Updates:

-Out of 3 big suitcases and 1 carry-on, and 3 blue boxes from Posten, I have so far unpacked: 1 suitscase and 1 box.
-Bookshelf and wardrobe are now sorted. Yet the mess in the room is worse than ever. More clothes are on their way out (to be given to charity or just plain thrown away) than came in with me, unfortunately same cannot be said of books, my shelves are desperately over-crowded. There is a chance of fixing this by getting rid of all the old VHS tapes that currently take up 2 out of 3 shelves above the TV.
-Been listening to much musics. The first one to break my missionary music habit was the Beach Boys with Pet Sounds. Followed closely by Paul Simon, David Bowie and then a whole plethora of awesome stuff like Tom Waits, They Might Be Giants etc etc... <3 But the CD-shelf is in desperate need of cleanup, though I think my very next project ha to be the desk. I need to move that darn thing >.< And into the messiest part of the room too, so I have to clean a ton before I get it anywhere. 
-I wore trousers. They weren't very comfortable :P Well okay, in all fairness, they were my jeans and they were stiff from not having been used in such a long time, plus they are too big for me: I can pull them down without opening the buttons. :P But I'm back in a skirt today.
-Am making art, it's epic.
-Have been uploading photos to Facebook, and lost my patience with the place. It pretty much arbitrarily decides whether it takes my edits into account or not and whether it lets me see my friends' comments or not. FailBook has fail.
-Waking up is fine again. Maybe it was just the jetlag :P
-Stuff in Japan still makes me cry.

I'm heading off to [Dory]'s tonight to sleep there before I go to church on Sunday.

So apparently we have an election in a few months. This is exciting. I get to vote :D

But who to vote for? It would seem that the Pirate Party talks about all sorts of things that matter to me alot - copyright and all that crap - but also doesn't seem to make a stand with other things that also matter, that in turn the Christian democrats talk very openly. But I'm also not so sure where I stand in terms of aligning politics and my religious beliefs. Just because I won't marry a woman doesn't necessarily mean that no one should. Or does it? Meh, gay marriage isn't really one of my hot topics, that was a bad example... A better example: the stuff that the Christian democrats say about culture and the arts is good, I agree with it alot - but on a personal level. Is politics supposed to be personal? I think that art should be ethical - does that mean that everyone should think the same? Someone put it really well when they said that politically Jesus Christ would have been a liberal but he would have personally lived like a socialist. So then we have the liberals in the picture, that would be a pretty obvious choice - except they don't exist here. So I'd have to move to Helsinki to vote liberal. Then there's a whole ton of other parties that I don't have the energy to look into right now... ._.

So perhaps we're back with the Pirates. Maybe, if I can't be bothered to find out which party exactly is the one for me, I should go with the ones who talk about the one thing that matters to me but will leave the other stuff be? Meh, I have month to pay attention to this stuff, so maybe I'll find it out. Or maybe I'll once again find myself out of the country when it's time to vote... >_>

Here's something amusing and related:
http://www.finlandforthought.net/2010/01/18/which-finnish-political-party-should-i-join/

Again and still; not yet and never again; after all

It's funny how some things don't change. For example taking my dog for a walk for the first time after my mission was exactly the same as ever. Consequently he is my guineapig in relearning how to speak Finnish :P Other things I find myself in need of relearning are different every-day routines, such as mornings and eating. My goodness how I struggle to wake up at 6:30! :O I snooze til 7. -_- Ridiculous. How can it be this hard? X_x I then take some of those good solid morning-hours for reading and study, then go down at my leisure to eat breakfast, after which I take the dog for a walk. Rest of the day is an unstructured mess (though it is becoming a little bit more evident that early day/afternoon is a good time for the internets as my mum usually watches stuff in my room around that time, so cleaning and art-related activities aren't going to happen... Too bad, since those are the super-productive hours of the day after the morning, but I'll just be productive in ET-catchup... >_>) But I certainly have decided to not be on the computer past 8pm.

Plenty of things need to change, beginning with my room. I need to clear out my bookshelf, my wardrobe, my musicshelf, my instrument-space, my walls and overall basically everything. I have not as of yet worn trousers after my mission. I am very comfortable in skirts thankyouverymuch. I also haven't really properly listened to any music I wouldn't have listened to as a missionary - partly because the musicshelf-cleanup that is due, partly because my CD-player is acting up. This clean-up means that I may be getting rid of some stuff... CDs... mainly punk and such... maybe. If I manage >_> I made this decision on my mission, and somehow the thought of doing it was much easier then... The only thing I have actually intentionally listened to is some uber-culture radio, which doesn't really count. And I haven't as of yet watched any TV. I just don't feel the need. YouTube on the other hand made it back to my repertoir ejust fine :P Mostly my not-being-a-missionary-anymore shows mostly in the time I spend alone, and my internet usage. :P

Things have changed on the internet, too. Not so much here in ET, at least not as much as I expected... Very kind of you to wait for me, but seriously, isn't it time to fix up some things? :P But every once and a while I spot a thing that's new or a new face, and it's cool. Very good. I hope you know that I'm planning all sorts of grand projects and stuff, I'll be getting very busy, tell you that. And I'll invite all my geeky missionary-buddies over here and the place will be swarmed with mormons. :P Maybe. They might be more prunish than I am an be put off by the sex, drugs and rock n' roll that is so very rife here in town (I'm going to talk more about this kind of thing later... If I remember to). Or they'll all be too busy studying and getting married that they won't have the time. But at least ET will be a good place to share my mission-stuffs with them, so at least they'll look at that. After all, they were there. They'll care that much.

Now, on to other post-mission discoveries... My phone is ancient! :O What the heck?! I have a Nokia 3210 (the first model that didn't have an antenna poking out of it...) and on the mish we used the smalled 1661 models, and now I want one of them instead of this old monster. That's right people: [iippo] wants a new phone. We did not ever imagine this day would come. This should be international news, this is so big. But I have also not as of yet acquired aFinnish number, so I am out of reach by anything bar text messages (picking up calls would be too expensive for me because of those roaming charges - or have those gone down since I left? But still, talking on the phone zaps my battery, so I won't pick up no matter what).

Yet the strangest thing so far is the empty lack of other mormons. I was with another missionary 24/7 for 18 months. Not only is it totally alien to be with another person that much, let alone a stranger who just happens to belong to your church. Good grief it was crazy. And cool sometimes, and sometimes you were just all "phew thank God you are here with me all the time!" But now, not seeing other mormons at all for long stretches of time... is weird. I miss you mormons ;_; So while I have immensely enjoyed my new-found isolation, I do miss that contact. Which is probably why I'm on Facebook all the time, talking to a lot of my mish-buds on there. And hey speaking of Facebook - there's a thing that changed since I left! :O What happened? I used to have apps and lolcats and stuff... I think.

As of yet, I have not picked up a pencil/brush/tablet/paint or even a wikipage to make art. Why? I just don't feel ready. o.O I'm itching to go, but... I'm not ready. I haven't closed the mission-books just yet. Even these diaries are part of the post-mission wind-down. I'll ease myself into it by editing and organising my mission photos and making wikis here. But I do have a lot of thoughts and plans for new art (18 months worth of inspiration). And now really is the beginning of my career. I learnt of some New Media places in Sweden while there, I have friends in Texas in case I need to go over to the Austin Digi-Art place, and all the old galleries in England (though it sounds like the UK government is dealing some blows to the arts lately...?) I just need to start producing work to exhibit. There could also be a lot of mormon-themes in the new work ahead :P My career might be developing towards "church-related information design" :P (I had some ideas in that direction, how to explain things in an interactive/web-based way... And seeing the changes in lds.org and mormon.org makes me think that the church might just put it to use if I make it...)

Something I have observed recently in myself (and let this be a warning to Silvie :P) is that I'm like... super-sensitive. o.o Whenever I hear more news from Japan I almost start to cry. I'm still in some missionary mindset that things that I hear and see have a really big impact on me. News, music, swearing... all causes a reaction, almost a flinch. o.O

And in totally other kinds of news, I like my waist :) I can wear my dog's collar as a belt. *wants a waspie*

I caught up with [Viking]'s diary.
I was kind of speed-clicking (because there is no 'continue where you left off' with diaries), so this is the list of things I need to look at later.

Birth of steampunk
http://io9.com/#!5780422/the-birth-of-steampunk-in-the-19th-century

A real revolution
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/78969.html

Democracy is not enough
http://reason.com/archives/2011/02/16/democracy-isnt-enough

http://www.librarything.com/

Obsolete Occupations
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124251060

Douglas Adams TED talk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG8HBuDjgc

Internet Enables Intimacy TED talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/stefana_broadbent_how_the_internet_enables_intimacy.html

Strange Maps
http://www.slate.com/id/2236256/

On the Pleasures of Not Belonging, or Notes on Interstitial Art (Part One)
http://henryjenkins.org/2009/11/on_the_pleasures_of_not_belong.html

Secret Histories
http://unlikelyworlds.blogspot.com/2009/11/secret-histories.html

5 Ways to hack your brain into awesomeness
http://www.cracked.com/article/127_5-ways-to-hack-your-brain-into-awesomeness/

the Spectator vs. the New Yorker review

Firsts and lasts and other numerical facts

I am in the terrible process of Elftown catch-up. My first day properly back home (yesterday) was spent glued to the computer. It was a mix of talking to old friends for the first time after a long time, and connecting with new friends on the interwebs for the first time. I would say that the amount of love in my life has doubled since my adventures in the Sweden Stockholm Mission. My language-abilities have increased (now is the right way to say it by half, or by a third, if I knew two languages and now I know three? Half sounds righter) by a half.

I did not cry in my last interview with president Anderson (my mission president, aka my dad on a mission), and I did not cry in my first interview back with president Penfold (my stake president). But I did cry in my first and last interview with bishop Mills. You have no idea how badly I'd like to live in Coventry again. But. Now is not the time. Later may be the time, we'll see what life looks like. An interesting illustration: I cried on the plane back from Sweden to England (leaving a mission is hard! Being a missionary is a labour of love, and then leaving the place you've loved and served with such dedication for such a long time is really heart-hurty), but then as we flew over England and I looked down (nice clear afternoon) onto this land, I kind of stopped crying and went "oh yeah. I love this place." And I think this love-thing is partially why I have to live in Finland for now. No more loving to learn in England or in Sweden, need to learn to love Finland now. And if/when I do, it might be time to move on, and learn to love- where next? Well, I've decided to learn French, Russian and Persian. Though Iran might have to wait for a while longer before I move there... <_< (My plan is to be the first older-retired-couple-missionaries to Iran - in about 40 years. Is that an optimistic timeframe to get that country to sort itself out enough to let proselyting Christians in? Maybe. But then again senior couples don't always proselyte, so that might work. But still: official mormon church presence in Iran in 2050? That'd be sick :3) Maybe we'll start with France. :P (Then again it's not the only French-speaking country in the world...) Anyway. The plan is to at least double the amount of languages I speak right now.

Immediate future plans (in order of appearance):
-Travel to Stockholm on the boat to visit the temple there when my last ward in Örebro will be visiting at the same time (including the new guys! :D)
-Back to Finland, visit church in Helsinki, and hopefully meet the missionary who baptised me.
-Two weeks of... life. Stuff. Thing. Re-learning routines: wake up and study in the mornings like a missionary. Start projects on ET and beyond.
-Fly to England for General Conference in end of March. Stay as long as people's hospitability allows.
-Return to Finland. Unpack mission bags. Start cleaning and organising my room and my life.
-Find a job, or sign up on the dole. More art and projects and stuff.
-Return to England for General Conference in October.


PS. I skipped a lot of yous's diaries (exceptions being ally (25), Viking (501) and Punk (46), which I will read soon (maybe), and Silvie, who sent me her diaries while I was gone and therefore I didn't have that much catching up to do) and only read the recentest ones, because there was a ton. If you got married or something while I was away, please accept my happy congratulations. If someone died, please accept my heartfelt condolences. If there was a lot of ET-drama, please accept my ignoring it completely :)

So my hotmail died while I was away (and messenger went with it). So if you actually would like to talk to me on messenger, feel free to re-add me so I get you back :3

Here it comes... look ready...
The Last Diary Entry! Tah-dah!

I've had several 'lasts' this past few days, I had my Last Sunday and did my Last Sunday Talk which went fine, and had my Last Choir Practice, and then I had my Last Sunday Dinner with my 'surrogate' family. On Monday I had my Last FHE, which was sort of a farewell do with kids my age from church. Which was funny because many of them had been up to Manchester for a convention that weekend and they were so tired that they were flopping off their chairs and laughing their asses off because everything is funny when you are tired. On Tuesday I had a farewell-for-now with my friends from uni, so there were many Lasts there... But that is actually a story:

I had planned my Last Week pretty carefully: Friday I have to report at the Missionary Training Centre, so my surrogate family drops me there on Thursday, so I need to be set apart on Wednesday evening, so effectively Tuesday is my Last Night as a normal person, and I wanted to party with my uni friends. Which I did. But during the planning, I told everyone that it was on the 2nd X_x Which is Wednesday. So I met my teachers at uni and confirmed that they were coming round M's (=where the party was) later, and they went 'oh it's today? Well, yeah, we'll come later.' And I went ahead with two of the new students. I texted M ahead, and she called me back sauying 'isn't it tomorrow, you told us it's tomorrow!' And I explained that I won't exist tomorrow, I go into the oblivion known as being a Full Time Missionary. So she said 'it's ok, we can have it today' and she started readying everything while I panickedly called everyone telling them 'it's not tomorrow it's today, can you please come? I suck so much!' And we got there and M's boyf had his mates over and they were all put to work to go get food and start making stuff, while I profusely apologised to M and we both kept contacting everyone about it... And when people arrived I kept apologising profusely... And you know what? Everyone came. O_o I was so amazed and touched. But also amused because this means that my friends don't have lives :P And it was just the brilliantest evening. Most of us stayed til half past midnight (though I had been discreetly almost falling alsleep for an hour and a half) at which point we all kinda went 'damn, it's past midnight, let's call it a night' and everyone agreed and there was much hugs and confusions and awesome, and my teacher D. took me home. Whenever I meet D. there's always these moments odd remembrance and/or deeper realisations that we are really similar people. We think alike and just... get what the other one is on about. But also, when I don't talk to him for a while, I slowly forget that he likes me. It's this wierd social problem I have that when I absolutely adore someone, I slowly slip into assuming they don't like me (unless the likage is enforced regularly). So it always comes as a surprise when they do. So it was great to just talk to D. as a friend all the way to my house and then we sat in the car outside my house for ages talking. Much win.

So, rest of today is all packing/moving/house-cleaning stuff, then the setting apart tonight, after which my 'family' takes my luggage in their car and I go spend the night round the bishop's house, and then tomorrow morning my 'family' comes to get me from there and off I go.

I'd want to end my Last Diary with something win, but I have nothing win in mind right now, so instead, here is a bunny with a pancake on its head:



See you soon. Write letters to me, please. :)

What the hell? o_O

So, I was listening to This American Life, as usual, episode about Big Breaks. And this married couple comedians are telling about how back in the 60s they had their Big Break - they got a gig on the Ed Sullivan Show. How awesome. So they tell about the dress rehearsal, how they didn't quite get how a dress rehearsal works on TV (they didn't do their act properly), and about an hour before the show Ed Sullivan tells them to change their act to fit the audience - which is going to consist of 15-year-old girls tonight. So they are all "dub-tee-ef" and go to their dressing room and try to work their new act out, and this weird young lad in frizzled hair and huge glasses comes up and hangs out and talks to them, and they're getting kinda annoyed, and when he finally leaves they get back on their act and try to sort it out... and they are called on the stage, it's all about the start. And they are telling this story on the radio with an interviewer. And then they play the clip from the show they did... Ed Sullivan's voice saying those words that are now so incredibly historic, the words I've heard millions of times: "ladies and gentlemen - the Beatles" and there is the explosion of screaming and the song starts...

And I started crying o.O

Y'see, I've had my share of Beatlemania. I don't mean I just liked the Beatles a lot - I mean the real mania that the Beatles inspire in females for some mysterious reason. But I had it around 2002, I wasn't yet born when they were big in the 60s. But I've had it. There was a summer when I watched all these tapes my mom had about the Beatles, documentaries and the films etc... And I had that urge to scream and put my hands over my face and cry. The real physical and utterly literal fandom that the Beatles caused in the 60s. People screamed so loudly in their gigs that nobody could hear the music - not even the band. Ringo couldn't see anybody else's faces from behind the drums and therefore he had no idea what song they were playing on their gigs. People threw so much jelly beans on the stage that it actually hurt the band to be bombarded like that. And there is no rational explanation for the behaviour. But I know exactly what those crazy fans felt like. And the feeling came back all of a sudden it came right back when minding my own business, working away and idly listening to the radio. It really felt like being throw in the head with a brick, a brick that was thrown in the past. By me. O_o

I'm a little bit disturbed by what just happened.

*goes to find Beatles playlists on YouTube*

Well, I guess here comes more podcast inspired nonsense. :P
Or not. Most of it was spent on the recentest edit on The Dark Knight Observations. Also I listen to so much stuff that I forget a lot of it now. But that's okay, because I'll remember it when I need to (today I listened to themes like the famous kidnapping of Bobby someone which turns out that Bobby is in fact still missing and the boy the found as Bobby was this other kid, so they basically stole someone else's child to replace theirs that went missing; few shorter tales about there being the one and only person out there for you, which is not realistic, it's more like there are a hundred thousand people out there for you - and I'm actually planning on figuring out what the amount is for me personally; more talk about healthcare reform, and I finally understood the big difference with American healthcare is that they don't have KELA/NHS type of thing that pays for some stuff, that the people have to pay for all of their own illness, and now I'm a little afraid of America; and some more scripture-listening took place too).

I am making lists. The list of things I need to do before moving out (clean bedroom; wash laundry - and since my washer is broken that means going to the laundromat; write to Claire - because I forgot to tell her my mission address in my last letter; defrost fridge and freezer - not looking forward to that, and in preparation to it I have been trying to eat the stuff from my freezer; throw away remaining foodstuffs and lots of other remainings; arrange for George to come pick up the Mac - but only after I've finished the LED thing; pack everything. The time allocated for this will be broken and mutilated by various farewells and other social activities, so I'm a little intimidated by my list...), the list of things I need to take with me from the kitchen (pan and lid, frying pan, wooden spoon, spatula, cheese slicer, knives, fork, knife, spoon, teaspoon, mug, glass, plate, small plate, bowl, can opener, sieve). I'm leaving a lot of things, but I want one of everything that I need when I come back, so that I don't come back to a kitchen that possibly has nothing in it. Then I also have a visual list of thee drawings I wanted to make (well, I was asked to make something to decorate the mothers' lounge in church, so I planned to do these drawings of animal+child, and I've done some line drawings, and now my plan is to photocopy them a couple times and let the children colour them and use the coloured drawings for the lounge, but I want to finish off a couple more). I also have a list of people whose addresses I need to write down before I leave. It's mostly RL people, whom I'll hopefully all see in the various aforementioned farewells.

Tomorrow I'm going to a wedding. Third wedding this summer, and personally the least important one, since I don't know the couple very well. But the bride's father asked me to help out with the photography and that's why I'm going. He's going to do most of it himself, but since he has to be in some of the photos, he asked me to help since I know at least a little about pointing a camera (srsl people: someone who has a camera of which the lens can be detached ≠ a really uber professional photographer). I realised today that I have nothing to wear since I got rid of or left in Finland all my non-missionary clothes. Ah well. And on Sunday I will have to talk for about 30 minutes, since it's traditional in the ward that when you leave for or come back from your mission, you have to give a talk. I haven't given it much thought, I've listed a few things I want to say. So maybe I'll just wing it from there or something.

Leaving is one big hassle. -_-
Oh, that reminds me of something. A friend of mine was over yesterday, and we talked a lot and lot, and he mentioned something about wanting to travel, and that I obviously want to travel, because I'm here and I'm going again. But actually... I've noticed that I don't actually o.O When I was younger I desperately wanted to travel. Now I'm not inherently interested in travel itself. The world has become local to me. In that if I need to go somewhere or I have a reason to want to go somewhere, I am willing to travel there. But I don't actually want to travel to some far away place just to see the place. I'm sort of settling with the idea that all places are the same in a way. Here's how I reckon that: for several years in my teens I was aching to leave Finland, I wanted to go to California, or France, or pretty much anywhere. Then I did. I left. I moved abroad. I came to Coventry, to find that loads of people are aching to leave. And when I go home, disillusioned about the glamour of 'living abroad' I meet people, friends of friends, who when told the short version of my life (I live in England and study art), they think I've got it made, they say that they wish they'd moved abroad etc... But to me England has become a reality now. It's not some distant objective anymore, it's a real place. I love it, yes, but if it had been California, I would now love California. Had I stayed in Finland, I would probably had experiences that would have made me love that place. And I will go to Sweden and I will love Sweden. The place does not happiness make. It's things you do, people you meet.

Now okay, maybe you can't meet people or do things that make you happy in every place (in all honesty, if I had stayed in Finland, I probably wouldn't be a mormon now). I didn't thrive in Finland and still don't partly because of the closeness of the family. But there isn't one particular place that is just better than any other place and anyone who comes there will automatically be happier there. Although I am willing to admit that there probably are places that are automatically worse than other places, simply because of political etc situations. Like, Afghanistan doesn't sound like a nice place at the moment. But there is no guarantee that if you left Afghanistan and came to England, that you would be automatically much happier.

Going back a bit, it may sound odd that someone who flies so frequently and had lots of international friends doesn't like travelling. But I see it like... you can live all your life in New York and never visit the Statue of Liberty. Except that I feel like that about the whole world. If you give me a good reason to go to the Statue of Liberty (I need to meet up with someone there maybe) then I'll go. But just for the sake that it's there and I haven't seen it before...? Well, it's not one of the most interesting things I haven't seen before. Again, to clarify, I'm not against seeing sights - if they are interesting. A statue is kind of interesting, since it's art and stuff and I have an interest in art. But I wouldn't travel to New York just to see art - unless it was something I had a really keen interest in. Like Marcel Duchamp coming back from the dead. I'm going to give up on the New York example now, and be more local. I have visited the city of Bristol a lot. You could look up stuff about Bristol on the internet, or if you are English you might know some interesting things about Bristol - and without ever having been there you'd know more about Bristol as a place than I do. Because I never visit Bristol in Bristol, I visit Silvie in Bristol. So many people ask me if I've seen the Clifton suspension bridge, and so many times I say no, and explain that the only places in Bristol I've seen are the bus station, art gallery, some parts of the campus, and Silvie's house. The only parts about Bristol that matter to me are the parts that matter to Silvie. And I would apply this travel-planning on a global scale: I would visit Argentina because of Pubky, I would visit Indianapolis because of Viking, I would visit Belgium because of ally, I would visit Brazil because of Tibo. Etc. In my book travelling to Bristol and travelling to Sao Paulo are the same. If Silvie moves out of Bristol, I won't go there again, if Tibo moves back to England, I will never visit Brazil.

And this is the paragraph where I turn my coat and prove myself wrong :D
Because there are places that I would want to visit for no practical reason. But there is still a reason.
I want to visit Utah for the obvious reason that that is the mormon state. But I wouldn't really do it for the whole sight-seeing "ooh lookit, something historical!" -reason. But the reason is still somewhat voyeuristic since I don't personally know anyone really close there. It'd just be nice to see a place where the majority of the people share my faith. And even more far-fetchedly, I do want to go to Maine or Alaska or upstate New York or one of those other northern-ly states. I don't know why exactly, It's part Twin Peaks, part Gilmore Girls fascination I think. But I don't think I'd want to just visit there as a tourist, I'd want to move there. So I do still have some of those silly romantic notions of Someplace Far Away I'd be happier... But I won't go, I don't think, unless something drives me away. But it's far more likely that I will discover more and more reasons to love Coventry and England until I'm so rooted that I couldn't leave even if I wanted to.

Enough yammering.

The only way this would have more win is that if they'd spelt his name correctly (it has a 'u' in it guys, not a 'w')



Anyway, very little interesting things to say... Yesterday I discovered this absolutely delightful Italian restaurant in Coventry, on Far Gosford Street of all places. I had several good conversations (or one really long good conversation?) with a friend as a farewell-for-now (though he is convinced that I won't see him again... o.O) and I'm really close to finishing my stuppid LED project. I'm really fed up with it by now and just want it to diediedie. Or finish. Or whatever.

I've been working so intensely, and listening to so much stuff (news, podcasts, radio-programmes...) that I won't share any of the thoughts that those things have prompted, because there's just too much of it and my brain is frying pretty much. So I'm easing up on the economics podcasts and This American Life a little, and mixing it up with some music and also a lot of listenables that one finds on the church website (pretty much everything is read out loud - for the benefit of the blind and illiterate I imagine - everything from the scriptures to the actual missionary handbook... So am putting that stuff to use in order to pretend that I'm at least somewhat prepared...) But most of the thoughts that that stuff inspires I don't care to share here, because I can't imagine anybody else really caring about either (especially when a lot of it is me going "squee" over a guy who lived in the 1830s...) :P

I should just stop talking to people and just express myself by linking to pages of Dinosaur Comic. Because T-Rex and co. say everything I'd ever want to say.

Like the last panel in this one:
http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-1332.png
He puts very eloquently what I think but fail to ever express. He does this all the time.

* * *

As the mission-thing draws nearer, I'm starting to worry that I'm going to be a really rubbish missionary. Like... I am so anti-social and don't like people much. Or, well no, that's not exactly true, I like people somewhat, when they talk to me. But I don't want to talk to them very much. So that is something of a problem there. And another problem could be the sort of... weirdness. Now I don't actually know how much of it I put on and how much is out of my control. Am I quirky because I like being quirky, and could I be normal if I really tried to (or if I got shouted at by my mission president a lot)? Or am I just quirky and there is nothing I can do about it, like an illness? I don't know.

Meh. In reality all this nonsense boils down to "I don't know what I am doing, and that makes me very nervous." Despite the fact that I have known a lot of missionaries, both ones that are going on their missions, are on their missions and have returned from their missions, and I have read and heard and witnessed a lot of details about what goes on on a mission... But yesterday I was reading the information I have on what to do and what to bring etc... and it just makes me nervous (gym periods? I'm going to have gym periods in the MTC? What the hell, is it high school or something?! I'm very proud to be able to say that I haven't done anything that could even mildly be referred to as a 'gym period' in over five years - and I like it like that! I don't even have any sort of clothing that is appropriate for any sort of arranged exercise. *frets*)

*goes back to reading DinoComic*

So I mentioned theMoth.org couple posts back. And I just finished listening to this one and it's the best one I've listened so far.
Nathan Englander - Man on the Moon
http://e1.simplecdn.net/upload1.themoth.prx.org/wp-content/uploads/moth-podcast-71-nathan-englander.mp3

Aww frig!
http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1321

Dinosaur Comic has the ability to make you go 'frig'.


In other news, I bought a compact digital camera for my mission (can't take SLR on a mission). And two things:
1. The camera is pink. o.O Wy did I buy a pink camera?
2. My pet is in Finland. We all know that the rule is that the first photo you should take with any new camera must be of a pet. Wat do I do nao? :C

I have discovered TheMoth.org (via This American Life, which you everybody really should listen to sometime). And it is making me appreciate story-telling and anecdotes etc... this sort of urban oral tradition. Like, the other day I was on the train and I was desperately trying to remember a story my teacher G. had told me some time ago. It was the sort of similar type of story as the "Australians searching for 'Loogaburooga'" -story that someone else told me that I have told everyone (I tell it whenever the difficulty of pronouncing English names comes up, the gist of the story being that two Australian tourists are trying to find their way to 'Loogaburooga' - which in reality is Loughborough. which is locally pronounced something akin to 'Lofboro', and nowhere near 'Loogaburooga'). And it was driving me batty that I could not remember this story. It involved him on a Tube or trainstation trying to get to a place that apparently the Londoner-pronunciation of is something like Barstow, but is spelt with an e in there somewhere. And I remember that the situation when he told me this story was when we were on a bus going on some kind of class trip to some art place - possibly to Compton Verney (which is where the MAs were yesterday) on the annual tear-fest. See, my teachers are so awesome that they make the students cry. I'm serious, stay with me here. Art is a very emotionally charged subject to study. I think that if you can't cry over your work, if you can't get frustrated and angry over it - you're doing it wrong. And if the teachers aren't making you cry and frustrated and angry, then they aren't teaching you art at all. Because art needs to be attacked while it's being made for it to get better. So D. and G. are these monsters of a teachers and they will make you cry. And I was made to cry several times on my MA. But apparently there is every year this beg trp to Compton Verney (which is like a stately home/country house turned art gallery). And they have these mad Capability Brown landscaped grounds, which are stunning. And the plan is to take the students to this amazing setting away from the university and to really lash into them. This is the point of no return, brutally honest feedback trip. Anyway, so we were going there, and you have to drive through a lot of Warwickshire to get there, and I pointed to a sign and asked G. how something was pronounced. And the conversation sort of went from there.

This was all sort of prompted by the radio, but also by something else. Just a few hours ago these two women came to my house to look at the rooms, because my landlady will be needing to rent the house soon, so people want to see if they want to rent. Anyway, that's fine, I let them in and showed them around the place and we talked, and what's weirder is that I talked. o.O Like... really. I was entertaining and stuff. This doesn't happen to me very often, and it mostly seems to happen around strangers. The first time when it happened to me and I was made conscious of it was about this time last year when our show was about to open or had opened or something, and the external examiners were in town and D. And G. and some other lecturers and a bunch of us students were taking them out. And we first took them to Browns (which is the art pub in Cov), then later to this Lebanese restaurant that we all knew from the past to be really nice (what we didn't know that it used to be a nice restaurant because it used to have a nice chef, who had since been fired or something and had moved just a few doors down and opened another restaurant, which would now be the nice one I guess). So we got to this place, it's September, but they have this heated bedouin tent at the back. So we go there. And on the way we have lost some people - who had to nip into their offices or to the cashpoint or something. And it's me and G. of the media arts lot, then the externals, and possibly some other lecturers. And G. is incredibly tired - he is always tired, it seems that you can't sleep if you teach the MA properly like G. and D. do, but G. is never tired. Anyway, so I sort of entertain these external examiners in this Lebanese restaurant and we order food and it takes forever to get there, and apparently someone had gone to buy wine from across the street so they show up a little later and some other people also show up and they also order and this food takes forever to come, and when it does come, none of us knew what we had ordered, and the waiters didn't know. So we're kind of guessing "who had something that had chicken" - well most people did - and it's just this dinner nightmare you'd think, and on top of that we're in this silly bedouin tend, sitting on cushions with a tiny silly little table and... just madness. And when the evening is done, G. talks to me and thanks me for handling that. And I was like "whut?" And he said he's never seen me like that, all lively and entertaining and fun. And I'm all "hoeshed, I was, wasn't I? How did that happen? I need to sit down and not talk for a few weeks now..." And he tells the story to loads of people of how iippo was the hostess with the mostess. And occasionally that still happens, and whenever it does (when I notice), I still get all... awkward about it. Like start to think "uh-oh, shut up, someone else please take over, this isn't me, I don't want to be seen like this..." o.O

Changing subject. Today I bought this "100 Classic Book Collection" for my Nintendo DS. I was in Asda (of all places) having just done my shopping (which was literally some fruit, Poptarts and margarine - I eat like crap) and the games and DVds shelf is by the door so on the way out I just thought I'd look at the DS shelf, because hey crazy, I have a DS! :D I've never had any kind of equipment that would play any game that could be bought from a shop. So I was looking and getting pretty impressed with all the stuff that is out there for DS, and considering some Pokemon things, some other things... And I notice this book thing. And I think "hey there's a neat idea, I'm glad they did that." And some time previous I had actually thought that it would be great if I could buy scriptures for DS (I know they exist for all sorts of palmtops as downloadable content etc) because every time I go to church or anything related, I need to take a lot of books, and if I could not take the four 'standard works' well, that would be great. So I leave the shop, thinking that I might come back for that book-thing. Then I think that I might actually have the money on me to get it now. Then I think 'nah, I'll come back after giving it some thought' because I don't buy things spur-of-the-moment (or when i do, it usually sucks). But then I kind of tell myself the winning argument: "you could get a hundred classic books for under £20 with none of the storage/moving hassle associated with traditional books - you are second-guessing this why?" So I go and get it. I haven't actually tried it yet, since I have to finish the LED-project, and I'm fearing I don't have enough time.

I had a really awesome dream and now my life sucks just a little because it's not real.

In my dream my teachers D. and G. had this most amazing derelict industrial revolution-esque warehouse building, which was all just... open messy space for artists they knew and/or had taught in the past. And the whole place was just teeming with people making stuff. My dream started when somebody (I forget who) led me to the place. We climbed up this old cast-iron fire escape, and there in the first room were D. and G. kneeling on the floor working on something. (Now I haven't seen them in a while, so I thought in my dream "whee, I get to talk to D. and G. again!") But instead of stopping and talking to them I just went past and looked around the place (I think I was playing cool, like "I'm not really so madly obsessed with you two that I'll just make you stop what you are doing the minute I see you, so I'll just stroll around first and then come back to you"). And there was just loads of artwork being done, mostly video and projection and such, new media stuff. Like there was one girl who had these streams of ribbons laid out on the floor and she kind of wanted to film them rolling up, and next to her on the floor was a guy who was flirting with her and suggesting that she wrap them around these wooden blocks to make them roll like she wants to, and she tried to point out that square blocks do not roll, but somehow it didn't occur to them that rounded blocks would roll, and I remember making a mental note about going to buy some rounded wood and bringing it to her later. (Now I feel guilty that this was a dream - the poor girl will never finish her video :/) And it was just such a marvelous place.

I've had dreams like this before, where a building is all old and falling apart (and therefore exciting and awesome in my book) and art happens in it (one dream I had I was in the university art building and the top floor was banned from students because it was too dangerous there, but it was still the best floor so of course we went there but then couldn't figure out how to get back and there was a giant hole you had to jump across to get away etc...)


I think I'm not going to see the Time-traveler's Wife today, even though I really want to see it (and not just because Kermode talked about it - I saw someone on Conan talking about it, and I just love time-travel things). But I just can't bear the thought of going to that cinema today. Why can't the Electric have it on? -_- Meh, maybe I'll go later. The other reason for not going is because I feel like I'm seriously lagging behind on the LED-tapestry thing. I'm working like crazy on it, and it's really slow going.

I'm all freewheelin' and stuff :O

So went to the cinema today too, to see The Proposal (don't judge my movie goings Mark Kermode! You don't know everything!)
And here is yet again the explanation why I don't like the Odeon. It's the same reason as before, just repeated: forced seating. They don't sell you an admission ticket, they sell you a seat. So you have to know where you want to sit before you go to the room. Now I'm anti-social, I want to sit as far away from the other people as possible. How exactly will I know where I want to sit before I see the room? Never mind that, thought I had come up with a solution: I will start siting by a wall! Nobody ever sits by the wall, so it's unlikely that someone will sit right in front or back of you - or worse, right next to you - if you go sit by the wall. You see just fine from every seat in the room, and as added bonus, you can lean. Perfect one would think.

So how could this possibly go wrong?

Let me skip ahead. My watching experience of The Proposal was slightly damaged by the fact that I was sold the seat smack middle of the very last row and had three giggling teens sat right in front of me. You see, it seems that "middle row, by the wall" was interpreted by the guy who sold me the ticket as "middle, row by the wall" or something like that. But even though words may have failed like so, I still clearly motioned to the side, as in "I want the wall next to me, I want to sit by the wall." But perhaps the concept was too strange and novel to his poor young mind to comprehend, that his mind locked in a logic loop and to break free from it, he tried to find the closest thing to it that made sense to him. Alas, what made sense to him, was not what I wanted.
The Odeon does not favour the deviant it seems.

In addition to myself and the aforementioned ladies, there were about four other people in the room. This is why I hate this seat-selling bollocks, because if we all didn't have a little paper that dictated where we were to sit, we would never have sat like that. Because it was awkward and ridiculous, they felt uncomfortable having me loom right behind them, and I wanted to kick their precious little heads in.

I will give the Odeon one last chance tomorrow, when I go see The Time Traveler's Wife. I will try my darnest to be absolutely crystal clear that I want the wall to be either on my left side or my right side, that I want to be the last seat on the row, and I want that row not be all the way at the back, but somewhere in the middle. I do not want to sit in the middle of a row, but at the end of a row that is at the middle. And if that watchery will still be ruined by sitting uncomfortably close to the other members of the audience, I will take my business elsewhere.

* * *

Something else just occurred to me. I just heard that they are testing some 18-year-old girl who won something in Berlin sports game of some sort, to see if she is a female. Because apparently it's one of those things that you might be all female outwards and all such, but still actually have male genes. So it all of a sudden occurred to me: what if I am genetically male? Or indeed any other female person I know? :O

:O Greyhound comes to England! :D

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=a3h4dsc3GlQ8

If only I had a reason to go to Portsmouth :P
I might actually do it just for the trip. Greyhound is legend.

I just can't shut up today.

An article
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/ap/53299422.html
A counter-article
http://www.getreligion.org/?p=16494

If you can't be bothered to read both, read the second one, because it explains the gist of the first one too. (They're both kind of biased pieces of writing, so obviously I'll recommend you to read the one that isn't biased against me :P)

Anyway, I'd just like to add to that:
Quoting from the first article: "Mormonism teaches that homosexual sex is considered a sin, but gays are welcome in church and can maintain church callings and membership if they remain celibate."
Just to sort of provide context: the Church teaches that all sexual relations outside marriage is a sin (because the power to create life is sacred and family is sacred etc...) so actually all unmarried members are expected to remain celibate. Also, God made marriage between a man and a woman, therefore marriage is also sacred (i.e a big deal) so that's why a lot of the members feel so strongly about it. </doctrine>

This kind of continues from the law-morality thing from the earlier post. I must admit that I don't have a particular stance on the issue at all, again due to the morals-law thing (my morals shouldn't affect a law that has nothing to do with me). The Church encourages people to be active in politics, but since I am incapable of having an opinion in all things, I will only be active in things that I actually know what my agenda or opinion is (like copyright). With this issue I can see the argument on both sides, and I can understand that the issue is really important on both sides. If I had to pick a side, I'd probably side with the gay side, because of my idea that law must protect, and right now gay couples aren't getting the same kind of protection by a legal joining-together that marriage is that straight couples are getting. The only reason I don't sympathise more with the gay side of the whole Prop 8 thing is the backlash. We have here a democratic process, people vote on an issue and the majority wins - and then the losing minority attacks some of the people who voted the other way. And only the members of a certain religion of that majority too, nonetheless.


Oh yeah, I went to see The Moon today in the Electric Cinema, partly because Mark Kermode said it's good. Win. Can't say anything else about that, it's one of them films that you can't say anything about without ruining it :)

On the drive to the airport on Monday my sister asked me "do we go through Lahti (the old road) or through Helsinki (motorway)?" And I voted for Lahti, because I had just watched Cars and was feeling very nostalgic and Route-66 and all that. And some 60km from Tampere (I was going to Tampere Airport) we saw a hitchhiker. Well, my sister saw him, and shouted "hitchhiker! Shall we pick him up?" And I said yes! So we stopped and asked where he was going, and he was going to Tampere city center (the airport isn't exactly in Tampere at all) so we agreed to take him in the general direction. It was kind of awesome. He was this gothy guy with long hair and piercing and all dressed in black. It was rather win. I've never been in a hitchhiking situation before :3 It was kind of cool, we chatted some, pretty odd things. Like we talked about goblins and trolls and how all these mythical creatures translate between Finnish and English, and we came to the conclusion that in case of fantasy like LotR or Harry Potter, the word "troll" is translated incorrectly to Finnish. In Finnish mythology a troll is this sort of big, human-esque (clothes, language, riches) thing that is always outsmarted by a guy named Matti. The LotR type troll (humongous, stupid, throws rocks at people) should be translated as hiisi (hiidenkivi and hiidenkirnu are both rock-related thingies), and seeing how there are different environment trolls (mountain troll etc...) in Finnish there is the water troll, vesihiisi (that sizzles in the lift :P)
We also tried to figure out how an English-speaking person (such as myself and himself, he was half-American) would pronounce mörri-möykky (which is a kind of a children's song troll character), and we failed.

* * *

The following might not make sense, I just need to get this out of my head so I can get back to work...
<ramble>
Today I've been listening to This American Life radio programme about this arms dealer thing, and it is very thought-provoking (that's what TAL is supposed to be). They're basically saying that it was right to arrest this supposed arms dealer because he was willing to commit a crime, sell arms to a terrorist. And there was this big justice guy saying "bad people want to commit crimes, bad people have to be punished, these are simple truths" (I kid not, those are his exact words). But the programme is asking, is it a crime to want to commit a crime, even if you aren't able to do it? Now fair enough, this guy actually did attempt to buy missiles - he attempted for something like 22 months and failed. But this idea that bad people want to do bad things... is fascinating and annoying at the same time. I'm sure every country jails people all the time who didn't want to do bad things. Lot of these bad things happen by accident or through negligence or through a host of other things. And meanwhile loads of people are not being jailed even though they go around wanting to do bad things but manage to suppress those urges and not do bad things.

It's also this idea of morals (the big justice guy said that too, that this guy is so amoral that he would sell a missile to a man he thought to be a terrorist, good riddance to him then). Now it's very obvious that we all don't have the same morals. Whose business is it to say that someone's morals are right and someone's are wrong? I don't think that that is what law is there for. I don't think that law is supposed to tell us what is right and wrong. I don't think it's right to drink alcohol, but it is legal to do so; someone else would think that it's not wrong to use drugs even though it is illegal to do so. I reckon law's purpose is two-fold: freedom to, and freedom (or protection) from. Just because most people's morals and some parts about law coincide (most people think it's immoral to kill, law protects us from being killed) does not mean that law equals morals. Now morality is relative, so there is no point in saying "that man is immoral" - not even if the majority of people agree that he is. But is it illegal to have morals that go greatly against the morality of the majority, or even against the law itself? Is it illegal to think that paedophilia is ok? Is it illegal to say that paedophilia is ok? Surely having an opinion and expressing an opinion can't be illegal. And you can't legally do anything about that until the person acts on the opinion.

Which is where this case had a problem, because the security agencies in the country were given a mandate to prevent terrorism, not catch them after the attack. So essentially what they did was simulate a crime to see if their perp would commit a crime. But the defence argument was that if they hadn't arranged this simulation, the guy would never have faced this moral dilemma of whether to do it or not, and therefore he never would have. In some ways I agree with the prosecution: he did think he was committing a crime and he did so. You think "how hard can it be to think 'err, wait, this is illegal, I shouldn't do this' even if the opportunity arises to commit a crime?" But is there an opportunist criminal inside all of us? In uni we were constantly told to not leave expensive stuff visible in your flat or in the studio, because people are like that: even if they wouldn't steal from you personally or break into your house to steal your stuff, they are prone to just taking something that is lying around. Art students nick things, that just is so. But the problem again in the arms deal case was that the government sent a guy to ask him if he would sell him missiles, then they gave him (a fake) missile to sell, and then arrested him for that. If you go around looking for people who would - if the opportunity arose - nick things, you would have to arrest the entire art school (including the lecturers).

</ramble>

We had a little bit of a thunder in the distance, very little, very distant, but the dog picked up on it anyway and went batty. At nap-time (my mom looks after kids at our house, so while the kids are here, the dog is upstairs or outside with me (or not with me when I'm not in the country)). So he was having a freak-out, so I tried to have patience and let him have it in an under-control kind-of way. When he freaks out he needs to pace back and forth, so I was giving him all the space upstairs to pace, left all the doors open and just sat at the entrance of the stairs preventing him from going downstairs. But he really wanted to go downstairs and kept trying to sneak past me and I kept pushing him back. So this went on for a while til we had a close call, he almost managed to sneak past so I had to claw at him to get him back (he wasn't wearing a collar so there was nothing but hair for me to grip - and this thing is very hairy so... yeah). So he got upset at that and snapped at me a number of time - and I don't mean that he called me rude names, it was a proper bite. He didn't get me, but I heard his jaw snap shut with great force, so I got really upset at that and snapped back at him (with the, you know, name calling and stuff) and we came to blows sort of, I punched him etc... very physical. So I stuffed his head in the collar and dragged him to my room away from the stairs, locked the door and thought 'fine, you can't play nice, then I'll just... lessen your pace-space'. But then he kept clawing at the door (again, noisy - naptime) so I blew a fuse (not literally, it's a figure of speech... so far, but my becoming-mechanic plans are going great by the way :D) and trapped us in the balcony (which is adjacent to my room). So that's as limited pace-space as possible, but also very easy to contain a freak-out. So he freaked out for a bit longer while I was getting bored on the sofa (there was no more thunder noise by the way. It rumbled twice or thrice during the initial freak out and then went, but the freak-out didn't went). Eventually he relaxed-ish to lie down in the corner and pant heavily, so I was hoping he'd freak himself to sleep. So I went back to my room to watch DVDs again, but when I opened the door he continued to freak out. So I thought 'fine, I'll watch and you can freak out in and out of the balcony and my room'. But that didn't work because he went back to clawing the door. So I locked him on the balcony again. Then at some later point I opened the door again because I felt sorry for the stupid thing, and let him in the room again, and he went to claw the door again so I booted him back out to the balcony. Third time when I was about to do this, my mom came upstairs to let us know that the last kid had left and that the dog was allowed downstairs again.

Result: nothing got broken even though he did knock a couple things over, nobody got hurt (except maybe Ressu, but he's a big boy so he can just deal with it) and there is a chance of him learning that clawing at doors gets you booted to the balcony.

I also need a t-shirt that reads 'babette ate oatmeal'.

* * *

It's Friday now, right? So only Saturday and Sunday to go (and we're going out of town for my sister's do) and then Monday daytime and in the evening, away we go, wheee! Back to England, the mountains green, the pleasant pastures, the clouded hills, the satanic mills! <3