Me again, because Silvie is at work.

So today I was delivering papers in the middle of the night (which is what I do and I'm pretty good at it) and my bike broke down. You see, it looks like this (when it's not broken):


(disclaimer: this is not my bike, there is no snow here yet, this is a random picture from the internets)

And the leg, that metal tube that goes across under the front wheel that makes it stand while I'm inside the building, it broke in half. Just, by itself. It was really strange. When I stopped to inspect it, it broke even worse with one half of it falling off. I wasn't exactly sure what to do then, so I called the boss in the office. And he just said "okay, I'll come there now with a new bike." So he did, I swapped bikes and I was off again like nothing had happened. When I got back at the end of my route, I saw the bike in the garage (barage? is it called a garage even if it's not for cars but for bikes?) The broken bit was on the front shelf-thingie and a note saying "there seems to be something wrong with the leg of this bike..." :P

He's growing on me. Y'know what I've noticed is actually helping a lot? That we serve each other. I ask him for help with something and he helps, when he has no one to do the route on Sunday and he calls me as the last resort I don't give him a hard time over it and just do it as a favour to him, we do small acts of kindness that, y'know, people do...



Yesterday I watched Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I love it muchly. I think I shall watch it again today (it has no subtitles in any language so I could hardly understand what anyone was saying, never mind understand when they are having their amazing lingual gymnastics all the way through the movie).

Today in the newspaper there was an article about the water footprint, which is like the carbon footprint, except more important because without water there is no life, so if we rich fat white people waste all clean water, everybody dies, not just the environment. Great -_-

The article gave a lot of interesting information: everything we buy is drenched with hidden water. So it's not just about not letting the tap run while doing dishes, but it's about how much water goes into growing one tomato, or into making a pound of beef and all this. So you can become very aware of water and prefer products that will use less of it.

What I still don't know is why, or maybe how. How will my not using water help those people who don't have clean drinking water? Why does it matter? This country gets a lot of rain, there's tons of lakes and rivers and the underground drinking water is plentiful. We have no shortage of water - is there a way to make our water go over to the place where they don't have enough? I mean other than loading it into big containers and shipping it over to Africa?

The article said that water is spent mostly by a) farming (rice growing being the worst one since the plant needs to be drowned in order for it to grow) b) industry c) regular people. So isn't it just a hilarious stab of irony that the places where it rains alot are losing their industry when all the factories close or move to China, and only have a short growing season so you can only get one harvest per year. -_- It seems that this entire planet was designed to be a huge puzzle. And perhaps the reason we are failing at solving it because it takes the equal effort of everyone working together to solve it.

10 Days of Photography - Burning/On Fire


Future Tense

In the contest manipulation is not allowed, so I wanted to put the photo with manipulation up here.
My camera didn't capture the red like I wanted it to, so Photoshop had to help >_>

Hi. Yeah, another diary from me today.

So I'd like some moar feedbacks since it worked so well last time.
There's this web icon design contest that the http://vineyard.lds.org is doing. Basically it's a website for the LDS Church members to help out with stuff when it comes to handling a massive international church. It's a relatively new thing this, where they just invite people to help in many ways. Anyhoo, in the contest they have five sections, General Helping in the Vineyard, Translation, Photography, Image tagging, and Church Technology. I got carried away and did a set.



I must admit, I have no idea what they are looking for. But since I felt inspired and had fun with the concept, then hey ho, let's go.
There's a lot of symbolism that'll be completely obvious to all mormons, so I'll explain that briefly la:
-Three grey triangles at the back: Salt Lake Temple
-Vineyard (of the Lord): the field of labour in building the "kingdom of God", reference from the Bible and the Book of Mormon (so the branch, leaves, flower and grapes are something akin to what a real grape vine looks like)
-Beehive + bees: very common symbol for coöperation and industry. That specific beehive design is yoinked straight from the Salt Lake Temple door handles. Also, deseret means honey bee, and the word deseret is used all over in all kinds of stuff, like company names in Utah and such, so it'll be really familiar.

The size restriction was 225px wide.

My main concern is the way the images look. Placement of the elements (how to make more harmonious design?) Would it be snazzier without colour (or if maybe only the bees had colour)? Anything else that comes to mind?
Also anybody know stuff about vectors-to-raster stuffs? I saved the lineart straight from vector to the 225 width and it looks really pix'ated to me. Would it look just as pix'ated if I saved it big first, then resized in PS or such?

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/10/population-seven-billion/100176/

A beautiful picture gallery. I know it's point is probably to highlight some kind of issues with population, but I just find it a beautiful celebration of humanity. Look how varied we are! People live everywhere! In so many different ways! And sea gypsies, what the heck? That's just so cool "they only go on land to bury their dead".

I love people. <3
Welcome to the world baby #7,000,000,000

I may have mentioned the DDR army boots before some time. In case I haven't (or you can't remember) here's the deal: I own a pair of used NVA boots. They are cool and amazing. Me and those boots have been through a lot together (I walked 30 miles in them one time, and 15 miles another time), they can be worn to church or to the forest. They aren't sweltering hot but there is space for a woolly sock for cold weather. So pretty perfect, right? Right you are. I had them with me in Sweden, as being the active missionary that I was, the boots were actively used - and thus they passed away in Sweden. Well, right one did. Left one is still kicking. But the sole of the right one cracked all the way across the foot and it shall be no more. I showed it to a number of shoe smiths and they all said "no can do". I tried to glue it together myself, but it's no go, it won't keep. This boot has come to the end.

So when I returned I knew it's time to start scouting for new boots. But I couldn't find an online shop in Finland that would sell such boots. I found one that came pretty close, but they only sell huge man-sizes of these SS boots (which are possibly cooler than NVA boots, but yeah, only men marched in the SS, NVA had lady-soldiers too (if I understood correctly) and therefore have smaller sizes too).
And how long did it take me to realise that I could buy these boots from Germany? Long time. But I did get there eventually. So with the help of applied Swedish and Google Translate, I searched for DDR army boots in German. And found. Oh how I found! :D
http://nva.4mg.com/shopshuh.htm

Basically the summer fight boots are what I have, but I fell in love with the tall, commanding Officer's paradeboots and I do believe those are the ones that I shall go with. A German-speaking friend of mine (thank you mission experience and Facebook) will help me email the place to ask about paying and posting it to Finland, but having worked in Salpakirja, I'm pretty sure they'll have no gripes sending to other EU countries, and since the currency is all the same, transferring the money will be a piece of kelp.


I love you European Union. Please don't collapse simply because greedy people don't know how to work together. ;_;

So I've been reading a lot about blondeness through the ages, from a book that talks about exactly that. I've read up to the Victorian era, but it's been basically the same information repeated in every chapter: prostitutes would bleach their hair because blonde hair drives men crazy, rich women used all sorts of nasty crap to make hair lighter or would buy wigs, and blonde hair in art would be either 'treacherous, dangerous woman like Eve' or 'innocent and pure like virgin Mary' and context is the only way to tell which one it is. It did mention history's first ever 'dumb blonde' Rosalie Duthé, who was a very wealthy courtesan and she was the subject of a satire 'Les curiosités de la foire' (Market curiosities), where one such wondrous thing was "a machine human, a very strange apparatus that looks like a beautiful woman, and acts like a living being: eats, drinks, dances, sings, and it can strip a man down to his undergarments in a matter of mere seconds. But it cannot produce speech, and they say this problem can never be fixed." Mme Duthé was there when this play opened, and she was outraged. She promised a kiss to any person who would write something that would return her honour, but the task had no takers.

So first blonde hair (and indeed all hair) was all evil and sinful and causing lusting etc etc... then the setting is thrown a little by Virgin Mary appearing blonde as well (and general loosening up in society where having your hair showing didn't automatically mean you were a hooker). The next surprise in the story is fairy tales. All the fairy tale heroines are blonde bar Snow White, and this whole culture of fairy tales had nothing to do with vain rich people doing all they can to be pretty nor with prostitutes (rich nor poor kinds), but with regular people. These were stories told when people sat around doing the kind of work that makes your hands occupied and mouths and minds unoccupied. Stories told to reinforce a value or a virtue (or a taboo). People like H. C. Andersen and the brothers Grimm didn't make their stories up: they listened to these stories when growing up, they went around to the places where such story tellers lived and recorded the stories and published them. And then you move to things like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (the real life Alice wasn't blonde, but the book-Alice is) where blondeness has more to do with youth and the innocence of youth (you lose your blonde hair as you grow up and get older, just like you lose your innocence - I found this to be a very cool symbol, since my hair behaves that way).

Another interesting curve ball was Queen Elizabeth I (not the boat). She had brown hair, but during her long solitary reign (she never married) she created this public image of herself of being this ever-beautiful, blonde queen of amazing and oompf that people could worship and love (in a patriotic way). All the portraits painted of her had to be approved of her, they were all young and beautiful and blonde and probably looked nothing like her :P But her blondeness wasn't about seducing men nor about virginity. It was about... royalty and power and inspiring awe. Being larger-than-life (which the portraits are). So that's cool and relevant.

Then I got to the literature of the 1800s and we're back to seducing and virginity. Stuff to look forward to in the coming pages: aryans, Marilyn Monroe and the conclusion (that is always the most fascinating part of any such book).

This isn't helping much in terms of the work since the pictures are drawn and the hair is coloured and it was decided from the start that they would be blonde. I am having fun though with different shades of blonde and this is something that the book also highlighted. The whole hair = sex is pretty irrelevant to me and it's really boring how the book seems to really dwell on that. So as far as research goes, this was not incredibly seminal or even all the way useful, but it was a good read and enables a wee bit of discussion and referencing. So not all a waste. But who knows, maybe it presents the Hitlerian love of pale and blonde so badly that it'll cause me to reject the whole shebang and go back to machines :P (oh wait, the nazis or communists loved machines too, didn't they? >.< If reductio ad Hitlerum was a valid point, all art would have to be rejected).


Last comment: I did enjoy the fact that I was simultaneously reading about the renaissance ideal female in this book, renaissance culture in another book and about Botticelli (again) and they all talked about Savonarola. I might have to research this guy, he sounds pretty interesting.

Started watching Adam's Apples on YouTube and it's looking pretty win after part I :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qYw78f37JI&feature=related

It just really really makes me want cake >_>

Anyway, story about a neo-Nazi who seems to be sent from prison to a church for parole or some such.

This coming All Hallows' Eve is designated as the Day of 7 Billion.
It is guesstimated that on/by that date, the population of the Earth will be 7 billion. Which will be strange, since I learnt in school that it was 6 billion. Now I have to learn a new number >:| 

Their website is cool though: http://www.7billionactions.org/

Oh hey awesome, they are working with Playing for Change!
http://www.7billionactions.org/music

If you don't know about PfC, it's really awesome and should perhaps look them up? They are kind of globally uniting buskers and other musicians from around the world to create peace.
Heck, I'll just link you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM

Past couple weeks we've been visited by a fish monger (I almost typoes 'fisited buy') A guy on a bike with fish comes up and says "buy fish". And we have bought fish. From a real live country side fish monger. Heck, I hope a green grocer would start coming too :P But today he saw our dog and left us a couple less-valuable fish and said "boil them and give to the dog, will make his fur shiny." :D So I think my mum's actually going to do that. I think it wouldn't be amiss to add "my life is average" here :P

So I ended up continuing the paper contract indefinitely. This is my first ever real job that doesn't have an end date affixed from the start. Kinda cool. So I am a regular filler-inner now. :P We'll see what becomes of this all when the snow comes, meep. I did tell him that I will be away for a week in December to go to Sweden, and he said that will work in the regular way, no problems. And maybe I'll be able to take time off when a friend comes to visit, or it'll be a bit strange when he's here :P

The future in short: two more possibilities for English groups starting in November; Silvie chided me for not sharing workz on the internets so I'll try to do some kind of a fix for that (the drawings are too big to scan and really annoying to photograph so I've just been too lazy to do it properly), though it may be mostly just research-sharing in diary-form. So if yous all of a sudden start getting iippo-diaries about blonde hair or white clothing in art, you can send your hate-mail to [windowframe] :P

And today, in the paper job I was learning a new district (this and the previous one have been taught by pleasant young fellas - so no complaints there), and now I need to plan tomorrow's English class. I just had an amazingly delicious cup of Rooibos Earl Grey (I heard the Occupy Wall St. people drink Rooibos :P Good taste) and will whisk off to Kouvola in an hour to help the missionaries with something, and will have time on the bus ride to read art magazines and knit.

Things are good.

But in other other news, I'm planning a Sweden trip with a Swedish Interrail Pass, and this trip would involve the north-south night train all the way from Göteborg to Umeå. 13 hour train ride! This is like a dream of mine. The whole shebang travel-wise (train pass + flights) would come to about 300 euros total, I would be staying with friends, and would only have one light carryon luggage thing with working wheels and a backpack, and have no more than a week of this, because by then I would probably have to get back to work.

These kinds of things make me really happy ^^

I need someone to tell me what to do about the paper job (they want to continue the contract), and I want someone to tell me to continue the contract. >_> But I also don't want to continue the contract.

This decision would be easier if I had had money come in from this job already (I have, for like the first week, but I mean like a proper salary), so I could look at it and go "mmmmyeeeaaah, not worth it" or "wewt, my very own monies that I owned with my very own works!" Y'know? But it is good to not be on the dole. And I can totally do the English clubs too, even have more groups if I manage, and still have time for arts. It's just the evening stuff like Institute and helping the missionaries that goes out the window. But missionaries can be helped during the day, I will have evenings free sometimes - and even the Sunday thing isn't a big deal, since it doesn't stop me from going to church (it doesn't even feel like Sunday properly, being out there so early at night) and he has been not-giving me Sundays as of late. And I haven't talked to him in weeks either (there has been no real need) so the asshattery hasn't come through too badly. Sooo...

I'm going to continue it. >.< But like, when the snow comes, I really want out. Or maybe I won't. Gah! *is too much of a push-over*

In other news, the autumn outside is gorgeous, me and the woof are enjoying outing together. And I want to make some kind of a product line of wooden... something, called Finnish Son of a Birch (Suomalainen Kuusipää). Y'know like Emily Strange or something, this massively popular character of the Son of a Birch. :P

I'm starting to record evidence that Christmas is almost here. I have never been so ready for Christmas this early in the year ever before.

-it's snowing (...in Utah and Idaho, but still! And I know people there so it's my business :P)
-a friend on Facebook said he's going to be hanging Christmas lights up already
-Listening to Owl City's 'Peppermint Winter' a lot doesn't feel dumb. Other Christmas songs are also already good to listen to.
-My mum brought up Christmas weekend plans when we were eating, and now those plans are all set.
-Other December plans (friend coming over, me going to Sweden to buy julmust) are also being made.
-There was a photo in the paper today that had two Santas in it (I can't remember what they were doing in the picture, something... charity)

You know, Harpo had his Christmas lights up all year one year because they just didn't want to take them down after Christmas, and they had the amazing Christmas feeling at home all year. So I think I shall simply put my Christmas decorations up already. I definitely need to start burning candles. :3

And today when taking the dog on a walk, I was sensing things in the air, kept imagining "was that a snow flake?" etc... :P

Today I have not much to say.

But I am looking at cool things, and wanted to share this to those of you who struggle to draw hands:
http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/6250628522/drawing-hands-grant-snider

So yesterday I watched that Zeitgeist movie on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w&feature It's really long. But interesting. My problem is that... I don't know if I trust it. And I wonder, would I trust it if I had seen it on TV? Is my distrust the result of internet cynicism (everything on the internet is a lie or a hoax or some kind of a dangerous cult of predators) and so if a thing's main point is not to simply entertain and be light, therefore I must be wary of it and doubt it. Or perhaps doubting everything at first is simply the healthy way to go about life in these perilous days we live in, it's self-preservation.

But I would rather like to believe the Zeitgeist movie. Maybe I will after giving it some thought. See, this whole "countries in debt and it's a crisis" thing... I don't understand it really, and the movie kind of explained it the way I've thought about it. That basically, it's this big game that we have all made up, right? And now basically all the countries in the world are in debt, in fact in so much debt that there is no money in the world to pay it all of. So, like... why don't we just... rewrite the rules and say "okay now, nobody is in debt anymore"? Just make it disappear. It doesn't really exist in the first place... (I mean the debts that countries have - my personal debt is real and I kind of want to pay it off, because that will feel awesome when I do... But countries' debts don't have that personal thing to them). Meh, I've been meaning to read up a little more to understand economics a bit more. Instead I've been trying to catch up in the junk forum. Which is kind of like a debt on its own. I guess, if I can't press "skip all" in junk forum, that means we can't just cancel all debt that countries have.

Anyway, the movie talked about other things too. And the ending was really cool (I found it even somewhat emotional, and I think that is partly why I find it suspect). So if you can't be bothered to watch almost 3 hours of a YouTube video, let it load all the way to the end and watch just the ending. :P

Okay, so apparently I did have much to say after all. Wordiness is like a plague that I have. I don't think it's contagious, though.


Huh. Strangely related to Zeitgeist:
http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/6254306837/boredom-pays
http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/6441532113/philosophy-of-the-less

I have developed better technique of drawing on my emotionally addictive papers. Annoyingly, I developed it mid-project, and now want to go back and redraw all the images in the project with that technique. Which I won't, I'll just have to learn and deal, and draw some other pictures with the new technique later. Hoping that I will still remember it then.

I am also knitting squares (over 6" in size). If you knit and would like to participate in an awesome art project, please knit squares.

And now I will pull out all of my musical instruments and take photos of them for the reference photo marathon contest (there is no way I'll ever be able to make that into a link, I can never get those words in the right order) *goes to find a white sheet for background purposes*

Creativity is fun! :D And the meaning of life, too (just to drop a little hint there, in case you're looking, to prod you in the right direction).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSrWkbH7FrM

Sweet Child o'Mine, played by sweet children. Pretty cool.

So teaching English as a playgroup thing was so much fun and went by really fast. We just repeated six words over and over in different games. There's this little girl who pronounced "ear" with a perfect Queen's English accent <3

I also dropped by the library in search for sheet music that would get me excited to play guitar and/or piano again, and I came across and checked out this http://www.voimauttavavalokuva.net/english/index.htm The Loveliest Girl in the World. It has a series of very fairytale-ish photos taken over a number of years of a handful of young girls, it's about acceptance and rejection and all those other awkward, painful things that girls go through. It's really beautiful and right up my research - which I had been getting on with just hours prior to discovering the book in the library.

It was pretty amazing to go in the library in the first place. I haven't been there in years. And it still smells the same. <3 It was also hilarious, I was wondering around aimlessly, looking at the classification numbers (I worked in the bookstore, remember, to me 7 means all things creative, 1 means philosophy etc...) and I hovered around the sevens, not able to locate the sheet music - which was very prominently placed and well-signed for behind the check-out counter, though not next to all the other art and music books :P

I have done everything! *fist in air as a sign of triumph*
I have emailed and Facebooked everyone that needed to be contacted, I've banked and done other official business, I'm prepared to teach English to kids tomorrow for the very first time (this is going to be so much fun btw, it's not teaching, it's playing games for an hour), I've done ET stuffs (though there is always more to do), I've knitted, I've started to listen to the recentest episode of This American Life, I've groomed my dog, I've had a shower. All this after having done a newspaper round, and before dinner.

Carry on.

So the paper job gets increasingly more annoying and difficult, which is a good way to go about it I guess. 'Cause on Friday I was scary to be alone, on Saturday I was stupid and thought I could leave some of the papers in the drop-off box and pick them up as I go past it to the other area, but I left too many and had to come back and then go back and it was a hassle. Also the papers were late coming. And then Sunday verily did suck because you have to deliver this annoying little thin slip of a thing to every door, not just the subscribers. Ah well, I survived in the end. Interestingly, last week the weather was gorgeous every night, so I guess this week it's going to rain and suck, just so I won't get to thinking that this is a glorious career choice after all. :P

Two interesting things worth mentioning about the weekend. On Saturday after I finished my round, I called America. And America picked up and passed the phone around so that I got to talk to a whole ton of my friends <3 Y'see, they had a missionary reunion in Utah on Friday night (so that's Saturday morning for me) and we all got to talk on the phone. They all really appreciated it and I really loved it too. So that was epic and I was on cloud nine for a long time after that. (I wrote a really long cool note about it in Facebook if you want excessive details for any reason).

Sunday made me seethe, though. I was on my way to work, and there was a bunch of guys coming home from a bar - including my religiously insensitive boss-person. And they were all shouting and heckling me as I biked past, the boss-person being the loudest and most obnoxious of the lot. Despite the fact that he wasn't at work and he was drunk at the time, I still think that is incredibly inappropriate. And I mean, more inappropriate than if it had been total strangers. It was one of the most threatening moments in a long while. Usually I just don't care about stuff like that, but that one really brushed me the wrong way.

So then later I was explaining to mum and dad about my shifts and days off, and I said "yeah it ends on the 17th." And they were all "whut, why?" so I just stated that the contract ends, there's all this change in the districts and stuff blahblah" and dad said "ah, but maybe you can extend it" and I said "probably but I'm not going to." They were all o.o and I explained "I don't like the guy who does our shifts, and you have to work with him if you work there, so I don't want to work there." And we talked about him, and I think my dad knows (of) him, and he said "is he the guy who's in Perussuomalaiset (Basic Finns, that extreme right wing political party that is getting all sorts of attention over here). So today I spied him on Facebook and yes indeed he is that one. I don't know if that means anything, if that explains it at all, or if this just enforces my slightly negative view of the PerSu-group. I'm sad if it does, because I thought I'm above that kind of thing.

If I meet one obnoxious Bulgarian, will I assume that all Bulgarians are obnoxious? Of course not. But is judging people based on their thoughts and actions (like a politican group) better than judging them based on something they have no control over, like birth place or race? I think so. But then extending that judgment to the entire group would only work if you knew that the person's obnoxiousness was caused by the thoughts and actions that are promoted by the group. So in short, is my boss obnoxious because he is PerSu, or is he just obnoxious? Should I judge the PerSu because he is obnoxious, or should I just judge him? The thing here is of course that the PerSu are so very talented at being obnoxious all across the field. Their elected representatives say racists things in interviews and in blogposts, their leader has the gift of the gab and uses it shamelessly to blather populist bollocks instead of trying to do anything (these guys pretty much almost won the elections - why are they in opposition? Oh yes, because they don't actually want to do anything, they just want to sit in the sidelines and heckle á la Luke 7:32... Then again, if they had formed the government on a PerSu basis, I would have left the country. I'll take the Tories over the PerSu any day).

Wow, political rant time, over.

Anyhoo, so I came home on Sunday morning cursing the name of that guy. And then it was General Conference and president Uchtdorf talked about exactly this kind of thing in his talk¹ and called me to repentance about it. Bah. Fine. I'll be nice. But I am still not renewing the contract. -_-

¹ http://lds.org/general-conference/watch/2011/10?lang=eng&vid=1194756909001&cid=12