lines of flight

A few photos from my recent trip to Northern California.

Not that spectacular, I know. I mainly uploaded them to play with the WordPress NextGEN photogallery plugin. I installed this plugin looking for a fast, easy way to get slideshows online, specifically for Mālamalama magazine, which is now built out in WordPress(!!).

However, I find myself really liking the gallery (thumbnail) navigation. The slideshow gives more control to the creator for things like picture order and audio–we like control at the magazine–but the gallery lets users select the pics they particularly like and breeze through the rest, or not.

The other option for this type of photo presentation would be to make a video with the still shots, but that takes a bit more labor and creates issues of how to insert the caption info. But, video can be hosted on a site like youtube, which reaches a wider audience and can be easily embedded by others.

decisions, decisions…

In Alaska I’ve met women like Sarah Palin.

Okay maybe not as high-powered, but women who shoot, who hunt, who drive four-wheelers, snowmachines (aka snowmobiles) and trucks–who drive very well, period–chop wood if they need to, grow things, raise animals and run a household. These are women you want on your side in a pinch, who hold their own among men and can look cute while they’re doing it! I like and respect these women. I know I’ll always be a helplessly liberal urbanite in comparison, but we can actually get along. Especially if there is alcohol involved. heh.

So I wasn’t mad at Sarah Palin. I don’t want her to run things, not one bit (((understatement))). But I felt like we were cool with each other somehow. That is, until she crossed the line and said this to Katie Couric:

I’m not one of those who maybe came from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say go off and travel the world. No, I’ve worked all my life. In fact, I usually had two jobs all my life until I had kids. I was not a part of, I guess, that culture.

Hey Sarah Palin, guess what? I’ve almost always had a job, or two, or three, since I was 15 years old! We have something in common? Except my parents encourage my study abroad and I scrimp and save so I can travel more in the future. To be able to travel is a blessing, yes, but it’s also a choice almost every healthy, unincarcerated American can make.

Just like how Palin chose to spend her first semester of college at University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, supposedly cliqued up with some other girls who’d transferred with her. After their first semester, they all transferred to Hawaiʻi Pacific University in Honolulu, before she bounced to Idaho or wherever.

I dont know why she didnt like it here. Maybe she missed winter, or didnt like being a racial minority, or living in a very urban environment (or a small town local one like in Hilo). But just coming here to me showed an inquisitive, if not adventurous, streak. Again, respect. So why you gotta be so scornful, Sarah Palin!??

Amazingly she goes on to say,

From ice bar to sauna bar plus communist kitsch in Cuban and Russian flavors, Helsinki drinking establishments are not lacking in novelty. This of course means they are slightly corny and very expensive! A recent travel-section article in USA Today confirms that this trend of theme bars is on the upswing.

After reading the article, I can’t say I’m sad that we didn’t actually make it to the Arctic Ice Bar when we tried a couple years ago, at my insistence. The hours were all messed up and then our party of eight balked at the cover charge. Didn’t even know at the time that the room only seats 12 and has an average visit length of 20 minutes! Sheeeeeeeeeit.

As my charming cousins had already shown us, there are much better places to have a drink in Helsinki. This sounds good tho:

“The most intriguing offering is the $7.25 Fisu shot, found throughout the city. It’s a blender drink made by mixing chilled vodka with pastilles of Fisherman’s Friend, a menthol-flavored cough drop. The result looks filthy brown-black, but the taste is all fresh, Arctic icy burn. It has supplanted in popularity the similar but far more vile [lies!] salmiakki shot, made from vodka and salty licorice candies.”

IDK about “Arctic, icy burn” but it sounds yummy to me, like mentholated Jägermeister, maybe? Or maybe not. This blogger Cracker Lilo from whom I, ahem, borrowed the “fisu and sisu” line (but who is wrong about fisu meaning fish; I think it’s probably based on the name Fisherman’s Friend?), tried it at home after reading the article, even going so far as to try other kinds of cough drops like Sucrets and Halls. LoL!

Another blogger at Necroblogicon was less inspired but equally LoL-able. “The body of a Finn seems to be immune to the nigh-magical hangover inducing quality of this concoction. As a weak American, I spent the next two days dancing on the razor’s edge of vomiting and contemplating suicide. I didn’t cough at all, though, although that may have been because of the acid reflux ripping my esophagus to tiny mentholated pieces.”

In related news, the stereotype of Finland as a nation of alcoholics remains undiminished.

Learned something new about Finland on this travel-video site. I wonder if they eat the heads, or they have to cut the teeth out?

Lamprey have nothing to do with this hilarious article in the Helsingin Sanomat about the “authentic Finnish national costume,” the shellsuit (tracksuit in U.S.-English). However, in the lamprey video, you can see a Finn citizen happily eating flame-broiled lamprey while wearing what looks to be the notorious shellsuit.

There is a reason this get up doesnt make it onto Hel Looks.

Even without any major travel since our jaunt to the Bay Area in May to see Bjork in concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre, my summer was busy with the freelance writing I mentioned and the big deal in July, our QuadMag.com 10-year anniversary party.

Never mind that I was supposed to be working on my MA project, I managed to squeeze in a couple books just for fun: Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia and the last half of Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, which I had on loan from the library since ah, 2005. (Gotta love the generous faculty/staff borrowing privileges.)

The title links above go to amazon via my affiliate name and if anyone buys following these links, I’d get a small commission. I’ll be surprised if this turns into a revenue stream but figured why not, I shop amazon for books, CDs, movies, all kinds of things.

My impressions of these books after the jump.