In honour of Valentine's Day, here's a lesson on what love is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV5-N1wykfU

I am such a kid, but I love Sesame Street so much <3

So I've recently got into Brad Paisley (I know, it's pretty outrageous: the iippo officially likes country music now o.O ) but this one song "Online" is not one of my favourites (even though it has a really awesome moment using the Mac start up noise, it's win :P) but it's an serious earworm so I've actually been thinking about it a lot.

It's a pretty simple "hey aren't people ridiculous when they pretend to be something else on the internet" song, with a pretty catchy thing going with "I'm so much cooler online". The sad fact is of course that I think I'm so much cooler online, but not in the way that is implied in the song (aka I pretend to be cooler than I really am), but in the sense that I'm not as shy and reserved, and I communicate better in text than in speech, and I actually have a peer group online that is actually more like me and lets me relax and be myself (growing up in a small town and being a little bit... peculiar is no treat: you either conform and pretend to be something you're not, or you stick out like a sore thumb).

Something I've noticed with this rising interest in country that I have developed is that country music videos are way literal o.O It drove me crazy at first with Taylor Swift, but now I'm kind of liking the added dimension when the song and the video are actually about the same thing. And the strong points of the "Online" video are when you see Brad himself (instead of the geek playing the main role in the video) being the person who is cooler online. If they had not had the short, plump nerd in the main role there but the singer himself all the way through, the whole thing would have been so much cooler. 'Cause, y'know, Brad Paisley is cool, but even he is cooler online. At least it would have steered the video away from the social stigma of "this is what geeks look like and everyone on the internet is in reality a sad ugly person". Also he's written a number of songs that are a gentle mockery/social critique ("Celebrity" and "Alcohol") where he himself takes some of the stings along with the rest of us. Self irony is cool.

Ah well. The song is dated (MySpace? Pfft) and it shows, and that's okay. But yes, the thought behind all this was when the song was stuck in my head on the bikeride to work and I realised that the reverse is more of a concern in my life: I don't really have to worry about someone I know online to turn out to be something else than they said (being cooler online than in real life), but it's always such a drag to find out that someone you know and like isn't as cool online <_< Like they spell bad or use text-speak, or don't get the internet. And especially now with Facebook when everyone's online with their real name and...

Yeah, someone needs to make a Web 2.0 version of this song :P

Linktime!

The song itself, "Online"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE6iAjEv9dQ&feature=BFa&list=TL-flhTnIQexs&amp;lf=artistob

Then a couple of the ones I really enjoy:
-Little Moments (ode to real in relationships) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBErCVNP6rM&feature=BFa&list=TL-flhTnIQexs&amp;lf=artistob
-He Didn't Have to Be (ode to step fathers) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjO1F6oCab8&feature=BFa&list=TL-flhTnIQexs&amp;lf=artistob
-Welcome to the Future http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Yg9wjctRw&feature=BFa&list=TL-flhTnIQexs&amp;lf=artistob
-Whiskey Lullaby http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZbN_nmxAGk&feature=BFa&list=TL-flhTnIQexs&amp;lf=artistob

http://www.whudat.de/anamorphic-illusions-by-felice-varini-34-pictures/

O___O Aaaaarghh!
Buh! really trippy. I can just about imagine what kind of a head asplosion I would get if I saw that in reality.
Made me realise something very interesting about vision and its importance to me. So... thanks for messing with the universe like this, cool person?

What is the difference between secret and private?

Guise.
OK Go + a car with pneumatic arms + a couple of thousand of instruments + a lot of space in a desert = incredible music.

http://youtu.be/MejbOFk7H6c

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/opinion/killing-in-syria.html

The article says Russia and China take some of the blame for this. But there should be some kind of an international... consequence for their stupid vetoing. How about "you can't veto for the next five times we vote on something, because you vetoed wrong this time"? Or maybe for the first stupid veto you lose the ability for one time, for the second stupid veto you lose it for the next two times etc...?

Hey, why doesn't the word "article" mean some kind of an oblong art? One that possibly develops over a long period of time? Or perhaps an oblong art making tool, like a pencil or a brush? Like, "Cause of death: stabbed with an article."

Some men just want to see the world burn. And some just want to wear cool socks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/fashion/in-silicon-valley-socks-make-the-tech-entrepreneur.html
Oh and the part about "girls notice"? Is true :)

Hi guys. So you know how I often rave about This American Life? Yeah, you just tuned out, right? But please come back and I'll tell you an awesome story of what happened at work today and it involves 140 Euros! Anyway, firs the bit about ThisAmLife, and this is not about the radio show, but their blog. Here's the link http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sleepwalk-with-me And in case you don't click without knowing, this is Ira Glass asking for help to get a movie called "Sleepwalk with Me" (that he produced and Mike Birbiglia made) some visible support that it would get distributed in cinemas. There's a little clip of the film, and all you need to do is put your zip code (or country for us non-USAians) to show possible distributors that ThisAmLife listeners would be interested in this film being distributed, that there is an audience out there. And hey, even if you don't want to put anything on the page to indicate your willingness to watch this movie, at least go watch the clip, it's cool :) It really looks like a cool movie. :)

So anyway, this morning at work I was late, it was past 6am in a straiwell, and I found that someone had dropped money in the stairs, two 50€ and two 20€. And in case your currency conversion's not up-to-date, I'll translate for you: that's kind of a lot of monnie. So much in fact that I left it there, hoping that the real owner would come along (hopefully having noticed that they dropped that much money and retracing their steps and discovering their money safely inside their apartment building) before someone more opportunistic did. It was kind of a strange encounter though, to all of a sudden be faced with kind of a lot of monnie like that. It's a strange feeling. Can't really go as far as say that it's an encounter with the sublime, but it's not far off, y'know.

Also discovered that while the Tate art symposia recordings/podcasts are an amazing way to share the research and critical thinking going on in the arts currently, they can't be listened to during paper round, they just aren't good enough quality recordings. I can't crank them loud enough to hear over the sound of walking or biking, part of the time the speaker missed the microphone in someway, etc... They just weren't thinking about being heard when they were speaking. Too bad. Y'see, so far I've tried some old BYU classic speeches -recordings, and those are good but only half an hour each so you end up with 7 or 8 talks in a night and it kind of loses a lot of impact. I also tried this arts and culture radio programme called Utah Now, which worked well despite of shortness (did you know that Richie Ramone has done a collaborative thing with a classical orchestra, where he drums the West Side Story music with the orchestra? It has awesome :3) but because it was so interesting and a lot of it really relevant to my research, I realised that I would need to listen to it again and take notes and all that. Now the Tate ones fail at audio quality whilst otherwise they are perfect (really long, about art and research but not directly relevant to my art and research)... This American Life, again, would be great, but they don't have old episodes on the podcast, only on the website >.< I still have a bunch of other ones to try, and if not, Wittertainment will work just dandy.

My dog woke me up twice last night (second time at ten to one am, only fifteen minutes before I was supposed to get up! >.<) for no real reason, just because he wasn't sleepy. Suffice to say he's sleepy now. So my plan is to take him for a walk in the afternoon, and then poke him and tease him all evening so he can't sleep again until it's actually night time. Stuppid messed up sleep rhythm -ed dog.

I asked my dad just now how cold it is outside, and he said it's -24. And I said "huh, last night at work it was only -20" and then realised that something is wrong somewhere, when -20 is "only -20". Y'see, -10 or -15 or thereabouts is nosehair freezing cold. -20 makes your eyelashes freeze together. It makes your eyes so cold you get a headache, and there is nothing you can do because there just isn't a scarf or mittens that you can wear on your eyes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/opinion/i-had-asperger-syndrome-briefly.html

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!