Happy holidays!!

Progression of a holiday card from a departmentstore photo through quick photomanip to what I sent out to people.



Have a good one! Be safe! Watch out for drunk Santas driving around in convertibles!

On the busses

So yes, as per schedule, more video.
There is more than one hand in this one. The plot thickens.

That video-thing and blogging

So I started this video.. thingy. Series. I suppose that's a fair description.
There's a vague idea I have of where it's going though it's just going to develop and unfold in it's own sweet time. If you've seen the Truman Show or Le Quattro Volte, then you know what sort of a thing I'm going for.  It's basically a video blog. Vlog, I'm told some kids say. Just... life, as it is. I'm just having fun with this ability to record video. I'll be uploading these for the next year (2013) on Tuesdays and Saturdays unles I not be near a computer when there's need for editing and uploading.



Out of these two though, I have to say I'm not entirely happy with #2, but there ya go. I set a schedule and that was the material I had, so... lesson learned; always do a little extra work.



On the rest of the blogging thing: I'm trying to get a list of topics together that I'll be writing about on here. 30 or so items. That would be something I'll post weekly, something more generally useful that requires a wee bit of research on my part and not just a butt load of rage-enduced opinions. That would be the written blog part for 2013: about one generally helpful post per week. Possibly other, less helpful posts around those. Next year's just going to be a tiny bit busy as far as I can tell, so I'm tying to not schedule myself into knot before it's even started. These video things don't really take that much time though.. but still. Someone stop me before I get too much ahead of myself.
So yeah, what with the book projects and studying and studying some more for exams and probably working for The Man a bit to pay for traveling.. I'd say it's looking kind of busy.
Now excuse me while I lazy a bit for tomorrow, because I got applications to send off on Monday. :) Edit: I've heard it said that people who make videos on YouTube are either bored or lonely. If you watched the two videos I posted there, you might make some guesses if that is an accurate assumption. XD

Breaking new ground

I made a video.



Yes, it's basically a training video to learn how to use some of these editing tools and the video capture tool of mine (phone).

So here's why this is here taking up your time and space: I'm curious about video as a format for creating in general and have been wanting to try it out for a long while now. The only obstacle has been that my Nikon D60 isn't really capable of recording moving image but only making stop motion animation and stop motion animation is a big (nay, huge!) undertaking. My old phone was pretty hopeless with recording anything because, let's face it, it was a phone.
I've switched phones. I'm trying out some sort of "vlogging" thing (which just shows you just how damn hip and with it I am with what the kids are doing these days) with showing some documentary-style snippets of Finland. Or where ever it is I happen to be. It'll be brief, calm blotches of video about nothing in particular. Just breathing, basically.
Not like the video I just made and posted for you to endure.
Not sure how I'd feel about a talking part in them, but I suppose that's a bridge to be crossed when we get there.

I got 2013 pretty much planned out, but I'll get to it when we're closer to the End Of The Year.
I can tell you that it's going to be very busy and there'll be a whole butt load of all kinds of content. Including actually useful stuff on this blog. But that's all a subject of a different blog.

Practical tips for happiness

I realise this sort of a list or a post might come off as disingenuos coming from me, that is coming from someone who has spent the better part of this year in turn hiding under my foldable bunk bed or writing out letters filled with brimstone and every last drop of teendaged insecurity to absolutely no one and then maybe possibly told everyone who'd listen that I don't much care for living in this country. But I present to you that despite and because of all of that and still being alive/having friends/very much looking forward to everything that happens next I'm JUST the person to be writing this sort of a list.
Because I have been profoundly unhappy. Even more so than what comes with the perpetual dark and cold. And because in the past year I have not been unhappy but annoyed and occasioanlly scared and a lot of the time very much aware that I am exactly where I need to be right now and exactly where my actions have taken me. And that's cool, bro.

So, a couple of a practical tips for everyday happiness that are proven to work, on me, 100% of the time.

1. Exercise. Every few hours (particularly if you're doing something sedentary), do a few lunges or leg lifts or best of all, put on a good song and shake what you got like nobody's business.
Because it is nobody's business but yours. And you're awesome and so is what you got.
On a scietific level: this will increase blood flow to everywhere including your brain and your mind will keep sharper. Brain likes exercising. And it likes being challenged in different ways.

2. Eat well. Not "eat chips/burgers/ice cream/chocolate because that shit tastes good and oh my good I feel awesome afterwards". No. Eat well. Eat loads of foods. Eat things you made yourself. From scratch. Go to a proper restaurant with table cloths made of cloth and not plastic or a cafe with sandwiches that don't come out of plastic wrappers and protective gasses. You can have a cookie after you eat your soup/stew/risotto/that-thing-they-call-food.
On a scietific level: your body needs food. Your brain needs food. Not just all the nutrients in actual food, but the look and taste and experience of having a proper meal. You know those foodie pictures people lust after online? Like this one:

(picture found online at Creative Loafing)

There's a reason why you think it looks good enough to eat. Because it is. And more than likely, if you're reading this, it's not out of your budget to make something like that for yourself. If you're feeling crap, there's a good chance that you're not eating well and getting both enough energy to keep your body functioning and enough nutrients to keep it functioning well. Feeding yourself well is part of being a grown up.

3. Sleep well. Another thing that's part of being an adult and knowing that you and your body are the same creature that needs to take care of itself to be happy and do the stuff it wants to. Your body needs rest.
On a scientific level: there is such a thing as DSPD (Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder). What this means is that a person is not able to fall soundly asleep and experience deep sleep in the same pattern as "normal" people. Often times "sufferers" fall asleep between 1-5am and sleep past noon. I'm using a lot of quotes there. The thing is that our western capitalist/consumerist world is built to accomodate people resting in your regular 9-12pm to 6-7am patterns. This is how everything is timed. If you're resting outside of that pattern, no matter how rested you yourself feel, the rest of the world will not wait for you and you will miss out of a lot of the things going on while you sleep. HOWEVER, most of the western world is becoming increasingly 24/7 with factories and entertainment running at all hours of the day. This will undoubtedly increase the amount of people experiencing DSPD (along with increased use of internet which is basically another world running 24/7 already and the very very high use of energy drinks/similar) and it does make it worth a ponder if the anxiety and depression DSPD-"sufferers" experience is due to metabolical changes caused by the changed sleep patterns or due to the societal demands and blame heaped on them.
Regardles. However you do it, do it well. Sleep well. Sleep enough. You need to recharge and process. Don't over do it.

4. Go out. Even if it's raining pitch forks and frozen peas. Go out.
On a scientific level: it's a light version of this. On a non-scietific level: it's where all the stuff really happens.

5. Spend as much time as you can with friends. The ones that listen to you and who you in turn listen to. If you find yourself failing on either one of those points, then it's not the sort of friendship you should be cherishing. Hug them. Hugs are good for keeping warm on the outside and inside.
On a scietifinc level: Friends are like pets, only better because more often than not, you're not responcible for housetraining them, cleaning their vomit off everything, feeding them or putting them to sleep after having known them for 15 years. Hugging is known to reduce anxiety, strengthen bonds of belonging to a group and fight depression.. all of which are pretty much parts of the same big mass of being healthy inside your head.

6. Write it out. Sometimes, and by sometimes I mean a lot of the time, people have thoughts and things going on inside their heads. Things you don't understand, things that scare you, things that confuse you. Negative things. Sometimes those things are like a sweater with static electricity and they attract other crap to form a Crappy Dust Ball Of Doom and then you're in trouble because you're carrying around all this useless crap that attracts other useless crap and it makes you look like crap and feel like crap and it just not good for anything at all. And even if your friends might volunteer to get some of that off you, putting negativity out just means you heaped a bunch of your crap on someone else and made their day a tiny bit less awesome. So write it out. Write that shit out and write all the nasty words you want to use you'd never say to anyone to their face because when you have enough crap on your back, everything comes out disproportionate. Don't be horrified at how much anger or negativity there might be inside you. It's human to have emotions. It doesn't make you less of a good person to be angry. But negative crap attracts more negative crap and that's why it's important to not carry it around with you or throw it at other people. Put it in a letter and then burn that sucker. Also think carefully during every day communication. It's very easy to slip into being Judgy McJudgerson and spreading negativity without meaning to.
On a scietific level: I got nothing. It helps. And it definitely helps with putting your own emotions and reactions in perspective and not infecting other people with negativity they had no part in to begin with. When I find a study explainging just how this helps, I'll be sure to link to it. All of which bring me to...

7. Do difficult stuff you like. Why? Because the more you don't do the difficult stuff you'd want to be doing because there's this ideal You you have inside your head that does all kinds of stuff, the more annoyed you're going to get with yourself and your life. And the more annoyed you get with yourself and your life, the less you're going to enjoy it and the more you're going to enjoy other people being miserable (or, in other cases, the more you're going to be hating on other people seemingly enjoying their life because being preoccupied with their life makes it somehow ok for you to not think about your own life). Here's a secret: that difficult stuff you want to do? You can totally do it and it's not actually difficult once you learn it. Sure, you might not be the best ever at it, but people run marathons without feet and dogs drive cars and dolphins use tools, so whatever excuse you might have that relates to physically not being able to, is pretty much invalid. It's mostly a question of priorities. Is your life a priority to you. Is your happiness a priority. Is your health a priority to you. Yes, health. Healthy spirit, healthy body, the two are just facets of the same thing.
On a scietific level: neuroplasticity. Your brain is by far more adaptable and capable of learning throughout your life than people think. You CAN learn new things and you can learn to learn new things. Like enjoy learning.

And finally
8. Just say YES! If it's a choice between doing what you've always done and doing something you haven't (given that doing something you haven't doesn't get you/other people killed or seriously injured) always do the thing that you've never done before.
On a scietific level: see the bit about neuroplasticity. We're training the brain to be happy here. You wont know if you like something or not before you try it.

And that's all I got. 8 things that make you (me) happy.
I might not have much financial room to travel or be in another country right now, but I'm enjoying being in this moment. Every morning is a thousand new opportunities to change those bits that you don't like, accept the things you can't change and enjoy the bits you do. So you really can't lose.

Doing things in short sentences

There have been so many awesome things going on that updating anything has fallen by the wayside like a disoriented cyclist: my classes started. As you can see by the doodly doo on top, the brain does love a cup o' intellectual challenge. The classes provide. This has made it pretty clear that I'm going to be a scientist when I grow up. So there ya go.

Then I read a very interesting book on how the internet affects our brains and though I haven't read all the reference material (which I should), it has given me the impetus to do a few things: firstly I'll start linking to things not in the text, but after the text. This is to make things needlessly complicated for anyone reading. Actually, it's to allow whoever might read this to read in peace and let their brain relax into the process. Secondly, I'll be taking non-connected days. Haven't quite figured out which day of the week yet, but Wednesday or Thursday sounds like a good idea. I don't actually have to be logged on to anywhere these days, to post an update. This is why most sites provide "scheduled updates". It is nifty. I shall take advantage. This is to allow for my own brain to relax into reading and doing research for whatever I'm researching at the time. Or, like, go out. You know, into meat space.

I swear someone will create a social networking thing eventually and call it MeatSpace. "Tens of tables! In a single room! All new people! Come join us in MeatSpace!"

Thirdly, I'm sort of setting up a new blog here on Blogger, for reviews. It's still in pieces, so I'm not going to link to it before I get the thing going. If anyone is interested in seeing things from me more regularly, I suggest checking the Tumblr-blog. I'm trying to post there daily, or as close to that as I can manage. "But all that sounds like a whole lot of work and a lot of things to update!" you might say if you were either talking to me or talking to yourself while reading this. It sort of is and is not. Doodling doesn't take time. Doing an actual piece of work with recognizable people or backgrounds and colours and plot and things like that does take up more than a hour, but that's still not an overwhelming chore. The new blog.. well, if you look to the right side of this blog, you might notice that I've taken down one of the ads for my Zazzle stores. I went back and forth a long while with that and eventually came to the conclusion that there were more valid reasons for me to not keep up with the store I originally opened. It's still there, but I'm not going to be putting any effort into it. Haven't exactly decided if I might close it entirely, but for now, it'll just sit there on it's own. My time and energy are directed elsewhere. Hence some things get chucked out for not serving valuable purposes and other things are taken up.

Books. Books are taken up. Books are good. Also, being outside is good.



This is a good book. Go read it now. The Queen of Everything commands thee. I think it's pretty cool too. :D

Tumblr blog: http://boogybunny.tumblr.com/

Family

My gran turned 85 this past Tuesday. Because it was Tuesday, there was no celebrating. Tuesdays are like that.
Instead we celebrated yesterday.



Family gatherings are by nature a mixed bag. You don't get to pick your family. You can divorce one and you can choose to not have anything to do with them, but going by pure biology, family members are the ones that are the least likely to eat you alive. Which is nice.
And in spite of all the differences in methods of communication between us (or lack of methods), there is a lot of love in my family. And I'll be forever grateful for that.

So Happy birthday, Grandma! Hope to see you again before you turn 90!


Oh, and the saunas and the nature were rawking. You don't get to wash your face in pure lake-water, sitting at the end of a pier too often. Quiet lake with a family of swans swimming around at the other side of the lake is definitely a good way to start the day.

Where to put your money

I'm not a huge fan of blindly donating money for any cause. Not because I don't think you should, but because there are a lot, and I do mean A LOT, of organizations of all different shapes and sizes for causes great and small which can make it downright confusing to both find information on how legitimate an organization is far as actually doing any charity and spending the money you give them AND because on occasion, the need to help overrides planning the means to help. That is, you would want to help, but you're not sure how and a bunch of other people also had that same want and lack of how, so they came up with a charity that sounded like it was addressing an issue, but instead ends up creating a situation where the help actually holds back improvement on the problem it's supposed to be helping with.
It happens. Mostly by accident.
And we're easily attracted by methods of helping that involve NOT donating our time directly. I'm not pointing any fingers but let's just say that there are a whole lot of companies that make a big profit out of selling pink consumer goods.

However, sometimes there are organizations that do benefit mostly out of people donating money to them AND wearing lil bracelets to make the cause more known. I got my lil bracelet in the mail today. I've felt unreasonably proud wearing it all day.
Why do I like This Star Wont Go Out foundation? Mostly because it acknowledges how connected we are on a different level to most any other organization I've come across. Our lives are not singularly our own. Our mere existence affects SO many other people on a daily basis without any particular effort and TSWGO foundation was created just for that. You can read more about the organization here and in case you want to donate by getting a bracelet yourself, you can get one here. 100% of the proceeds (minus shipping costs) go directly to the foundation.

And now that you're on a roll doing good with your moneys, you should also check out KIVA. I might have linked to them before, but I'll link here again because they're just the sort of thing that actually helps build a healthy infrastructure without neverending monetary dependency to "wealthy, donating countries". KIVA provides small businesses with community funded microloans. What that means is if you're a person in a poor country and you'd want to set up a business or expand on an existing on, you can apply for a loan through KIVA. The loans are always comparatively small. The loan application goes up on the KIVA website where you, the person who wants to support equal distribution of wealth across the globe, can contribute towards funding their loan. That is, you can lend them money. The operative word being "lend". 98% of all loans made to small businesses and individuals through KIVA are paid back in full. To find out more about KIVA and/or contribute, click here.

And now I have to get back to doodling. Amma write about the Helsinki Night of Arts later.
Oh and apparently we're going to have one more Restaurant Day this year. It might just turn out to be a very good year. :)

This thing is happening here right now. Acorns. Damn trees.

You break it, you will reuse it

I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but I kind of broke our electric kettle. Totally not a big deal in a household of 3 people who all exist on coffee/tea.
Ok, it was a slightly big deal.
But in my defence, the kettle did smell of burning rubber (or "hot fudge" depending on which one of us you're asking) before I actually "broke it" and I broke it trying to wash the insides clean.

I was not aware that the method of cleaning the insides of electric kettles these days involves not touching the inside. My bad.
So instead of just smelling like burnt crude oil products (or hot fudge), it stopped blinking lights and boiling water alltogether.
Today we put the ex-kettle to use.
Behold the Kettle-Vase!




On an unrelated note, today was yet another Helsinki Restaurant Day: a public event sort of thing that anyone can participate in by setting up a booth/small shop on the street and selling food in it. This is at least the second time they've had this event this year. Maybe one more before the weather starts to suck wet testicles? I was instructed to go visit Mesa Criolla-tent for some Latin American foods. So I did.
And it was pretty awesome.

Boys serving goods.


Kidney beans!


Plate of rice, veggies, chicken and beans. And some tamarind juice. Tamarinade?


More of this sort of thing, me thinks.

Cats and hipster lambs

This is my toiletpaper. For real. This is my actual toiletpaper: it has an eyeware sporting hipster lamb on the package and bunch of "ironic" (or inspirational, I haven't yet wiped my behind with it, so I don't really know the full context) text written on the sheets.
I'm at a loss.

And obviously this stupidest marketing ploy of all time is incredibly effective, because I bought the damn toiletpaper.
Woe is me.

On a slightly unrelated note, I wanted to introduce a few hep cats from the shelter I've been volunteering at, to the world.
Afrodita:



Eetu The Big Boned



Kittens 1 through 5



Yes, the kittens are adorable. Unlike the 2 little geographically confused butthole ones I was working with today. They'd managed to unscrew a vent in the wall of their coop and take a dump in it.
How does one do that without opposable thumbs - the screwing, obviously not the dumping - is beyond me.
Pets rawk.

But then I got distracted

I didn't really. Frankly, dealing with the benefits office and their endless cycle of people-I've-never-talked-to-before-but-must-now-explain-my-situation-yet-again-because-nothing-is-moving-in-any-direction has sort of sapped me.
However, that's done now. I'm finally officially getting the benefits I should've been recieving for the past, oh... 5 months? Yeah. That didn't take long. So that's a load off my shoulders.
Alas, once one can of worms closes, another opens.
It's not nearly as bad as that sounds though.
The thing is that after having talked to my student counseling person (who is filled with awesome and a very lovely lady to boot) it seems that I can't study in the schedule I originally planned and I also can't take an open uni route to get a degree in this particular field because it happens to be one of the few degree programs where you can't do that.
I didn't know this. It's not information available in online resources.
What that means is that my original schedule for studying and moving is sort of kaput and I honestly don't know what sort of a schedule I can put together now. The absolute worst case here would be having to live in Finland for an extra year. As pitiful a consequence as that sounds, it might still be over my tolerance. Or it might not. We're pretty much into Autumn here right now and I'm having many mixed feels.
So the word of the day is "confusion".

There aren't many days when I didn't wish there was a button I could push to get to the point where things are happy and functional and stop being irritating and lame and filled with confusion.

On the upside, I do have some Captain America covers all sketched up, as you can see here, the bigger book project I'm setting up with my friend is moving along slowly and it's making me seriously consider if it wouldn't be best to set up my own publishing house to get what I need out of it, and I'm looking at options on how to get the smaller project published. Though to be honest, I haven't done nearly enough reading on any front. Not as far as research goes and not as far as maintaining my brain goes.
READ MORE BOOKS! TURN OFF THE INTERNET! THE INTERNET IS FILLED WITH LAMENESS!! I should know, I put it there.



Oh, couple of things that are pretty awesome: my skin is very much liking switching to mineral products and I've been very busy hanging out with friends, who manage to prove every single time that I just have the best ones in the world. And we visited the Wintergarden. I've never been there. It was puuuurdy. And had this statue.

Captain America and feminine hygiene products

The Redraw Captain America Covers From 1996 project is on it's way and the first redraw is posted at that other blog. Not going to lie; I did run into bit of trouble with an idea I had for using classical paintings as reference simply on account of not being skilled enough and trying to draw with a broken mouse. Oh well... you hit a bump, you reroute. All of the covers I'll be redrawing can be seen here.
Yes, most of them are originally by Rob Liefeld. No, that's not a coincidence.

Besides that, this is what I found out today: you can purchase feminine hygiene products with green tea in them.



I don't even know.
Green tea is awesome, but I'm still thinking that I don't want to rub it on my privates all day long.  Maybe it's those magical rejuvinating properties? Your vagina can be as smooth as a baby's after just a month of regular use!
Ok, that's sort of ick.
I don't think I want to think about this any further.

Though I do have to say that the panic most female hygiene product manufacturers want to create over our vaginas and the things that happen to them and in them, is sort of endearingly entertaining.
Srsly, you don't need to rub green tea or vitamin E on your vag, it's not going to make it more magical or less bleedy. Not unles you have a fungal infection. And I'd really recommend using an actual medicine for those as opposed to menstrual pads. Just saying.

Look, over there!

I laid down some scheduling for my various projects, personal and otherwise and it turns out that I'm a) pretty good at keeping my own deadlines and b) just like everyone else in the world, less stressed out and irrationally annoyed when doing things I enjoy and achieving personal goals. Huzzah for personal goals!
Basically, the Captain America re-draws are going to be done by 13th of next month and posted in that other blog of mine. The one with the drawings. Yup. Because.. it's for drawings. This is just for shooting my mouth off in the hopes of decreasing WorldSuck with the power of mere lung capacity. No, wait, finger dexterity? One of those things.
But anyone who reads this probably already understands what I mean.
God I hope someone understands what I mean.

The idea would be post roughly 1 new redraw a day for the next few weeks. In case you're interested in that sort of thing. You should go see. I might draw Cap naked cuz I'm that kind of a person.


Another project, one about some ladies who made history,... well, I did my numbers and that's going to take me at least 6 months. And I don't have financing for that yet. And I'm going to have to do that while studying. In other words: expect me to maybe possibly go on Kickstarter or Indiegogo at some point for that. I've barely started doing research for it, but it's going to be awesome. I'll be posting more specific info and images of that thing on here and the other blog as it progresses. Right now, I don't even have an estimate of costs. But again, most pics will probably be in that other blog, so if that's what you're after, then keep clicking here.
There are also a couple of other things I might be arting on, but they're in such early stages that we're just figuring out what exactly it is we're doing. Yeah, there are other people involved.
When I know, you will know.

On a totally unrelated note, I have to say that I do quite like Andrew Zimmern. A man who likes foods that taste of something other than pizza or beer? My kind of a guy.
Yeah, I don't expect much. Don't blame me, blame society!

This sounds like a good place to go make another cup of coffee.

Fancy breakfast

It seems that the ink (or whatever sort of paint they used for the print on my napkins) does not hold against deshelled eggs. Naked boiled egg + lurid napkin = fancy breakfast.



They're really quite pretty. But I'll try to not do that again, since I have no idea if the ink is toxic or not. And if someone knows why the napkins - and yes I use napkins when eating alone in my room in front of the computer because it makes me feel like I have a proper life - don't smudge with water but do with eggs, I'd be really interested to find out.
The same reason you can clean your hair with egg?

So yeah, that happened. :D

Work

This is pretty much what I do for at least 4 hours per day:

Or, you know, try to do, and end up trying to set up the tinies goals for myself such as aligning a piece of a single image on a single item before I'm allowed to take a break so that maybe, just maybe, I'd end up over-doing myself, exceeding my own miniscule expectations, and aligning TWO (2) pieces of that single image.

 Picture found online from here.

This is me working.
And this post is about not being addicted to brain crack but getting the derps out of my head and flourishing in the great wide world as soon as the derps appear. And by derps I mean ideas. Sometimes they fail in a stunami of firey explosions and sometimes they turn into beautiful butterflies. Fly little derps, fly!
This post is also about distracting myself from drawing a version of an 1996 Liefeld drawn Captain America comics book cover.
I want to and yet I fear I could not do it proper justice. So I derp.
But hey, at least I got other important stuff done while trying to avoid doing that one! #winning

Right. Captain America coming up tomorrow. Stay tuned! I'm going to bed now.

On crack

It's been a rather terrible couple of weeks in that my perspective has been on doing crack and then getting frustrated when nothing happens. There was the waiting for the university entrance exam results(1), the benefits office(2), the skin(3) and probably some other things that I forget now and what's terrible is that none of those things are as terrible as I'd want them to be so that I could indulge in brain crack(4).

I should probably include annotations in the entry.

There, added.
(1) I didn't get in the uni or the degree program I wanted. I'm on reserve spot #3. This is not terrible for the simple reason that I can study the first year courses through open university while NOT enrolled officially as a student and claim unemployment benefits as opposed to student benefits. The difference between these two is about 300-400€ per month in favour of unemployment benefits, which brings us to...
(2) .. the benefits office. After over 3 months of waiting for them to make a decision on my benefits (a process that should by law take 30 days) I got a negative decision for the first 2 months I've been in Finland and not a peep on the all the other months after that. This isn't good, but it's not as terrible as it feels. And I managed not to swear at the boy in the benefits office and told him I was sorry for being short with him because obviously it's not his individual decision and he said he understood that after 4 months of no income at all, I might be a little tense. The good thing about all of this is that for once, none of the hiccups in the proceedings are actually my fault. They're solely the failings of the system to function the way law requires it to function. And now we wait for another few weeks for the rest of the paperwork to pass through.
(3) The skin has not been reacting favourably to OCM which of course hasn't exactly improved my mood. Why is this ultimately a good thing? Well, it just struck me today that after cursing that silly doctor who wanted to fix my skin with topical ointments that obviously wouldn't address the actual cause of the situation, I was doing the same thing with the OCM. With some people it works perfectly for just this sort of thing, but quite possibly, with those people the reason for the skin acting up wasn't in the rest of their body not functioning properly. And to be fair, who wouldn't want solutions that were as easy as just changing the product that you put on your face because the alternative would be to change things that you just don't wanna.... like leaving out cappuccinos. I don't wanna. But if it's a choice between leaving comforting foods out for now and getting skin to calm the fuck down or keeping those comforting items on the menu and have to pay for paper bags to wear over my head and oh, use twice as much money and time.. there's really no choice. But I still kinda don't wanna. Because I should just be able to live like a 5 year old and run around the streets naked and pee where I stand and everyone should think it's totally charming and give me lollipops. And that sort of brings us to...
(4) ... brain crack. "Brain crack" is a term possibly coined by zefrank describing how addicting it is to come up with ideas and never actually do anything with them because you're "maturing" them or "nurturing" them or other such words that describe the fermenting process. We like the idea that ideas are like fine wine or cheese and the longer you let them sit in your head, the better they get because you're perfecting them so that eventually you'll have that Idea To End All Ideas that will solve world hunger and capitalism and syphilis and everything bad and wrong ever in the world and in the process make your life the sort of perfect that you want it to be inside your head. And hey, maybe there was once an idea that fermented in someone's skull like this and when it finally came out, it was awesome. But for 99% of people that nurturing process is just a way of a) not doing anything that would require actually doing anything, b) a way of procrastination and c) a way of holding on to the notion that we could be something great if we wanted to, we just don't want to right now. In short: change is scary! Failing is scary! The fuck I will put myself out there, people might actually see that I'm a human being just like they are and that I'm not perfect! Hell, I might have to face that! No thanks!
If you are addicted to brain crack, fear not, most of us either are to some extent or have been.

The thing to do with brain crack is to watch this video by zefrank on it. And then think to yourself that if this is how the brain works, by forming physical links between things that it finds pleasurable and gratifying and the things that you do, surely you can strenghten the link between immediate action and execution of an idea and immadiate gratification just like you can between eating pizza and feeling a bit less bummed out. I learned to like eating cheesy pasta when I'm bored or frustrated, so surely I can learn to like drawing when I feel those same things. Or taking a walk. The human body is nothing if not a constantly changing organism.
And if you need a bit of extra motivation, just keep asking yourself "if I didn't do this thing today (or now) how would I feel about it tomorrow? Would I want to kick my own butt for being a lazy bum and bumming around all afternoon/evening/morning/day instead of doing the thing I actually want to be doing?"
Believe me, you don't want to get yourself angry. You wouldn't like getting your butt kicked by yourself.

Oh and walked barefoot on grass. It was awesome. So I did it twice.
And I will never ever do crack again.

End note: there's a high possibility that "cheese" and words for other forms of dairy will make frequent  appearances in this blog in the coming month. I'm not sorry.

Two plus two equals a bunch of things

Ok, let's talk about a personal (yet not personal and goodness knows now that it's on then intertubies it's definitely NOT personal anymore) issue. I've always had trouble with my skin. Always. There might have been a few years in between coming out of the womb and having chicken pox and puberty when I didn't have issues, but we're not counting those for obvious reasons. The obvious reasons being that when you're a a wee one before hitting puberty, your hormonal balance and production is going to be radically different  from what it is when you're biologically an adult and capable of having your own wee ones.
I'm not going to say I did the same things everyone else did or did "the sensible" thing. The skin issues have usually been small enough that they can be either covered up so as not to be horribly emotionally scarring, or small enough to be considered negligible, or small enough that everyone including myself has thought that I'll grow out of them.

Welp, here we are, over 30, and we have not grown out of them, have we.

The official medical history is such: everyone of my cousins has had problems with their skin either long term or temporarily due to reactions to food/medication/growing up. So there's that. And when you have a mystery rash on your legs for 10 years that ALL the doctors seemed to think was nothing (turned out it might have been lord knows what in the beginning, but it definitely went away entirely once I stopped living with a cat and stopped using the utterly pointless topical creams doctors prescribed), the stuff on your face is also considered either nothing, or much like "female issues" in general, something I'm exaggerating. Sad to say, but that's often the attitude people get at a doctor's office. And let's face it (oh, pun!) it's not a full blown acne that would be terribly debilitating in wide terms. However, personal opinion here, physical symptoms making your body not function within bare minimum of norms, should always be looked at because they are, as the phrase goes, symptoms of something.
Anyhow, I used the usual over the counter products on The Face as a teen, though one doctor has later on remarked that such products are much too harsh on teenaged skin and shouldn't even be marketed to them while another said that they thought the first doc was full of it. So there ya go. I was on the Pill for many years and it affected the skin only marginally. The problem(s) of course being that it's an extra dose of hormones in your body which I'm not too thrilled about; it didn't actually make that much of a difference AND if I were to ever fancy having those wee ones, I would have to stop taking the stuff. I spot many holes in this "remedy".
I'm not going to go on a longer tangent on how contraceptive pills are generally offered as a treatment for acne/problem skin or many other symptoms women suffer from related to their cycle. That's a whole other kettle of fish because it's a kind of a large-ish topic.
I do pick at my skin which obviously isn't good, but even under conditions which would be normally considered ideal as far as stressing out (which always leads to picking at the skin) and letting the skin heal in peace go, the skin has still not behaved.

Now we get close to our current date. In Mexico, my skin was ok. It wasn't ideal, but it was ok. It's hard to say if it had gotten better with some more time to look into the changes I'm making now (and I'll get back to this later) or if it was something else.
That's the thing: when it's not hideously disfiguring, bursting puss all over bypassers and sidewalks or growing teeth and tails, your guess is as good as mine. Or specifically, my guess is as good as the doctor's. Especially if the doctor is one of those who thinks everyone should have to suffer things. In Mexico, I wouldn't really pick at my skin, but it would still be "not clean" and produce little blemishes or blackheads in certain areas and sometimes go completely wild a week or so before Aunt Flo came to town.
The benefits there were a relatively stress free environment and all the awesome foods everyone tells you to eat to make your skin glow. And yes, my skin did look better there.

So we're now at my current situation where we're back in Finland and my skin has had what would in person-terms be called a Complete Meltdown that's spreading down my neck. Contributing factors here are numerous: none of that awesome healthy food. No fresh avocados, mameys, pomegranates or oily fish. No healthy dairy, just the kind that will give you gas (I've learned today that it's also known as "dead milk" *shudder*). Definitely not a stress free environment. If you know me, you know how I feel about our benefits system right now. There are feels. They're not entirely positive. I also had to switch from a cover stick that I've been using for years to another product that seems to be blocking up my skin something fierce. The previous one was the only one in the market that I could actually use without ending up looking like the Elephant Man in the evening. I'm thinking that that particular switch is the biggest current issue, though obviously the situation wasn't exactly being handled before.
I did take this to the doctor. She suggested it was a mild form of acne (which it might), handed me a piece of paper that basically said whatever it is, it can't be cured and I definitely, definitely can't do anything about it on my own ("changes in diet have been proven not to have any effect") . Then she made out a prescription for a topical cream.

It's ok to roll your eyes at this point if you've read about acne. Or sensitive skin that's NOT acne.

And here's why: the cream is basically a bleach that will burn the top most layers of the skin. The tube says that it will bleach fabrics and hair (to be applied 2xday on the problem areas, which include arms and legs with me, so yeah.... ), it will make your skin worse for the first 4 weeks and it wont cure the problem but the treatment has to be renewed about 2-3 weeks after the previous round has ended. So basically, it's not going to help with anything and since acne has been discovered to be a hormonal issue, it's not actually going to address that either. And if my issues isn't precisely acne, why am I taking this again? Wait, why would I be taking this even if it was?!

Soooo.. since my options with this particular doctor have now been exhausted, the next doctor I might see is a dermatologist. And the huge fly in the ointment is that that will cost serious money (both the appointment and the medication/treatment, not to mention if there are possible lab costs) and making an appoinment that I would automatically have to pay for does not guarantee a better treatment/medication than with the previous guy. Obviously this will have to be a plan B.. or C.
What I AM going to do is not listen to a piece of paper that tells me not to try anything because it's not going to work and try to work at this from home. Isn't it better to be healed/helped through placebo than to suffer because there's no scientific proof that any of the things you do are actually working?

I'm giving myself a month. A month should be enough time for the skin to renew itself to see if anything is happening and weather at least 1 monthly poo storm from the Hormone Gods. Skin should not need cover up stick. I'm willing to bet some money that if I could get to a point where the skin would be blemish-free enough that I didn't feel the need to try and hide .. well, most of my facial skin under cover up stick, the skin would get to breathe and tan and it's natural balance would eventually be restored (to what it hasn't ever had the opportunity to be before). So I ordered mineral make up. It's supposed to be The Shizzniss for letting your skin breathe.
It's not actually called the Shizznizz though.
I'm adding chia-seeds (for omegas), mint tea (for proposed benefit for hormones related to acne) and proper green tea (for everything ever) in my diet.
Also keeping a really clean diet in general for the next month. You never know. I've been like a teenager in college with my eating habbits once mum stopped cooking all my breakfasts and lunches. Ok, a healthier teenager, but still. So basically that means following what I ate in Mexico as closely as I can, with the exclusion of drinks containing dairy.
Doing the Oil Cleansing Method and making sure I drink enough water and exercise enough.
I already switched my toothpaste to a non-flouride one because... hey, it's worth a shot.
And finally; getting a new shampoo. Barely related. Ok, it's not really related, but I'm trying something here and the store is kind of sort of in the same general direction as the place that sells the proper green tea and I really shouldn't even have to justify this because I'm a damn sprout-eating hippy and I already wash my hair with an egg once a week.

It's for seeing if it might help with my scalp and tired looking hair. My hair is tired because I am. Maybe the hair will perk up when I pamper it for a month.

So there. That's what I'll be doing here in the background while being busy with all the other stuff. This is all basically just background noise, but it's a big issue for me what with skin being the largest organ and all. Will write about this probably more in case there're movements one way or the other. If I remember. I guess I'm asking people to keep their fingers crossed for me, please.

On hobbies and burning things

I visited grandma's place for the midsummer holidays this past Friday/Saturday. The trip (figuratively you could say granny lives out in the sticks, literally, she lives right next to the sticks these days since the actual farm is inhabited by my aunt and a companion) was a while in planning and didn't really materialise funding-wise until the very last moment, which meant standing in line for bus tickets with the number 27  when the number being served was 250.
People travel. Especially for Mid Summer. It's a big deal here.

The short history of that is that Summer Solstice is one of the few remaining pagan holidays and we do pagan rites and the wee ones are encouraged to dabble in the dark arts during this holiday. So everyone's all excited about the prospect of getting to dance around the fields at night buck naked because we're stuck up enough not to know we could be doing that whenever.
And the reality of it is that most people just get blind drunk just like during all holidays and all the sacrificing we do is donating our blood to benefit the mosquito population.
Fat mosquitos make for happy birds? Eh, I dunno. I'm all out of silver lining for that one. Even with my 60 denier pantyhose and jeans, the squeeky little bastards managed to bite my legs and butt raw.

The trip was... enlightening. I love being in transit. Being in transit is going on my list of hobbies. It's the way you're doing something, seeing places all the while also being able to meet new people and do something that you enjoy, like reading or writing. Being in transit is all of those things bundled into one handy package. Seeing my cousins and aunts and uncles after a very long time was a sobering experience. Sometimes you forget how time passes. Sometimes, especially when you're locked up inside yourself, you fail to see other people clearly. This was a new experience for me, seeing these people as they were and not through my own distorted expectations.
The little cottage by the lake is still as beautiful as ever. That's where my god is. Even with the damn mosquitoes. You want to be in awe, you go sit on a pier midsummer night, listen to the cuckoo echo over the lake and tuffts of mist roll over the water, then warm your bones next to a bonfire and let the ash fall over you like snow.
I've missed those things from my childhood.



Being away from my little cubicle, meeting people anew, being in transit and reading up on some great ladies in history got me to put some perspective on things again. Learning learning learning, this whole thing is a massive exercise in how to be myself which is becoming a lot less complicated the more I understand. Basically it boils down to just not making excuses for not doing things. I've taken up keeping a diary. Again. Well.. it's been a while since I had one, but now that I've reduced my blogs to just this one that's for wordy things and my Tumblr blog that's for pictury things, I needed a place to talk to myself, honestly, in my own language. Because we're built with a thousand ways to decieve ourselves with pretty words. Talking to yourself without evading is important.

So amma gonna be in transit a whole lot more in the future. There'll be pictures. And there'll be drawings of things and stuff and comics at my Granny Panties blog. Which ever you prefer. And if you see me, come and talk to me, cuz I'm always happy to meet new people.

On learning and dead people

This past Monday I finally started my classes. Just one course for now, but oh man does it feel good to be learning with an actual teacher again.
I could mention how Finns are not ones for joining in on class discussions (which sort of makes me the Loud And Obnoxious One.. you know, more than usual) and I could mention that the class so far isn't exactly what it said on the tin.
But all that's secondary.
It's learning. It's not-wasting-your-time. More specifically, it's minimizing-harm-and-maximizing-happiness. Our bodies and minds have this terrible desire to be used and to develop and if those needs (that were a biological necessity) are not met,  we are want to drown out their pleas with immediate gratifications in excess. And I say in excess because learning and moving and being connected and deriving pleasure from things that are not fashionably pleasurable are all things you can learn (narf) to enjoy and hard to do in excess, but things that are fashionably pleasurable, that is sex, food and similar, are very easy to over indulge in.

Yes, I've been reading about Epicurus. And Benjamin Franklin. And Hans Christian Andersen. And a whole bunch of other people. See, I started on this most awesome book called The Book Of The Dead by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson. It's basically cliffsnotes on all the people and biographies you ever wanted to read with a huge chunk of people you never knew about thought you should and a great big bucket load of happy for having discovered and learned about all of these people.
I did not know da Vinci was gay. It also never really entered my head that he used to be young and apparently very tall and incredibly handsome. Because you just don't think about famous masters in those terms. And the history books in school have this tendency to not mention when someone is gay or bisexual but just note that they had a "companion", like we're talking about puppets or cubes.

Getting back to Epicurus. There's an interpertation that when you tell someone to enjoy all worldly pleasures that you're telling them to stuff their face with cake (which is undeniably pleasurable when you're doing it) or to boink everything. Rarely if ever do people percieve wordly pleasure to mean ALL pleasures that you can take in this life. Not in western interpertations anyway. So how about reading and talking with friends or sitting by the lake listening to the birds and the breeze? I'd say these are pretty pleasurable things. Why I'm bringing up Epicurus is that he had some pretty good things to say: 1) necessities of life are food, water, warmth (I'll just understand this as clothing since most of us don't live on nudist colonies), shelter, freedom, thought and friendship. And now think honestly how many of those are you willingly giving up every day for the benefit of not doing anything at all because scary scary SCARY! 2) The things that are essential and good for you are surprisingly easy to come by. Looking at that list of necessities, do you think those things will cost you a lot of money? Do you think that having a lot of food/sex/money would increase the quality of these essentials and more so, make you enjoy them more?

There's a a phrase that gets uttered at all the wrong moments, by people who fail to understand timing or sympathising: "It's a question of attitude".
Once you get to the right state of mind, once you stop thinking in terms of "I fail at life because I'm not earning as much as my peers or have a house as big as they have and I'm ugly to boot and my pain is something that I need to keep to myself because surely it's a private thing that I wont uncosciouly take out on others once I get annoyed enough" and start believing that everyone has their soft spots and we all protect them the best we know how because scary scary SCARY!.. you'll notice that that phrase is dead on. Damn it.



Don't fear God
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure.
           Tetrapharmakon according to Epicurus

The days without internet

My monitor died last Sunday.
After years of emiting a low but terrible eeeeee-sound whenever the power was turned OFF, the monitor finally died a true death. I will not miss that sound.
Today, I got a new monitor and am, in a manner of speaking, "back online".

Sidenote: the new monitor apparently has an extra feature which allows you to turn it on its side so you can more easily read documents in your avegare A4 or similar letter size. Which is truly handy seeing as the monitor is almost perfectly square. Oh well, it's the thought that counts. XD

So here's the kicker: I did not miss being online. I miss hanging out with my friends, I miss taking classes and going for a cup of coffee (or a chai latte or anything with milk in it I could drink abundance off outside Finland that alas, is all forbidden here where all milk products, but especially milk of the runny-kind, makes my anus bleed) afterwards, I miss the unbearable heat and the close proximity to everything new and not understanding if people were insulting me or being nice. All of those things I miss daily, but being online? I did not miss being online.

The unfortunate thing though, is that our information society is built on the fact that everyone is online all the time. So when I went to look for a place that would sell cheap monitors I was told to look up the address and the public transports there online. Or to order online because it would be quicker for me to order things from the online version of the store I was standing in, than to have them make the order for me right then and there.
How this makes sense, I have yet to figure out.
Also, all job applications must be filled out/sent online as do all my drawing and photographing projects.

What did I do with my time? I slept better. I got to actually take my clothes off and get between the sheets and not just pass out in my jeans and wake up when some part of my body started hurting from being in the wrong position for too long or when the clock would chime 4am signaling a good time to go wash my face. I ate less and wasted less time doing so while still managing to eat well.
I read 2 books (Looking For Alaska by John Green which was very awesome and you should all read it and Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner which was.... probably best viewed within it's cultural and publishing era context. The glowing personal profile articles in the added material were extremely annoying.) and checked out 2 other books that were on my reading list for this year and started on one of them (Kill All The Brutes by Sven Lindqvist). I wrote letters. I hatched a project to mess with this damn country and its fear of intimacy. And I got to terms to actually wanting to be a research scientist. How's that for 2,5 days? Yeah, I'm pretty much going to study, and probably practice to some extent, to be a research scientist. Which is nice.
And I hung out with a friend and had a small amount of alcohol and it was the best damn drink I've had in a long long while. Sitting at the terrace on a lovely pre-Summer day was nice too.
AND I might have been caught redhanded oggling at a cute guy. And my head might have exploded.
Yes, this happens to girls.

Today, there were sparrows in the sky.

I don't quite know how I feel about the internet. It obviously has it's place (though I have to say I was a little dismayed that the numberservice I called to find I number I'd stupidly forgotten to write down from an email, used Google to try and locate first the office of the organization, then the number of their front desk from their website, as opposed to using their own database with all the listed, non-secret phone numbers in this country), but most people I know are terribly illequiped to use the internet "wisely".
I'd go even so far as to suggest if quitting the internet and switching to using only phones might help a lot of people who currently suffer from various forms of dissociation.

Spreading information serves a purpose. Being in touch with people far away serves a purpose. But there's a very fundamental difference between shouting into the void like I'm doing now and sitting with a group of friends and talking about all of these things above. Like Smell-O-Vision, that's just something you can't artificially replace.