"Bees have fur, but they're no good for petting."

I sometimes wonder about the creative department meetings behind particularly funny, absurd, or unbelievable ads. For example, this commercial for Orangina Rouge. Laced with Gallic farce, it features a maniacal, anthropomorphic Orangina bottle going after some sqeaky-clean day-trippers with a chainsaw. The tagline is, "Why is he so mean?" to which Mr. Crazy Juice Pop Drink simply answers "Because!" ("Parce que!"). I adore it-- it's silly, but it works because people who see the commercial might immediately associate Orangina Rouge with a fun, absurdist piss-take. Either that, or the actor playing the lunatic refreshment will be assailed with calls of "Because!" for the next five years each time he walks down a boulevard or stops to pick up some Gauloises.

For anyone still sceptical of the Internet's potential to change the mechanics of civil society, see this article on the Nadia Kajouji case. (Warning: the piece contains descriptions of severe creepiness and preventable tragedy.) Through what other medium could one be persuaded, by a total stranger, into a fake suicide pact? Meeting said stranger on a site devoted to suicide, accessed after being ignored by real-world colleagues and friends? I feel this comes down to Yeats: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

On a lighter note, if you'd like to play with an online translation service perhaps less conventional than the now ubiquitous BabelFish (which, while being somewhat functional, still wins major points as the greatest proof of God's non-existence) try this Esperanto translator, and impress your friends and family with birthday greetings, dinner invites, aphorisms and sound bites in the invented language damned by Hitler, Stalin, and Orwell.