Moving

Hi everyone!

Since I'm such an avid blogger, I have completely neglected to mention that I got a job about a month ago. I'm a graphic designer in a mobile phone software/content producer company. I haven't started yet, 'cause the work place is in Helsinki (the capital).

I'm moving this Friday (Friday the 13th!), and that means I won't have the internet starting from then. It takes a while to get an internet connection in the new place, so I might be absent for about a month or so. Of course I will pop by now and then, from work or somewhere else, but I won't have the internet at home.

So, bye bye for now! I'll let you know how work is later.

It's Uncanny!

New website!

Or actually it is the same old website, just up in new place. So go visit death-teddy.net for all your Maija needs. Also now you can go visit Red Riding Hood's little business, the office of the Hood Girls (a.k.a. my graduation project that I never linked to).

I promise I will answer Dan's meme the next time I write. Also, I've been wondering what to do with my LJ? I have one, you know. Perhaps a sketch or writing journal or something. But I never update even this place, so would I be any different with two blogs? Now I just use the account for following other people's posts.

(This vanilla-rhubarb yoghurt is good!)

Pictures of me

I thought I'd post some pictures of me because... you know, there has never been any. Also I'm puzzled by the fact that I always seem to have my eyes closed and manage to look somehow pleased with myself in a stately manner in all pictures.

Proof (from our graduation party with our class):
1
2
3

The curse is broken! I am having fun:
Laughing and dancing, skipping and jumping.

But then my coolness is jeopardized:
Yes, it's karaoke.

And because I want to, here are some pictures of me from a pirate costume party from last fall. I'm dressed as a pirate flag.
Me posing (oh no, the cleavage-ness).
And me killing a friend of mine while she is killing the photographer.

And finally the two/three years old picture of me from a photography class. I'll show it last so that I can pretend I always look like that and so that you will forget the bit with the karaoke.
Studio

There, I think that's enough egoism for a few years. Now you know what I look like. Don't expect new photos of me anytime soon. I will probably just have my eyes closed in them.

Website Trouble

Help me! What will I name my new domain when I get one? All suggestions welcome, although some may be laughed at. :D

So, my website is down now. I had it on a friend's server, and the server broke down, so there. It's annoying because I had just finished the fiction site I was going to add there, and I was about to post an address to that graduation project of mine here on the blog. But now I have to hunt for a web space provider and wait until I have money to buy the domain/space.

I got the grades for the graduation project - I got 4 out of 5 from both the written and the artistic part. I'm pretty disappointed about the 4 in written, since I worked really, really hard on it and I know I'm a good writer. The teachers didn't have anything bad to say about it but then they gave me 4 because the subject (Red Riding Hood tales) was quite far away from our studies (Digital Arts). But I'm very happy of the four in artistic!

Anyway, I haven't really done anything, I've just taken it easy and read comics (Bone, Akira (up to 8), V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 1). :P

Wtf did you smoke, Kiba?

The end of Wolf's Rain is like... on crack. What were the creators on? Or is my brain too limited to understand their great minds?

Edit: Ok, I do understand some of it (just re-watched it when I wasn't dead-tired). It's just that when I think that I understand all of it, something pops to my head and makes me think that "No, I've got it all wrong"...

Numfar, do the dance of joy!

The graduation work is done! I just need to write a 5 page essay for a course and get the written part of the thesis between covers and delivered to the proper place, and I'm done with this school!

Head exploding thesis work

Working on my thesis. I have 4 weeks to get it done if I want to graduate this year. Wish that my head doesn't explode. Talk to you later.

Vishal bugs me!

Ha! I will not give in to your bugging, Vishal! Oh, wait, damn...


...


Christmas went well. ^_~

Serenity not coming to Finland

Up until now, the first screening date here in Finland was supposed to be today, 2.12, but when I went to check, it had mystically disappeared from every theater's list. After a moment of googling I found this message from Sandrew Metronome Finland:
"Ennakkotiedoista poiketen elokuva saa näillä näkymin ensi-iltansa valitettavasti suoraan videolla. Päätöksen takana on kyseisen elokuvan levittäjäyhtiö."

Which says that the film will be straight-to-video, and that the decision has been made by the distribution company of the film. This really bugs me and is weird, since the movie is being shown just across the border, in Sweden... So the distributor just decided that it wasn't going to be shown in Finland??!

This sucks.

Things I like (they make me go squeee!)

(EDIT: Another thing I like - ADVENT CHILDREN! OH HOLY TAPDANCING JENOVA, it is NICE!)

In other words, I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at a preview screening last Friday and I've been meaning to write about it ever since. Actually, I'm going to see it again on opening night tomorrow with my sister. From that you might have guessed that I liked the movie.

The first thing I'd like to mention is the music. Danny Elfman certainly delivers, like he always does. I've missed his music, and so listening to this movie made me happy.

The other thing I wanted to mention was the added backstory of Willy Wonka. While I agree that it was completely redundant, it didn't actually bother me. If the filmmakers wanted to invent a past for him, okay, have fun, but the movie didn't need it and would have worked fine without it. Hopefully someone had fun making it up.

Hmm... it seems that I don't have much to say about the movie after all. Johnny Depp was delightful and hilarious, and his Wonka was even weirder than I thought based on the trailers. And I want some of dem chocolate bars.

To all you Finnish people out there, I want to add this line that I smiled at in the subtitles:
"Olen aina tehnyt karkkia fiilispohjalta."

****************

Another thing that makes me happy is Susanna Clarke's book Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I finished it about a week ago and I loved it - the plot, the characters, the footnotes. I especially liked the language of the book and I can't believe this was Clarke's first novel. Ooooh, it was so good. *shivers* It's tragic and exciting and funny and witty, and you just want to know what happens next. Even when "nothing" happens the text flows enjoyably onwards.

(I liked the portrayal of fairies, and just wanted to mention that nowadays every elf is in my head drawn by Ted Naifeh. I can't help it. The gentleman with thistledown hair was "drawn by Naifeh".)

I had only heard good things about the book before reading it, but I still didn't have any huuuge expectations. It is always best to read things for yourself instead of believing reviews. The last book I read that everyone had only said good things about was China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and I didn't like it. I was bored and wasn't sucked into the happenings of the book, and I couldn't have cared less about the characters. There wasn't a single character that I gave a crap for. It wouldn't have moved me one bit if they had all died. Characters are very important to me in a book, or in any story. In Jonathan Strange, on the other hand, I liked each and every one of the characters. Jonathan Strange, Vinculus, Drawlight, Childermass, the gentleman - just to name a few.

It's not even that characters have to be nice and likable for me to like them - I have liked many an 'evil' character in my times. I know a person who didn't watch Farscape because she thought every character was so unpleasant. I liked them because they all had flaws of character. But in Perdido Street I couldn't relate to the characters, I couldn't quite grasp them, I couldn't find any characteristic in them that I liked. So I ended up not caring about them.

o_O Aaaanyway, it seems I complained more about Perdido there than gave praise for Jonathan Strange. I just want to say that I don't believe that Perdido is a badly written book or anything. It just didn't relate to me at all, when there has to be a lot of people out there to whom it does, because they are different people and perhaps can find something in the characters to grasp onto.

But I want to say that I *loved* Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and I will recommend it to each and every person I meet. They can make their own decisions, but I think they should at least open the book. It might work for them as well as it did for me.

****************

That Ted Naifeh comment earlier on there reminded me of another thing I liked: Courtney Crumrin Tales - A Portrait of the Warlock as a Young Man (loong title). If you Courtney Crumrin -fans out there haven't read it, do so now! I mean, it has Uncle Aloysius as a young man (I'm such an Aloysius fan girl)! The mood of the comic is different from the other albums, but different doesn't mean bad. Actually, in this case at least, it means very good. And of course the whole album is filled with delicious art. I love his style so much.

(I hadn't even noticed that I had a shortage of Naifeh-drawn young men before I read this - in Courtney you don't see that many of them. Aloysius Crumrin is teh hot - as well as the epitome of cool.)

Okay, signing out now. Phew.
I shake you warmly by the hand.

Blonde

I. Am. Blonde. Well, reddish. And my hair is short.

I'm getting used to this freakishness - actually I will colour my hair red in a couple of days, and that is the reason of my sudden attack of the blonde.

No, I don't own a camera. (So this entry was pretty much pointless.)

As you can see, DeviantArt has a new feature. Thanks to it you can now always see my 4 most recent deviations at the top of this page. Nifty, eh?

Tonight I'm going to a gig with my sister Tiina. We're going to see a Japanese band called Blood - I actually haven't listened to their music before, but they are the first visual kei band to ever come to Finland, so it is A Happening. And I will Be There. I expect to see a lot of pretty dresses, both on the audience members and the band's boys.

There was something else I thought I had to mention, but I don't remember it anymore. o_O

I get my paycheck tomorrow.

(This will look good on my shelf next to this.)

...
What, buy useful things?

I am SO MAD right now. I ordered my copy of the new Harry Potter book ages ago, and a few days ago I got an email that said that I could go get it on Saturday the 16th from the place where it would be delivered. Well, I went there today and THEY DIDN'T HAVE the package! They said to come check again on MONDAY AFTERNOON! I ordered it a few months ago when I could've just gone and picked it up today from the store. Then I at least would've gotten it when other people do, and now I'll get it a few days late!

The thing was, I was expecting that the delivery would take so long that I could get it as late as Monday, but then I got the email and became very happy. Yay, thanks for getting my hopes up.

My homepage Mayakashi and webcomic Fool's Court now have a new home ^^ at http://mayakashi.nitesade.net. Thanks to Antti for providing the space!
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www.tednaifeh.com:
"In other news, Oni Press has talked me into doing another Courtney book. It will be a single-issue story titled (deep breath) Courtney Crumrin Tales: Portrait of the Warlock as a Young Man. It follows the early adventures of Aloysius Crumrin in a world of secret societies and forbidden witchcraft. That's all I can give away for now, but rest assured it will be a rollicking adventure."

Fan-girl SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAL!!!!!!!! (Yes, I just squealed in the middle of class...)

Umm, some hacker broke into our school server, where my homepage is (was), so that's why it hasn't been working during the past two weeks, if you've wondered. They can't start it again, because the web server software is so old.

It seems I'm looking for a new place for my homepage and web comic. It's just really annoying, because when I move them I cannot redirect people to the right address. The server doesn't work, so there is no way I can put up a message like 'the page can now be found here - link'. So there can be many people who have used to e.g. read my webcomic and now just think it has disappeared, and can't/don't bother to find it again. Annoying.

I've had an offer from a friend of mine to use his server space, so perhaps I'll do that. Or something...

I finished reading Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones and I'm completely in love with Howl. He is such an ass! ^^

I have to stop writing these one minute newsflashes and write a decent blog-entry, grrr.

I just saw the episode of Time Squad with Edgar Allan Poe in it. He wrote children's books and greeting cards instead of, well, the stuff he should be writing.

I had lots of fun. I wanna see it again.

Dir en Grey's newest album, Withering to Death, is number 31 on Finland's official album chart! o_O

Texhnolyze
Last night I was at the local club's anime night and saw the first six episodes of Texhnolyze. I didn't get very into it - at first one wasn't sure what was going on and there was interest, because I wanted to know what would happen and what was the link between these different people. But then as things became a little clearer, I lost that interest. I didn't care at all what was going to happen to the characters. That's a pretty bad thing, so I don't think I'll be watching any more of that show.

The surprising thing about Texhnolyze was that it belongs to those very rare animes whose opening and closing songs are both good. The other one tends to often be crap. But this anime opened with a wonderful song called Guardian Angel (Xavier's Edit) by Juno Reactor, and I was jamming with it every time it played. When it opened the first episode, it really raised my expectations of the show, and I wanted to see what it was all about, since the song created such a great atmosphere from the get-go. Too bad the opening song was the thing I liked most in the anime. Anyway, the closing song was Tsuki no Uta by Gackt, which is a very nice song, too.

So, even if I didn't care about the characters and the plot, at least I was jamming. And I liked the visuals of the opening, as well, and some of the character designs.


Why isn't there anything good going in the theatres? I wanna go see a movie...