Dear junkforumites: I had no forum replies at all when I logged in today. This is a worrisome thing considering I have a lot of the threads on watch and I wasn't here at all on Sunday. You guys are getting lax. Except Viking, because he doesn't like fish.

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Tate Modern has just become even cooler :O They have that astonishing Turbine Hall turned into an exhibition space of ginormous proportions, and now they have started using the underground oil tanks for performance/installation/stuff in dark space. And while the tanks are huge too, they have an intimate feel.
http://www.visitlondon.com/events/detail/24069906-tate-oil-tanks

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Weird: today I looked up the etymology of 'egads' (in case it's too rude to use - it's not) and ended up in the Wikipedia article of minced oaths, and then few hours later on the radio was the Thought for the Day and the person talking did his entire bit on minced oaths. o.O I go from not knowing anything about this concept of minced oaths to learning it twice within 3 hours.

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Imagine if the government would adopt the kickstarter approach to taxes. You choose yourself what you want to support and by how much, and according to that you get the services. So in order to get a library card, you need to donate amount to the library tax, in order to get your bin emptied you donate amount to that tax. If you support the subsidies for the farmers, you get cheaper food at the shop, if you support the railroad tax, you get cheaper travel. Maybe the fire fighter tax would have to be non-optional, seeing how letting your house burn down might make the fire spread to other houses... <_< But the police tax would work, if you want help from the police if you get crimed on, you need to pay your tax. Even if that Kickstarter approach was combined with a tiny basic tax percent from which money can be put towards important things that don't get their funding through their kickstarter.

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The second issue of the Racket is up. http://theracket.com/ Its theme is exile. The first one's was Self-improvement. I think they are following me... >_> Anyhoo, will link to specific articles if I come across some that need specific linking.

Also, Kimbra's new video Two Way Street: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SH0pVVBmN0
I love her. She puts to music and words the things that I feel.

My aunt gave me a violin. Noise is about to follow.
And I know violin is one of those instruments that you need to start young in order to get anywhere blabla. My mum was really surprised when I said yes when my aunt offered it to me. But it's not really so much about that I want to learn to play the violin in any kind of serious way. It's more the fact that I want the object to be near me. I want to be surrounded by objects that live. Musical instruments do this very much so. People touch them and they come to life. Art does it too, except not by touch but by sight. Books come to life, they are imbued with life through and through. I don't even care if a book is written in a language I can understand, it breathes, that is enough. Machines live, even parts of machines. Clothes live, especially second-hand ones (everything second-hand is more alive than new things). Things made out of bone, out of wood, out of stone. Some things made out of glass, some things made out of paper. Very few things made out of plastic. Is it selfish to want to live amongst living things, even if I can't make them come alive? Maybe it is.

I want to live in a house where there are as few plastic things as possible. Also, wanting the violin was a little bit selfish, in a future kind of sense. If/when I have kids I want them to be able to try everything. Every instrument, every sport, every art form. Try all the things! So having an old violin in the house, that the kid can look at, touch, be charmed by and eventually say "mum... I want to play the violin". That's the point, I guess. My house never had a violin. We had a piano. I ended up playing the piano as a kid. I want to provide options. And if at the time we are too broke to buy the kid a kid-violin, then s/he'll just get to learn on a hundred-year-old one :P

I also have been watching a lot of Sherlock. So maybe an appearance of the violin was a little bit too serendipitous to let just slide :P

Aamg amg lololol :D <3
http://youtu.be/Ai287ZvU8a0

Today on the BBC4 they've talked alot about the worries about the airports getting really clogged at Heathrow etc because of the Olympics bringing massive amounts of people into the country. I really can't help but point out that if you'd joined the Shengen deal, this border control problem wouldn't exist: you wouldn't need to check passports for anyone coming through the other Shengen countries. Thinking of how Paris, Amsterdam, many German cities etc... are important air travel hubs, you could easily spread out the passport checking stuff for people outside the Shengen area/Europe and only the people flying straight in to London from the outside would need to queue up.

I'm just irritated by the rise of isolationism in the UK :/ Play along (because I love you and it sucks to see you be all "rah rah we're not European" -_-)

Some cats just prefer radio.

Awesome quote from an old episode of This American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/19/rich-guys?act=1

"No... No, Jack. The proper medium for this story, as for any story, Jack Hitt, is radio."
-Ira Glass

<3

The proms start on Friday :)
And in August 17th they will have a John Cage prom :D Not sure how well that would work over the radio...? :P I wonder if...? No, no more trips to England until Septeber.

Guysdudes-Silvie! :O You know how people have the Olympic craft projects? I want to do a proms project! That I work on while listening to the proms stuff on the radio :O Amg amg amg :D

Posh guy on the radio pronounced "fans" and "pants" as "fahns" and "pahnts". Spongebohb SquahrePahnts. I kid you not, that's the word he said with that post accent :D

The radio also asked "what does Andy Murray have to do to win a grand slam?" -Not play Roger Federer >_> 

Remember how much we love Ron Perlman? Remember how much we love HellBoy? Yes.
http://io9.com/5924190/good-guy-ron-perlman-reprises-his-hellboy-role-for-a-very-special-audience-of-one

Nobody helped with the exchange rates thing :/

"The continuing struggles in Arab countries are seen (by many Russians) as a battle by those who wear neckties against those who do not wear them. Russians have long suffered from terrorism and extremism at the hands of Islamists in the northern Caucasus, and they are therefore firmly on the side of those who wear neckties."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/opinion/why-russia-supports-syria.html

Well darn, when you put it that way... I know I like people who wear neck ties... :/


This is pretty giggly :3 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/opinion/our-political-black-hole.html


I'm really really interested by the LIBOR scandal, and finally yesterday learnt how to write it (I've been listening to BBC and heck, it sounded like they were saying "the liable rate" - y'know, because it's... liable? And now it's not anymore? >_> No? Just me then?
"Britain and America have reacted to the Libor scandal in completely different ways. Britain is in an utter frenzy over it, with wall-to-wall coverage, and the most respectable, pro-business publications expressing outrage."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/opinion/libors-dirty-laundry.html



And one more, this one really kind of sad: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
The blog of the author of the new novel Redshirts which I really really want to read.
(This one http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/books/in-redshirts-john-scalzi-gives-expendables-a-life.html )

Colloquial Finnish 101

Talviturkki (talvi = winter, turkki = fur coat). Used to refer to the change in colouring that some animals (hares, squirrels, weasels etc...) experience between winter and summer 
Heittää talviturkki = to throw or cast off the winter fur coat.

To throw off one's winter coat, a colloquial expression for the first swim of the year in a natural body of water, during which the swimmer dives or is at least one point fully immersed in water and the so-called winter coat is fully washed away.

Examples:
iippo: I threw off my winter coat this morning!

This is a big deal because I haven't actually swam in any kind of body of water in over ten years.

Yes, it was kind of cold :B

I'm struggling with one of these practical everyday things that seem to be so impossibly difficult for me: exchange rates. So I want you to tell me if I've got this wrong.

If the pound is 1,25 euros, and/or the euro is almost 0,80 pounds... That means that if I get paid in euros and then change them over to pounds, that is a good rate for me? Given that the pound has been like... 1,40 euros before? I understand better how this works if the euro was 75p and is now 80p, then that is good because the pound is the stronger currency, so getting more of the stronger stuff for less euros is good, yes?

I was good at this in Sweden, because we were given our allotment in dollars, everything was in Swedish krona, and my personal monies were in euros and pounds. :P

Payday's two weeks away anyway, so I'll keep an ear out how the rates go.

"Have a nice trip. Welcome to the United States."

^_____^

A headline in the New York Times today was "A Clear Declaration of Intent Is Now Even Clearer". The NYT has started to speak lolcat.

Electronic Frontier Foundation et al are working to get the Declaration of Internet Freedom recognised. Halp?

https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8750


The radio interviewer asked a scientist whether the world will change with the discovery of the Higgs boson like it did with the discovery of the electron. And the scientist agreed that the world did change with the electron, and how we get electronics from the word electron-- guys. We are about to invent bosonics! :O :D


I also feel like an awful person, but there was a man speaking on the radio whose r's were l's. Unfortunately he was interviewed to talk about the bank stuff going on in England right now, so he kept saying things like "legulatols legulating" and I didn't hear anything that he was saying 'cause I was too twitterpated over that ^_^;;;

I love my tresaurus tumblr a lot and what I've been doing with it, but this one is my favourite even though it's not exactly in the right pattern:
http://tresaurus.tumblr.com/post/26344591942/221b-here-dwell-together-still-two-men-of-note

PS. Silvie, I've been reading that Final Problem thing too, now. It's a terrible place to get lost in.

Here for safe keeping because it might come in handy some time:



Also: http://youtu.be/J4oQbrLtu7o


Edit: This too, courtecy of Triola:

 
My mum considers me her personal greeting card maker. So I made one for my second cousin's kid for her confirmation

I also realised that chunky gold ink on white card would make pretty sweet Christmas cards too, so I decided to take a head start and start making Christmas cards :D


In other news.
I like being up-to-date on news, but more than the news themselves I love the little funny things that happen on the side of the news. Like this: "Supreme Court Health Care Ruling Prompts Foot Race in Press Corps" :D
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/06/29/155972981/supreme-court-health-care-ruling-prompts-foot-race-in-press-corps?ps=sh_sthdl

One more diary, this one a happy :)

My boyfriend and his best friend work in the same office. I used to work there too and am good friends with his friend. My boyfriend is not on Facebook, but his friend is. Yesterday it was a big storm in the city they work in. The friend made a Facebook update that said "thunder and lightning, I'm scared and I want a hug." I suggested to him to go find my boyfriend and hug him as a mediated hug from me. He said he'd wait 'til I was back in England, and I made a sad because that's 77 days away. During this my boyfriend texted me saying there's a huge thunder storm in the city. I texted him back telling him to go give his best friend a hug. There was some more Facebook banter with the friend, who then said "nevermind, your boyfriend just gave me a hug in front of the HR Manager" :D So I texted my boyfriend again thanking him for that and saying that I owe him one awesome, and asked if his friend had explained the whole thing to him yet. He said he hadn't (and he was pretty astonished that I knew already - bless him he knows not the instant power of social media), so I explained the entire thing, and rejoiced in the fact that he's so willing to play along :3 I forget how chill he can be, I'm so used to seeing him keep cool...

And pretty much the entire yesterday I talked to various friends from around the world and got nothing useful done, and that's great. And then this morning I woke up to find that Nehirwen had evolved into a Wheehirden :D It was a serious "and thy cup runneth o'er" moment of joy <3

Uhh, Google, WTF? Come on, try to be not-evil, will ya? >.<;
http://www.youtube-mp3.org/help-us

The euro-zone leaders stayed up all night in Brussels and hashed out some kind of a plan to diffuse the crisis in Europe. Considering how many generations of students have learnt the effect of pulling an all-nighter, are we surprised that they do that in their professional lives too? :D I wonder if this idea of "don't rest until it's finished" is some kind of a way to tap into some human brilliance that lies dormant until it is forced out by sheer stress and need...

The wife of Egypt's new president. I kind of like her?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/world/middleeast/naglaa-ali-mahmoud-an-egyptian-everywoman-in-the-presidential-palace.html

Also, I found something incredibly dull and I kind of like it too?
http://www.dullmensclub.com/blog/24-blog/825-breaking-news-boringoregon-votes-to-twin-with-dull-scotland-.html
I might join this club.

You're more likely to be killed by a bee or a wasp than by a terrorist (says recent research). And people think I'm crazy for being afraid of buzzers!

Couple of nights now I've seen this small spider hanging out near (or in) my bed when I wake up. There's an old belief in Finland that it's bad luck to kill spiders, that if you kill a spider it means someone in the house will die. Apparently this is because when a person sleeps, their soul goes wandering around in the form of a spider. Now my sleep pattern is wonky because I work nights (I think of it basically that I'm living in the Chinese timezone :P) so maybe my soul is still making its way back when I wake up.