Turukhtan

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

A piece of art

Click to see it big. It's a portrait of Mihai. I call it 'The Reluctant Economist' ...

Posted at 6:13 pm by turukhtan
Comments (6)

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Del Mar 8

Well, at least here's someone who seems to be able to make the best of her situation - having a frustrating job, but making hilarious comics about it.

Ladies and Gentlemen - Eleanore Studer's Del Mar 8 (as ranted)!

Posted at 7:03 pm by turukhtan
Comments (3)

Dammit.

Magnus at Utrikespolitiska Föreningen took an interview with me today about Siberia, "because you've been there, and we don't have anyone else". It went better than expected, although I mostly forgot to say all the interesting and important things about Yukos and evil hypocrite oligarchs like Khodorkovsky who pretend to be friends of the working man, although they are the richest man in Russia thanks to tax evasion. Instead, I just rambled on about things like Asian type toilets (well, that's my specialty, after all ...).
So, whatever you do - DON'T tune in to Radio UPF (99.1 MHz) tomorrow at 16.00.

¤ ¤ ¤

I happened to find Art Spiegelman's "In the Shadow of No Towers" at the Lund city library today. The library's comics department surely seems to be getting better and better. (The only problems are that the comics are kept in silly boxes, like children's picture books, and that most books are gone most of the time - the Gothenburg city library, which is a virtual Schlaraffenland, has solved the latter problem by having a large selection of 'reference' comic books that you can't take home).

Anyway, this time I actually read the introduction of a book. There, Spiegelman writes:

"I'd spent much of a decade before the millennium trying to avoid making comix [...]. I'd gotten used to channeling my modest skills into writing essays and drawing covers for The New Yorker. Like some farmer being paid to not grow any wheat, I reaped the greater rewards that came from letting my aptitude for combining the two disciplines lie fallow."

Dammit. I want to draw comics.

There are so many wonderful stories waiting in the back of my mind for the time when I'll be able to put them on paper. Sometimes I fear that that time will never come for most of them. At least I'd like to complete Driftwood before I die. Is that too much to ask ...?

How wonderful it would be if I could actually earn my modest living on drawing the comics I want to - have to - draw. Or, if I could at least have some kind of free time that would be structured enough for me to be anywhere near *productive* at drawing comics.

Posted at 6:39 pm by turukhtan
Comments (8)

Friday, November 26, 2004

The boob diaries part 4 - conclusion

Last Wednesday I went to have the second digging-around-in-breast-with-big-needle session.

It was a different nurse this time, and she didn't hold my hand, but just kept her hand on my shoulder until my insistent hints about what a high tolerance I have against pain convinced her that it wasn't necessary to touch me ...
However, this nurse talked way too much, and absolutely wanted to know all about what I study, what I'm going to be when I grow up (as if I know??), what I'm going to do in the Christmas holidays, if I have any brothers or sisters, where my parents are, if I live alone, etc. She also told the doctor that I study Russian, and as he was indeed Polish, he recited some Pushkin (about the only thing he remembered from his compulsory school Russian) for me while he was digging around in me with that needle, which was quite nice.

Well, I got to stay there until he had made sure that he had really gotten as much tissue as he needed, and after two needle sessions it was all right.

And this morning I got a call from my Kävlinge doctor, who informed me that it was a completely harmless connective tissue cyst.

Oh well. There went the six weeks of stress and anguish.

¤ ¤ ¤

Hmm. It's still kind of irritating to have that little lump there. Part of me wants to get the kitchen knife and cut it out, myself ...

Posted at 4:35 pm by turukhtan
Comments (10)

Thursday, November 25, 2004

About Ukraine ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4043601.stm

"If, at any point, Mr Yushchenko is declared president the situations in Kiev and Donetsk will reverse.
The Donetsk miners - who of course did not answer Mr Yushchenko's strike call - will stop work and go to Kiev, leaving the country without coal in the middle of winter.
Mr Yushchenko's supporters will take down their tents outside parliament and the presidential administration and the miners will erect theirs in their place."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1359397,00.html

"There were anxieties that the threat to shut down factories, schools and transportation risked provoking a crackdown by the outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma, who accused the opposition of trying to carry out 'a coup d'etat'."

It's usually always the wrong people who learn the wrong things from history, so I do hope that Yanukovich or Kuchma don't pull an Iliescu and invite the Donetsk miners to 'clean up' the demonstrations in Kiev, like Iliescu did to the demonstrations in Bucharest 1990, which were complaining about the fact that the same aparatchiks were still sitting in the government. (And yes, Iliescu and his party PSD still rule Romania today ...)
But maybe the situation in Ukraine is a bit different. Yes, there is Russia backing the side of Yanukovich, just like it was on the side of Iliescu in Romania (because the Kremlin would prefer a 'buffer zone' bordering the European Union).
But after all, this is about an election, and not the sitting government. Many independent monitors have stated that it has almost definitely been rigged. Yushchenko's side seems to be trying its best to keep the protests legally backed, and has filed an appeal to the supreme court. It is yet to be seen how it will all end ...

Posted at 11:03 pm by turukhtan
Comments (4)

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Socket from the crypt

An old Romanian socket. I'm not sure how old it is, but it's from Mihai's room, and looks quite interesting ... I took the picture last summer.

Posted at 12:28 am by turukhtan
Comments (4)

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Kick ass!

The Norwegian Chamber of Strength has used one of my blood paintings in their website design.

Posted at 12:38 pm by turukhtan
Comments (13)

Link of the day - the Kostroma moose farm

http://moosefarm.newmail.ru/index.htm (English and Russian)

Quotes from the website:

"When the USSR decided to become worldwide, in the 1930s, war-moose were expected to solve the problem of deep snow cross-country cavalry passability. Moose were trained to carry armed riders and not to be gun-shy. The work hardly could be done before Soviet-Finnish war (1939-1940), and, only several years later, the Second World war revealed that the cavalry became only a pix. [...] After the war, moose was regarded as potential meat and milk domestic animal who will eat lop on wide wood-cuttung areas of USSR."

"... moose are not fools, being free, they will leave a meat farm. So, Kostroma farm turned into a milk one with no more than 10-15 milch moose cows (no more because this is a summer food capacity of adjacent forests). The idea of thousand meat moose herds died forever, but Kostroma farm survived because healing properties of moose milk were discovered. Free ranging moose eat hundreds of plant species, mainly shrubby and arborous, which are not eaten by other ungulates. Perhaps, this predetermines moose milk unique healthfulness. Now the milk is used in the Ivan Susanin Sanatorium for peptic ulcer and some other diseases healing."

Posted at 12:51 am by turukhtan
Comments (3)

Monday, November 15, 2004

All right ...

Everything about my new host is fixed (or so I hope). I bet no one even noticed that anything happened there ...

Now that I have so much space, I'll also move Mitsu's and Sergei's home page to this server, as it's still on the increasingly irritating GeoCities. (The only thing that webhost is good for is hosting illegal material - mwah hah haa!) They'll get a subdomain under me - urburella.kommiekomiks.com ...

Posted at 8:19 pm by turukhtan
Comments (11)

My apologies ...

... that this blog suddenly looks so crappy, and that my website is down. I'm changing my webhost right now, in hopes of more space and less money spent.

Posted at 3:07 pm by turukhtan
Make a comment