Dropped by in the library this afternoon with my housemate. And while he explored, I sat down to read, and ended up having to note down the following.

Excerpts from Hickey, D. "Revision Number 7: Formalism" in Art in America Apr.09 pp.35-38

Art doesn't have a dictionary --> patterns present themselves that are unaccounted for in "correct" readings.

All expression contain unintended secondary and tertiary patterns that contribute to the work's intentionality. (Emphasis added)

The primary virtue of formalism is that it allows you to see and hear patterns that were not put there, that only ended up there as a side effect of some other pattern more urgently desired.

Formalism speculates on the intensity and possible longevity of tangible art that elicits an instantaneous visual confirmation.

One's sense of a work's quality, virtue or intensity is as instantaneous as the mind's ability to sense patterns and their on-purposeness without knowing that purpose.

Formalism begins with an instantaneous sense of alien, patterned complexity. We stand before a work of art with no hope of understanding it and no choice but to try.

______________________

I fan a lot of pages on Facebook, especially bands, because I want the news and alerts and updates. It was through Facebook that I found out that the Offspring's latest album was going to premier on the internet, so I was able to listen to the whole thing before buying it - which really was full of win.

Well now I got an update to say that Rascal Flatts' new video of Summer Nights was premiering on Yahoo!-music, and it was suggesting to check it out. So I did. And as much as I love Rascal Flatts (their sound is just so different and awesome) and the song is ok (not my favourite, it's sort of... average), the video was really rather meh. First it's the band saying that they can't be bothered to make a video, so maybe just have a beach scene of lots of pretty people singing along and partying to the song. Just... no.

Proms. I'm proper excited about the Proms now, makes me wish I had a TV, makes me with the BBC iPlayer can be watched in Finland (can it? Is it UK only, or was it EU only, or something? I know it doens't work in the States... Ah well, there'll at least be radio in Finland, and they're not televising all of it anyhoo). And Proms make me work great. :D Today I watched the first night and worked all the way through watching - that's two and a half hours of programme/work, people! That's some good hours put in. :) And there was a man, a pianist, Stephen Hough, who seems to have much win and needs to be looked into much. Which I will. But in other radio-related news it seems that I've lost how to listen to the Today programme on the radio iPlayer. So I haven't in a couple days, and am back in the news-void. I am also binging on Angel. Really badly. Like, 3-4 episodes at a go. My housemates have the DVD boxset, so... I'll be srsl Angeled out by the end of the summer. But that's okay because I love Angel. Well, not Angel himself as much as Doyle. And Lorne. Also noticed something peculiar. Doyle is a lot like the groom from the last wedding I went to (when I was plus-one of one of the best men), and then Wesley is a lot like my date the best man. So lesson to be learnt here is: don't watch so much Angel, or you'll mix reality with TV. Oh wait, I do that all the time anyway.

So right now life is a mixture of work, Angel, pokemon, occasionally dotted by bisquits, slices of bread and glasses of squash, and the ginger interruptions (very welcome ones at that). That is all about to come to an abrupt end on Monday when I go chez Silvie for a week, and then Finland for a while the Monday following that week. Well, Angel will be interrupted, unless Silvie will allow me to bring it with, pokemon and work I will take with for sure, and I trust there will be noms there too... So... actually nothing will be interrupted, things will simply change location. One thing I'm not thinking about just yet is packing for Finland. Because it involves a lot of "this I need to get to Finland and leave there for the duration of my mission" which means that my mission is really close, and I'm not ready but also really aching to go already (things are hard right now, mission will make things really easy... Especially the obsessiveness and the aching-for-cuddles and such things that pertain to a man whose attention and interest I don't seem to have at the moment...) But I'm really not looking forward to packing on the Saturday I come back from Silv's. -_-

_____________________________

Kermode said something (many things indeed, but one thing in particular) about the new HP-film (no, I haven't been to see it yet, might leave it til Finland and go see it with my sisters) that I paid extra attention to, and that was that in his opinion it is a good children's horror film, and why didn't films like these exist when he was growing up. Now that's something I've heard a lot of parents say in a negative way, that as the HP-series progresses, it gets too scary for children. Now I'm of the school of thought that reckons that it's good for children to be scared. I can name about 4-5 things off the top of my head that frightened me to bits when I was a kid. For example: the Groke in Moomins, Katla in Brothers Lionheart, the thin-ice-warning-animation they showed every night of every winter right before bedtime -- and I know kids of my generation were all dead afraid of those things. I saw the Exorcist when I was far too young (I had a horror phase when I was about 10 or 11, I watched all the horror films and TV-shows I could get my hands on, I read everything there was available about monsters and the occult, and I got through my vampire-phase back then), I watched my brother play Doom and I had nightmares about that too (I had dreams that there were Eyes of the Beholder in my shower room, and I had to chop them down, and then the pieces changed into those little Peperami stick figure men and attacked my dog o.O). But the two worst things that I can remember from my childhood - one real and the other a nightmare - have nothing to do with having been scared by TV or movies.
        My worst nightmare as a child - a recurring one, no less - was that I was babysitting two young girls, and we were at the road, not far from my house (we lived in the sticks, so it's a quiet road, really bendy, no asphalt, no streetlights - a country lane), and a car came really fast down the road, and I didn't have time to react and I shouted and pulled the younger one to the side, but the older one got ran over and died. Now I never babysat, ever. My mom didn't let me, because she found it a really bad idea to let me be in charge of anybody's children - she just didn't think it was fair to make a child responsible for younger children. I mean, I looked after my kid-sister alright, but never that sort of formal babysitting thing. But this dream was horrible, because it was so real. And the feeling of "it's my fault" stayed with me even when I woke up and realised that no one had actually died. And I've since realised that the two girls were probably supposed to be me and my younger sister, because that was the kind of team we used to be (still are at times), and so essentially... I saved my sister but failed to save myself (whatever that means). Anyhoo.
        The other thing, the scariest thing ever to actually happen was that I remember going hiding under my bed (I was scared of mom for some reason, I did something to make her angry, or she was angry for some reason, can't remember) and she vacuumed the room and she didn't see me under the bed, obviously, so she vacuumed me (I got hit by the sucky part of the vacuum) and we had this really mean-sounding vacuum cleaner, and all us kids were pretty afraid of it, and I seriously thought that I was being vacuumed for real, and that mom was doing that because she was so angry with me that she was going to vacuum me. I think I actually peed myself at that point. I remember I hid there for a really long time, and then went and hid in the sauna (it's dark there, and nobody goes in there if it's not a sauna evening). Anyway, point was that neither of those worst-evers had anything to do with scary entertainment. That's not to say that I wasn't scared by scary movies and books when I was a kid - I just finished saying that I was plenty scared - but the point is that it's good to be scared. I've lost all coherence. Damn you Mark Kermode.

Some quotes from a programme on BBC1 about the moon missions I was watching because of the Apollo 11 anniversary:

{talking about the photos Apollo 8 sent} "the world received images, the likes of which we have never seen before. For centuries we have peered into space form the Earth. Now, we could see ourselves as the rest of the universe sees."
http://promega.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/nasa-apollo8-dec24-earthrise.jpg

"If NASA hadn't paid so much attention to filming, we would never have made it to the moon. It's the television images of heroes that appealed the the public... without TV, we would never have fallen in love with the story {of the moon missions}"

"{during repairs to a satellite} NASA produced more incredible images for the world's TV screens."
http://www.ri.net/schools/Glocester/WGES/Dulude/images/spaceman.jpg

And I realised that that is one of the values that NASA returns to us. We (and by we I mean the USAian tax payers) pay incredible amounts to construct... thingies, to find out... some other thingies that some smart people tell us are very important to find out. But if you are not into science of thingies, this all may seem like a lot of waste. But the science is not all that NASA provides. They also produce emotional value, they give us thingies that anyone can understand: images and stories. And I personally think that is enough to justify their missions, to be thankful for the work NASA does in enriching our culture.

______________________

You know the phrase "I'll never forget you"? You can imagine some really emotional moment when two people who care for each other separate never to meet again (whether separated by something permanent like death, or just by circumstances like moving far away from each other). I've found that all of those close friends of mine that I've separated with for whatever reason, no matter how dear and close, I do forget them sometimes. Months, even years may pass when I don't think of them. But there is always something that comes up and the memory returns. And I think when we say "I'll never forget you" we mean to add "permanently". Or we mean that "I'll remember you at times. At random times when I'm not really thinking of anything in particular, you will come to mind. Or I'll see or hear something that will remind me of you, of the good times we shared. And times, quiet times, when you will simply resurface in my mind with a bitter-sweet reminder of how good it was, and how other things will be good in another way another time. But never with you again."

In case you're wondering where this all is coming from (Coventry, England), I was listening to the radio where they talked about the young British servicemen who have died in Afghanistan. And it made me think of someone who went to school with me who also died at 18. And I noticed how long ago that was, and how I still think of him and love him.

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1364

The last panel is the most truthful thing ever mentioned in this comic.

Quiz-time!

Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post as The Controversial Survey?
-No, I don't.

</Quiz-time>

I have to scrap my LED Christ in Glory -project and start from scratch. For the third time. -_- FFS. Last time it was because they (Major League Baseball) changed the file that would be used, this time it's because the program has an unforeseen limit on how many elements can be placed onto the timeline, and it is nowhere near many enough for what I am doing -_- So I will either have to... go back to Flash and make the whole damn thing in as a Flash animation (this would mean that the finished thing is skewed, and it bothers me far more than it should), or I will have to learn how to group the lines so I can put one element per line instead of one element per light. I'm not sure if that'd work either, and I'd probably have to make many small animations in Flash to be the elements, which then runs the risk of the imported files being misplaces and the whole shenang going blargh. This decision will come another time, for right now I am in no state of mind to make decisions or think rationally about what to do - because right now the winning option is stabbing my computer screen with a buttery knife... >.< Why do I do media art, someone remind me please? (Oh yeah, 'cause it pays well...)

So I'm putting the damn thing on hold til I can gather myself... Heh, the moment this error message showed up and I realised exactly what it meant (that all my labour so far all these months was totally wasted), I put my boots on, grabbed my keys and went for a walk around the block, because otherwise I would have trashed my living room.

I have to email George about the set back... I'm thinking of writing it in the form of a riddle...

I think I'll go watch Dr. Horrible now.

Hokae, important announcement. Though less of an announcement and more of an advertisement. >_>

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is the most fantabulous thing ever. Yes, it deserves le tag-abusage. And I'm not just saying it because I'm in love with Neil Patrick Harris and will soon send myself to him in a package (although it would probably spark a real-life instance of someone saying the phrase "the hell? Who mails a bobcat?")

Back to the important announcement. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a... let's call it a movie, a superhero- no, a supervillain movie. A supervillain movie musical. It is about Dr. Horrible (who has a Ph.D in Horribleness), who keeps a video blog about how he strives to get in to the Evil League of Evil (which is led by none other than the Thoroughbred of Sin: Bad Horse *shivers*) But like all supervillains, he has a superhero nemesis, Captain Hammer (corporate tool). I can tell already that you can not contain your excitement, so I'll stop telling you what it's about, and move on to tell you 1) how friggin' awesome this thing is, 2) why exactly do you need to watch it right now, and 3) how many ways Bad Horse could 'make you his mare'.

Seriously though. The project was conceived during those dark and dreary months of the Writers' Strike. The people behind the project (Joss Whedon and co) basically got all their mates together to make a movie that was released in three parts on the internet. And when I say "their mates" I mean their professional mates. These people do this work for a living (I love Neil Patrick Harris because of 'Stark Raving Mad' which he did with pre-Monk Tony Shaloub, the guy who plays Captain Hammer, Nathan Fillion, is a familiar face to me from 'Two guys, a girl and a pizzaplace' or whatever that show evolved into when the girl got married with this guy, and the Whedon-clan are famous for doing a lot of good stuff). So it's these professional people going "this writers' strike sucks, we want to do stuff, let's do this and put it out on the internet ourselves." And how much win it has, I can not begin to tell you.

Look, here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXI3obHfwgU And http://drhorrible.com/ is the official place (USAians can actually watch the whole thing on there, and I'm sure it's around on YouTube too, though the DVD is so worth it, and not expensive either).

So. I love the story. I love the actors. I love the music. I love the concept. And most of all I love it for how it was done, and what it says about how things can be done.

Fanart will happen. Soon. Very, very soon.



And we all are Bad Horse's mares. And I love it.

Coughing hurts. Apparently dark chocolate is supposed to suppress the itch-reflex that causes coughing - we bought four bars of chocolate today, three milk and one white. -_- Will go to the shop tomorrow to fix this oversight. Today I also bought the remaining BSG that I haven't seen (so that's like the fourth season, which is stupidly divided into "fourth season" and "final season" because of the darned writers' strike), so am quickly catching up with that. So more fanart may come out of that, especially now that I live with the ginger geeks, who appreciate fanart much.

Anthony Gormley's 'Fourth Plinth' started today. For the next 100 days a person will stand on the empty fourth plinth on Trafalgar Square for an hour each, all around the clock. This project has so much win. I'll be keeping a close eye on it.

Emotionally battered, so I can't be bothered to do much. I'm avoidant of everything.

I have found the Reith lectures. o.O http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/the-reith-lectures/archive/ This might mean that I will become vastly smarter. Or just more confused as to what my opinions and political views are. But either way, it are win.

This is actually something very pertinent right now, and I'd like you to be aware of it: my opinions are in a flux. I am finding it increasingly difficult to be critical in a negative way. My assessment of about everything in the world goes from "oh, that's okay" to "that is the most marvelous thing ever". There is no "suck", no "lame", no "bad". (I actually remember Harpo Speaks mentioning a man who was like that, whose meanest thing he ever said was "that Hitler isn't really the nicest fellow"). I told my new housemate that today, that he really should not trust my opinion or taste on anything. I mean, things which I'm excited about are probably good, I don't think I get really excited about lame things... but at the same time, my opinion will not protect us from the lame things. And this kind of uncriticalness also takes form as a political indecisiveness. I am at the moment unable to make up my mind as to politics. So if I seem vague and disconnected about interesting debate, that might be why (or it might be the reason why I ask questions in such debate, who knows... See?! Unable to decide). It may be to some extent that I'm really easy to please and tend to look for the positive in everything (so it works out for me a lot of the time, even though I'll be unable to share a critical opinion about a movie). But I'm also honestly politically lost - there seems to be no option that suits me: there is no iippo-party. And I can't make one because I don't know what their views would be :P I hope this will slowly fix itself - until it does, the most I ca do is define my opinions in terms of "well that's not it" (although in some cases like abortion or gay marriage, I can't even make up my mind about which side I think isn't right).

Another thing about smarts that I wanted to share with you. I was spending time with these kids my age whom I know from church. And it was a fun evening, there was noms, we played games, talked etc... And at one point we were bored and trying to think what to do, and someone said they could use their phone to find some quiz-questions on the internet, and we could have a quiz. So we sorted all that out, and the guy with the phone was like "err, I don't know about these questions, they may be to hard" and said "for example, would you know 'what is the fin on the back of a fish called?'" And I said "of course we know that, it's a dorsal fin." And he looked at me all surprised, and everybody else did too, and went "...okay, so you would know, okay then. Well, the next question is 'what is the biggest island of Thailand?'" and his tone of voice kinda suggested "you guys aren't going to know this, this quiz is too hard, we should do something else" and I said "well I don't know how to pronounce it, but I think it's Phuket." And again everybody just went like... "how can you know that stuff o.O" These people are supposed to be my peer group, yet they don't know what a dorsal fin is? >.<; Is it such a surprise that I feel older and prefer to spend time with older people? (I know, it's not just an age thing, since I know people younger than me who are smarter than me - but my mental age is not at the same level as theirs). 
            Now I'm a person who gets along with just about everybody and anybody, I don't do the whole "we have nothing in common" -thing, I'm happy to kind of even sit on the edge of a group of people and watch them have fun, and still feel included in some way... But that... was a very strange sort of alienation going on there. o.O Alienation by participation. Just... what the heck?
            The drive back made the evening worthwhile though, so it was good in the end (see, positive side in everything! Meh.)

I'm also learning alot about humility at the moment. That also in turn might lead to indecisiveness. But it'll also at the end of the process make me a happier, better person, I reckon.

Jessica Rabbit gig is off. -_- Woke up without a voice. Meeeh. I'll do it next time (which technically means "after my mission"). Meeeeh.

To ease the annoyance, I've been looking at http://www.ladiesemporium.com/store/ladies_shoes.php :3 ([The Penguin Who Could Fly] knows what I mean)

One of these a la Viking:
BNP (British Nazi Party) is ordered to accept ethnic minority members.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/5611876/BNP-ordered-to-accept-ethnic-minority-members-or-face-prosecution.html

This delighted me so incredibly much XD

A funny man on the radio had a very good idea. Let's call on 3000 blacks, asians, muslims and east Europeans to join the BNP, then the rest of us join, then the ethnic minorities run for all the positions in the party, and the rest of us vote for them, and then we change the name of the party (while keeping the same initials just to annoy them) to something else, and... voila. :)
(it was today's Now show on BBC Radio 4 in case you for some reason want to listen to it, it'll be on the iPlayer or on their podcasts or whatever)

Going to Canada, brb:
http://blog.chickadvisor.com/2009/05/ben-jerrys-if-i-had-1000000-flavours.html

Meh, I'm ill. My throat is really sore, I'm losing my voice and I'm coughing... But I really want to do that Jessica Rabbit gig tomorrow. *overdoses on Lempsip, Strepsils, Vicks VapoRub, paracetamol, ibuprofen and chicken soup, while drowning in a hot bath of herbal teas*

Blessings And Cursings of Having a Computer at Home, issue 1.

Welcome to the first issue of Blessings And Cursings of Having a Computer at Home.

The first blessing is http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1486
The cursing that goes with this first blessing is that I now have all the win things of the world at my fingertips (lolcats, xkcd etc...) and as such, they don't update quite frequently enough for my newly-found speed. Before days, maybe even weeks would pass between my visits to these win things, and therefore on my spar moments when I did visit them, I could really indulge and immerse myself. But no such luck when you check them every five minutes. So you need options. And one option is randoming. So I randomed in xkcd and came across his parody of the Dinosaur Comic, and there and then I remembered that the dinosaur comic is awesomely cool, and went to read that instead. But of course I haven't read much of it, so hours were easily spent reading it (backwards, too, so the arching storylines don't make much sense). But then I came across the strip linked above. Which is seriously webcomic netart. The coolest thing ever seen in the webcomic genre, I swear. It's groundbreaking (unless someone else has done it before, in which case... well it's still groundbreaking for me, since I'm seeing it for the first time).

The second blessing is <URL:stuff/toomuchmontypython.jpg> which I made for the Comic Workshop. The cursing that goes with that one is that I haven't done much actual PS-drawing in ages and my hands are freezing (because my house is always freezing) and therefore the drawing itself isn't particularly good. But I thought it was a funny idea.

Well, I'll see you in next issue (if it happens, probably won't).

Today is a special day. I have internet. At my house. :O :D

A friend of mine gifted me with an old G4 Mac tower, and other old, temperamental bits to go with it, together to compile what we commonly call a computer. Well, gift isn't exactly the most accurate of terms, loan is more like it, seeing as I will only need/use it til September ayway, and then will give it back to him. But that does mean that this summer there will be an iippo. No excuses. So much rejoicing took place.

Another friend gifted me with a Nintendo DS, which also means that much time shall be wasted on Pokemans :D So if said iippo seems distracted and then bursts into swearing violently, it might be because her pokeman failed (or it's the tourette's flaring up).

To be fair, the computer is mainly to help me work on the project I'm doing for the friend who gave it me, so how much anything will happen there, who knows. But it does also mean that the BBC iPlayer is now a serious attention grabber in my life, possibly. Especially if I figure out how to get it to show me fast cars (yes, Formula 1 has conned me into thinking that seeing impossible little vehicles going around in a circle is exciting. Plus it'd make talking to A. a little easier, having actually seen what I'm pretending to know what I'm talking about :P).

And yes, the gifting friend loaded it with all sorts of delightful programmes, like Flash and Photoshop et al. :3 I have lost all reason to go outside my house, bar library and printing. Please send foods.

In other updates, not much going with mission preparation, and on Saturday I'm going to dress up as Jessica Rabbit and sing on stage. Yes, it will be videoed. And, err... you might see that, might not. >_>

http://xkcd.com/14/
I'm still waiting for that feeling to come.


I did a 'Which Tom Waits Are You' -quiz on Facebook:
_{You are the Ambitious Traveling Pirate/Internationally Misunderstood Genius Tom Waits! You have a craving for radical storytelling and worldly instrumentation! You're in the blooming moment of your prime. Everyone might not understand you currently, but everything you touch will be considered gold in the future. You really can do whatever you want right now: grunt about pirates or dwarfs, sell songs to Rod Stewart, or write a concept album and play about a down-on-his-luck accordion player! Your albums are "Swordfishtrombones", "Rain Dogs", "Frank's Wild Years", and "Big Time".}


Well, in other news, I may have started an art collection. A very specific one. I collect a very specific size (I haven't measured yet, roughly the size of an LP sleeve) artist prints - y'know, etchings, aquatints, woodcuts etc... Old-fashioned printing techniques. I have two (three if you count the scrap paper I stole from the typography room and cut to the correct shape - it has to test-prints of the text 'support our turbines' and some mess). One is an image of a lock and key (I bought that at the art school auction last year), and the other I bought yesterday at the degree show, it has this kind of grid with trees (every other tree has leaves, every other one doesn't) and in the last square of the grid there is a couple. :3 So pretty.

And now I will tell you of the other things I saw in the degree show. It was pretty good.
So there was this series of etchings by a Fine Art+Illustration students about love life (one of which I bought). Very delicate and beautiful (I should take a photo of it and show you). There was a lot of cut paper -art, one of which was sort of layered to make this very map-like structures. They were placed on plinths (so you looked at them from above) and some were lit from below (I preferred the ones that weren't). -> http://www.stephaniehesketh.co.uk/ One was this installation, very surrealism inspired. The space was done like a room, with wall paper and floor painted different. There were these chairs with really long slender legs (think Salvador Dali's long-legged elephants) and teacups with hair placed all over everywhere, and drawings and glass prints pinned to the walls (not at normal exhibition height, but at various heights). http://www.joanne-baker.co.uk/ One had these prints with text sort of burnt to the paper, and also text burnt/printed to feathers. One guy had done these paintings that were sort of one image but different areas of it were done in different imaging ways (so a picture of a person with half done in X-ray mode, half done in infra-red/heatcam, square areas of the image here and there done in normal viewing, with words nd information about the subject written on the paintings. Were much win, but I really liked the couple smaller ones he'd done of objects: a clock, a lava-lamp and something else that had a motor of some sorts. And those canvasses had little perspex boxes attached to the sides that had a part of the object in question in the box. I really wanted to buy one of those little ones, but they were like £100 each, and I just can't afford stuff like that. Maybe it if was closer to £50 I would have forked it over, but as it is, hundred pounds for student work - nah. And then probably my favourite was this typographical work, which was taking at its base the phrase 'the despairing self is constantly building nothing...' (Kierkegaard quote) And there were letters that had been laser-cut from some black stuff, piled on the floor to make an incoherent phrase, and these prints, iterations, in the back, where every letter of the whole text/quote was printed on top of each other, so the first print had the letters from the first word, the second print had the letters of the first two words, third first three etc... I thought it was absolutely brilliant. And there was one media arts-y piece with strobe lights flashing behind a screen on which was projected films, and there was music... It was to do with this artist who had a degrading eye sight, and apparently constantly sees everything with flashing lights in his peripheral vision. So I thought that was quite impressive, literally sharing with the audience how he sees the world. Obviously it was very much instant epilepsy -type of thing, and you couldn't stay for very long. But it was good. I also did go through the graphic design and illustration exhibitions too. GD was really good, lots of really creative, smart adverts etc... They had a really good year. Illustration didn't have anything I particularly loved, and I didn't go to any of the other floors (I didn't go to basement because I was afraid of running into someone I don't want to run into - which is a shame because the basement is the sculpture exhibition).

I am back.

Friday was my last day of work. That means that from now til September my days are filled with 'preparing' for the mission (read: sweet idleness and arty indulgence of every kind). So a return to Elftown and all things internetty and geeky (including the last season of Battlestar Galactica out on DVD today, which I will buy for my ginger friend and watch it with him). Speaking of my ginger friend, he's moving into my house in July! :D I'll have him as a housemate for two months! Perfection <3 <3 The French Occupation will come to an end!

So yas, my last day, let me show you it. I got the mission call on thursday night, so on Friday morning I burst into the office, floating three feet above ground and went around announcing it to everyone. The entire day was filled with buzzing, they'd got me cake and the coolest ever farewell-card in the universe. They also gave me a gift-card for Bhs to buy missionary garb with (the guidelines how missionaries should dress are really... just really. Conservative is the most descriptive word I can think of right now. And while I have a really old-fashioned taste, it's old-fashioned in a slightly different sense :P) And they presented me the cards with everybody gathered around and made me do a little talk and stuff. And someone stole a little desk-flag of Sweden from upstairs and put it up on my desk (he put it at half-mast, and this other woman kept walking past and putting it up, and so it went back and forth :P) And I just felt so loved and missed there. It's brilliant to know that I have a lot of friends in that office.

I also had an exit interview with the head of HR, which was really nice and basically said "when you come back, and if the hiring freeze is over, you should come back." And I'm actually considering it as a serious alternative. For, as much as I dream of working for university and being a lecturer, a university as an employer is a very different beast to the academic institution of university. And the church office work is wonderful in the sense that you are helping build the kingdom of God, which is what I want to do more than anything else. But obviously I can't stop doing art. That drive is inside me and needs to be channeled to creative oustings otherwise something else might happen that wouldn't be so good. But at the same time I'm not interested in pursuing a career in art, because I don't want it to become a job. And on the other other hand if I'd be able to somehow merge the creative talent and church employment, that would be a dream come true (there is nothing I want more than to be involved in the building of temples. Somehow, anyhow). <insert a minor head'splosion here> I'mma gonna stop thinking about all that now. I have 18 months of not-thinking-about-that ahead of me.

So anyway. When the last day ended I had decided a long time ago that I would walk back home from work. Now the office is in a different town, about 20 miles away, and the roads are country lanes, some going though villages, and then the A45 dual carriage way (but that has a small path on the side, so it's not too bad). The scariest bit was in the country lanes when there was literally no ledge. At that point I was so afraid that I'd get ran over (the speed limits on country lanes are really low, but people don't keep to them because it's fun to go fast on them - but you can't see far ahead because the road is curvy...) that I ran. Almost peed myself, I must admit, I was that afraid. But the rest of it went well, really monotonous, lot of time to think and come to conclusions (most of which I've forgotten by now I'm afraid). It took me six hours in total, so I was home at 10pm. I'm glad I did it, but I don't think I'll want to do an uber-walk like that anytime in the future again. It's better when you wonder around (and do the majority of walking in the daytime) and don't have a set goal. This walk ended up being more about the destination than the journey, and in the general grand scheme of things, 6 hours is a rather short walk for me (admittedly I was totally nackered by the end of it, but I had been at work all day, so it wasn't all walk-tired).



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Drag Me To Hell review
Went to see it Saturday. It was an actual proper date (which are rare in this country/culture where people really suck at dating) with a guy from work, and it was a lot of win :3 And then on Sunday I got a wedding-date invite, which is even much more of win ^_^

Mission call arrived yesterday: I'm going to the Stockholm Sweden Mission, in 4th of September. :D :D :D *insert every kind of emotion and a little tiny implosion here*

Today is another day off work (they made me use up all my annual leave before I finish, even though I didn't really want to as I felt kinda guilty over taking so much time off at Christmas time to go see my family and spend my last Christmas before my mission with them, even though I hadn't at the time yet earned that annual leave which I used, since you only earn like 1.75 days per month, and I hadn't even been there for a whole month at the time) so I'm at uni. My lecturer said he would e-mail his current students to let them know I'd come to uni today, that I'd be available to help with Experimental Practice presentation (which take place tomorrow) but nobody has come for that purpose (some people have been around but not for that) and it seems very much that that e-mail was never sent. So I am alone in the lab, working on my project (which I do need to tell you guys about, since I'm slowly getting a little bit excited about it) and listening to TED-talks on YouTube (the project I'm working on is done in Flash, and Flash can be a very mind-numbing programme to use). So I'm link-hopping on YouTube. I wanted to listen to inspiring academic lectures, and have at the end of every video just clicked on an interesting-sounding related video, and that has got me to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W51H1croBw
It's a sort of a stand-up comedy about aliens, but also a touching tale of human relationships told through anecdotes ("close encounters"). I really enjoyed it, and thought I'd share. Now I move on to the next related video.


Except that I'll tell you about this project. The university is building a big multi-layer carpark behind the library. Car parks tend to be uninteresting architectural elements even at the best of times, so they have decided to stick a giant low-res LED screen on it. It's a pretty cool thingie actually, and the screen is controlled by a software that can be downloaded from the internet. You slap some media (pictures or video) into this software, and it translates it as closely as possible into LED light display. I've been involved in this for some reason (the reason being: I love my lecturer so much that I would do anything for him) even though my interest in LED is very limited (I'm a tungsten kinda gal). But all along I've been involved saying "some very interesting things could be done with this" and "if something was made specifically for this screen, it might potentially be very interesting". I've been saying this stuff to the point that my teacher said "make something specifically to the screen". So that's what I'm doing.

Now, I live in Coventry, UK. It's not a particularly remarkable place, it was bombed flat in WWII and as a result is in some circles a symbol for reconciliation alongside with Dresden; Lady Godiva is from Coventry, as is Saint George; it's been famous in different times in history for the colour blue (nobody else knew how to dye cloth blue like some monks in Coventry did - and now that knowledge is lost and that colour of blue cannot be achieved anymore and it is lost forever), for watchmakers, weavers, for car industry, for bicycles, for aeroplanes, etc... Coventry Cathedral was destroyed in the war, and they built a new one next to the ruins, which is sort of a tribute to modernism of the time (40s-50s etc). And it has this tapestry, Christ in Glory, instead of a stained-glass window. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham_Sutherland_Tapestry_-Coventry_Cathedral.jpg So as this LED screen is oblong and unlike a normal screen, it made me think of a tapestry, and the connection came. So I'm making this LEDed version of the Christ in Glory tapestry, that will be animated to be woven and unwoven on this LED screen.

Yesterday I was going home from work. I left the office and went to the bus stop and waited around. It was raining. Usually my boss (not the one who I fancy, a different one :P) catches the same bus, but he wasn't there yet. The bus was a little late. When it came around the roundabout, I hailed it, and as it stopped I saw my boss on the other side of the road. I saw him see the bus, and start running. So as I stepped onto the bus I asked the bus driver to wait for that man (who was quickly crossing the dual carriage way) as he wanted the bus also. Now this is a bus that comes every half an hour, and the journey to where we want to go (the airport/train station) is 20 minutes long. When I expressed my request, the bus driver said 'no, we're already late'. I was so taken aback by the idea that he thought standing still for about 30 seconds for my boss to get on the bus was unreasonable. Amusingly enough, I was so taken aback that I literally took a step back - obstructing the doors of the bus, and I took hold of the handle of the door. So I stammered something along the lines of 'but he's right there' - all the while my boss is bolting across the dual carriage way to the bus stop. My unintentional stalling tactics did the trick and my boss got on the bus and I moved on inside the bus (as the bus driver said something along the lines of the 'step away from the door' and 'could get shot'). I went to stand stupidly in the middle of this jam packed bus, shaking, trying to figure out what had just happened, while my boss bolted to the upstairs of the double-decker to find a seat. I came to enough to realise that I might be able to sit down upstairs (and also hide away from the busdriver - for some reason the whole episode had made me terrified of something), so I went up too. I was shaking and trembling all the journey long.

So. Why was I so taken aback? Why was I so scared afterwards?

First one, I think is much to do with the way I assume that everything I think is obvious. I don't think I have unusual thoughts, I don't think that anything that I understand is complicated for anybody to understand (if I could figure it out, surely anybody can?) - I think that everything is obvious. And not once does it fail to make me utterly baffled when it turns out that it's not like that. I think that everybody wants the world to be a better place. And because I want the world to be a better place, I want to help other people as much as I can, because the world itself is too big to be helped so focusing on helping individuals is a more attainable and rewarding activity. So I think that everybody else wants to help other people too. So when the bus driver - a person employed to serve the public - says he thinks it more important to drive on as quickly as possible, leaving somebody waiting for the next bus that isn't due for another half an hour, than waiting a split moment for someone who is running for the bus -- well, that leaves me flabbergasted.

Second one, I'm not so much baffled by the fact that I was scared - I'm scared most of the time, by things that excite me and interest me, by people I know and love and adore and respect, and by situations that are familiar and comfortable. Fear just kind of works for me, it makes me do things, it stops me from doing other things, it motivates (though sometimes it cripples)... I operate with constant fear, and that's fine. But why was it so delayed? Maybe I'm really slow on my reactions, that is possible, and it was just my regular fear kicking in with a delay. But this fear was different. It wasn't like my usual fear. So I am baffled here also.

How something so small and insignificant can cause such a tumultuous brain-process over such a long time... I'm sure there's a defective (observe the use of one of my new favourite words, courtecy of Meatloaf and Life Is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back) chip inside my brain there somewhere... How much is lobotomy these days?



Still no mission call. Been on edge all day. I'm going straight home from work today to wash laundry, and to receive a visit from my home teachers later tonight - if the call isn't there waiting for me when I get home, look out in tomorrow's headlines for: "Housemate finds woman dead in living room. Detectives suspect spontaneous head'splosion."

Still no mission call.

I know my diaries have recently been very 'amg I'm going on a mission' -focused, and I came across this page that explains pretty clearly what exactly that is. So for your benefit, while you wait for me to get back get on with your lives while I get on with mine, here's a link to a thing:

http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/background-information/missionary-program


In art news, I've been to uni a couple times, and it's exactly the way I left it, and I love it and miss it so much. And I'm doing a project for my teacher, that might become a public art -type of commission thingie. :3 Exciting.

I was thinking about the last Sunday before I go on my mission. I know how all this run-up-to-the-mission -thing works, so I know I'll have to give a talk in church on my last Sunday, and that I'll be asked to pick a hymn or I'll get to ask the choir sing for my farewell, etc... So I was thinking what would I pick. The very first one I ever thought I'd pick was 219 'Because I Have Been Given Much' - which is Marc's favourite hymn - but we sing it all the time, and Ray is pretty fed up with it. It does have a really appropriate sentiment "because I have given much I too must give" the sort of idea that you get blessings and you in turn bless others, which is what the mission is about. But because we do sing it all the time, it makes it lose meaning. So I've been thinking of alternatives.
                   
There's a bunch of really missionary-themed hymns, but I'm strangely averse to them - like "Called to Serve" is the missionary hymn. And I don't like it very much. There does seem to be a huge tendency to sing the bigger number hymns in the book more often, like around the 200s. I prefer the little numbers. So I was flicking through the hymnbook yesterday because I was bored, and a couple stood out to me as interesting: 8 "Awake and Arise", 9 "Come, Rejoice" and 28 "Saint, Behold How Great Jehovah". They're all restoration hymns rather than strictly speaking missionary/service ones. I haven't heard 8 or 28 before. The words to Awake and Arise are really nice though, and it's sung 'Brightly' and one of the scripture references is Doctrine and Covenants 133:7-10 which is win, not only because it's leet :P Come, Rejoice is a lovely, bright tune. We don't sing it very often, but when I was picking it out on the uke, I did recognise it. The last line of every verse has my favourite word 'hosanna' on it. :D Also it references Doctrine and Covenants 29:4 'Ye are chosen out of the world to declare my gospel with the sound of rejoicing, as with the voice of a trump' which is very missionary-appropriate. 28, 'Saints, Behold How Great Jehovah' I also haven't heard before, but as I played it on the uke it's really a lovely little tune, about restoration and gathering, which is what missionaries talk about. It too references D&C 133, verses 37-38. (I'm liking that chapter of D&C at the moment).

There's a whole bunch of other hymns that would be appropriate too, but I think I'm leaning towards 9 Come Rejoice. It's the hosannas that do it for me :) I might even call it my favourite hymn from now on.

Anyhoo, I was thinking of the other last Sunday stuff too. Like what I'd say in my talk... Mention having watched David and Chris, Claire, Pun, Guy, Joe, Alex etc... all go ahead to their missions and leaving me behind, striving to follow their example. How observing them has made me familiar with the leaving-side of the mission, what it's like to those who stay, what it's like on the build-up to the departure (the preparation, filling the papers, the farewell, the last Sunday, the setting apart, the begging for letters... :P) So I've been able to think of all that and plan all that (because I don't have family in the church who'd plan that for me, I have to take care of it myself). And all that has kept my mind busy enough to not start thinking about what's beyond what I've seen my friends do: the actual leaving, going away, not knowing where and with who, not seeing the people I love for a really long time... I'm a natural born worryer, and most things in life make me scared - even good things. So all this run up to the going on mission has let me not-focus on the scary bits, has let me look at the process step at a time: get the papers, get the medical sorted, get the interviews done, get the call, prepare to go, get my stuff sorted, get my family sorted etc... It's all to stop me from going "holy crap, this is scary and I don't want to do it" - because I do want to do it.

Of course I wouldn't say it like that, and the example of friends would be a very small part of the whole talk. But I'd like to mention it.