This Is Not About The Euro Crisis

If I were an investor, I'd invest - out of sheer solidarity and caring - in something Greek right now, recognising the need for support and realising an opportunity for mutual enrichment. I would be patient. I would be willing to accept that there might not be that great a profit to be made in monetary terms, but that there is a great chance of success in other terms: in human happiness, love, stability, the future, the greater good. And I wouldn't dream of suggesting that the money would wear the pants in this set-up, I wouldn't dream of telling you what to do. But I would expect to be an equal partner, privy to the details of the state of my investment. I'd also like - if not down-right expect - to see my investment treated with care and responsibility and a certain amount of serious commitment. Not that I oppose to a certain amount of creative risk-taking or surprises, either.

But even this kind of investors will get nervous when Greece itself makes the environment shaky for investment. Insecurity is the great cancer in the finance sector, nothing but a scary rumour can cause a bank run or plummet the stock market. Communication is vital, information is vital, confidence is vital.

This is not about the Euro Crisis.
This is about my love life.

So I would like a whole bunch of you to totter over to http://www.hitrecord.org and join it. Especially if you're any sort of creatively type and aren't all that into copyright, like collaborating and think that the new world order (for example altermodern?) is just round the corner. :)

Also, I would like to express my dismay over this solar eclipse you had last night. Yes, last night, and by you I mean some undefined bunch of Americanos. I can't believe that I wasn't told that there would be an eclipse, and I can't believe that it was not here. D: Boo at your failclipse.

I just came back from visiting STS Sedov. It r pretty.

I think this is the kind of thing that many of you would enjoy, whether or not the sight of Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes you want to remove garments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFOIdhaJLo8

At MIT you can get funding if your project is funny enough :D
http://shass.mit.edu/inside/resources/internal/deflorez/application
Why isn't every school MIT?

Also, Abine is doing a campaign about raising people's awareness about Facebook privacy, and while I'm sure you people are very aware of it already, they did make a quiz that calculates your monetary value for Facebook.
https://goprivate.abine.com
I'm worth a stapler.

If these guys had led the Russian army...


And awesomest of all:

http://replaceface.tumblr.com/

Yesterday when I got back from Church I found out that my dog had got into my chocolate and eaten it. Luckily it was only a few pieces and he's a gigantic monster beast, so he didn't get sick from it. But I did worry myself sick and scoured the internet for consolidation. Today in the morning during the walk he tried to eat something really nasty stinky from the forest. And now in the evening I found a huge pale tic in him and had to under barely-controlled freak-out battle him while trying to remove that nasty critter. I must brag here now that I didn't start to cry until after I'd got the tic out and I'd cleaned the wound with antiseptic.

Why... are you trying to die so bad stupid dog? ;_; If he develops borrealis from the tic bite I'll put the bullet between his eyes myself >.< I can't handle the heart attacks :(

Brainpickings usually seems to work as a blog that shares cool things in a short and sweet way. But this one was long and detailed like an article, I'm impressed.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/11/internal-time-till-roenneber/

It's about sleep and social jet lag, really fascinating and I heartily recommend it.
But as I was reading it, it wasn't like "ooh, this makes so much sense in my life, wow!" Quite the opposite, I couldn't really relate to it at all. First all these charts about where your midsleep is, and the earliest numbers in it is 0 and 1 am - which is when I wake up >_> And all this stuff about not being able to change your body clock - when in my life I've noticed that it doesn't matter at what time I go to bed, as long as I get 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep, I'll be fine. And I will stay awake and feel alert (unless I go on a bus or a car, the hum of which makes me drowsy really quickly) until two or three hours past the time I went to bed last. So if yesterday I went to bed at 5pm, I can stay awake tonight til 8ish, by which time I am totally ready to drop. And then if I go to bed at 8pm, the next evening I'll be able to stay awake til 11ish. And seeing how I never sleep past 6.30, I am always capable of falling asleep around 5pm (excepting things that cause difficulty sleeping: if I'm worried, depressed or worked up over something, I either won't fall asleep or I won't be able to get up).

But thinking back... In uni I had my own hours, and during the four combined years of BA and MA I went through everything from being totally nocturnal to 4am-8pm kind of rhythm (I loved that one the best: I had a long sweet morning at home waiting for uni to open, got into the studios really early when there was no one else there, spent the entire day working, and headed home a bit before uni closed to go to bed :3) Then I worked and had to get up early (5am was it?) and commute a long distance. That was fine, I just went to bed around 9... And then in the mission the hours were strictly 6.30am-10-30pm which I adjusted to quite quickly and have actually stuck by since, until now that I work nights except 2-3 days a week. As of late the only time I haven't got 8 hours of sleep was when I went to England for a visit and didn't get to bed til 12 usually (because of socialising) and couldn't sleep past 5am out of excitement or something. So either I matured quickly into an early chronotype or you actually can change your body clock.

But basically, I'm a talented sleeper, like Harpo. :3

The most interesting thing about the article was this notion of the societal clock being this crazy construct that is not helping people be happy. I've often thought that it's the minute hand that is the tyrant. If we had clocks that only had the hour hand, you could still more or less be aware of what time it was, at least to about 15-30 minutes accuracy, without the tyranny of minutes. Not that that would help with the waking up bit. :P

http://urbanetiquetteproject.blogspot.ca/
This makes me so happy I could do a back flip of joy if I knew how to do a back flip :D

Also, I would die of joy on the spot if I ever saw this on an airport:


Today was the first real summer rain. Spring rains can be quite aggressive, it's like they are attacking the winter, but summer rains are playful. It rained all night when I was at work, but it was warm (11 Celsius is warm in my line of work) so I had to take my jacket off and just get wet in the rain - but it didn't matter. And that's how you know it's summer rain: you don't mind getting wet. Because summer dries what summer makes wet. So when after my route I put my jacket back on to go home, it was warm and comfortable inside the jacket :3

Has [Viking] seen this?
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/08/18/cookie-monster-tom-waits-mashup/

No meds for the dog without prescription. So we got him regular de-wormy meds (it's about the time to make sure he's worm-free) and he ate them like an angel (inside small pieces of sweet bun, but still it was very good of him because usually he detects the medicine and spits it out and only eats the bun). So instead when he reverse sneezes in the future, I will pinch his nose, stroke his throat and maybe blow him in the face (I am dubious about what good that last one will do...)

But in other news, I'm going to England in the beginning of June! :D You have no idea how happy this makes me! Just the prospect of going, of timing lining up really good with stuff, getting cheapo flight with an airline that actually accepts me silly electron card...! Bweee! Now to figure out where I'm staying...
*dances at the prospect of travel to England*


Also, I had a really weird dream in which I was friends with François Hollande and he told me to not come to listen to his talk in Milan, because he was going to deliver it in Italian, not English (my subconscious seems to not know that Mr Hollande is French), and I was fretting about it because I was planning on going to England (which is, you know, the country that has Milan in it :P) for General Conference and it would have worked out well - I actually think that Mr. Hollande was kind of going to talk at General Conference, except of course his talk would be political, not religious, and in Milan, not Salt Lake... My subconscious needs a world map :P Anyway, then I was on the phone to my English family and I was in a chapel in Sweden I think, watching a big screen and it dawned on me: it was General Conference going on at that very moment, and I had not travelled to England. :/ And Hollande took off somewhere too and I had to bike home. From Sweden >_>

My dog reverse sneezes a lot. I did not know there was a term for his little breathing fits... Apparently you're supposed to pinch his nose and stroke his throat when he does that so that it'll pass quicker. I don't know how he'd like me pinching his nose... But I guess I'll try.

Also apparently reverse sneezing can be a symptom of a Pneumonyssus caninum ("nose tic" in Finnish) which is a kind of a tiny parasite that lives inside the dog's nose. Apparently it's really common for dogs to have that.

I had never even heard of nose tics or reverse sneezing before this morning at work. I feel really bad now, because my dog's had reverse sneezing for ages :/ I didn't know there was something you can do about it, let alone that it could mean he has a parasite. We've never even mentioned his little wheezing fits to the vet either. Why haven't we mentioned about his reverse sneezing to the vet? >.<

So I guess I'll give him parasite meds to see if that ends the wheezing (his eyes leak a lot too, which can be another symptom of the parasite), and if it doesn't, it's just the random thing and I'll pinch his nose when he does that :/ He'll probably bite me in the face for that :D


Oh and I got over my urge to get on that sailing boat. The timing is all wrong, this month is going to be stupidly hectic all the way to the end. Instead I am considering going to visit England from the 1st of June, to celebrate the end of hecticness and to see a private view of some friends of mine. Need to see what my English family are doing that week, they have some kind of a summer break and I'm not sure if they'd be in Cov or not...

Sneak Previews of the current project.

I just got a postcard from rural North Carolina! :D

:O The world's largest four-masted barque STS Sedov is going on a circumnavigation, leaving from St. Petersburg on 19th of May, and it stops in my town on the 21st! :O :D :O <3

So obviously I'll go see it and lure my sister and the missionaries too (since it's on Monday which their rest day), but there is something I noticed on www.sts-sedov.info and that is that the leg from Hamina to Rostock still has places and it's, well, really expensive, but I could afford it... I could take a couple days off from work and go sailing. :O I... don't know how I feel about this, except scared and awed. It's like "holy mackerel the chance of a life time" and it'd suck to think I almost did... Buuut, I don't think I will. Unless. Maybe I will >_> Meep. *needs to sit down and think and look into it a bit more*
My sister would murder me dead out of jealousy, though. >_>



*edit*
So I checked it out: I could do the ship, from Rostock take a train to Hamburg and fly back to Helsinki via Copenhagen. The whole shebang would be around 800€...

You know what? If by the 15th (when I get paid) the ship can still be booked, I'll go.
Though... I need to first do some calculations to make sure I'm not shafting my USA trip >_> But I have three months of summer working non-stop, that should be fine... but I'll do the math first :P

http://drawhappy.org/submit/

Draw happiness. Send it to this person. Take part in a cool.

So I've been watching episodes of Happy Days online because I watched a documentary on Henry Winkler on Sunday with my mum and started to miss the Fonz so much that I overcame my disliking of online tv-watching. And... I don't remember it making me this emotional when I was watching it as a kid o.O Like, I'm in tears over Fonzie going blind and stuff. But it is incredibly fascinating to see it with adult eyes now. So many things I didn't pay attention to as a kid (admittedly I've become a lot more sensitive as I've become more religious, but good grief Potsie and Ralph are desperate! :O And they're all very... fast!) But I'm glad to find that Fonzie's brand of looseness is still as gentlemanly as I remembered it. I identify with him a lot (as well as find him hot :P)

*goes back to her craziness*

I had three portions of fruit (of the daily five) for breakfast today! :D Gone are the days when I'd get 1 or none of my five-a-day.

No problems with the drunks this morning :) Next up: midsummer's -_-;

I wanted to share this http://www.thedominoproject.com/2012/04/tracts-and-books.html
I'm on the mailing list of the Domino Project and they say cool things. But I have as of yet bought anything from them. Then again, I don't have a Kindle either.

Two things that Google should do:
1. google.eu that will search all sites in Europe. Even if they only do Google Shopping search, this would be so incredibly incredible. And it would help the economic area. Because really, who bothers to go to all the different sites of google (co.uk de fr it never mind all the little country ones like se dk fi...) to find the thingie.
2. Google art search. Like a google image search engine, but searching only within the visual arts, with metadata about the different images, like "male gaze" or "impressionism" or connections to other artists (whose work influenced the work or who were influenced by the work).
3. Hire me to make these things, esp 2 (this is optional if they will make them and do them good themselves, but if they won't, they should make me do them).

Monday is the perfect day for having a day off :) I woke up early, cleaned and walked the dog and art is great and I feel happeh! And it's only 11am! Six more hours of awesome day left! I'm even a little bit panicked about what I should do with these hours to best utilise my time. Then I have one day of work, then one day off, and then rest of the week work til Sunday.

Speaking of Sunday, yesterday I was officially called as the Primary president for my ward (while previously I was the second counsellor to the primary president). So you may now call me President iippo (but only in matters that relate to persons between the ages of 3 and 11 years of age that live in the Kouvola area...)

Tomorrow is May Day (which means that the stupidest month of the year will be over) and I'll get the day after it off work. Though I'm not really looking forward to working on the night after May Day eve (all the drunks... The night belongs to paper people and truck drivers! All the rest of you should always be at home by 2am)

Listening to blues music can drive an insecure person crazy. o.O First they're all "I love you and if you leave I'd die" and the next song is "I don't want no woman like you, stay out of my life" ;_;

You guys paying attention to this political murder intrigue going on in China?
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/289923/china-scandal-exposes-elite-impunity
Really interesting, it's history playing out before our eyes (well, sort of before, considering how China tries to hide stuff).

Today I made a cat card for a kid I know who's turning 12.

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/04/26/literary-paint-chips-gallery-1/
Colours, as defined in literature.

Good night.

The shoe shop that I stalk all of a sudden sent an email saying "lookit, discounts!" so I looked. Earlier I had a running list of shoes that are "kinda nice, consider buying some sometime" and one pair that was "amg amg wantwantwant" (dees ones http://www.brandos.fi/iron-fist/lovelace-flat-ifloxf0002-cre-cream/a53616 ).

Now there are also dees
http://outlet.brandos.fi/bronx/herald-64833-k-1-blk/a22280
http://outlet.brandos.fi/bronx/herald-43584-j-2-whtecru/a22267
http://outlet.brandos.fi/dkode/alandys-28197-006-leath-offwlilac/a29892
http://outlet.brandos.fi/h-by-hudson/deller-5601010-multi/a13669
that have the same reaction and are on sale. Plus a couple more on discount that I would say "yes please thank you" to, and whatever I go with - if any¹ - I will throw in these http://outlet.brandos.fi/vagabond/aida-3126-001-01-white/a26013 because they are simple and white and flat and I simply can't think of any occasion where they wouldn't be the perfect back-up emergency "they go with everything" option. Plus they are really cheap. Which might indicate poor quality. But also indicates big discount so maybe not.

My name is iippo and I have a problem :S

^{1 The sheer amount of choice often leaves me incapacitated to make a choice, so I might end up buying no shoes at all.}

It seems that a worm of some sort sent all my MSN contacts a link to something or another (I found out after I got a delivery notification when one of the recipients' email bounced). Which is interesting since I don't use MSN anymore. But yeah, sorry Viking, Silvie, Pubky and three other people that I had as MSN contacts. Long live Skype, eh?


http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/21718631467/the-2012-forbes-fictional-15-richest
How could Flintheart Glomgold possibly be second-richest next to Smaug, when everyone knows he is second-richest to Scrooge MacDuck? Or maybe the picture is not in order...

Hmm, they gave a shoddy explanation on http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2012/fictional-15-12/flintheart-glomgold.html