Turukhtan

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Hungry for hills

On my way back from mum's place, I stopped by in Gothenburg to sell some of my comic books to the local comic book shop Dolores (Södra Allégatan 2B) and visit the wonderful city library (which has an excellent comics section - now even more excellent, since I donated Tunguska issue #0 to the library). I also went for a walk, during which I just had to climb all of the about 200 steps up to the fortlet Kronan (the crown). Unfortunately, its museum was closed.

There is another fortlet in Gothenburg, near the railway station, which is called The Lion. It has a gilded lion on top of it.

The view from the hill was quite nice. You could see most of Gothenburg, including one of the coolest student dorms in Sweden - the Johanneberg water tower.

The fortlet was built in 1687 to defend Gothenburg against those nasty Danes.

Posted at 8:17 pm by turukhtan
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Sunday, January 08, 2006

"Asphalt Mirrors" is going to be translated into Italian

The first story about Eva, "Asphalt Mirrors", is going to be published in English and Italian on the website eravamotreamicialpub.it. The Italian translation will be available soon, but the English version and an introduction in Italian are there already.

Some of the other things on that website might be interesting, too, such as the Soviet fetishism. Or maybe not, such as the abundance in certain sections of lightly dressed women. Anyway, "Asphalt Mirrors" is the first comic published there, and it seems to fit in quite well (it has both some Russian elements and some lightly dressed and well-endowed women in it).

Posted at 8:59 am by turukhtan
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Tuesday, January 03, 2006

2006 ...

I made a new year's card with pictures from the second visit we made to the furry puppies of mum's acquaintance. This time, they were bigger and wilder, and their teeth were itching badly ...

Another way of celebrating the new year was by building a snow Mitsu. Here, Ainur is brushing off some snow from it.

See the snow Mitsu at night with the lantern lit, and read more about the Japanese tradition of building snow dogs at Ainur's blog.

We also made a snow Mitsu two years ago. You can see it at Mitsu's own website.

As always, the real Mitsu has lots of fun destroying the heathen idol. But this one is built quite sturdy, so it takes a bigger effort than last time ...

Posted at 4:18 pm by turukhtan
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Skärhamn

Today we went on a trip to Tjörn, the slightly smaller island south of our island Orust. We visited the small town Skärhamn, the name of which means literally 'skerry harbour'. In this picture you can see some of the skerries outside its harbour:

Stuff to catch lobsters with.

Ainur and mum in Skärhamn.

The bottom of the sea in a less oily part of the docks.

On the way back to Orust:

Posted at 4:02 pm by turukhtan
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Foggy sun

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Friday, December 30, 2005

Furry little puppies

About a week ago, we went to visit an acquaintance of my mum, who has puppies.

Here are the parents - Sasha, a West-Siberian Laika, and Lakko, a Finnish Spitz, both hunting dogs, though the multi-talent Lakko knows how to herd cattle, as well.

Their puppies were absolutely irresistible.

They stay with the four big dogs in the kennels. Unfortunately, the owner seems to be too busy with his hunting and other capitalist activities to clean up the kennels every day, so the poor little doggies have to run around in shit ...

Posted at 8:03 pm by turukhtan
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Snow and a sleeping little baby

Posted at 7:52 pm by turukhtan
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Monday, December 26, 2005

Serilda

When my old fake leather pants wore out, I was really excited, because now I had material for making a leather pig called Serilda (this old germanic name means 'armed maiden of war').

I assembled a studded necklace and some cheap silver earrings for piercings and went to work. And here she is:

I let Sergei get aquainted with Serilda (he is the adoptive father of all my toy pigs).

He wasn't really all that interested, but Serilda looked like she wanted to challenge him to a bout of kung fu. Ah, the rebellious youth ... always sticking up against their parents.

I wonder how Serilda will get along with Sergei Jr., Severiina and Serpieri.

Posted at 12:47 pm by turukhtan
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Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The Stalin purges - a gendercide?

Interestingly enough, gendercide.org labels Stalin's purges in the 1930's as "gendercide", because they targeted primarily men.

Of course, something like this would never have occurred to the average non-gender conscious historian, who assumes that if something happens primarily to men, it's a genocide, while in the cases when something happens primarily to women, they are much more willing to label it a 'gendercide'. (An example of the latter would be the witch hunts in Europe 1450-1750, where it is estimated that 40.000-60.000 people were executed, of whom only 20-25% were male.)

Posted at 9:04 am by turukhtan
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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Standing on eggshells

Inspired by Chris Crudelli's BBC program "Mind, Body and Kick Ass Moves", I went against the warning text that appears at the beginning of each episode, and tried one of the tricks featured in the program ...

Here is the video. (9.3 MB, .wmv) If you don't right-click the link and choose 'save target as', I will unleash the wild sows of the ancient bloody forests on you. Help me save bandwidth, dammit.

I regret having filmed myself with the camera in a vertical position. Windows Movie Maker distorted the picture and made me considerably shorter and broader ...

Posted at 1:51 am by turukhtan
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