I like this a lot :) (stealering from [Triola]
http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back-online-after-a-year-without-the-internet

I love it how he sort of states (what to me is) the obvious, that you are you whether you're online or offline, I really don't think people have separate personalities (unless they, y'know, have that sort of disorder) for offline and online lives. Which also means that I think that trolls are assholes in reality too (basically, the internet is a social place that lacks the social constraint that other people's presence gives us. So some people would steal from a shop if no one could see them but wouldn't if someone was there, while other people would not steal under any circumstances. In similar way some people are assholes as long as they on't have a tangible other-person-presence there to stop them. And some people of course are assholes all the time, to offline people as well as online people). Internet is just another social space, that has different rules for how to behave, just like one might behave differently with parents than with friends from school.

Sorry, rant over. >_>

Back to the article. I think he might have missed something good that he learnt there. In the beginning when he was offline, he was doing great. I've done that "take a break from the internet for a bit" and it really is great. So just because extended period of offlineness do not you a better person make, doesn't mean that shorter breaks can't be beneficial. And you don't have to cancel your internet to take a break, just don't turn things on for a while.

And you know what would make taking a break from the internet a lot easier? If you didn't worry about missing out on something. If your people did it at the same time. If my whole group of friends said "let's not use Facebook/Tumblr/email/something" for anything important or interesting for a week, it would make it a lot easier to think "there is no reason for me to get on so I really should just not turn the device on." I remember back in pre-Facebook days when Elftown was down, I had a very much of a "nothing to do on the internet" feeling :P

PS. When the weather warms up a little, I might go ahead and do an internet break. Because the balcony is very comfortable when it's not too cold, not too hot. :)

Story tiems! I had a really odd nightmare.

The thing had a feel of a night at work and pokemon adventure at the same time. So when I say "someone had told me", it's sort of in that pokemon kind of way when you talk to someone and they tell you one thing.

So I was at work (in my job I cycle around and enter buildings, much like one does in pokemon) and someone had told me about this really old and saintly woman who lived somewhere near here, and there was something really special about her. So during my work round, I actually found myself by her bedside. And it seemed to me that she had died. A really long time ago, actually. And I touched her hands, which were sort of resting on her chest, and she opened her eyes and looked at me. I was a little startled, sorry that I had woken her and embarrassed that I'd thought that she was dead. But she was really weak, and she asked for some water. So I gave her some water from my bottle, and I was a little worried how such a frail little old lady was going to be okay, all alone in this huge house with the huge bedroom and what not. But when she drank, she was like rejuvenated before my eyes, like one of those little plants that can be dried out and then come straight back to life with a little water, and I realised there was something really weird going on. And I got worried. And I made my way out of there as soon as I could, but I saw her getting out of bed all briskly and stuff, and I was rather freaked out. So I biked back to the work place as fast as I could, but on the way there I saw her on the street, roughly handling some kind of... things. Like bodies, but not people's bodies. More like... pokemon bodies I guess. And I was convinced that she had some how done some kind of magic thing, so that she was leeching my life vitality because I had given her water to drink from my bottle. And I somehow came to the conclusion that if I were to smash my bike light into itty bitty pieces, the spell would be broken. So I was beating the lamp against buildings, all the while hurrying back towards the office (I guess my bike disappeared here). And I got back to the office all out of breath and freaked out, and then felt weird because there were people other than my boss in the room, and everyone kind of looked at me quizzical like I'd interrupted them (this btw is the default look people at work give me in reality too), and I was sort of embarrassed and tried to explain, that I needed to give my work phone back because there was something wrong with it. And the boss said "okay...?" and as I was handing it to him, I realised that it wasn't my work phone but my nintendo DS and I was like "oh wait, I need to save my game", and the freak out sort of dissipated with the sort of normal surrealness of the situation...

But the old lady was scary as all get out >_>

Mr. Woollcott's appearances in the popular comic format:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns0RG5GA2_Q
http://www.supercartoons.net/cartoon/756/the-woods-are-full-of-cuckoos.html

Courtecy of Geoffrey, who has the geeky skill of finding stuff like this :)

http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

I might... have to watch all the ones in humanities... >_>

First day back to work after sick leave. And the knee hurt a little bit, like it did when all this knee pain started, which indicates that it will gradually be getting worse again. I guess this means I need to start looking for a new job soon. Or just bite my teeth and do the three months that I'd been planning on doing before moving back to England, being always high on pain killers at work... We'll see how this develops. *sigh*

It's so frustrating I could cry. :/

This is a pretty picture: http://visual.ly/death-taxes-2012 And I mean only literally/graphically pretty, not like... you know, like a good thing. But the thing itself is very good. Even though the... stuff isn't. I mean, it is full of good stuff, but you know. Just like, click it, yes?

Happiness begins three weeks from now. Prepare yourselves. And your shelves. And cupboards. And under the desk.

Sick leave ends in three days from now. Praise the Lord. I'm having serious cabin fever here. I hope they don't put you on sick leave for cabin fever... :C

This post thingy has a list of podcasts to check out: http://transom.org/?p=33356 It is a very long list :/ But I have been hacking down the Economist and the More or Less podcasts, so maybe there is time to...

But mostly just pokemans and Star Trek and This American Life.

http://news.yahoo.com/mormon-bishop-samurai-sword-runs-off-attacker-233001935.html
The what now? X)

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/med_00.html

This was kind of cool, I came across it when wondering why the heck there are a million chrome.exe processes running in my Task Manager. Also found a way to kill the pointless nonsense that Apple stack in my computer when I installed iTunes (useless since I don't have an iPod or the sorts).

But this laptop is getting more and more erratic (no Aval, not erotic :/ ) every day. I don't think it has a lot more to give :/ I should start gutting it and saving things some place safe now...

Tomorrow is World Book day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Book_Day

Please celebrate in any which way you'd like. :)

In Finland the day is called The Day of the Book and the Rose, so if you go buy a book in a bookstore tomorrow you will get a rose (may be applicable to women only, possibly).

This. http://www.genusfotografen.se/?p=2190 Is. Win.

A school assignment where the high school students were asked to attach August Strindberg's face to a woman's body. (He was a notorious and outspoken women-hater type back in his day, but a world famous author despite that.) He just has the most perfect face for this kind of exercise in the differences how men and women are portrayed in visual language. Similar idea as the much beloved Hawkeye Initiative :)

So I'm still on sick leave. For the rest of this week. What am I supposed to be doing? O_o Someone, quick, give meaning to my life! I already went through all the official forums that I was behind on, I draw and listen to podcasts a lot, I read and study, I walk the dog (as much as he wants to be walked, which is not a lot - today he just plopped himself down on the snow instead of walking to the mailbox with me to get the mail X_x ), I hitrecord, I junk forum, but I need to... do things! O_o;;;;

Yet I feel like I never finish anything, or manage to get on with important stuff - bar maybe the drawing. :/

It seems that I have so much time that I can't use it right, and then end up not doing what I should be doing. What am I supposed to be doing? :/

This was my experience in England too http://satwcomic.com/no-way-out
And it's all the more disturbing because, what if there's a fire? The exit should not be locked so you can't get out without a key!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD5ImtmTT-w

XD
http://humon.deviantart.com/art/Sauna-Time-137849149

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/232/the-real-story?act=3

One man trying to rewrite Star Wars Episode 1. And his ideas are actually rather win.
(10 minutes)

Bought Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints while stopping in a record store (a proper record store like the ones you see in movies) because my bus wasn't coming for another 15 minutes.

Have a week of sick leave from work because my knee is slowly buckling from under me, will try to see if it gets better with rest. :/ The doctor told me that this was not a good line of work for me and that I should go study something. I refrained from pointing out that I have a masters degree, and just said that this is a temporary thing anyways. Three more months, tops.

Reading a collection of Alexander Woollcott's essays, While Rome Burns. It's wonderful, like a new door to that world that Harpo habited. He keeps dropping these names that I've learnt to love: Edna Ferber, Herbert Bayard Swope, F.P.A., Harpo, Alice Duer Miller... It has Minnie's obituary. And "My Friend Harpo".

Drawing a frame of detailed geometric stained glass patterns, coaxing stars out of a dusty table, and making an animated background for the Subway Existentialist collaboration over at Hitrecord.org.

Applying for work in England.

Watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Waiting.
_Waiting.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/231/time-to-save-the-world?act=2

Can I do this thing again where I beg you all to listen to This American Life? Because this episode "Trends with Benefits" is good, really really wonderfully good. It's about a county in Alabama where 1 in 4 people are signed up onto disability support, and the show tries to find out why this is happening. And there is this mind-boggling "how the other half lives" kind of moment, where a lady with back pain can't think of any jobs where you get to sit down all day. For a university-educated person like moi, this was quite an eye-opener, a real privilege-moment.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits

List of countries that still use capital punishment:

Afghanistan Bahamas Belarus Botswana China Cuba Egypt Guatemala India Indonesia Iran Iraq Israel Japan Lebanon Malaysia North Korea Pakistan Saudi Arabia Singapore Somalia South Korea Suriname Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Tonga United Arab Emirates United States Vietnam Yemen


I would point out that the United States is the only first world country on the list if I hadn't for some time ago come to a personal resolve that the United States is not a first world country at all (it is the only way of thinking that helps me make sense of its policies and such without completely losing my mind). In my universe the United States is a second world country.

Wednesday night I felt so sick to my stomach that I couldn't go to work, then found out Thursday morning that my dad was in a similar predicament. Friday morning my mum had the same bug. And Saturday the dog ate a whole ton of dry grass emerging from under the snow, and then threw up Sunday morning.

Somehow this just tickled me, that everyone in the family had the same, very brief stomach bug. Even the dog.




In other news-worthy news, I really like Duck Dynasty now.

I'm still sort of in aversion mode. Apologies. If it seems that I'm not doing anything here, it's because I'm not doing anything here. :/ It's kind of a personal crisis type thing. Or something. I'm kind of just nipping in and out again occasionally.