Had another strange dream. There was this new uber train track (possibly going through Siberia? Or some other landscape like that, y'know, desolate and poor country type) on which Google operated this fast uber-train, which was all the rage and everyone loved it. But I discovered that there was this hidden part to it where the track was really unsafe, it was just right there on the land, no safety measures of any kind to prevent people from getting on the line, and as a result tons of people had died when the uber-train had ran them over. And the trains never stopped to investigate and the people (or their remains) were never taken from the tracks. The train was somehow so incredibly uber that when a person was ran over it, they were just utterly shredded, there was no body left over, only tiny pieces. But since this wasn't public knowledge, it happened in the regions where the track went through that people went missing and no one knew how or what happened. When in fact they had been hit by the train, and the train people and Google never told anyone.

So I discovered this with the help of a train conductor. He showed me the place where a little girl had been ran over the train. And I was collecting the pieces of her and her things (she had a lot of little metal jewellery that was all mangled, little heart-shaped earrings or something) to bring it back to her family for burial. And I was worried that the train company would find out that the conductor was helping me, I kept telling him to go on ahead or something. And he said he'd show me all the places where people had died, and I realised that this was a hopelessly ginormous task, of gathering all the pieces and bringing them back to the families.

Apparently my subconscious isn't aware that people are mostly wet, since all the pieces were dry, as if the girl had been made of porcelain. So it was more of a sad-factor than a gross-factor that was the dominant thing in this strange scene. Also what must have been influencing this dream was the recent episode of This American Life about the massacre of Dos Erres in Guatemala, which has only recently been found out and the people brought to justice. And also few weeks ago/last month I heard of a boy that got run over by a train here, and his family had to identify him from his watch and jewellery or such, because there was nothing else left. And that his watch and necklace had been totally unscathed and perfect, while he himself had been mangled unrecognisable by the train. Also I may have been confusing Google and Virgin Trains :P Also also also there's this infomercial video I once saw about Google on YouTube that illustrated and clarified exactly what kind of massive world-domination plans Google's got going on, and the end image made out of all the typography in the video was Darth Vader and the last sentence was "Google: Trying hard not to be evil."

My dreams are in dialogue with the reality I live in.

Haa, I have shot my own sleeping rhythm to hell in just one day X_x I worked this morning as usual, then slept after work thinking "ah-HA, this way I can stay up past 6pm!" I did. But the I had a nap - from 7pm to 10pm. It is now 11pm and I'm not tired. I'm fuuu...

But I must admit I have been enjoying sleep quite a bit lately. I had an incredibly sweet and lovely dream few sleeps ago. It was a very choppy dream, but the sweet part was that I was on the edge of some kind of a body of water, kind of a beach maybe, and I was just relaxing there. And there was also a guy I really love (not in a romantic way, one of my missionary brothers - the Choice Fox). And I said something deceitful that made him jump into the water to go for a swim, but there was something wrong with the water, it was either too cold or too shallow for swimming, so essentially he just ended up getting wet and cold from his splash and it was my fault. He was very sour and he got out of the water and plopped next to me, on his stomach facing away from me. And I felt bad and said I was sorry, and dug out the towel I was lying on and dried him with it. And we were both completely naked in the dream, but that was more like a state of innocence than anything else, there was no awkwardness, it was natural and comfortable.
(I guess it's not translating into words very well, it was a very sensory dream... But I want to remember it, hence writing it down).

I'll go eat something sleep-inducing now. :/

This blog is sometimes hilarious and sometimes just strange, but this is the most hilarious bit.


http://brinkwater.blogspot.fi/2011/10/matthew-545.html

http://dearphotograph.com/
also
http://www.digitaltheatre.com/production Ahmg <3 Especially Kafka's Monkey, I need to dload that one.

I was walking my bike up hill on my way to work this morning and all of a sudden this really bright star - like the brightness of 30 stars together - did a really long red-flaming shooting star thing across the sky. I had to stop and stare with my mouth open, because the other times I've seen shooting stars it's been juts a white line, really quick. This one I could actually follow with my eyes, and it had colour and it was humongous. I then spent a long time of the rest of my trip to work thinking if a piece of space junk could do a shooting star that big and still burn all up in the atmosphere.

Apparently there was a space rocket launch in USA yesterday morning, maybe it was something to do with that, some of its junk coming down?

But it was really pretty, and made me think of an idea for a story. :3

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).