1960's in 2009.

I developed some rolls of Diana photos this weekend, which included a couple of experimental yellow-tinted lomography shots. I don't even remamber taking this one, but it is from the Belladrum Festival about a month ago. A well-captured moment that truely looks way before my time. Sometimes my crap photography-skills surprises me. Love it!

500 days of summer.

loving loving loving this movie!

the last fading moments of carlisle.

Today I completely left the city that used to be my home for three years. Anything that might be left behind is finder's keepers or garbage. I'm not coming back. "Enjoy our house, please take care of her", I said before I closed the door without no longer having the key to it. I loved that house and I will always miss it. As I walked towards the city centre I didn't look back once. It was cold and raining slightly. My iPod ran out of battery in the middle of Sufjan Stevens. The tunnel between Bitts Park and the city council had lots of spider web hanging from the sealing. Almost as though the city hadn't cared about taking care of itself since I moved out more than a month ago. It seemed sad and a little ashamed. As if windows and lamp-posts and traffic signals all said "Goodbye, Stina. It was nice knowing you. Please don't feel too bad about us". I thought about how young and scared I was when I first came here and how much older I feel now when I'm actually leaving it. My thoughts used to revolve around getting used to Carlisle, being stuck in Carlisle, dreaming of getting out of Carlisle. And now I am there. Carlisle is over. I have no hard feelings.

090909.

Stuff like "End of the world" freaks people out. I suppose especially if you're an atheist. That's why people who are not atheist loves to come up with their little predictions to when the world's coming to an end, just so that they can piss people off and toy with their fears and thereby have more people coming to their churches. As if they know when the world's gonna end. Yeah, of course they do, they are buddies with God. Anyway, I read somewhere that the world was gonna end on September 9 2009. I guess because that would be 090909, and when turned upside down it's the devil's number. Oh, scary... I'm just wondering why nothing happened on June 6 2006 then... Whatever, my point is that September 9 2009 has been a lazy ass shit piece of a day, filled with migraine and angry phonecalls to Parcelforce Worldwide. I certainly hope those smart-ass end-of-the-world predictors where wrong, because it would kinda suck if this was the last day ever. I wouldn't bet on it at least, seems like the world is saving up for the big show in 2012, when it's REALLY suppose to happen. Yeah, Hollywood even made a stupid apocalyptic "everything's gonna be ok - haha, just kidding" movie that will be impossible to beat in terms of catastrophy. It's called "2012" and I don't wanna see it. That whole prediction is super-lame and supposed to be based on an ancient Maya calendar. Apparently their calendar ended on December 20 2012, hence everyone's going insane and claiming that's the end of the world. Yeah, I bet those Maya indians just got fed up with their tedious work of making a handmade super-duper calendar, so they just said "Guys, this really sucks, let's go get high on a jungle snake's venom" or something like it.

manchester.

I spent last weekend with some friends in Manchester. Snapped this shot of a spntaneous stripper.

glasgow.

Have been living here for a month now. It's only NOT been raining for one day. Or.. no, wait, it rained that day too. So far Glasgow is alright though. But if I catch the people who let their dogs shit like fucking elephants on the street, I'll kick their sorry little asses to the moon! Other adventures that has happened during the last few days involve being robbed by Greenpeace, witnessing a massive street-cat fight between two middle aged men, walking next a man who threw up spontaneously, rediscovering The X-Files, getting anti-biotics and possibly being allergic to cats. Somehow the summer never happened here and I constantly have wet socks. Glasgow has its little surprices though. The area where I work is really neat. The architecture is inspired by Venice and doesn't look one bit Scotish, so I sort of imagine I'm in a place where sunny days are actually possible. I just have to ignore the smell of brewery.

blue skies.

Just rememebr seeing Noah & the Whale's movie "First Days of Spring" at Belladrum, and this song has really stuck with me. It's a bit of an encouraging song when the weather here in Glasgow is pretty dodgy. Really lovely movie as well, very cute and beautiful.

devotchka.

This post is very overdue, but I wanted to post it anyway. I went to the Belladrum Festival outside Inverness, Scotland a few weeks ago. Besides sneaking into an after-party backstage, seeing a drag queen lick a tampon from her ass, get a spiritual reading and sing sing-a-long to Mama Mia like I've never done anything else, I'd say that these guys were the best thing at the festival. They're called DeVotchka and are not eastern European, but just regular Americans who happens to have awesome skills in weird musical instruments. They did the music in Little Miss Sunshine and are definitely worth checking out!

bye bye belah.

I am now a poor design graduate, based in Glasgow, sitting in my room with two darling cats awaiting new adventures (hopefully with some cash involved), and I miss my Belah Crescent sisters more than ever. Rushe and Mikaela (not in picture), you're the best psycho-analysing, pie-baking, bbq-ing, ass-shaking, Swedish bitches a Stingosaur can have. I love you and I hope we'll have a reunion soon.

yey, summer...!

Don't really know what day it is. Or month or year. No, I'm not drunk or worse. I've just been spending so much time in front of my computer screen, busting my ass off for design and design and design. Doing freelance, my own million projects and applying for possible futures in the glorious, impossible, design feild for immortals. I know I've been sitting in front of the computer for too long when my headphones starts to act funny. That's like the biggest Western World disaster of today, I think. When I can't be hooked up with music. It really freaks me out. Have to go buy new headphones now. Crap.
I've seen so much great design work online recently I've started to feel like a complete hopeless UCUM victim. Such a shitty university that is. Seriously, if anyone anywhere considers to enroll at that piece of shit school, I hope you'll google it and find this blog-entry and follow my advice and NOT even consider to attend. I've just realised how angry I've been for three years and how unnecessary that anger was. It just drained my motivation and eneergy to actually do something useful. Now I'm a graduate and I'm much better than I think I am, but baring in mind all the stupid stuff my tutors sometimes told me, makes me completely stressed out. As if nothing I do is ever good enough. It feels completely unfair.
This summer is all scizofrenic (how on earth do you spell that word?). It's like it can't decide to be nice and warm, but at the same time not be completely shit either. It's something in between and both and I don't know if I like it. I just stay inside anyway and hope that the tan I got a few weeks ago will last for some time.
Yey, this is my very confused and tired summer. Next year I wanna go someplace warm and awesome.

regina!

Ah, can't believe I miss another opportunity to see Regina Spektor... And this time she's only doing one show in the entire UK before she heads back to the lucky bastards in the states. Dammit! I've been wanting to see her for five freakin' years! And everytime she's been performing anywhere near where I live, I've always been occupied with stupid things like work or poverty or school. Dammit! I guess I just have to move to the states then, huh. Regina's new album "Far" is pretty darn awesome by the way. Love it, love it, love it!

handmade sketchbooks.

A few handmade sketchbooks is finished, but I'm planning to make heck of a lot more. They will all be available for sale on my website when they are all made, no later than August. Let me know if you'd like to buy one.

way new.

As I write this, stingosaurus.com is being updated big time. I'm not a student anymore, so I have to look more like a pro now, ey? It's gonna look great, make sure to have a look at it (and give me lots of jobs). Other than that I don't have much to report. Summer is here and I produce millions of books, hang out at secret beaches, do freelance stuff and carry tons of trash to the recycling bin at Morrison's.

50 years of kicking ass.

On this day, 50 years ago, Ingemar "Ingo" Johansson became Heavyweight World Champion by bringing down Floyd Patterson in Madison Square Garden. Hats off to Ingo for being the coolest Swedish person of all time! R.I.P

everybody's free to wear sunscreen

Aweful 90's graphics but some really good advice.

my mum kicks ass.

My mum recieved an award because she's like the best crafts teacher in the world. I love you, mum!

printing like hell-hell-helvetica?

Another day in the printing studio. It's insanely hard work, man!

what we do for a living.

Have been spending all day at uni, screen printing millions of t-shirts today. I'm trying to make the most out of the facilities now, while I can. I'm surpriced I'm the only one there. Screen printing is so much fun. A lot of hard work, but so awesome! Among the tees I've made today is a series of t-shirts about what certain people do for a living. The featured people are Tom Cruise, Albert Einstein and Ingemar Johansson. It's a little odd, considering that two of them are dead, and can't really do anything for a living anymore. But consider them as what they used to do for a living. The final stuff will be photographed properly and posted here and on the website in a soon future. Since I'm making so many, I might put them up for sale as well.

summer comes to carlisle too.

It's been a while since my last entry. Or maybe it hasn't, but I just feel like time is either speeded up or going very slow. Probably because so many things happen everyday, because I think I have a lot of stuff to do, or that I actually have a lot of stuff to do. I don't know. Time is weird. Some things seem like they happened yesterday, like moving to England and contemplating dropping out after a few days, when in fact it was 3 years ago. Other things, like going to Newcastle to see Timourous Beasties and have sushi, seem like 10 years ago, when it happened just last October. And then Christmas was last week in my head, but going to New York was probably last year. It's all upside down. One thing is for sure though; summer is here now. It actually comes to Carlisle as well. I can tell, because I fell asleep in the sun and does therefore have very red arms now. Summer is awesome, but it's not good for design. Sitting in front of my Mac computer these days is such a party-pooper. I think there will be a lot of design nights from now on; going to work when the sun sets. Kind of like a graphic design vampire (oh, damn, I saw that Twilight movie by the way. I laughed so hard. Who the fuck wrote the script for that shitty piece of film? Worst emo-lines ever!).

done walking with my regular shoes.

Finally, it's finished. Done Walking With My Regular Shoes is my new book and it's done, it's printed, it's bound and it's great. It feels like I have a baby. When I woke up this morning, my first thought was to check on the book, to see that everything was okay. My head was all soar from not getting enough sleep, but I had to check on it. The glue was dried, the pages looked alright, flipping the pages worked. And it makes me feel so proud. I'm super happy with it. I can't believe I've done it. The tutors will probably hate it, I'm sure. I'm sketch-book-Stina, right? I'm not supposed to deal with typography and photographs, it's too late to learn new things when you're a 3rd year student. I don't want to hand this in. Fuck final major projects! Fuck uni! I don't want to be associated with them, I wanna be Stingosaurus and do awesome things for the rest of my life. Just do what I love and screw everyone else. Is it okay to say that? Will anyone hire me or publish my work if I say what I really feel? I'm so done with tipping on my toes around people with "athority", just to not offend anyone or being afraid to be put in a possition where I don't get anything. I'm so done with being catagorized and do the same thing to other people. It makes me fucking upset and pissed off and I just want to be free from it. Right now my mind is end-of-project-blurry and this anger probably doesn't make any sense to you. It's partly what my book is about though, but being set in New York instead of crappy Carlisle, so perhaps you should read it. When things are getting a little less crazy around here, I think I'll put it on Lulu.com where people can actually buy the book. Let me know if you want to order a copy.

a very tiny book.

Just made this tiny little mock-up of my upcoming book. So far it's rough experiments put together. But hopefully, by working with the crazy speed that I've had for the last couple of weeks, it will be shiny gold making-evil-people-cry beautiful when it's completely finished.

cre-active.

Time's 00.30 and I'm cre-active (actively creative). Picked up new photos today. Had to have fun with them. Can't go to sleep otherwise!