Winter debris

I've been feeling particularly delirious lately, it's like I have a giant Christmas hangover that won't really let go. I'm struggling to turn my sleeping pattern from sitting-up-all-night-munching-candy-and-watching-old-films to get-up-while-it-is-still-light-and-get-stuff-done. I'm a weak person. It's so difficult, despite that I've moved from tea to coffee to up the caffeine intake. The combination of lack of sleep and excessive amounts of caffeine is fun though, it's like being on some wacky drug that turns my thoughts into a hyperactive flower. Does that make sense? It makes sense to me, which should tell all there is to know about my state of mind.

But the real reason I'm writing this is to have another little maniac rant about how lovely winter is. Proper winter that is, with snow and temperatures below the freezing point. This is my first winter in Helsinki when the place hasn't been a dark soggy hell hole, and I'm loving it. I get to wear my amazing knitwear without sweating, there are lots of fun stuff to do and everything is PRETTY. All things dull and ugly are hidden under a pristine white carpet.

Also, we got a camera for Christmas,  so I can now lurk around the neighbourhood taking pictures of everything I see.
What I've particularly noticed lately is all the debris and lost stuff that seems so visible in the snow. Particularly lost knitwear. The fact that a lost mitten on the street will be carefully picked up by a stranger and placed somewhere nearby where it is easy to see and won't get lost in snow makes me believe that there is something essentially good in humankind. We are not only selfish, we also care about strangers we will never meet.

All this glory must, as everything , have a soundtrack. Winter just seems even more wintery when I'm listening to "Winter" by Tori Amos,  Cocteau Twins' version of "Winter Wonderland" and  for some reason I don't quite understand: Enya's "Anywhere is". I'm frankly amazed that I'm not tired of it yet.


Was there a proper red thread in this post? Not really. Just some ramblings about how great winter is. But there is a red woollen cap. That'll do.

"Reccomended for you"

I have a YouTube account. Or rather I have a gmail account that can also be used for logging in to YouTube. Anyway, I thought that it was a good idea to make use of the account. Partly because I have a tendency to watch videos I really like over and over and over again.

And again.

And then some more.

Just like an annoying 5 year old actually.

Thus it is practical to be able to "favourite" my favourites, saving myself the 10 extra seconds it would take to search for them. I'm very busy wasting time on the internet, I have to do it effectively.

The other reason for having a personal YouTube is the "reccomended for you" function. I have great experience with this kind of thing from amazon (I made this link to my wishlist, just in case anyone who reads this would ever want to buy me a present) which makes me spend quite a lot of cents ordering library books, and Last.fm, which makes me spend a fortune on hard-to-get music.

Why waste time looking for things I like when there is companies out there who are just too happy to do it for me (while probably making a profile on me in order to sell me stuff more efficiently or for whatever sinister reasons they might have)?

I live in the 21st century, I'm lazy and I want to be entertained.

So, since the "reccomended for you" section in YouTube for some unfathomable reason think I want to see hip-hop videos and "hot girls" I decided to tick the little sqare that says "stay logged in". If I stay logged in, all the YouTube videos I watch will be taken into account and thus my reccomended videos would be perfectly suited to my taste and personality. Maybe, in our culture where what you consume define who you are, it can even give a subtle hint of what kind of person I am.

The resulting reccomended video is this:

squashed cat

I haven't seen it, and I don't want to know what kind of profile I have in Google Inc's archives.