You've all heard this before, I'm sure

November was a busy month, apparently. I have something to show for it, too: the first draft of my Licenciate thesis is now finished and I'm already working on the final version. I'm not entirely happy with it (is anyone ever?) but at least I'm a lot closer to a PhD than I was half a year ago.

I did get to meet M's new dog - I've done so several times now - and a really lively doggie she is, too. Courtesy of M, I also got to journey back in time, when a couple of weeks ago we moved her horses to a place with no running water. This meant that the only way to water the horses was to walk to the spring in the middle of a forest and then struggle back with two brimming buckets. And then go back for more water. Coincidentally, the first time we did this, we were in the middle of the most vicious snowstorm in the history of Central Finland. Gave me a new sense of appreciation towards all my foremothers who have done the same thing, day in, day out - and without the help of Airam torches.

Despite all the busyness, I've had time to listen to some new music (at least compared to the music I normally listen to). As I don't have the inclination to follow the music papers (like I did some ten years ago), all information about new and exciting songwriters and bands reaches me with a considerale lag. That is, unless my better informed friends recommend something to me.

Juska, who is a more active person than me in many ways, and keeps abreast with the music biz, has been raving about Amanda Palmer for some time. I was slow to catch up, but eventually, I had to agree with her. Palmer makes great music.

This story also made me pay more attention to Palmer (and especially her videos, which are fantastic). Long story short: Roadrunner records won't promote Palmer because her belly is too fat. See the offending video (which is also behind the link) and judge for yourselves; as for me, her belly was probably the last thing I would have paid attention to in the visually rewarding video.

Here's another vid of Palmer's, dedicated to no other than Sarah Palin. Includes scenes of rape and coat-hanger abortion set to jaunty music. Brilliant, and extremely disturbing.






Another artist I should have heard about long ago is Anna Ternheim, a Swedish singer-songwriter of the old school (at least compared to Palmer). The songs I've heard tell of heartbreak, isolation, and solitude, and are delivered in a pure, charmingly accented voice - a perfect soundtrack to the pre-Xmas weirdness.

'No Subtle Men' is my current favourite.




A week of academic activity, and then I'm going north for a few weeks of frantic piano-playing, chocolate-eating and gingerbread-making. Should be good.

Getting arty

Been doing a lot of writing lately (mainly my licenciate). So here's an arty picture to make up for my silence in the blogging department. The thing in the middle with three white splotches is Ruttu, a teddy bear that followed me home from Yorkshire.

Next week will be a more socially active one. I was promised

1) that I'd get to meet M's new dog
2) that I'd see the wondrous new colour scheme in M's house (lots of yellow, she said)
3) that there will be a new feminist reading group
4) that there will be lots of wine
5) and some coloured paper, glitter, glue and other miscellaneous fun at Otter's place in H.

Looking forward to it.

Wheee!

Last weekend I was in Helsinki, where we celebrated Fidia's birthday in the already traditional way: by watching loads of films (some classics like Kind Hearts and Coronets, and some not-so-classic ones like Hair), eating lots of cake and just generally socialising.

As usual, I had my guitar with me and treated my friends to some Joni Mitchell and other similarly cheerful stuff. It's great fun to play to an appreciative audience, but I hadn't realised just how appreciative they are. Just before I was about to launch into my set, they presented me with a brand new guitar case! It's one of the best presents I've ever got, especially as it comes from so many people, many of whom have been forced to hear my yodelling for years now. And my old case was falling apart at the hinges and was in dire need of replacing.

So thanks, guys! :)

It's a bit hard to get organised after a trip like that. In the next couple of weeks I should wrap up my licenciate, prepare and teach a four-hour session of literacy skills and fill in a few application forms. Should be great fun. But somehow things seem to be going pretty well at the moment, and I'm feeling uncharacteristically confident. Autumn, for some reason, agrees with me.

(In case you're wondering, the dog in the picture above is Olga, my cousing's Bernese mountain dog. A great character. )

My new best friend

What with my birthday coming up (well... soon enough), this year I asked my mum to buy me something practical, something I've wanted for a long time. And she did. Now I've got my own private sun.

It's one of those wake-up lamps that works like an alarm clock, only with an increasing amount of light. Apparently this fools your brain into thinking that the sun is rising and you wake up refreshed and happy even when it's pitch-dark outside. The darn thing even has different noises you can choose from; this morning I woke up to the most aggressive-sounding blackbird I've ever heard.

It does feel a bit creepy having a lamp that has a mind of its own, quietly (or not so quietly) glimmering into life next to you. Of course I was so excited about the thing that this morning I opened my eyes almost at the exact moment the lamp switched on (half an hour before the actual alarm time). Yet I think that it will be most useful in December.

And if the birdsong won't do it, there's always an insistent gong-sound, the expectancy of which will probably keep me awake all night.

A nose by any other name would smell

Went to an overly optimistic seminar today - there were people there trying to teach us poor PhD students how to turn our theses into commodities, i.e. how to make them sound more interesting to the general public, how to sell articles to newspapers and get rich and famous overnight. We'll see what happens. If I won't get famous by Xmas, I'll sue the History Department.

An interesting little incident occurred towards the end of the lecture. A youngish man put on his coat and collected his stuff: a dead giveaway that he was going to get out before the session was through. He excused himself to the lecturer by saying that he was leaving because of "family logistics".

Sounds important, doesn't it? It's not just picking kids up from the kindergarten; that's what mothers do. He made it sound like he was planning some sort of intricate process of moving people from place A to place B with the greatest efficiency. Which is exactly what mothers do. They just never make it sound so important.

I don't mean to denigrate his choice of words (or indeed the fact that he was picking up his kid(s)). In fact, I kind of admire what he was doing. I seriously think we women too, need to come up with such ponderous-sounding appellations for our daily tasks. If nothing else, it might just promote the idea that none of the domestic duties (cooking, cleaning, shopping, childcare etc.) is our biological destiny.

I'll leave you with this brilliant clip:

(via feministing)

Mushka, mushka!

What with the colourful season still continuing lovely and non-rainy, it wouldn't be fitting to fill this entry with academic angst. Suffice it to say that writing a good PhD isn't enough to guarantee a career at the uni; during the next couple of years I should find ome time to study and teach, to go abroad for a few months to do some serious networking among my foreign colleagues, to publish in all kinds of journals and appear in all sorts of conferences - and to learn coding. And, of course, to write an excellent and groundbreaking doctoral thesis.

I promise to do all this if someone pays me.

Anyhoo, it's not all that bad. Yesterday evening Juska and I went out to see this band called Ralli-Olga - two young women and an accordion who have an unashamedly girly attitude (and by girly I don't mean the pink-and-blonde-and-squeaky kind) to making music. And a great matter-of-fact sense of comedy. And a kazoo. Amid all this cynicism and postmodern cleverness it's nice to hear songs about dead hamsters and Russian women farmers for a change.

Turned out nice again

After a week or so of glorious autumn weather, even I am finding it hard to constantly complain about things. So before the darkness and general grumpiness set in, I thought I'd better do a post about things I've been enjoying lately.

To start off, some music: Nellie McKay is an amazing artist who does Broadway-style songs with a twist (most of the times a political one), and liberally mixes all kinds of musical influecces ranging from jazz to rap. It's nice to hear some fresh protest songs in this cynical, passivist time.

Along with Joni Mitchell, I've been listening to a lot of English folk lately - June Tabor and Norma Waterson in particular. Great voices. Oh, and Martha Wainwright's 'Bloody Motherfucking Asshole' has been going around something silly in my mp3 player.

Thanks to my friend Fidia, I rediscovered Smack the Pony, which in my view is the most brilliant tv comedy series since Monty Python.





I never knew a bull could look so melancholy...

Finally, I must confess (and this shouldn't come as a surprise to those who know me) that I'm in awe of the British skill for making costume drama. I don't know which appeals to me most: the great actors (whose greatest quality is that they can get through a page-long sentence from Jane Austen without appearing at all constipated - and not the fact that they look great in corsets - although many of them do), the amazing locations, or the respect and sense of humour with which the 'classics' are treated. These people actually look like they've lived in that set, in those clothes, in that society.

The 1995 adaptations of Pride and Prejudice (the BBC series) and Sense and Sensibility (with Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman) are my favourites, but there's a marvellous one of Persuasion also from the same year. Amanda Root plays the sad-eyed Anne Elliot to perfection, but I particularly like Sophie Thompson's portrayal of her constantly ailing sister Mary.



I can also fully symphatise with Anne's dislike of Bath.

It never rains but...

This week's been abnormally full of stuff. In addition to wrestling with my licenciate, I've already managed to move a hundred bales of hay from place A to place B, make an ex tempore trip to Ostrobothnia (for the second time in three months), get a job AND a dentist' s appointment. On top of that, all the books, cds and clothes I'd ordered during the past month decided to arrive on the same day.

I'm not complaining, since I also got my new wellies yesterday. They are light blue and have flowers on them. They make me very happy, as it's pissing down as I write, and I don't expect the weather to improve for the next five months or so.

Read an interesting piece of research on the BBC website this morning. Apparently, the music you like correlates closely with your personality. Well, take that tedious feather and knock me down. Anyway. According to this research, people who listen to classical music share personality traits with those who dig heavy metal; both of these groups are introverted and creative. If you like pop, then it's worse luck to you - you're not all that creative or at ease (whatever that means).

I'm a bit confused. I like classical, which proves I'm creative and don't like people all that much. Then again, I also love jazz, and jazz lovers are supposed to be outgoing. Fair enough. That means I don't have to be introverted all the time. But if I add rock into this equasion, does it then cancel out the good self-esteem and work ethic the two other genres give me (as rock fans are, according to these Scottish researchers, not-so-hardworking and prone to low self-esteem)?

The researcher person from Heriot-Watt University did have a valid point about the tribal qualities of music - that people digging the same kind of music tend to be similiar to some extent, no matter what their colour, creed or nationality. However, I don't quite believe that these similarities can be reduced to generalised personality traits.

Well, I don't know. What does this tell about my personality, then?

Two stories that made my day

I'm fond of dogs, and not all that fond of children. So both of these stories brightened up my day considerably.

First, a link via Kaleidoglide about child-free zones in India. Hope this catches on in this country as well.

Then, a really awwww-inspiring story courtesy of The Cellar , proving that animal welfare isn't just for hippies and batty old ladies: a group of New York bikers who call themselves Rescue Ink have started investigating cases of animal abuse.

Very cute, and very very scary at the same time...

What did the women's lib ever do for you?

19 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Yep, it would have been a bleak life for me as a 30s housewife. Dunno which counted against me more, the habit of cooking in my PJs or the fact that I don't "praise marriage before young women contemplating it".

This reminded me of an article I read some time ago (tried to google it but as it was an online newspaper thing, naturally it's gone now... :P) about three British women who aspired to be 'perfect' housewives, living in homes decorated in the 30s, 40s and 50s style, respectively. Presumably they begin their day by dressing in their lovely vintage clothes, doing their hair and face, then proceed to make a nourishing vintage breakfast for their manly husbands in their immaculately clean vintage kitchens (the 50s kitchen looked particularly enticing).

I can't remember if they mentioned what they do all day when their husbands are at work (besides bake pies and lounge in their painstakingly constructed fantasy worlds). My guess is that they hang around at ebay trying to find more lovely vintagey stuff).

Naturally, they all thought that life was much better, lighter, purer and less scary in the first part of the 20th century when men were men and women didn't have to worry about careers or having opinions of their own.

Such an easy life, I know, and I'll have to admit that there is something slightly appealing in the idea - until you realise that these are 21th century women who've had the choice to live like that, and who have husbands who have enough money to finance this silliness. The forties may sound like a charming place to be, with impressive-looking cars and jaunty hats, but imagine yourself running to a air-raid sheter in the middle of the night, dragging along half a dozen bewildered kids, and then tell me about how women in the past were so much better off.

Anyway, I'm off to the opera.

A crapulous summer altogether

The picture above proves that we had at least one sunny day this summer...or that we had a summer at all.

When the weather's continuously grey and depressive, there isn't much else to do but drink tea and read. I started Evelyn Waugh's Scoop some time ago because I had heard that it's a funny book - maybe even his funniest. Being a fan of Waugh's, I eventually picked it up - and have been making quite a slow read of it. Knowing his style, I wasn't expecting a silly laugh-out-loud romp ala Wodehouse, more that kind of book you can quietly smirk into.

I'm now halfway through and I've only smirked once or twice. It may be the weather, or perhaps my smirking muscles are suffering from paralysis - or it may just be the fact that I cannot in any way relate to the book. Basically it's a story of a gormless English squire who is sent to the heart of Africa to cover a local civil war for a newspaper called The Beast. My biggest problem with the narrative is that it isn't particularly subtle when it comes to depictions of the natives (or any other Others for that matter).

Anyhoo, the reason I brought up the book was actually an etymological discovery it helped me to make. What sparked this sidestep toward the OED was the phrase "a heap of crapulous black servants". Having only a faint notion of what might be going on, I looked up 'crapulous' . Turns out that like the Finnish word krapula (a colloquial term for hangover), it originates from the Greek word kraipale, 'drunken headache'. In Latin, the word is crapula, from which comes the English term for inebriation, crapulent, and its adjective form crapulous.

And yes, I am very easily amused.

Here goes...

Starting a blog is a bit similar to writing to a new penpal (remember those?): it's important not to sound too eager and tell everything about yourself at once. Yet, you'll have to tell all the interesting bits or else they'll never write back.

This blog, like most blogs, will probably include pointless ramblings about my daily life, the books I read and the music I enjoy, but occasionally I might be inspired to write some more pointed entries. These will most likely include ramblings about popular culture, women's rights, the price of milk, and postmodernism.


We have a rocking chair
Each of us rocks his share
Eating muffin buns and berries
By the steamy kitchen window
Sometimes we do
Our tongues turn blue.

- Joni Mitchell: Sisotowbell Lane