First time I'm seeing something like this on the interwebs: http://www.ninjavideo.net/

Anyhoo, you know the Finnish presidential election thingie? We're in second round, with two very competent candidates, and election day is Sunday. And this would be a very incredibly interesting race, since they are both very capable of being a very good president - except that there's this really lame reduction going on with a lot of the discussion going on around them. You might even say that it's kind of gay. Because one of the candidates is gay and has a husband, the other is not gay and has a wife. So a lot of the writing and commenting around the election is "is Finland ready for a gay president" and "imagine what the more conservative countries will say/think if we have a gay president" and the Basic Finns are going "we can't vote for anybody now" (because the last thing they want to vote is for a Kokoomus (Finnish version of Republican/Tory) candidate). So where some Americans voted for Obama because he's black and they wanted to prove that they're not racist, some people in Finland are voting for Haavisto because they want to prove they're not homophobic. And vice versa, the homophobes won't vote for him, just like the racists didn't vote for Obama. Couldn't we just... agh >.< I dunno, have an election where all the candidates have to wear a paper bag on their heads and on said paper bags you can only write political things about yourself, like "will abolish slavery" "will raise taxes" or "will keep us out of NATO"? People's race or sexual orientation shouldn't matter when being elected to public office >.< *will go in the voting booth with a dart*

But life is happy, singing and reading and writing and art!

Apparently I read the NY Times now.

I like the sensible approach in this
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/beyond-sopa.html

I like the feeling of breaking borders and boundaries in this one (though you do have to read between the lines a bit to see the idealism shine through there). Made in the world! 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/friedman-made-in-the-world.html

There's a lot of things that you just don't know if you're not from somewhere. And in this specific episode it is a lot of things I don't know since I'm not from USA. So I'm asking yous.

What is Delta like as an airline? What's its reputation? Is it expensive, low-cost, reliable, struggling, snobbish...? What adjective goes with Delta? Also, am I somehow stupid or is it really the only airline that flies between Indy and SLC and SLC and Atlanta? Like, what the heck? Do you not have real low-cost airlines, or do they just not do those specific airports (or are these search engines tricking me and only searching for the main Indy/SLC/Atlanta airports while there are other smaller ones in the outskirts that low-cost carriers fly to)?

Secondly, do you have top-up/pay-as-you-go/pre-paid mobile phone SIM-cards? Where can one buy them, at like a 7-eleven or WalMart or suchmuch corner-store places? Or do you have to go to a proper phone store? Are there SIM-card vending machines even (don't laugh, I've seen them before)?

Newspaper delivery is going hitech: they gave us all Nokia C5s to use as a digital delivery list thinger (hurrah for automatic updates!) Y'know what else the C5 has? :3 A music player. So I didn't need to buy an iPod after all, I've just loaded some podcasts into it and am looking forward to work tomorrow night so much, get to try it out :D

Today is NASA's Day of Remembrance for lost astronauts. So here are some pictures from thisisnthappiness, around the theme of "Space is depressing as hell"











It is also Holocaust Memorial Day today, but we'll leave those pictures for another day. :/

Time for a bit of activism again. Hated SOPA and PIPA? Maybe you'll be interested in
http://jailbreakingisnotacrime.org/ (don't let it become illegal to install your own stuff onto smartphones, tablets etc...)
http://ripmixmake.org/ (everything is a remix, and considering a vibrant part of cultural production and the making of it illegal is craziness)

Training today. Hopefully will have time to do other stuff too. We should take bets on "how long until iippo unpacks her suitcase after England trip".

The car stopped outside her house and he jumped out of the driver's seat and made his way to the passenger side door. She gathered her belongings and got out of the car as he held the door open for her. He stood on the curb and as they hugged goodbye she thought to herself, "There are two possible endings for this evening: either he kisses me, which means he is a thug (because you should never kiss a lady without permission) or he doesn't kiss me, which means he is a coward." As she pulled away from the hug, he didn't let go and they stood face to face with their arms around one another, and as he leaned in closer he said softly, "May I?"


My life is average. By average I mean it's like a novel.


While I was away doing that, I got mail: more squares to be turned into bunnies, next month's work schedule and an invitation to mandatory work training that happened a day before I got back (uh-oh...), the short story anthology "Monsters and Mormons" and notices for two more parcels that I need to go pick up from the post office today (one is a skirt I ordered, the other one could be a gift from the States, an order from Amazon or the 'Think Before You Think' -comic book - or something completely different).


*is giddy and will move back to England at some point*

Ooh, I just got it, http://thisisnthappiness.com/ is also on strike today :D
(I'm going through all of their old posts, and was like "oh no, what has happened to the more and less buttons?!")

http://sopastrike.com/strike/

Duuuuudes, have you seen Wikipedia today? <3 I might just end up donating to them again. Because they has win.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory

Do you like handmade things? If so, you should maybe listen to this episode of This American Life. This may or may not be misleading so that I can trick you into listening it. >_> But it's only because I think it's kind of an important one to listen to. And I never know if any of you listen to any of the ThisAmLife episodes I link to. I only link to the really important ones, because I know it is such a hassle and an investment of time to listen to a whole one.

I have said in the past that place is irrelevant to happiness. This statement has been mainly inspired by observing people who are unhappy after having emigrated to "better" countries (from poorer countries to Europe) and listen to them miss and praise and pine for those lands where life surely must be much more difficult. Also from observing Europeans being miserable in their so-called rich prosperous countries. But while I still hold that there is no single "best place on Earth", no promised land of guaranteed happiness, I'm starting to think that place does matter, on an individual level. I always assumed that I could be just as happy living in any spot on this Earth, that I make my own happiness, that it's inside my head. And while I still reckon I can be happy living anywhere in the world, I do recognise different places have different effects on me, and therefore some places are more conducive to happiness than others. And just like people, places affect our behaviour. The company we keep can have a negative or positive effect on us, and so can the place we live in and the climate we have around us. So while yes, I am happy in Finland, I realise it is not a place that is making me a better person (I'm more anti-social and aggressive, and I have less self-control and use my time less wisely). And the fact that at times I will remember a place I would rather be (Norrland or England) and the pain of missing those places actually makes me cry.

In case you didn't read it between the lines there: winter is properly here. -_- I had such a terrible night at work because the roads are just so bad that I biked a grand total of 100 metres (110 yards/330ft) of my entire route, the rest of it I just walked the bike. Because I just couldn't be arsed with the... fear and the fighting. Fortunately I have a day off, then three days of work (lighter than today, weekend is always the worst) and then a week off completely. So with any luck, the weather and the roads will have changed greatly by the time I'm back. This winter should be very short, we're almost to February, and February itself is very short... :)

I do fear that this week off of mine, when I go to England, is going to dislodge my heart really badly. You see, I will go to a country where you can walk on the streets without the constant fear that you're going to fall over. Heck, you can even run over there, without any strange spiked contraptions strapped to your boots that are meant to help you remain upright! You might not even have to wear boots! You could wear shoes! With totally flat and smooth soles! Imagine that! A land where you can trust the ground you stand on! If that isn't the promised land, I don't know what is.

Winter is ridiculous, and I miss Coventry.

Sweden is crazy and almost completely lost in secularism, but it's cool because then they come up with things like Kopimism, a religion about Pirate Bay :P

"The pirate movement’s political arm, the Pirate Party, provides one possible future path for Kopimism. People didn’t take the Pirate Party seriously at first, either. Then its membership exceeded that of the Green Party, and then the Liberal Party and the Christian Democrats, and then the Centre Party, and then the Young Pirates Association became the largest youth organization of any Swedish political party, and then several other parties and a number of prominent politicians shifted their stances on piracy in a more pirate-friendly direction, and then the Party spread to forty countries. Now the Pirate Party actually holds two seats in the European Parliament. These are early days for the Missionary Church of Kopimism. Who can say how far its gospel will spread?"

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/01/the-missionary-church-of-kopimism.html#ixzz1jLGv3b74

Sweden really is clearing the way for copyright reform. And to that I say: Heja Sverige!

Finland is having a presidential election. And I'm going to have to vote tomorrow, because I'll be in England on the actual Election Day. I must admit I haven't given this election much thought - Finnish politics are not that exciting, they don't even feel like it makes much of a difference what I vote (though my vote does make more of a difference than it would in America, so that's something to be grateful for I guess). There's a whole lot of parties who are all kind of more or less the same (except of course the Basic Finns, who are just scary), and the president doesn't have a whole lot of power or influence over stuff. So I was kind of worrying "what if I go in the voting booth and just can't figure out who to vote for?" There's also my own problem of being in a political flux (can't seem to decide am I a liberal or a conservative, or some bastard combination of both). But after some quick research, I think I have made up my mind on who to vote for the first round, and also who to vote on the second round, assuming the first person doesn't go to second round. And if my second round person doesn't go to second round - well then that will be very surprising and I won't know what to do. :P I must admit I am getting ever so slightly excited about this. But only a little.

I wanted to share this, it's a writing contest for women on Ms. Lexia: http://www.mslexia.co.uk/whatson/msbusiness/scomp_rules.php If you are a writing woman from anywhere in the world, you can enter this contest if it looks like your kind of thing.

Today I sang and wrote but did very little other creative things. Tomorrow shall be catch-up day in knitting and drawing type activities. Maybe. Unless I get distracted by <forum:Junk> or thisisn'thappiness. I did finish reading Hamlet. Time to start mashing the scripts soon.

Until then.

Last night I had a proper nightmare, the kind where you wake up and your so terrified that you don't want to move or even stir a little in your bed for a while.

The dream was scary, because it felt so real. I was walking along the road that I live on, it was summer time, and the road didn't have asphalt (it didn't used to when I was growing up). I walked around this hilly bend, and from on top of the hill I could see into a house, and I saw that there was a man, naked in there. I thought "haa haa awkward..." to myself and tried not to look, but kind of kept glancing. And it looked like it was filmed for a horror movie. Y'know, I look and he's standing at the back of the room, next time I look he's standing at the window looking out, the next time I look the room is empty, and then I hear the door. The man came out, naked. He didn't seem to notice me at all. He walked towards the garden swing and he was talking under his breath. I noticed now that he was probably mad, and I heard him say "will... hang..." and I assumed he meant himself, and he started fiddling with the ropes of the swing, so I hollered to him "don't hang" (because I'm not the kind of neighbour who'll look on when something awful is going on). He noticed me, and stared, then moved away from the swing and to this weird setup in his garden, where it was like a kitchen: there was a sink and a fridge. And he took two porcelain cups and put them on the counter, then smashed his fists into them really hard so that the cups broke and his fists started bleeding and bits of porcelain were stuck to his hands in the wounds. I got really afraid and kept walking past wanting to get away as soon as possible and then call help. I saw from the corner of my eye that he took some kind of a tumble and ended up with clothes on (weird surreal dream thing that I didn't think anything of at the time), and then noticed how he was picking out pieces of porcelain from his flesh, kind of distracted like you pick at a scab or something. He didn't seem to register pain at all. I was going around the last bend and in between two sheds, and I glanced back and he had a really big knife and some potatoes and he was crossing the road, and I heard him mutter "must... kill." He was kind of addressing the potatoes, but I was really really afraid. I had my phone in my hand ready to call the police, and my brain was going "what if he sees me calling the cops, what if he chases me, should I run, I can't talk on the phone while running, and if I start running that might make him chase me... Where should I go, there is no good place to hide, and sides, where am I anyway, where do I tell the police to come to? What number does he live in? Which route are the police going to come from, if I should try to go meet them before this guy's house (our road does a loop so you can come from either end)" etc etc... I was expecting potatoes start raining on me any moment, and him coming at me from behind with a knife. I saw that someone had dropped their mobile on the road as I walked past, and thought "oh no, someone else tried to call the police before me" and that's kind of where it ended and I woke up.

I haven't had a proper nightmare like that in a long time. I've had dreams that make me uneasy and "bad" dreams, but not "pure terror in the head" kind like this.

Anudder link diary:
http://youtu.be/ahv_1IS7SiE
A video full of really cool hippie/punky/gothy/alternative strange people.

http://shouldiworkforfree.com/clean.html

I don't wholly agree with this thinger, but it is win that they made it. And maybe it'll help some of yous decide whether you should work for free.

If your pet was a famous person, who would it be? I think my dog is Andre the Giant.

I found a place to watch Cremaster online! http://www.ovguide.com/cremaster-1-9202a8c04000641f8000000014ab5ab2 The list is a mess but it'll do. Hopefully they'll have all five cycles (or are there six?) I've only ever seen cycle 3 and that only in part before. This all was brought about when I was looking up Aimee Mullins and recognised that she's in Cremaster 3, and I was looking her up because I had listened to a story she told on the Moth podcast on themoth.org and I found out about the Moth from listening to This American Life.

One of the Cremaster cycles has some kind of a cowboy square dancing scene filmed inside the old Kirtland temple, but I can't recall which one. So that'll be fun to look out for. :) And to make myself feel better, I'll call this research (maybe Matthew Barney has something to do with my project. She does have a lot of women dressed in white, and blondes in general... And with him it's about the feel of the films, they just feel really weird and awesome. I suspect that the only reason all of Elftown isn't madly in love with Cremaster is because people just don't know about it... I should write a review about it) not that I don't feel achieved, I finished writing a fable for the Mormon Lit Blitz contest, just in time to enter by the 15th :) I've knitted and stuffed some more, made more plans for England trip and shall now retreat to bed for a few hours to read before going to sleep.

Good night.

There's this really cool girl in the town next to mine, who wants to go to university to study theology. And she asked me to help her (kind of as a tutor) to prepare for the uni entrance exams. Before that she asked me to practice singing with her. So I have a friend with whom I will sing and study theology with several times a week this coming spring... That sounds really awesome ^_^ I'm so excited. It's so cool, she had asked me over to her place to sing and I went, and while we ate together she brought this up, saying that she had been thinking about all this applying to university -stuff, and came to think of me, that I've been to uni and have a masters and maybe could help her... And as she spoke and showed me the books she had to study, I realised that this was exactly what my project reflective research needs next: it's got plenty of reflex, plenty of art history, plenty of feminism, but it still needs a bit more solid handle on the theological side... I love the way things just come together. Plus the song we're practising will be really cool too! <3

I'm also trying out Google Chrome. Because Safari betrays me all the time. Yesterday it forced a reload on all tabs, one of which had a very long message in the typing. It was so infuriating that I turned off the entire computer and went to bed raging and raving mad. It also sometimes forgets to open all the tabs from the previous session, and I have to manually find out where I'm at in thisisnthappiness. And who knows what else I've forgotten completely since Safari won't show it to me. So even though I still kind of love Safari... I just can't stand the backstabbing anymore. So I may or may not give it up. We'll see how well Chrome fares. But as a result of this, I did manage to install junk warnings, and they have win!

Today is Christmas Eve in Russia (happy Christmas everybody!) and because of the 'major holiday' nature of the date, there is a lot of traveling. I live close to the Russian border so we get our share of the travelers - and so shops are open even though Twelfth Day is a public holiday. So this morning/last night when I was delivering papers I saw that the hotel had a sign up on its door that said in Finnish and English "our rooms are fully booked for the next night". If the paper had been outside and I had had a pen, I would have added to it "but there's room in the stable."

Guys, check out the Wikipedia article about Twelfth Night (holiday) and (in the box to the right) what is the correct way to observe this holiday :D

This:





So I just finished reading "Harpo Speaks!" and my plan is to now read the book by his son, "Son of Harpo Speaks" and a realisation just hit me on the way home today: this book I am about to read will have a bit in it about Harpo's death. Now I do realise that he is dead from the fact that he is no longer living, but... his actual death is not real to me. I don't know what he died of or when or at what age. I looked it up once in Wikipedia and can't remember. And I'm afraid. I don't think I want to read this book. :/ I'm so sensitive to things in books and movies, those characters are all real to me, and I mourn the deaths of characters like real people. My little heart broke into millions of pieces when I got to that awful chapter 'Exit Alexander' in "Harpo Speaks!" where he tells of Woollcott's death. What will happen when it's Hoppo himself? ;_; I... I might need to read something else. I have the autobiography of Cheeta, which excites me a) because it's written by an ape! and b) because I think Cheeta and Harpo have quite a bit in common, in terms of the roles they played (on screen and in real life).
(In case you didn't hear the news before, Cheeta died just a little while ago, he was 80 years old, which is a lot for an ape.)

Need to get a hold of literature of the times of Harpo from Charlie Lederer, Oscar Levant (he has written an autobiography as well! Amg amg amg, he used to live with Harpo, plus he's mad and awesome!) and Woollcott obviously. And who all else was there... :3


A realisation came to me just now typing this. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I have chosen that when it comes to movies I'm going to be a comedy aficionado. I intend to undertake a serious comedic education here and watch all possible comedies that I get my hands on, the good and the bad (I might skip the ugly a bit) to develop that aficionado taste in what is funny. And writing that thing about mourning characters made me realise that it is a good choice of genre I have made, but also made me wonder if the lack of death and sadness in comedies is partly the reason for the choice...? Maybe not, I do think it was originally based more on the idea of appreciating humour and especially appreciating the difficulty of making funny movies. Like Woollcott said: "surely there should be dancing in the streets when a great clown comes to town".
I appreciate comic genius more than sombre genius.

Enough babble. Time for dinner and bed.

Continuing with the theme that Ira Glass started:


Also, it's gonna blow up with Iran isn't it? :/ The situation down there scares me.

Samoa skipped Friday.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/samoa-leads-partying-for-the-new-year-20111231-1pg9k.html

I didn't know you are allowed to do that. But now all those maps that show the International Dateline, or the timezones, are all wrong.