Follow Me Into Disaster

Cloverfield was not exactly what I had expected. To be fair, I had actually expected worse, seeing as how the last mainstream thing I dragged people along to was the horrible, horrible National Treasure 2. This one was a masterpiece in comparison.

The filming really was effective, I felt rather dizzy leaving the movie theathre, and it made everything seem a little more frightening. I might also end up having nightmares from the spiderlike creatures that bit people. I am not usually big on monster flicks, but I guess this one was ok. Will move back to the narrower shelves from now on, though, as the movies I have a good gut feeling of up front always turn out to be the best ones.

Speaking of nightmares, I woke up in the middle of the night last night screaming. There's this one older guy at my work who for some reason was in the spare bedroom of my apartment (although it wasn't him, it was some grey haired actor I don't remember the name of), and he was sitting in my office chair with his back turned to me.

I knew there was something horribly wrong with him, but I couldn't turn the chair around so he would look at me. And then there was something with his hair that I don't remember and I woke up with a scream halfway out my throat and my neighbours probably wondering who the hell was being murdered in our building. I kept on dreaming all through the night, but that is the only one I remember much of. Hope tonight will be a bit calmer, or I won't profit much from being home early today in the morning.

Tomorrow I have _nothing_ on my schedule. This is heaven. Saturday is the Middlesbrough game, and Sunday I again have _nothing_ :D

Should you want to tap into today's mood, Pete Yorn - Musicforthemorningafter is the right choice of record. It's always the right choice of record, actually, but some days more so than others. One of my most listened to albums ever.

She Says

Today's topic is (as usual) problems, and I have a musical one. Somehow I seem to have misplaced the previously mentioned Howie Day's Stop All The World Now. I can not find Du & Jag Döden by Kent nor Editors' An End Has A Start either. As all three are amongst my favorite records, this causes no small amount of distress, but at least it leads me to believe they are all in the same place, and likely to show up when I least expect it.

My jaw is behaving much better now, and tomorrow I will see Cloverfield. If it's bad I will leave well enough alone when it comes to mainstream picks (at least until the Sex & the City movie is comes out). Mr Big played the perfect man in The Perfect Man (Hilary Duff disaster), by the way. He really _is_ New York, isn't he...

One of the managers in our company, a guy I highly respect and was looking forward to learning more from, announced today that he will be going back to South Africa come April 1st. I guess it was no huge surprise, it's natural that he would stay almost three years and then head back after finishing a fiscal year, but still... I hate it when people leave, it's one thing I've never been able to deal with without becoming unbearably sad.

I also found out today that my blog audience is partly not what I think it is. Not that it matters at all, I've been blogging for too long to know what to put on here and not, but still a bit surprising. Kind of like when you hold the shift button on your keyboard in for too long and the handicap function sets in. You know it's not going to break anything, but all of a sudden you're all consious about your use of the button. Until you forget, off course, which is something like five seconds later.
So... I was saying?

Let Me Take You On A Trip

I am currently on drugs, as my screw-in-the-jaw-implant has been acting up, rendering me unable to perform in society except as a whining, feeling-sorry-for-oneself bitch from hell. Fortunately it turns out dentists can describe (here I should have written "prescribe", but is indeed good to know they can describe the stuff they want people to take as well) perkiness in tablet form.

To brighten up my day I started looking into vacationing, and I've come up with the following wish list (not in any specific order).

Cambodia
I was supposed to go there for Easter -07, but when planning I got carried away and we suddenly ended up going to Laos instead. Work of a mastermind, clearly, as I've never been anywhere that nice, but still off target. Am on an Asian break at the moment, but Cambodia will definitely be next stop when I start going back. Or maybe Vietnam... see, this is how I get sidetracked.

Romania
I want to go on a road trip through Romania. There are two problems with this; a) I don't want to go alone, and b) traffic in Romania is apparently insanely dangerous and I don't want to die on vacation after all. Found one blog with people that had backpacked off the beaten track from monastary to monastery, maybe that's an alternative that could fit me better?

Italy
Strangely similar to my plan B for Romania, I've for years wanted to go on a monastery-hopping vacation to Italy - alternatively go to just one and stay and work there for some weeks. This is a rather well established way of vacationing for people who are trying to retrieve sanity and/or have a major thing for churches and other religious sites (I belong to the latter group, in case you were worried).

New Orleans, USA
Granted, I should've gone before the hurricane hit, but that's a bit too late now, isn't it? I bet there's some jazz left in them ole streets yet, and if I'm lucky I might find a cure for my lust for Creole mysteries. Wouldn't mind submerging myself in the Creole and cajun cuisine for a while either. New Orleans is one of the places I could consider going when I get rich and old and am about to open my rock/book bar.

Ireland/Scotland/Wales
Weirdly enough, although I might just be the most ardent anglofile on the face of the planet, I have visited England as often as possible but never ventured to any of the neighbouring countries. Then again, I do have an ongoing lovestory with London, so maybe it's not all that weird after all.

Even The Wrong Words Seem To Rhyme

0-0 against Wigan Athletic. Good thing I'm not a gambling woman, 'cause my safe bets sometimes turn out to be not so safe.

I've watched a movie this evening - The Perfect Man. Horrid piece of sh*t (the fact that Hilary Duff plays the leading part should have tipped me off), but it featured Collide by Howie Day - a little piece of music miracle I hadn't heard for a while. Look it up on youtube, it's a good song that deserves a bit of attention.

Found a great blog today, written by a guy who does freelance work for Lonely Planet. Stumbled across it while looking into sites on Romania, and ended up reading for hours. The link is in the right hand column (Killing Batteries), also worth checking out. I'm sales pitching all kinds of stuff today, aren't I?

I am so tired again today, when is this going to end? Will now drag myself off to bed, it shall be good to have some sleep. Next week I'll try to start swimming again.

Fake Empire

This has been a very random weekend. Ended up not revolutionizing so much as blurring my life yesterday in Sini's place, and to make sure my Sunday would be hellish I had a bit of wine, a bit of champagne, a bit of hard liquor, truckloads of beer and went to sleep after eight this morning. Hyvä jutto!

There will be no watching the Arsenal vs Wigan game today if I'm not able to move from this chair. If I tell myself this a sufficient number of times I might be able to get up. No? Darn.

I accidentally discovered that the line-up of Arvikafestivalen this year is totally brilliant. Wasn't intending on going this year, as, well, I always went there with Erlend, but now I'm going to go anyway. Death Cab are playing :D Also found out that The National are playing on the Thursday of Øyafestivalen, so I might try to squeeze that in as well this summer.

Basically, it'll be good to go to work tomorrow, these weekends are killing me.

This Is The Next Century

I am not a world class bowler, that's for sure. I just barely managed to beat Miia, whose wrists were so weak we were worried she would bowl herself down the lane in the end. Tapasta was great, as always, but after a couple of bottles of wine and sangria heads were spinning already at a very early stage of yesterday evening.

Today I would give a lot of money for a good game of football, but as Arsenal are playing tomorrow I might end up settling for Liverpool vs Newcastle at the local pizza joint. Am planning to revolutionize my life by having an alcohol free Saturday :p

Sweeney Todd was my kind of movie, I have to say. Loved the music, and loved the acting. The entire film was very, very Burton, and both leading actors were just right for their messed up roles. Before the film a trailer was shown for a movie that gave me very strong Clockwork Orange vibes - Funny Games. I hope they put it on in Finland at some point.

Speaking of A Clockwork Orange, I woke up this morning with The Universal in my head. Quite a good tune, that, I must say I've not listened to Blur for ages, maybe I should do some CD shelf rummaging today...

Heart-shaped Glasses

You know when someone breaks your heart and it's a total surprise? I had my heart broken a while ago, but it was nothing like that. I saw this one coming ages ago and the pinhole in my heart has been dripping pain for months already. So why on earth did I allow it to happen, you might ask? Well, because sometimes I just plain can't help myself. Welcome to rejection freak central, Espoo branch!

On a different Note (Nissan joke, pun intended), I am waiting for my new company car. It's an orange Micra, and I hope it will bring me as much good singing behind the wheel time as the current one has. Friday we are going bowling with my team, and I predict a difficult Saturday. I also managed to get myself into a well drunk state on Wednesday, rambling about in Vinyl with Kaisu and an Australian guy who was at his first WW. Judging from today's headache we took the welcoming very seriously.

Finally finished American Gods on Monday. One of my most talked about books, this was, and I will miss it. I wish Gaiman was more of a serial novel writer, so the characters would turn up again and again and again. At least they brought me much joy while it lasted, and I recommend the book to anyone. It is sharply clever, and Gaiman somehow manages to collect all the hundreds of little strings into a very coherent ending. I wonder what Shadow would think of the book if someone handed it to him while he was in prison.

The next meeting with the book club will tackle The Tipping Point, but after this excellent read I just can not bring myself to read a non fiction one, so I have now started on The Book of Lost Things.

Now, let's go make somebody's day better :)

When The Sun Shines We'll Shine Together

Have you ever had the feeling after waking up in the morning that you would give most anything to be back on Friday afternoon and just go to bed instead of starting a weekend full of insane partying? I think I have a friend or two who felt just like that this morning ;p My weekend was, however, surprisingly fine.

There Will Be Blood was an extreme contrast to the hopeless National Treasure from the week before. Superb acting, and the use of sounds and music was brilliant. The deaths in the mines fucked me up a bit, as they were rather brutal, but the brutality and lack of pink soft filters is exactly what makes this movie so good. Day-Lewis in the lead looks like he didn't have to lift a finger to step completely into the role. Next week we have Sweeney Todd!

Hair coloring on Friday went well, and I can see how people get hooked on this (once again thanks to the lovely Kaisu). Good dinner and beers in the evening followed, but was in bed rather early and hence had a good start to my Saturday where I met up with D&D in Stockmann to get tickets for this summer's R.E.M. concert! We also wanted to go see Bruce Springsteen, but he was sold out. Saturday night party featured almost all of my favorite people, and I again managed to get myself away from the hustle and bustle of partying until closing hours. Today I've had a lovely pizza in my neighbourhood football pub, and will soon retire to bed with the last pages of American Gods.

I was very happy to learn that one of the guys I've met through JD, Henrik, accepted a marriage proposal from his girlfriend on Friday. Lovely people who deserve all good things :)

You Raise Me Up

You know whom I find really attractive? Yes, Jake Gyllenhaal and Jude Law go without saying, but the other day Josh Groban stepped up to the plate. That's right, none other than Josh I-am-a-curly-but-freakin-sexy-boy Groban. I know I have friends that will slap me across the face for writing this, but there you have it.

One of the items I came home with from London was season 1 of QI - Stephen Fry and Alan Davies' brilliantly funny quiz/comic show. I intended to not watch it all in one go, and succeeded. It took me two full evenings to watch trough it all :p I now need the other three seasons asap, so if you can be of assistance give me a shout. Also brought home Control on dvd, and will surely make all I love watch it with me until they know the plot by heart. Backwards.

This week will bring the closing of February (way ahead of schedule, we'll kick some proper wholesale target ass this month), some beer drinking with Miia, my first ever hair color session on Friday and a Brittish/American going away party on Saturday. There are also a couple of backstage surprises in the deck, but I'll dish those out on a later occassion. This week's movie is There Will Be Blood, on Thursday.

Going back to the original topic of ridiculously attractive people that I have crushes on; did you know Kate Moennig (Shane from L-Word, yes I know, I'm such a femme clichè) is the cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow (and hence the niece of Blythe Danner, Paltrow's rather classy mother)? I wonder what the rest of the family looks like...

I Can't Believe You If I Can't Hear You

I spent the weekend in London - where spring is a bit closer than in Helsinki (although to be fair all the snow had disappeared here as well when I got back Sunday night). Finally got to meet Tori's beloved - a very nice young gentleman if I may say so, and I did a bit of shopping. My to-read list now exceeds 40 titles, hence I needn't worry about impending boredom any time soon. I found a lovely, lovely bookstore called Bookthrift (22 Thurloe Street, South Kensington, right next to the underground station) - definitely worth a visit if you go to London.

Watched a bit of football in the weekend, and off course the Arsenal game did not help the heartbreak from the weekend before (they played 2-2 against Birmingham, even though the latter were 1 man down after an ugly incident involving Eduardo's leg). They clearly have no regard for my piece of mind. Apart from that London is always a nice place, I've been in love with the city since the age of 8. This time around I was, however, puzzled by the extent of security measures against terrorism. You can't get anywhere near the buildings you used to be able to walk right up to, and hence a big part of the atmosphere was lost for me. What used to be so good about London was that you would have a sense of history being right at your fingertips, now you have a very strong sense of metal bars and security cameras.

American Gods is proving to be an extremely good read, I've almost finished it and wish I could do the book club meeting all over again as there is so much to discuss. It has also stirred my old love for myths, and I'm contemplating whether or not I should finally finish my comparative religion studies. Might be a bit much with work and all, though...

In modern day Lutheran Christianity it is commonly believed that the concept of Hell can be defined as "the absence of God" - the absence of that which is good. The concept of "evil" is a bit more foggy. If evil leads to a state of hell, does this not mean that all absence of good is evil? When individuals group together and form big societies the need of good acts per capita is likely to decrease - each person does not have to perform good deeds for the society to function. My question is basically - is it evil to not do good?

If I don't watch out my blog will turn into a full blown philosophy site. For reference I do not prescribe to any system of faith myself, but I believe in the search for meaning and that religious philosophy has a lot to offer in this respect. I promise to go back to only dealing with music, movies, books and my mess of a life in the next posts.