*has a bad*

Free comic!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanestrada/the-whole-story-winter-2013

So I backed the Whole Story comic bundle on Kickstarter, I think you all know about this. And it's pretty mad. The guy, Ryan Estrada, has raised a hugely mount of monnies already, and it's not over yet. And I'm really happy for him, because the Whole Story is really cool and if/when I make a comic I'm giving it to him to see if the Whole Story would want to do it. Because it's just so much awesomeness in that company.

Now this guy Ryan is way excited about comics. Like, way. And he does these project updates all the time, and he keeps adding to the backer package. So I'm actually going to drown in comics, come February.

And one of his updates recently was:
I want to make this even bigger. I want everyone who loves comics to find out about The Whole Story! But I hate promoting. I like sharing! So just for my backers, I’m going to give you a free copy of Plagued to give to whoever you want.
There are no strings attached! You can give it to anyone you like. You can give it to as many people as you like. It’s the whole book, not a preview. They don’t have to visit the site, sign up for anything, there are no ads thrown in, it’s the same book I gave you guys. You can give them that link, or download it and put it in an e-mail.

It's a pretty fun comic. And I like sharing too, so I want to share it too. But I'm not sure if by "sharing" he meant "post link to the Internet in a public place", so in case that wasn't what he meant, I'm going to ask you to talk to me and I'll send you the link. Just express interest.

This is actually a ruse. I just want to talk to people on ET. Even people who I don't know yet. But the comic is real. So if you like comics, here's a conversation starter. Just ask me to share Plagued with you.

http://io9.com/5976941/here-is-why-canadians-are-so-damn-dirty
Ignore misleading headline (io9 seems to love doing those) and the fact that they keep referring to "garbage" when it's more all-round about all eco stuffs.

But there was this commenter...

"So Canadians use a lot of water. Do you have any idea how much water Canadians have? Look at Canada on a map. It has the most coastline of any country on earth. And there are relatively few Canadians, so what's the big freaking deal?
Likewise garbage. Look again at that map Canada. See many cities west of Toronto? North of Calgary? It's a country full of nothing. With hardly anyone living there."

I must admit I don't fully understand what is measured here, but when you say "water usage per person" I think dishwater, showering, drinking, watering the yard etc... Aka, everything you can't use seawater for. Unless they... actually do take water from the sea and... do stuff to it to make it usable? Or maybe the commenter was referring to fresh water bodies and used the word 'coastline' in error. But this attitude of "we have plenty, therefore we can be wasteful" really bothers me.

"We have a population of 30 million people across half a continent, 70% of which is empty. We have lots of room to dump our garbage, it's a less expensive and more rational approach than implementing stricter recycling or other government run controls. The US has been 10x the population of Canada on a smaller land mass. We're not running out of empty space to dump our stuff. Australia has an even smaller population with a huge empty desert in the middle that's uninhabited. So ditto for them."

Recycling really is not about "where can we put all this shit?" -_- It's about resources. It's about not spending energy and raw materials to create a tin can or a plastic bottle (and the accompanying emissions), since you can wash out and reuse the one you just threw in the bin. It's about... recognising the perversion in the idea that you are rich enough to throw away things that have value, while other people on the other side of the planet have nothing. It's about the brotherhood of man. It's about the Earth as a whole. It's about living that idea in your own life.

The global problem with Canada being a pariah in all this (Kyoto protocol and all that jazz) is that responsibility and accountability are shared things, kind of like rules in a game. If someone all of a sudden says "I'm going to play by my own rules" the game loses its point. And that is problematic because... this isn't a game. :/

Sunday's are not always fun days. Most times they are not. Things like responsibility and lack of sleep and stress and worry just pile on on Sunday afternoon. So no wonder that by 10pm on Sunday one just kind of needs to cry. So I did, and went for my dog for comfort. He was lying on my bed, back to the wall so I slipped in between him and the wall, and cried in his back. And he knows exactly what to do when someone is crying. He mushes them against the wall. He pushed against the bed with all four legs and suffocated me with his furriness.

I can't stop giggling at that. I'll be a giggling mess at work tonight.

FINE.

http://101newthings2012.tumblr.com/

Dearly beloved.

We finally have a wedding date that isn't going to change: June 8th 2013. :D The wedding will be in Coventry, England, and you guys are all invited (with real invitations coming in the mail if/when you give me your address so I can send you one - I made the design and it's pretty awesome-win if I say so myself - and I want to send you one even if you're not coming). But it would be pretty cool if you did come, and I'm pretty sure I have enough friends with sofas that you can stay somewhere for free if you manage to get yourselves over :3

This will tell you all about the awesome movie Sleepwalk With Me which I have seen twice and I bought for Geoffrey it on DVD with Mike Birbiglia's signature so there! It's pretty awesome. And this video may infect you with some kind of strange insanity. It (un)did me. So go watch it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&;v=u4L-kFA_SmM

100 Things We Didn't Know a Year Ago
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2012/12/100_things_we_didnt_know_last_7.shtml

I want to draw these. And make a Tumblr of it. Curse you, thoughts! And curse you Tumblr too!

This could be my wedding countdown drawing thing. Not exactly a drawing a day, but something to that effect... Or maybe after wedding thing. I dunno, would this add more stress to the stress developing from the wedding arrangements, or be a way to relax amid the wedding hassle? I'll think of this for a while. If I remember to.

Go forth and write
https://yarny.me/

This is Harpo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&;v=7_nVEm5Yc3c#t=107s
Cpt. Picard is channeling Harpo in this little moment.
I will never watch TNG the same, knowing that Harpo is in control of the Enterprise.

http://youtu.be/WfGMYdalClU

I quite like this animation (I always think levity is a good way to draw attention to important issues and make people think - another such good way is science fiction) - except the ending. The whole thing is building up towards a point, you can see from the beginning that there is a point here being made, and the visuals get more and more gory and horrific and I'm sitting here thinking "come on, get to the point: you have me emotionally in a place where you can tell me your conclusion and what you think I should do, so come on and tell me what it is." And then it ends as it does and I'm left sitting here going "...what? The point is 'if we destroy our planet, aliens will come here and be very disappointed in us and punish us'?" Because that's the message I got. It was a deus ex machina moralistic ending of "if you do bad things, bad things will eventually happen to you." They might as well made the ending be "and then he died and went to hell and suffered there all eternity." That might have at least shaken the damnation-fearing part of the population (which, I would venture a guess, is larger than the alien retaliation fearing part) bit. Maybe. But the end really ruined it, because by the time there were cows getting flattened in a factory I was ready to go "yeah I should be a vegetarian again, not because eating meat is immoral, but because the way the meat is produced is morally questionable" - and then the animation just kept going, and then it went kableh. But how could it have ended? What would have been a better way? What would have worked for you?

The fear of "bad things will happen to me as a result of my bad actions" is a very immature thing. Children do that, making their choices in fear of punishment... Even the "what's in it for me" mentality (the positive side of the consequence coin) is immature and selfish. But mature people, grown ups, I expect them to make their choices based on a higher system, out of love or respect or sense of duty or something, knowing the consequences of their choices and reviewing those consequences from a perspective that's broader than "what can I get away with?"

I get a French word of the day email every day, and today's was just... a headdesk moment


les maths
Posted: 26 Dec 2012 02:13 PM PST
n.m.pl., math

Pierre et Paul étudient les maths.
Pierre and Paul study math.

TODAY
Note how the French use the plural les maths instead of a singular form of the word as we do in English. It’s just one of several examples of singular and plural differences between the two languages.






The French speak better English than you do, dear daily french email sender -_-

Spent part of Christmas day passed out in the toilet.
It's too awesomely enigmatic to explain that sentence.

Christmas presents from work:
-papers were not late (in fact they were ten minutes early to arrive) so I was finished at 20 past 5. Which is forty minutes sooner than I have been since the snow came.
-My period didn't start when I was at work
-The boss said I can have 7th-12th of February off to go to England to be measured for the wedding dress, see Silvie, and possibly/hopefully get some free immigration/UK border control advice (aargh visa applications are so confusing).

And then the bonus present after getting home: at work I had fretted thinking "I have got to remember to renew my passport, it expires on the 29th of December, don't forget!" Checked passport when I got home: it expires 29th of December 2013.

Or, to put it short:

New year's resolution: every month spend five dollars on Kickstarter (and if the thing I pledge for doesn't get funded then next month do two for a fiver).

I also am toying with this idea of doing some kind of an ET activity thingie something (contest? quest-thingie?) where there is a real prize, which would be that I pledge a certain amount in the winner's behalf on a Kickstarter of their choice. And if that one doesn't get funded the winner can pick another one (the idea being that the prize is the pledge favour thingie - and the happy feeling you get when you help awesomeness happen via Kickstarter).


Yesterday morning was a very interesting and lovely reverse-Goldilocks moment for me: I got home after working the night and a small bear (aka my dog Ressu) was sleeping in my bed. :3 And the best part was that he didn't leave when I climbed into bed with him. D'aaawwwwwww <3 <3

Guys. o.O The other day I signed a petition online (on the official sort of petition site for Finland) about an insulin product called levimir, that the state should continue to pay for it for diabetics (apparently they were going to stop doing that, and apparently that would have been a bitch and a half for the diabetics as there is no other thing that works like it etc...) And today they sent an email saying "they're going to continue paying for it next year and they'll look into it, whether there is any alternative and what the costs would be for society if they didn't pay for it etc a proper investigation.

This is a rather special feeling. I helped make a difference. In real people's lives. People I don't know.

After reading an article in the Independent "Letter to Santa from women" (that quoted men saying things like "as long as I have a face, Jessica Ennis has a place to sit" >.< ) I had the thought that one could apply the logic of the Hawkeye Initiative ( http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/ aka, if you can draw Hawkeye in the same pose as the hypersexualised "empowered" female characters without looking completely ridiculous then the pose is not sexist) to these types of comments to reveal the blatant sexism. Basically, if the commentor would be comfortable saying something to the same effect to/about a man, then the comment isn't sexist (though there is no guarantee that it's still not a really douchebaggish thing to say, but people are allowed to be douchebags - just not sexist). So if the commentors would be willing to make space for Andy Murray on their faces, they can make the Ennis-comment without fear of being a sexist.

Maybe I will make a tumblr of this.

I haven't got up close and personal in this diary in a long while. So let's see, things that are going on:

-Still living in Finland, at home, and not liking the situation. -_-; I hate the snow and I don't like not having my own place. I'm too old for this stuff. But. It's fine. I'm glad that I can be here to sort myself out. Which is coming along. I'm working (and sort of like my job, not so much at winter but I don't like anything at winter) and saving up. The plan is to move to England by next September.

-Because I'm getting married and that's where we want to live. Still don't know the exact date since the bishop of Coventry hasn't got back to me about the building being available. Aaand there's some other details that are still rather open. So that takes a lot of time and energy, trying to figure things out. The plan may be that he moves here after getting a visa to the UK that allows him to marry there, spend the spring here, get married in the summer, stay here a bit more then move to England at the start of term, to the place of his new university. There are so many unknowns in that plan: what if he doesn't get the visa, what if he doesn't get into uni, what if something else goes really badly?

-Creative work -wise I'm doing many things. Too many, perhaps, it is difficult to finish anything. Or show anything to anyone.

-Research-wise I'm reading lots of cool things. some of which I share when I come across it, usually on Facebook.

-Church-wise I've been madly busy this month and it's been the thing (besides sleep and work) that has been taking most of my time. Can't wait for Christmas to be over.

-Christmas-wise I'm really lazy this year. It's almost like I'm not really looking forward to Christmas this year that much. It's just hasn't been very fun or exciting. I sort of feel like... Y'know that boring trope about "if you let the spirit of Christmas in your heart, you'll have Christmas all year round"? Well, I kind of feel like I do that, and that in turn means that Christmas right now doesn't mean all that much to me.

-My dog is old and silly. He stays up all night and sleeps during the day. I worry a little bit.

-In ET I mainly trawl through the junk forum.

A blurb for an article of some sort I saw read "It's the beginning of the "plus one" event season. Even when surrounded by family, it is hard to be single at the holidays. And no one wants to be coupled off with the family dog." I find this weird because I am gladly coupled off with our dog, I have a great time in his company, usually... Maybe other people don't have very interesting dogs?