diedieDIE

Trying to get information from a website that has anything to do with the Finnish government is like trying to squeeze lemon juice from a rock. With one hand. While holding the other hand in a tub of boiling oil. And breathing inside a plastic bag. And standing barefoot in dogshit. And listening to pop country music really, really loud.

Also, it's dawn, and after hours and, like, all day at the computer, I still don't know if one of the programs I was looking for (I spent at least three hours just trying to find out what the name of it was, and then kept thinking I was Wrong because pages of results would come up referring only to Sweden, even if I put 'Finland' in the search terms) even exists in this city. I found out that another does (restoration! Which is for furniture and houses and sounds like the COOLEST THING to me!), but I don't think it counts because it wasn't what I started trying to find out in the first place. Also, I've managed to confirm with 100% certainty that the information I want doesn't exist on the internet. Apparently you have to walk there in person and ask for it on paper. (In 2003, the same was true of the University of Turku, which is pretty big. You'd think the most cell phone-saturated country in the world would be a little more networked.)

OH GREAT

Now the fucking microwave's broken.

Fuck you too, forces of entropy! For the love of Enya, I wanted to use the kitchen appliance budget on a blender! Farewell, smoothies. ;_;

Onions --> Arthurian Legend

Via, of course, shallots - small, sweet onions otherwise known as everyone's favourite (or least favourite) humourous misspelling of astolat's pseudonym. After an onion-related culinary disaster I was contemplating switching to shallots because they come in smaller packages - more single-serving, as it were - and then I started thinking, as one does, about the Lady of Shalott, and poking around Wikipedia.

I mean:

• Why is it called both 'Shalott' and 'Astolat' (answer: nobody on Wikipedia knows; Tennyson is their only cited source for the former)?


• What, exactly, was the nature/origin of the curse on the lady?


• How come there's not more legend about her besides like 'o hai there's a hot guy whoops I'm dead'?

Well! The big W told me that Tennyson's source for the legend was a medieval Italian book called Cento Novelle Antiche, so I looked for that version, and was rather surprised to discover that according to it, the lady was in love with Lancelot in the normal way but he ignored all her pleas because he was in love with Guinevere (Ginevra in the translation I saw, which I guess is the Italian version of the name). So she died of love (or possibly killed herself?), stipulating in her will that her corpse was to be arranged in state on a barge and sent to Camelot with a nasty Dear John letter on it explaining how she died because he was so meaaaaaaaaaaan to her. In other words, she was a psycho stalker! Nice. A bit Ophelia-esque. I like Tennyson's better, but then, who wouldn't?