The Euro 2004 soccer tournament is now well behind us, but a new computer game is ensuring that suspended Italian player Francesco Totti won’t soon forget his bad behaviour.
Totti was slapped with a three-match ban for spitting into the face of Denmark’s Christian Poulsen, and now a Web
site (www.giava.com/sputott) has launched a game, in Italian, dubbed “Spit with Totti.”
Each time Totti hits one of the red-shirted Danish players that dance across the screen, he raises his arm in triumph. When he hits all 11 players, he swaggers off arm-in-arm with girlfriend Ilary Blasi.
The on-line game, it should be noted, is much more exciting than most of the actual tournament (unless you’re of Greek stock, of course).
Premature burial
The dead could soon be speaking from the grave if an American inventor’s plan catches on.
Robert Barrows of California has filed a patent application for a video-equipped tombstone that will display a message from a grave’s occupant.
The hollow, talking tombstone will include a flat touch screen and will house a computer equipped with a hard disc drive or memory chip. It will draw power from the cemetery’s lighting system, and to avoid disturbing other visitors, people can listen to the message through wireless headphones.
But the plan will not give rise to the first electronically enhanced tombstone. An American company has a patent on a gravestone that will display photographs of the deceased and tributes from friends, according to news reports. However, the Barrows plan will go one further by including contributions from the deceased themselves.
Some of the more popular message might include:
- “Remember to unplug the toaster prior to fork insertion.”
- “Never confuse your parachute with a backpack.”
- And last but not least: “That light at the end of the tunnel? It might actually be a train.
