One of the main themes at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm is climate change. According to a study made for Der Spiegel, the summit itself will have a negative impact on the climate:
The transport and accomodation of everyone involved (delegates, demonstrators, police officers, journalists etc), as well as the construction and transport of the 12 km long safety barrier will produce about 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide - a third of what thefootball  World championship caused. "And these are still conservative estimates", says study administrator Moritz Lehmkuhl.

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More environment-friendly alternatives for conferences include video conferences over the Internet.
Anyway, these people must know, on some level, that they are doing something wrong, if they are so afraid that they have to hide behind a massive safety barrier.

As for poverty, another topic that will be touched at the summit, the delegates could easily start fighting poverty in their own respective countries if they would cut down their own astronomical wages and channel that money into social welfare (child and housing allowance, higher state subventions for healthcare, etc.).

The Manual Project - the personalities of hands by Bill Westheimer.

Last night, I first had a weird dream that involved an elephant and her handler who worked in the forest, digging up old bones. I accompanied them, and they found a site with many skulls, but no other bones. All of them had holes from a gunshot or a sharp object on the top of them. Some of them were fully intact. Others had only their lower half intact, while the upper half had somehow "melted" into transparent, glass-like substance and filled up the lower half. The handler said, "It's the ice", and pointed at the chunks of permafrost that the elephant had just broken up.

In the second, less interesting, dream, I was still living in Kävlinge, and came back from university to find my apartment door broken up. Burglars had stolen my stereo and most of my CD's and also my cassettes (!). Not my computers, though. They'd also taken my couple of DVD's and the CD's where I've stored photographs and scanlated comics.

I figured I'd call the police, and didn't touch anything, in case there would happen to be fingerprints or something. I locked the door as well as I could and closed the kitchen windows, but everytime I checked they were open again ... Then I remembered that I had a storage room (only in the dream, not for real), accessible from the living room, and checked it. It was completely empty, although I couldn't remember having anything but boxes of clothes in there. Well, it wasn't so much the loss of material possessions that bothered me (none of my comics or notebooks were missing, thank dog), but that someone had been in my home and dug through my things.

In my area there was a local hobo (also only in this dream), whom I'd made friends with a bit. I saw him outside my window and chatted a bit with him, and he said he might know who it was - a guy who wanted to impress his many girlfriends (perhaps a bit influenced by the manga Ciguatera I read yesterday night?). In the dream, it somehow made sense to me, as all my pretty clothes and "girly" CD's (I don't have any "girly" CD's, actually!) had been stolen ... And I could somehow understand the motives of the burglar and thought I shouldn't feel any resentment towards him anymore.

But the atmosphere was still bad. I felt frustrated anger at the fact that someone had done me wrong, but I was "supposed to" understand and forgive. I knew I'd never get my things back, even if the police arrested him, and he would never ask for forgiveness, because to him, his actions were fully justified. And I couldn't do anything about it, because I could understand him.

I woke up at half past six, and was extremely relieved when I realised that I wasn't living in Kävlinge anymore, and that no one had broken into my apartment. It had been the kind of dream where you don't know that it's a dream.

The dream was a bit inspired, I think, by the situation that occurred when the guy who rented my Kävlinge apartment while I was doing my internship last year stopped paying the rent and apparently disappeared. I went to check my apartment, and there really wasn't anyone there, and a neighbour who had taken care of the plants didn't know anything about when he might return, either.
I stayed in the apartment, cleaned up (the place was filthier than it had ever been before, even when I had been deeply depressed and didn't clean for months), and stowed his things in boxes, after sending him E-mails, asking him to come get them or send me money so I could send them to him. Since he still had the keys, I felt a bit insecure there. Following my intuition, I mounted metal loops on the door and the doorframe, and tied them firmly with a piece of string.
Then, one night, around midnight, as I was already in bed, I woke up when I heard someone opening the lock of my front door. This someone tried to pull the door open, but with my additional "string lock", it wasn't possible. I was still half asleep, so I wasn't thinking very clearly - I just listened intently with my heart beating fast, and didn't move. Then I heard steps walking away, and went to check the lock. It had really been opened. I soon had my landlord change my lock, and then, I could finally feel at ease again ...
Packing up his things, I found out that my former tenant had serious money problems, so I wasn't that angry with him about the rent or anything - I just wished he'd been able to be honest about it. Then everything would have been okay, and stupid situations like this nightly visit would never have happened.

Anyway, this morning, after waking up at 6:30, I couldn't sleep anymore. Instead, I kept involuntarily thinking about all the things I've ever done wrong - not in the sense of doing someone else wrong (either I'm ignorant of the situations where I've done that, or I've really been able to avoid it), but in the sense of not having handled a situation right.

Quite many of those have been situations where someone has done me wrong or hurt me, but I've ignored it or just not said anything, because I could, in a way, understand why they were doing it (although it was certainly petty and stupid), and thought it was somehow "below me" to care about it. (In the sense of "if you get angry/start crying/kill her, you lose".) I guess I wasn't always that strong - I still cared, and they managed to hurt me.

I've been thinking a bit lately about whether you should speak up and give lip when total strangers behave in a rude way. People do that quite often here, but it's unusual in Sweden (there, people just ignore it, or stare but don't say anything).

Should people just feel sorry for others, that they are so petty and stupid and don't know how to behave?
Or is it the duty of fellow citizens to "help" each other "improve"?

There should be a way to do it in an encouraging and constructive way ... Maybe to laugh a bit, and ask in friendly disbelief, "But what are you doing?", as if it wasn't actually understandable why they would behave like that.

Damn, I wish I was still young and naïve, not able to understand why people often behave in "bad" ways.

I didn't get "tagged", and I won't tag anyone. I just found this in my prowls of the Jaf Project archives and felt tempted.

Five things you were doing ten years ago:

Let's see ... I was 17, in 9th grade in Finland. [Sudden realisation, June 9th: NO, I WASN'T! I'm only 26 now, so I was sixteen! In 8th grade. But still in Finland, and everything else is also true.]
1. I was hating school and all the idiots there.
2. I was working on my great epic Driftwood that I had started drawing one year before.
3. I was walking with my baby Mitsu in the beautiful forests.
4. I was surviving my parents' divorce.
5. I was reading lots of great novels and comics.

Five things you were doing one year ago:

1. I was doing an internship at avant-verlag here in Berlin.
2. I was enjoying that work immensely.
3. I was contemplating when and how I should finally break up with my boyfriend at the time, as I had come to realise that he in many ways was, hrm, not so good for me. 
4. I was worrying about my princess baby Mitsu's health ...
5. I was working on my short comic The Compass Rose.

Five snacks you enjoy:

I just realised that I don't eat snacks. I usually eat three square meals a day, period. But sometimes it happens that I include in one of them, or substitute one of them for, something that can be called "snacks", so ...
1. The odd apple, plum or carrot.
2. A suspiciously cheap potato-based, pretty tasty kind of snacks called "Piratinos" or "Ocean Snack", in the snape of fish.
3. The likewise suspiciously cheap egg waffles from Lidl.
4. Deep fried pieces of dough dipped in soy sauce (my own innovation :op, though I found out people actually make somewhat similar stuff in Mongolia).
5. Russian pirogues.

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:

Since I always listen to music while drawing comics and composing print matter, there are too many to count. Five random favourites:
1. Bella Ciao (in Swedish).
2. U2 - Red Hill Mining Town.
3. Bob Dylan - I Want You.
4. Nirvana - Serve the Servants.
5. Сплин - Иди через лес.

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:

Assuming I'd have come in possession of them in a somewhat 'honourable' way (like the lottery) I would ...
1. Pay off my debts.
2. Keep spending as little as I do now (okay, maybe a *little* bit more, since I'm really on the margin right now, spending about 150 € on everything besides the rent each month).
3. Rely on those millions to be able to work less and draw (much) more comics.
4. Volunteer internationally with interesting projects now and then (such as this one about veterinary medicine and forestry in Romania).
5. Help mum and Ainur financially if need be, and finally be able to donate decent amounts of money to charities again.
Hmm, but if I'd *really* have a lot of millions, I'd also buy Köpi, and let the current tenants stay there.

Five things you like doing:

1. Drawing comics.
2. Even more, gazing at finished comics drawn by me.
3. Showering.
4. Hiding the sausage.
5. Being exposed to the elements and to furry animals.

Five things you would never wear again:

Hmm ... How difficult.
1. Extremely "girly" clothes.
2. Dental braces (I actually find crooked teeth interesting, anyways).
3. Male genital protection for martial arts (I tried that on once out of curiosity, but I don't really have any reason to do it again).
4. Extreme amounts of pastel and/or neon colours?
5. A bad haircut (if I can help it).

Five favorite toys:

To me they aren't really toys, but ...
1. Sergei Jr.
2. Severiina.
3. Serpieri.
4. Serilda.
5. Evil Mochi Dummy (in the making). 

I had so much fun yesterday evening. First, I went to see a flat in this fascinating building. Sometimes I check out available apartments on real estate websites, because the old, unrenovated ones fascinate me. I happened to see that there was a first showing for this one coming up. "It's the best flat in the house", the agent said ... I think the landlords weren't really interested in investing too much in it, because they arranged for a showing so soon, before repairing anything at all. See all the pictures.

Then, I went to the library (Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek, to be more precise). Now that I could finally register myself with the police, I could at last get a library card. Yay! I borrowed a big fat coffee table book on George Washington for work, and also a book on Stalinist architecture (with lots of pictures!) and Harry Skrdla's photobook on abandoned buildings in the USA.

Then, I biked around a bit in Kreuzberg and took some pictures.



(More photos)

Finally, at 9 PM, I went to see Lady Snowblood at the cinema in Köpi. I had never been there before. Everyone was extremely nice and friendly, and the place was really cool. I should go there in daylight some time, while it still exists ...

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To return to the title "cheap thrills" - the only thing of all this that I paid anything for was my library card (10 € - because my student days are over). The guy at the bar in Köpi didn't even want to let me pay anything for the glass of water I had. :o(

Today is Victory Day, the official anniversary of the Soviet army's victory over the Fascists in WWII. Russians and others, including me, gathered at the Soviet war memorial to honour the fallen soldiers who did the dirty work in the great war.

(More photos)

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From Wikipedia:

Sarkozy has said that having been abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today. As a young boy and teenager, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthy classmates. He suffered from insecurities (his physical shortness of 1.65 m, or his family's lack of money, at least relatively to their [bourgeois] 17th Arrondissement or Neuilly neighbours), and is said to have harboured a considerable amount of resentment against his absent father. "What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood", he said later.

I.e. he's perfect, and very typical, politician material. Politicians, especially those that advance (or want to advance) to the highest levels, don't really become politicians because they want to help other people, but because they feel they have to "prove" something and "show everyone what they're worth".

Ségolène Royal's background is, not very surprisingly, somehow quite similar. But she would definitely have been "the lesser evil". Due to her "socialist" profile, she could have been pressured to put into action more socially beneficial policies.

I've had pretty much the same haircut since 8th grade, save for a brief, confused short-hair period, and that I started layering it a few years ago (it not only looks better, but it's easier that way when you cut it yourself). But lately, for some reason, I've been unhappy with the way it looked, and yesterday I decided to try out bangs ...

This is how they looked right after I cut them. It still startles me when I see myself in a mirror. At least Quentin didn't seem to think they were fugly, but then, I wouldn't complain about the silly suits he wears for his teaching jobs, either.
Anyway, if my bangs feel too nasty, after all, they can always grow out pretty quickly ...

Lausitzplatz, Kreuzberg.