These two links go together:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/19/150906125/argentina-points-to-an-oil-company-and-says-this-is-now-ours

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q54lVO7elt0

http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/21330562264/extinguishing-yourself

This is surprisingly difficult to do when one seems to suffer from spontaneous human combustion. And feeling abandoned at the worst time of the year is not conducive to success either.

*cranky and bitter*

Schedule:
Tuesday - go to Kouvola to help M. prep for theology uni entrance exam
Wednesday - After-school English club thinger. Pray and hope that the new materials will have arrived or much fail will be had.
Thursday - Work on the background of the drawing (combining paintings of the Immaculate Conception and photos of nebulae by the Hubble telescope) of eyes.
Friday - Kouvola and M. again
Saturday - Hamlet in Kouvola a possibility, but very likely can't be bothered. Though I really should... :/ I hope I can be bothered on Saturday. :3 It is pretty much the last chance since it closes next week and I won't have time due to work...
Sunday - church, teach a super-awesomely-exciting lesson using chess pieces and puzzles and string! :D :D

As you can see from above, I need to plan in the time to work on art. This makes me feel really cool and professional like :3 Srsl though, I was really stuck on the background for that thing (it's a woman in a long white dress looking through a telescope), and it all of a sudden struck last night when I couldn't sleep (you know how it is: lights switch off, brains switch on) and I continued to figure it out at work when biking around, and it just got ridiculously exciting. So today I did the researches, and then went "crap, when will I have time to work on it D: ?" So I planned it in my calendar, and now I feel very accomplished and ready and prepared, and I think I shall reward myself by working on something else, a text maybe, or Numberpedia or some such. :D

In sadder news, I have completely lost my Chagall. I have this collection of really awesome-quality art magazines, each one focusing on one master of painting (short bio, selected works, and a short essay on their place in art history - a very good course in basics) and I was using the Chagall for a drawing, and it just totally mysteriously disappeared completely. This was months ago and it still hasn't shown up. And it got to the point of so bad that earlier last week I was going to work on it again and realised "well, I can always look up the image on Google" and then spent about half an hour trying to remember the artist's name X_x I had lost Chagall so utterly that I couldn't even remember his name ;_;

In honour of Chagall, this is the picture:


Now on to Murillo and space photos :D

And this movie looks pretty astonishing too
http://www.thefoxisblack.com/2012/01/12/trailer-for-moonrise-kingdom-wes-andersens-new-film/

I'm in a shary mood, never mind me. ^^; (though you might want to click unwatch on my house... >_> )

http://ink.nmfe.co/ This is new (to me). A thing that the owner of a website can stick on their site so that when someone copies something, it sticks a link back to the site with the copy. I've noticed something (possibly the New Yorker?) doing something like this on their own stuff, where it added a link back without telling you, but this lets the user know what's the haps.

Ur beans, they r cool.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/13/ultra-slow-motion/

I love the super slow-motion stuff.
If you only have a little time, watch at least the Pollination video (last one), the shots of the bats with the cactus flowers are so beautiful I almost started crying. And the Eagleowl video too, it is so intense and powerful, it is art, straight up.

http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/21041821122/camus
This made me feel awesome, because I had seen this poster before thisins'thappiness posted it :D I'd seen the kickstarter video *feels really smug*

I have found the replacement perfume. It's actually three perfumes, like a series they don't sell separately - but that's okay because all three of them smell amazing and scrumptious and <3 I knew you wouldn't let me down, Lucky Scent :3 It's still not Amorito, but maybe I just need to let go. And make new memories with the new scents. 

Monsters and Mormons review

I endorse the spread of regional language: http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/20755289721/19-regional-words-all-americans-should-adopt

I hate you, tiny-footed Americans.

Today I ordered more chocolate perfume samples, since the previous ones were all useless (too strong and... just, too strong. Sickeningly so). Every once and a while I slip into a desperation (a very realistic one) that this is all futile, that there is no scent like Amorito in existence and never will be, and even if I find a replacement that I like, it still won't be the same and have the same emotional effect with memories and my personality as Amorito does. I sent feedback to Body Shop, too, just in case they'd bring it back if enough people ask... :/ But they said somewhere "it wasn't very popular" and that's why it was cancelled. I don't care, I'll buy the entire batch, just make enough this one more time to last me a lifetime and I'll never bother you again. 'Cause, y'know, I'm a millionaire in secret. But 'til then, I guess I have to keep looking, keep trying.


In other words, I'm still utterly useless with... spring. Might not make it to England in May, since it's just too... hard to sort out right now. I've actually given up on trying to get anything useful done (or, more accurately, given up feeling bad about not getting anything useful done) and I just do anything that is a distraction or an indulgence. I downloaded Fallout and another free game from GOG but Fallout didn't hold my attention long enough for me to even save the game I started. I didn't finish watching the General yesterday, nor the Balloonist today. Maybe I need to move on to stronger ammo and watch Marx Brothers movies. This American Life did hold my attention for the duration of the programme, so that might be a good idea to do again, find an old episode I haven't heard yet (yes there are tons of them still)... Just lay on the floor and listen to Public radio. Not a bad plan.

My all-time favourite Buster Keaton movie (and also the first one I ever saw), The General is available in the Internet Archive! :D
http://archive.org/details/TheGeneral1926
This thing has me in stitches all the way through <3 <3 <3 <3 Just like... every part of it is my favourite part <3 <3 <3

Wow, I'm utterly wasted and I don't even know what with. Probably just spring. Hopefully it's just spring, since that indicates it will pass with time. I can just about manage going to work, going to the English club thing (it was lovely today, the little tyrant didn't come... which is sad, I don't want her to feel unwelcome - but she makes herself unwelcome by the way she behaves) and going to help Maisa prep for her uni exams. All the rest of the time I'm a useless lump, with very little things that hold my attention (the only stuff that does is indulgences, like trashy novels, chocolate and excessive sleep) and I'm not doing stuff that I should be doing... Oy vey. ._.

We had more snow today, I wonder if that has anything to do with it. Probably not, since bright happy spring days also make me broody. I had forgotten about this seasonal gloom that hits me, since last spring I had just come back from Sweden and I was depressed over having lost that life, and the spring before that I was in Sundsvall with someone I didn't get along with so well (so I was depressed over having lost a dear sister and not having gained as dear a one in return) and I can't remember the spring before that. Southern hemisphere sounds awesome right about now :/ Pubky, you got a sofa for an iippo to crash on?

Happy Christmas everybody! It's so wonderful isn't it, the most joyous time of the year, everyone's happy, there's Christmas music and lights and that special feeling in the air and people are nice, and you just feel so generous all the time, and there's lots of new snow on the ground and... and... ...and I am so desperate to make that last bit seem like a positive thing that I will wilfully lie to myself in order to not collapse into the depression of "amfg wtfbbq it snowed an inch and it's still coming and we're in friggin' April and I just want winter to be over and..." I hate spring. I hate this time of year as much as I hate winter itself, I wish it would go away, I wish I could live in a place that had nothing but autumn, ever. -_________________-
http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/20326401022/t-s-eliot


Anyway, I wanted to go on about Aspergers again. I did another test thingie today, because I'm curious and still don't quite believe that I actually am Aspie (I got 38 and it said any score from 32-50 was Aspie - but the test also didn't have any kind of "I'm not sure" option, so some of them I just had to guess). Then I read a blog post by an Aspie blogger about language and its subtext and how Aspies have a hard time when people don't mean things literally, and in the end she wrote:
Why is it so common for the average person to expect that what is said isn't exactly what is meant? Why do we, as a society, couch so many innocuous things in euphemism? Why couldn't the inspector in Haddon's novel simply state, "I know you didn't mean to hurt the policeman, so we are letting you off with a caution?" If I ask for "Everything except sour cream," why can't I get it?
^{http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/aspergers-diary/200811/joe-and-the-mega-sized-smoothie-language-and-aspergers}
This caught me by surprise. Is this... right? Like, I understand that sometimes people say something else than what they mean when they have some kind of a reason to lie (they are embarrassed to say something, or they're not supposed to or don't want to for some other reason) but that this is the standard and that people hardly ever say directly what they mean... sounds like a very extreme statement to me.

Another thing earlier in the post also caught my eye:
The face off of literal language versus interpretive language pops up frequently in my daily life. The average person not on the spectrum tends to expect a lot of subtext in what is being said, and frequently imbue their speech with a lot of subtext. This can be infuriating for a person with Asperger's who tend not to expect subtext, struggle to decode it when it's there, and certainly don't care to apply it in their speech if they don't have to. By default, we say what we mean (sometimes to a fault), unless we are taught (or teach ourselves) to do otherwise.

This is partly why I struggle to believe that I'm Aspie: a lot of the time I do know the right answers. And when the questions in these tests ask "do you think it's hard to x" (where x is some normal social situation) I answer "no, not really, because I know how to do that". But when it asks "is it your natural urge to x" then the answer is no, but I've learnt to do that. They usually diagnose Aspergers in kids because kids haven't learnt all the rules of the social game yet so they stick out more. Which then raises the question: does it matter then whether I have it or not? What would be the benefit of getting diagnosed? I'm probably not going to end up a suspect of killing someone's dog or of hitting a police man (like in the story in the post) so it's not like I need it for legal protection, and I'm not in school anymore, so I don't need it to level the field so that it would be taken into account in exams or something. And a diagnosis does nothing to level the field in social situations, since people don't really care about your problems in those situations... Would it just be for my benefit then, for the closure of knowing "yes, you have it" - but that's more likely to then cause other... stuff that I don't know what it would be or how to prepare for it. Basically, I don't know what I'd think of actually for sure having a diagnosis. 

My new shoes came today from ModCloth <3 But they're too small. So they shall be my sister's new shoes while I order the next size up and wait for another three weeks. >.< And of course ModCloth doesn't offer international exchanges. I wish the world would just get over this idea of nations already and embrace global everything, not just global economy. We're all on this planet together, guise. -_-

But I don't mind the extra hassle a whole ton because the shoes are waaaayyyy worth it, they are just so darn cute and perfect <3
http://www.modcloth.com/shop/shoes-flats/delightful-dress-up-flat

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/opinion/theft-law-in-the-21st-century.html

Maybe we should think of illegal downloading as trespassing or unauthorised use?

I'm beginning to increasingly pay attention to how we are constantly getting caught with words, that words and terms can actually enslave us and our thinking. One wrong word or a term used in the wrong way can absolutely paralyse or even destroy everything we've been working for. I've been thinking about this especially in the case of the gay marriage arguments lately. It seems that in a lot of cases it's actually all about redefining the word marriage. No one in the argument thinks "gay people should just not be allowed to form couples and live together and do what they want", or at least no one says that. What they say is that "the word 'marriage' is by definition between a man and a woman and you can't change that definition, because bad things will happen if you do." Equal rights when it comes to laws like inheritance and hospital visiting rights and all the rest of it? Sure, have 'em. Redefine our ages-old word? No way, WTF!? What if the gay rights groups had coined their own term, like gayrriage or homarriage or something? Linking the two practices with the similarity of the word while still acknowledging that "yes, they are not exactly the same thing by definition and it will be more convenient to still draw a distinction linguistically in order to communicate more clearly, but legally they are at the same level and everyone is ready to accept that"?

Similarly, the phrase "illegal downloading is stealing" doesn't really go down well, since people know what the word stealing means (taking something that isn't yours so that the actual owner loses their thing) and it doesn't quite fit the bill. How about "illegal downloading is trespassing"...? That sounds kind of strange too :P

I actually think this is a good thing, about language having a stranglehold on us. But I can't exactly put my finger on to it as to why it is a good thing, but it feels important some how. Words.

Today is Wednesday, not Thursday. I thought it was Thursday. So yay I gained a day, but boo I have to do English class thinger today :/

My gentleman friend got himself onto Skype yesterday. This is a very good development. Of course we will hardly ever be online at the same time, as on work nights I go to bed before he gets off work. But that's what days off are for. :)

Next weekend is General Conference and I am very excited about this :)

Darn it, I liked those diary entries that were lost. Not that I remember what they were... but still. Something about the Long Now foundation (I want to get that lifetime membership thing, where they give you a Rosetta Disk... And I'm totally naming my daughter Rosetta :D ) and some NYT articles and other cool thoughts about beige.

Ah well. So it goes. The internet doesn't remember everything, it's a silly myth. The internet can destroy our culture whenever it wants to.

England next month? :D

I love the Internet precisely because of the personal touch it adds to things like business. And I don't mean the faux-personal stuff that Tumblr, Chrome and ModCloth do (even though that is super awesome too), I mean this thing that happened yesterday and today: I ordered some samples from Lucky Scent and paid with PayPal. There was some error thinger, but the money went from my account so I reckoned it was okay. Today I had received an email from them saying "we got your money but because of the error your order went missing, so we put your money back to your PayPal, but now you have to do your order again, sorry :S But the problem should be fixed now." So I tried again and this time the PayPal transaction just didn't work. So I paid with card (it's a Debit card so sometimes they don't work on these things) and emailed them saying "it didn't work again" and pasted the error message in the email, then told them that I paid with card but am a little doubtful whether it'll work. And he just replied saying he'll take a closer look in the morning "but we'll sort this out!" :D And then there's y'know, Lev signing my book and Think Before You Think putting my ET review in the back of her print copy of the book... Basically, when all this is over, I will have all sorts of cool stuff that is really personalised to me - plus I'll smell like chocolate again :3

Today I bought a pair of shoes online, ordered samples of different chocolate scented perfumes and took pictures of myself wearing a corset. And yesterday I bought a new piece of jewellery at the post office. I've missed the chance to mail Mothering Sunday cards for Sunday (should I just do it anyway and be late? I have two English mothers, though neither of them is expecting a card from me - so it would be even cooler to actually send them them, even if they got them late... maybe?) I think I'm overdoing this woman-thing. Who cares! *goes to make cards with windflowers on them*

Steal like an artist:
http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/18955109348/steal-like-an-artist