Today Is a Good Day To Vote

March 9, 2007 3:35 PM

Jyrki Kasvi is a member of the Finnish parliament from the Uusimaa constituency. He represents the Green League and his campaign website can be viewed in English, Swedish, or Klingon.
posted by fandango_matt (23 comments total)

Meanwhile, the United States Postal Service is preparing to unveil R2-D2 mailboxes.
posted by fandango_matt at 3:37 PM on March 9, 2007

What is the point out of the fucking p... excellent.
posted by phaedon at 3:41 PM on March 9, 2007

Never let it be said that the Green party is a bunch of fringe wackos.
posted by keswick at 3:43 PM on March 9, 2007

If it's written with the latin alphabet, it's not true Klingon.
posted by evilangela at 3:45 PM on March 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

This is awesome. From the pictures, and this language option, he seems like a pretty cool guy.
posted by cmgonzalez at 3:59 PM on March 9, 2007

I strongly trust in love...I also consider all people having identical possibilities and difference being tolerated.

qagh Sopbe'
posted by owhydididoit at 4:05 PM on March 9, 2007

When I was 12, my best friend bought his dad, a general in the U.S. Army who held a Ph.D. in Classical Lit, the Klingon dictionary. Within 6 months he was speaking fluent Klingon every time I went over. I thought it was the most fucking awesome thing ever. (Until this post.)
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 4:07 PM on March 9, 2007

Klingons. Lame!

Real candidates would write in Sindarian.
posted by eriko at 5:03 PM on March 9, 2007

Ditto eriko.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:46 PM on March 9, 2007

QAPLA'

I bought the Klingon Dictionary at Caldor in jr high.

Never quite made me as cool as I thought it would.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 6:01 PM on March 9, 2007

Why isn't it in Finnish?
posted by opek at 6:07 PM on March 9, 2007

I've heard a common joke that the Finns hate their own language. Think about it---ever met a native Finn who didn't speak perfect English?
posted by metasonix at 7:35 PM on March 9, 2007

This is awesome.

Let it be known that the Finnish Green party, while fringe, is still much better and more well balanced than the fringes of other countries.
posted by taursir at 7:57 PM on March 9, 2007

several years back, multnomah county (where portland, oregon is) advertised a job for a klingon interpreter at its mental hospital, apparently because one or more of the loonies insisted on speaking klingon and there's some kind of federal mandate to accommodate loonies in their own language.
i remember thinking at the time that there's no surer sign that we oregonians are paying too much in taxes. i'm a proud member of the "speak english or starve, nutball" school of thinking.
hasn't star trek jumped the shark yet? in fact, hasn't it jumped the shark and left the shark behind on the other side of the horizon?
posted by bruce at 7:57 PM on March 9, 2007

opek:

It's in Finnish too. Drop the "?kli" from the URL or click one of the links on the left side of the page.
posted by Sand Reckoner at 11:24 PM on March 9, 2007

I've heard a common joke that the Finns hate their own language. Think about it---ever met a native Finn who didn't speak perfect English?

Finnish is related to Hungarian and is a very difficult language to learn - much harder than Kingon - but much easier to speak.

As for Finns "hating" their own language, Finns don't seem to care for language much at all. You don't find too many talkative Finns. There is a wel-known joke about two Finns that go on holiday. Finding two empty bar stools, they order a round of drinks and when the drinks arrive, the one Finn holds up his glass and says to the other "Cheers" to which his buddy replies "Are we here to drink - or to talk?"
posted by three blind mice at 11:48 PM on March 9, 2007

Funny, our parliament elections are next week and my candidate is on the front page of Metafilter. Kasvi has been at the job for four years and up for re-election. According to the preliminary polls, he's probably going to renew his seat. The Greens currently hold 14 of the total 200.

Hate is a strong word, but we do value silence in ways that can seem strange for people from most other cultures.
posted by ikalliom at 2:33 AM on March 10, 2007

Kasvi also has had for years one of the best blogs in the Finnish blogosphere. A couple of weeks ago he promised on his blog that after the rigours of the election campaign he is going to dedicate a full week for playing WoW...

(Interestingly, Finland might be the only country in the world where prime minister was forced to resign because of a scandal about the Iraq war, the so called "Iraq Gate")
posted by hoskala at 4:34 AM on March 10, 2007

Unfortunately, the reason for her resignation was her audacity to tell the people that the incumbent had been secretly fellating Bush. Not a high point in Finnish politics.
posted by Anything at 4:59 AM on March 10, 2007

And yes, uh, there was the breaking-the-law-while-doing it thing. My main beef isn't with her resignation, but her getting demonized by the press, when what Lipponen did was a lot worse.
posted by Anything at 5:04 AM on March 10, 2007

Oh, according to the Wikipedia article, she was found not guilty. She just got hammered in the headlines so bad that she might as well have been.
posted by Anything at 5:14 AM on March 10, 2007

Real candidates would write in Sindarin.

Nah, Quenya. It's more Finnish-like, anyway.
posted by taursir at 12:53 PM on March 10, 2007

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
- Dan Quayle

Best quote ever from that site!, thank ;p
posted by infini at 2:53 PM on March 10, 2007