in the West Bank town of Jenin were stopped by Palestinian Authority health officials this week. They judged that 180 kilos of meat, as well as vast quantities of vegetables, might rot in the sun. The organisers say they will set another date to make an attempt on the record - this time in the shade.

For some reason or other, August seems to be a popular month for trying to break the ‘longest sandwich’ record. Just a year ago, the 700 or so villagers of Kfar Qatra, a village 25 kilometres southeast of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, used 3,500 loaves of the local type of bread, 140 kilos of labneh (a Lebanese yoghurt), 21,000 olives, and 280 kilos of tomatoes and cucumbers to make a giant sandwich that measured 720-metres long.

The Kfar Qatr sandwich, which was cut into 14,260 pieces, was an effort to beat the Guinness Book of Records entry for the ‘longest sandwich’ set up five days before the Lebanese big bake by Pietro Catucci and Antonio Latte in the Italian town of Mottola.

The Italian job, which measured 634.50 metres and included 920 kilos of flour, 512 litres of water and 25 kilos of salt, was filled with 547 kilos of salami and mortadella and decorated on top with mayonnaise and tuna: it was eaten by 19,000 people in aid of charity.

The recent Palestinian record attempt was evidently more political than charitable. "Jenin is well known for fighting the Israeli occupation, and we wanted to give a civilised view of the city," said the sandwich project's manager.

Will the Israelis hit back with a ‘biggest bagel’ attempt? If so they will have to beat the record set up in July 1988, when Lender's Bagels of Mattoon, Illinois, made a blueberry bagel that was 34.9 centimetre high, had a diameter of 149.86 centimetres, and weighed a record 323.86 kilos.

A QUIET BEER

It’s a brewer’s dream to have his beer named the best in the world. That is unless you happen to be one of the 26 Cistercian monks who live by a vow of silence behind the walls of the Westvletern monastery of Saint Sixtus, located near the hop-producing town of Popering in the Flemish region of Belgium.

The Trappist monks at Saint Sixtus have been brewing beer for more than 160 years: a rich, dark-brown beer renowned for its exceptional flavour and strength. It’s not a big production: just 4,500 hectalitres a year, brewed over a period of 70 to 75 days. And they intend to keep it that way, despite winning the 'best beer' accolade.

While Belgium has more than 100 breweries and exports many of its "abbey" beers, only a few have links to religious orders. And apart from the amber nectar from Saint Sixtus, there are only five true Trappist beers brewed by monks, the others coming from Westmalle, Achel, Chimay, Rochefort and Orval.

Westvleteren is the rarest because it has not been distributed commercially for 64 years and can be bought only at Saint Sixtus where, even in times of plenty, customers are rationed to five cases of 24 bottles. You can get a taste of Saint Sixtus beers at the Café de Vrede, just across from the monastery gates – it’s the one place Westvleteren is still available, visitors may buy only six 33cl bottles.

Saint Sixtus monastery may not be commercial, but it does have a Beer Phone telephone number for international beer lovers: it’s + 32 57 40 10 57. Wait a minute: if the Cistercians abide by a vow of silence, who answers the phone?

PIGS FROM OUTER SPACE

This is no hogwash -- sweet and sour pork may have a different taste in your local Chinese restaurant in the future, following news from the Chongqing Academy of Animal Husbandry that China's next manned space flight will carry capsules of pedigree pig sperm in an experiment that scientists (and butchers?) hope will ultimately produce better quality pork.

On its second mission, due in early October, the Shenzhou VI spacecraft will carry half an ounce of pig sperm to where no pig sperm has ever been before. Scientists will then study whether exposure to outer space alters its genetic make-up – with high hopes of bringing home the bacon.

Imagine the following conversation at the Peking Dragon in the not-too-distant-future:

“We’ll go for the sweet and sour pork, please.”

“You want number 10 or number 15?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Number 10 is regular pork, number 15 is pig from outer space. Comes from near Uranus.”

Beam me up, Miss Piggy.