I did change my hair again though, I was getting bored at the blue and it had started to look kind of moldy (:P) already. Basically I went from this:

To this:

It wasn’t an entirely painless process though, as I was dead set on bleaching the blue away. Well, that didn’t quite obviously work out and a few failed bleaches later I just gave up and dyed the damn thing black again. I actually think it was for the better, because had I not fucked it up I wouldn’t have had to resort to extensions and most likely wouldn’t have gotten that lovely silver color in the next few months at least, hahah. It was a result of trial-and-erroring but I like how it turned out.

In other news I am sick of the winter already, it’s too cold to wear anything but my thickest winter coat most of the time and it’s way too slippery to wear anything but my combat boots. Granted, I could try, but I assume I would either just freeze to death or break my legs if I tried to venture outside in frillz and rocking horses, hahah.

So, aside from real life, what has been keeping me off this blog business lately is, as stupid as this sounds, this game:

Megaten, also known as Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE. Basically, it’s an SMT MMORPG. If you play it as well, let me know and I’ll add you to my friends list. :B It’s free to play, too, so if you’re looking for something to effectively kill time with, do help yourself to the client. And then tell me your usernames so that I can add you to my friends list, hahah.

Other than that, I almost completely missed the fact that Project Runway’s 7th season started airing. Thankfully I had forgotten to take project_eps on LJ off my watch list and found out that way. Can’t say much about it yet, but whatever, Project Runway is always good.

I am hungry as all hell, I really hope the pizza I ordered would get here ASAP.

I have been all over the place since the 21st and have just gotten back home mere hours ago so I am too tired to write much, I’ll just give up before I even start trying to write anything with a point and just post about my lovely newly-acquired materia, hahah.

I got the R-series Chrono Cruise jacket I ordered back in August (…) in the mail a few days ago, and to my disappointment I definitely ordered a size too small. This is a new one for me because everything tends to be too big for me on principle, but oh well. I love the design and I can squeeze myself into it, not being able to lift my arms is only a small disadvantage, hahah.

In other news, I spent the christmas money I got & then some on this beauty (I got it for about 70€ below its approximate retail price):

I titled this one ARMED & DANGEROUS aka peeniksenjatke extraordinaire. I have wanted to get a telephoto lens since the day I got my new camera, but they are way out of my price range. My prayers were answered when I saw this one on post-christmas sale, and I like it. I haven’t taken proper test shots with it mainly because I need to take it outside to do so and I have been too busy and it has been way too cold… But I already spied on the neighbours in the opposite building with it, so yeah, it’s cool.

I asked for my parents to give me some cash as a christmas present so that I could save up for a new phone, more precisely a Samsung Jet, but to my surprise my parents decided to be awesome and just got the phone for me instead. The w660i I had before this one was on its last legs, it kept crashing all the time and the battery life was a joke. I decided I’d rather get a phone that has functions that will still keep me happy a few years from now on rather than get a cheap phone just for the sake of getting a new phone. I didn’t imagine my parents would have actually gotten it for me since it was almost 400€, but hey, I don’t complain.

In clothes-related news, I got these two shirts, belt and bag on sale. Nothing special, but my wardrobe really needs upgrading again so anything new and passably nice is a plus, hahah.

Hmmm, that’s about it. I didn’t make any official new year’s resolutions, but I told myself to get off my lazy ass and both sew more and wear the frills more often this year. I am not holding my hopes up, knowing myself and my lazy ass all too well, but I can always try. Anyway, I’ll be back with something more interesting sooner or later, over and out for now!

Merry christmas (or whatever else you are celebrating this time of the year!) to everyone!
For the time being I am stuck at my parents’ house for the holidays with my Aspire One netbook as my computer, so it would be safe to say that I won’t be blogging at all before I am safely back home, and might not be posting again before 2010. In case that happens, happy new year’s to everyone, too!

I’ll be back once I am reunited with my iMac and have the time. Until then, I am going to leave you guys with a photo of a lonely coffee mug I saw at a gas station during our drive from Helsinki to Kouvola:

Anyway, that’s it for now. It might seem like I have died for a while, but I can assure I am only suffering from an acute iMac deficiency.

I picked up two new Sex Pot items from the customs today… I’ve been spending so much money on the frills this year that I unofficially banned myself from buying more until next year (not that I can really even afford any at the moment) and told myself to only buy “regular” clothes if I must buy clothes in the first place. So here we go, the beanie and the shirt are new, the jeans are Sex Pot as well but they’re old. My favourite pair of jeans, hands down.

Other than that, well, not much. Project Runway Finland’s finale is airing in an hour, and to celebrate that I ordered pizza and bought wine. Trutfully the whole show hasn’t been all too interesting, but I am a huge Project Runway fan and still followed through it even though the American (and some of the others, like PRCanada) are much better and more entertaining. I just ordered the pizza because I can’t cook for shit and am hungry, and bought the wine because I didn’t have any. But I can’t say that having some pizza and wine with my PR finale would make it a worse experience by any means, hahah.

It has also been fucking freezing here recently, the temperature dropped from -2 to -10 (and more) a few days ago. I am not amused, but it’s kind of pretty outside right now:

The photo is from my balcony, so it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing view, but it gives you the idea.

Fashion vs. lifestyle is something I have been thinking about every now and then since I first became interested in gothic fashion. And while I was sitting here in the middle of the night, in my red and black room, with candles as my only light source and the smell of an opium incense lingering in the air, sipping my red wine I realised just how cliche I am without intending to be, and thought that it would be a good time to write about this, hahah.

I’ll say it straight away; I don’t try to live up to any “lifestyle guidelines”, especially ones that relate to something as pointless as the stuff I prefer to wear. When I first got into gothic stuff, I was about 12 and was concerned that if I don’t do or like certain things, I can’t live up to the “standards”. Oh how wrong I was, but it’s funny to reminisce back to it and realise that I was just young and stupid back then. Nowadays I see kids on the internets trying their best to live up to gothic or lolita “lifestyles”, and I just snicker to myself because I remember how I was at their age.

What is a “gothic lifestyle” or a “lolita lifestyle”, anyway? Who says what it can be and what it cannot be? There are tons of guides on the internet on how to live a lifestyle up to the fashion you love. Why do they exist in the first place? For me, I started loving the gothic style back then because I had always been into the darker aesthetics. It just took me forever to realise that it worked that way instead of me liking the things I like because they are “gothic”. And that’s just fine.

But there are instances when people try to force theirselves to fit into a specific, assumed, “lifestyle” of a subculture (whichever it is). It should not be that way. There are no set guidelines. There might be things that a majority of the people in subculture x like, but you shouldn’t feel forced to like them if you simply don’t. Each subculture naturally attracts people with often similar interests, but as said, just because the majority in a subculture likes something and you don’t, it doesn’t make you any less “real” than the majority.

To me, subculture lifestyles are bullshit. The only lifestyle I follow is mine, and if some of it falls into the cliche gothic category, then hey, that’s fine. Point being; keep on doing the things you like and liking the things you like. Whatever they may be, it’s your (insert subculture) lifestyle.

I am going to keep liking my candles and my red wine, but I will also keep liking my bad eurodance and wearing my jeans and t-shirts most of the time. I genuinely like all of them, and it would be a shame to have to stop liking something I like just because it’s not “gothic” enough. Not that I even call myself a goth, because I am way too lazy with my frillz (and I bet some of the “true” goths out there would just laugh at my japanogoth stuff, but do I really care? No!), hahah. I am me, and I do things that make me happy. That’s what your “gothic” or “lolita” or whatever “lifestyle” should be about, and nothing else.

Of course, this is just my personal opinion. Someone out there will surely disagree with me, and that’s fine. Some people probably like the “guidelines” of specific subculture lifestyles. If that makes them happy, then more power to them! For me it would just feel like living up to someone else’s ideal standards, and it certainly wouldn’t make me feel happy or natural. But each to their own, of course.

With that said, here’s a (completely unrelated, but hey, I had to stick it in some post) small series of photos I took of my dorries for an assignment (not that they really relate to the assignment title at all, but whatever):