Swine flu, swine flu, swine flu... and no authority seems to agree with another authority on whether this will be dangerous or what. But hey, no my isolation is actually paying off! Of course the isolation stops in a month and a half when first lectures begin (the First Supper, as viruses call it...).
Ah well. Whatever. See if I care.
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www.thetreeofliberty.com:
http://www.elossa.fi/yhteys/kyselyt/elokuvakysely/millaisen-elokuvan-kirkosta-saisi
Nuorille suunnattu kirkon sivusto haluaisi tietää, millaisen elokuvan kirkosta saisi. Hmm... kirkosta, kristinuskosta vai raamatusta? Itse asiassa, aivan sama: kauhuleffan, psykologista laatua. ETHS meets Cradle of Filth meets Dimmu Borgir kauhuleffaksi niin ollaan aika helvetin lähellä todellisuutta.
Mutta kuka vitun urpo on äänestänyt romanttista rakkauselokuvaa? WTF?! FTW!!
Got an idea to list all Nobel Prize in Literature winners and try to read at least one piece by all of them. Then I encountered another attempting the same at http://kirjani.vuodatus.net/blog/category/Nobel-haaste.
*** = read
¨¨¨= working on it
2008 Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
¨¨¨2007 Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
2006 Orhan Pamuk
2005 Harold Pinter
2004 Elfriede Jelinek
2003 J.M. Coetzee
2002 Imre Kertész
¨¨¨2001 V.S. Naipaul - The Mimic Men
2000 Gao Xingjian
¨¨¨1999 Günter Grass - Peltirumpu
***1998 José Saramago - The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
1997 Dario Fo
1996 Wislawa Szymborska
1995 Seamus Heaney
1994 Kenzaburo Oe
***1993 Toni Morrison - many
1992 Derek Walcott
***1991 Nadine Gordimer - The Burgher's Daughter
1990 Octavio Paz
1989 Camilo José Cela
1988 Naguib Mahfouz
1987 Joseph Brodsky
1986 Wole Soyinka
1985 Claude Simon
1984 Jaroslav Seifert
***1983 William Golding - The Lord of the Flies
¨¨¨1982 Gabriel García Márquez - Sadan vuoden yksinäisyys
1981 Elias Canetti
1980 Czeslaw Milosz
1979 Odysseus Elytis
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977 Vicente Aleixandre
¨¨¨1976 Saul Bellow - Mr. Sammler's Planet
1975 Eugenio Montale
1974 Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson
1973 Patrick White
1972 Heinrich Böll
1971 Pablo Neruda
1970 Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
¨¨¨1969 Samuel Beckett - Watt
1968 Yasunari Kawabata
1967 Miguel Angel Asturias
1966 Samuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs
1965 Mikhail Sholokhov
¨¨¨1964 Jean-Paul Sartre - Inho
1963 Giorgos Seferis
¨¨¨1962 John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men
1961 Ivo Andric
1960 Saint-John Perse
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo
1958 Boris Pasternak
¨¨¨1957 Albert Camus - Sivullinen
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez
1955 Halldór Laxness
***1954 Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea
1953 Winston Churchill
1952 François Mauriac
1951 Pär Lagerkvist
¨¨¨1950 Bertrand Russell - Why I Am Not a Christian
¨¨¨1949 William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
***1948 T.S. Eliot - Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
1947 André Gide
1946 Hermann Hesse
1945 Gabriela Mistral
1944 Johannes V. Jensen
(No prize in four years)
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1938 Pearl Buck
1937 Roger Martin du Gard
1936 Eugene O'Neill
(No prize in 1935)
1934 Luigi Pirandello
1933 Ivan Bunin
1932 John Galsworthy
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1930 Sinclair Lewis
1929 Thomas Mann
1928 Sigrid Undset
1927 Henri Bergson
1926 Grazia Deledda
¨¨¨1925 George Bernard Shaw - Pygmalion
1924 Wladyslaw Reymont
1923 William Butler Yeats
1922 Jacinto Benavente
1921 Anatole France
1920 Knut Hamsun
1919 Carl Spitteler
(No prize in 1918)
1917 Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan
1916 Verner von Heidenstam
1915 Romain Rolland
(No prize in 1914)
1913 Rabindranath Tagore
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann
1911 Maurice Maeterlinck
1910 Paul Heyse
1909 Selma Lagerlöf
1908 Rudolf Eucken
¨¨¨1907 Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book
1906 Giosuè Carducci
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz
1904 Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1902 Theodor Mommsen
1901 Sully Prudhomme
And thus it begins.
Does anyone know how to get one's hands on non-Finnish non-mainstream European bands' records in Finland? Not in Amazon (where the record in question is labelled as 'pop'... apparently they haven't listened to it, or even looked at the not-very-poppish cover...). I've tried CDON.com and also ariman.fi which is supposed to specialise in rare records, but none in either of those.
Suggestions, anyone?
"...and behold! on her sleeve she will carry the sign, the herald, the Mark of an Angry Dyke..."
Flagitious Idiosyncrasy In The Dilapidation aka. (for obvious reasons..) F.I.D.
Japanese all-female metal (though Shadow kicks ass!):
I likey!!!
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It would appear that the possibility of a female-fronted/all-female metal band' existence corralates with the overall state secularity and social, political and religious equality between men and women in a particular country. Did some couple of hours of research on FF metal bands, resulting in the map below in which I've marked the bands I found (red=1 band, yellow= 2 or 3 bands, green= 4+ bands; NB! the number of bands is NOT the overall number of FF bands I found, just the ones I could hear a demo or a live show on their webpages or in YouTube).
And why is it that if a band's name ends -ia/-ea, it is likely it is a more or less gothic female-fronted metal band? Krypteria, Sirenia, Imperia, Nemesea, Exilia, Tristania, Xandria, Angteria, Adastreia. Or then a Greek-/Latin-like name: Elegeion, Ava Inferi, Gwyllion, Silentium, Tacere, Penumbra, Madder Mortem, Atrox, Coronatus, Catafalque, Ecthelion.
Sometimes when I have to visit my old home town I encounter people that used to be my class "mates": junior high, upper secondary school... Once I saw one from junior high. She looked pretty much as she did in the ninth grade as a sidekick to a bully. I recognised her and immediately decided to ignore her, pretend I didn't know her. The same thing happened last year at the Polytechnic when one other "classmate" from junior high applied and got in to study nursing. Luckily we didn't end up in the same class.
I can understand why some people don't leave that place since they have no education and even if they did their grades are too lousy to help them get in a university or even in a Polytechnic. But then there are those who did moderately at school and yet stayed. Why the fuck would they do that? Why would they freewillingly stay live and make their lives in the same small town in which their parents and relatives live? And on top of that, their spouses (straight, of course) are also from the same town. Inbreeding... seriously.
Today, in the street of my current home town, I came across with a "friend" or a buddy or an acquitance from upper secondary school. She looked a bit different but not that much since I recognised her immediately (though I did have to check twice more to be sure, by which time she had recognised me). She left to Polytechnic after we graduated from high school, and I only heard from her once, after my father's death when she sent a condolences card. She was walking down the street with who I assume is her boyfriend (didn't ask even his name; I am just so good at unexpected social encounters that I either remember the things I'm supposed to say a couple of hours later, or even if I did remember them in time it tends to be on occasion in which I choose to disregard them as I have no desire to be polite to whomever I happen to be speaking with). She said she had graduated from the Polytechnic and is now moving to my town as she was accepted as a student at the university... majoring in no other subject than business studies.
But that's not the point. The point is that I feel insulted. This is my town. It's bad enough to have my sister here (although I have to admit that luckily we rarely see each other even at the university) but now... The very reason I left K-shire was to get away from all those people I had to be in contact with: my family, my relatives, my school "mates"... everyone. I wanted to start anew, in a place no one had any presumptions of me due to my family or my school days... I wanted to be free of all that. And now it's just getting worse!
Kävin katsomassa Enkelit ja demonit. Ei, korjaus: YRITIN katsoa Enkelit ja demonit.
Vartti leffan alkamisesta saliin vaappuu taskulamppua heilutellen kaksikko. Istuttuaan paikoillaan minuutin kaksikko päättää siirtyä, mihinkäs muualle kuin allekirjoittaneen eteen. Puoli minuuttia tästä alkaa toisten sisuskalujen tutkimus, jota kestää arviolta puoli tuntia. Session aikana, sitä ennen ja sen jälkeen pitää puhua kovaan ääneen. Älkääkä vain missään nimessä sulkeko puhelinta saatikka laittako sitä äänettömälle.
On se nyt jumalauta jos ei sitä saatanan turpaa pysty kahta tuntia pitämään kiinni! Mulle on yksi paskan hailee vaikka ne naisivat siinä mun edessä, kunhan tekevät sen HILJAA! Mikä vittu siinä on, että pitää maksaa 20 euroa siitä ilosta, että saa tulla saliin myöhässä ihan vain jutellakseen ja imuttaakseen mahdollisimman kovaäänisesti (mielikuvaharjoittelu imukupin irrottamisen aikaansaamasta äänestä auttaa tässä kohtaa), ihan vain siitä ilosta, että saa tuolinsa selkämykseen joiltakin (eli tässä tapauksessa allekirjoittaneelta) jatkuvia potkuja ja lopulta todella ystävälliseen sävyyn käskyn pitää se saatanan turpa kiinni, kulminoituen käskyyn sammuttaa se saatanan puhelin kun se pärähtää maksimivolyymilla soimaan kesken leffan. Koska -ja tiedän että tämä on järkytys- leffaa tulee katsomaan myös ihmiset, jotka eivät "tule katsomaan leffaa". Ja on se nyt perkele jos ei aikuinen ihminen osaa vittu suudella kunnolla vain kuin pahainen teinipoika joka ruiskii kaksi sekuntia vaatteiden riisumisesta alavatsalle!
Perkele!
It was amazing.
And... it made me cry. Dumbledore's death.. what he made Snape do...
And yet, it was so beautiful.. the music.. It was as if now I fully realised the characters are, in fact, adults. Perhaps we all view them as Dumbledore: seeing them as the boys from the cupboard, as children. Harry, Hermione, Ron and Draco, especially Draco. And that the war between Voldemort and the other witches and wizards is now in full power, that it affects muggles, too.
And fantastic, too. The cameras... the attack in the beginning made me press my feet firmly on the ground, to remind me I wasn't spinning but the image was.. the death eaters were... And there certainly were horror elements, just like Helsingin Sanomat said. I knew perfectly well what lies beneath the surface of the lake and yet it caught me by surprise, made me flinch.
I am so going to go and see it again. This time earlier with a less mature audience, with people who, too, carry a mark of their houses, not that anyone noticed. My book that I was reading in the hall and then inside the room did probably stand out, especially since I was sitting in the front. :}
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Addition:
I really liked Hero Fiennes Tiffin as the 11-year-old Tom Riddle and his amazing look-alike Frank Dillane as the teenage Tom Riddle. The kid especially really seemed emotionless.
And then Bellatrix, or course. Evil, possibly insane and needs to boots her ego with herself instead of Voldemort but... Bonham Carter is good.
And for some reason... although I have always liked Luna, only now do I really understand her, and appreciate her eccentric attitude. Luna rules! Too bad she's in Ravenclaw, but ah well.
Interesting interpretation of the Pensieve, by the way. And Prime Minister didn't get to make a cameo after all. A good choice of action, I have to say, to omit that.
And Snape's home looked exactly as I imagined it! Love his library!
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Second addition:
I also very much enjoyed the way Apparition was made. There's just one tiny problem for future films: this one didn't include Harry et co. learning to Apparate, so they have to explain this somehow in "the Deathly Hallows" as they cannot travel the usual way. Will expect this eagerly.
The Swedes have it so well that their researchers have time to study the development of a drug that would reduce labour pains and, if successful, would make the lives of about half of the species a whole lot easier.
(http://www.hs.fi/juttusarja/sipila/artikkeli/Farkku-Ruotsi+2009/1135247615783)
Then there are those who claim labour pain is "good for women", that it helps them bond with the child and prepare women for motherhood and whatnot. It probably goes without saying these people tend to have a piece of flesh hanging between their legs, such as a midwife named Dennis Walsh.
(http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2009/07/man-labor-pain-good-for-women.html)
A reply has been made and I will copy the whole text as it is just so good.
"WOMEN TO FORCE HAT-STAND INTO ANUS OF MALE MIDWIFE
THE senior male midwife who criticised child-birth painkillers will today have a hat-stand forced into his anus, women have promised. Dr Denis Walsh will be dragged from his office and taken to a paddling pool in the car park where three strong women will hold him down while another two take a seven-foot, solid pine hat-stand with six large curved coat hooks and put it in him.
Emma Bradford, a pregnant lady from Peterborough, said: "No painkillers, no epidurals, we want him to be able to bond with the hat-stand. And of course there are potential health risks if you use painkillers while a hefty, awkwardly-shaped piece of hall furniture is shoved as far up your lower intestine as we can get it. The pain of hat-stand insertion is a beautiful, natural thing, but if he's worried then perhaps he could try hypnotising himself into thinking that none of this is happening while we use the hat-stand to convince him that it is."
She added: "We've set up the paddling pool, or 'hat-standing pool' so that he can see for himself exactly how much difference that will make." Jill McKay, from Doncaster, said: "If he needs something to take his mind off the searing pain in his anus I'd be more than happy to take a pair of pliers to his testicles."
Dr Walsh said: "I take it all back. It was obviously a joke. Look, I've not been well. Get your hands off me. For Christ's sake someone call security. Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!""