Roads to Safe Places

This is more a memo to myself than anything. I found this blog, entitled "Fat free vegan kitchen", while searching for cookie recipes, and not only do their cookies look amazing, they also have a lot of other recipes that look great, like a lentil soup. Must check out the rest.

To His Mistress Going to Bed

Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy ;
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe ofttimes, having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing, though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glittering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breast-plate, which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopp'd there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed-time.
( Read more... )

I had to take a break from the internet because reading blogs became just too time-consuming, so if I commented even less than usual it was not because I don't care, but because I am working on my big, scary thesis. It's going ok - but I am scared out of my mind that I won't finish it, that it won't be any good. I have about a third in rough draft and the remaining two thirds in notes, which is probably good, but I am not fast enough. I wanted to have half of it down by now, but both the chapter on events and the chapter on performativity are giving me more pain than I thought they would. Can't wait to start with the actual work on the texts properly, though, the looking forward to doing that is what keeps me going right now.

( Adventures with soy milk )

Other than that, I've mostly been reading for the big, scary thesis and playing the trumpet. Which is still a lot of fun, and I'm playing about three times a week now, and I like the way it's going. The sounds that come out of my instrument sound a lot better than they did in the beginning, and I am gathering confidence to join Crocky's ensemble after Pentecost.

Now I only have to get my act together and work harder than I have done so far. And stop being scared.

Recently, an article in Die Zeit on the role of German fathers in time of post-feminism sparked a lively discussion  gender wank in the comment section that is still going on a couple of months later. I occasionally read the comments only to find that people seem to be following this guide to the letter: Derailing for Dummies. Read it. It's brilliant.

Die Zeit is supposed to be a German quality paper but the comment section is a gathering of tabloid brains who use their college vocabulary to discuss issues that were relevant back in the nineties and say things that I usually only hear from particularly dim YouTube users.

The gist is: we have achieved equality, the pay gap is a thing of the past, all feminists hate men, and where are my rights and my "boy's day"? It is women are damaging men because there are so many of them in our educational system, so that's one way how women oppress men: by forcing men out of the educational system. Also, evil women force their weak partners to be a "New Man" and then leave them for the "old" kind, leaving their poor partners battered and broken - which only goes to show how much more powerful women are these days.

People are spouting things like these:

• "How dare you call me misogynistic! I was only saying that women are clearly better suited for child raising and men for studying physics, it's in their nature, and everything else would be denying basic facts of biology."
• "You do realise that your tone is not helping your cause, don't you?"
• "How is it not oppressive that boys don't have Girl's Day!"
• "Since we have equality, the only role in life that men have left is that of impregnating the women who choose them, how come women aren't conscious of that immense power they have over men? They can choose them! They are more powerful than men, who have to fight for women."
• "Oh, sweetie, that is so typical for a radfems like you. Really, it makes me laugh, how can you expect us to take any of this seriously?"

To make it worse, it's all in the awkward, letter-to-the-editor-style my countrywomen and -men use when conversing online, and it's in my mother tongue, so that comfy linguistic and emotional puffer zone I have when I read idiots discuss these things in English is non-existent and ten minutes and three pages into the discussion I feel like strangling someone. It's not only the sheer small-minded ignorance of the arguments, it's the vocabulary. If people use words like "radfem" or "feminazi" in English, it's just a word, it doesn't have any of the playground-humiliation connotation "Kampflesbe" or "Kampfemanze" have (although nowadays I think that "Kampflesbe" [militant dyke] is pretty cool).

The way the mostly upper class users don't realise that in this world, not everything is about them and that there are plenty of people, like, for example, "working class" girls and boys or people with a background in migration who still do NOT have the opportunities they themselves had is truly baffling, not unusual, judging by the experiences I had in education courses with gender topics at my university. When they do discuss people Not Them, they do so with a detached, generalising arrogant ignorance which is not much better. Gnah.

It's a bad outlook when discussions I have with xenophobic High School dropout teenagers from the US about why LGBT people should all be locked up in jail are less threatening for my faith in mankind than merely reading discussions among supposedly educated, self-proclaimed "liberal-" and "open-minded" Germans. 

Something nice for a change: I usually only whine about this city, but finally, I found something that I love about this city: it has may bugs!!
Yay, may bugs!


I saw the first ones today on my way to my appointment with my GP and rescued two from the street and put them back between some shrubs in the park. I hope they don't get stepped on.

I love, love, love these beetles, and I am not sure whether I should be glad that I don't live in a time in which they are so numerous that they they threaten our harvests or sad that they are so rare that when I saw one of them today I stopped and watched it until it has waggled out of sight, trying to remember when I've last seen one - which was back in the late nineties, and even back then my mother called me to show it to me because it was such a rare sight.

Also, I found 'Es gibt keine Maikäfer mehr'  on YouTube - ah, childhood memories - and pest control wank in the comments. Seriously, Reinhard Mey fans, I would have thought you were above that. o_O.

In a part of the mines without dwarven (architectural) remains, that is. I also love how they seem to have used the exact filter set the guys who did the Twilight movie used just to ram home the fact that the story of this movie is really Serious Business, and serious business requires an excess of blues and grey rather than pinks and yellows, apparently. I liked movies which are able to create this effect without filters, but tastes differ.

So, we watched the newish Harry Potter trailer this morning and while there are many things in there that I really like, there are also things that I did not enjoy, unsurprisingly. One was the gollum-inferi and the interior of the cave. Maybe there is not much creative leeway with caves.

( In case you're worried about spoilers )

Also, while I am quite weary of the changes they made, I am looking forward to this movie because in spite of the gratuitous filter use (look at those colours!) it is so stunningly pretty. Adaptation-wise I doubt that these people's assessment of the movie is wrong, though - concentration of romance and changes to the ending sound exactly like what I would have expected. The spoilers of the movie found here and here also don't really make me that exited about this.


( More trailer stills and thoughts )

Right. Back to different concepts of performativity and mediality.

Take a look at this:


Does this look... somehow... adult-themed to you? (Click here if you want to look at it in all its NSFW glory).

No?

Well, sorry, you sexually depraved deviant, you obviously don't share Amazon's family values (and shame on you, just look at it. It's clearly promoting not only the homosexual lifestyle, but also bestiality). This is clearly more offensive than, say,  the 120 days of Sodom. At least according to Amazon.com - as you may have already read, they're removing some titles from "some searches and bestseller lists and  the sales rankings from books they consider "adult themed".

Personally, I have no idea who makes the chops and why. King and King retains its ranking, so does The Different Dragon. My Daddy's Roommate does not, nor does Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimmingpool Library, or Fingersmith, but as I said, some editions of the 120 Days of Sodom do.

I wonder where this is going, especially considering some of the other books and merchandise allowed to keep its rating.

There's a summary of what has been going on here in case you're interested, and here is an affected writer's timeline.

This is gonna be good, I can tell.

EDIT: And the plot thickens. A SA employee's post on the AmazonFail proposed a different theory. According to him (1) either a vigilante organisation comparable to Innocence Jihad during during strikethrough/boldthrough/LoLJ's been reporting books with a specific kind of tags en masse, resulting in their adult flagging, (2) in addition to that, considering that apparently, Amazon's reporting system is not automatised, someone made "mistakes" influenced by personal bias when marking books as "adult themed" - or (3) someone did it for the lulz.

What gets me about the whole thing are the kind of books which were affected - LGBT books, no surprise there, it's common practice that any media with LGBT content are flagged as "adult", BDSM-related books, see above, but survivors, too? And feminists? Huh.

There is also early troll claims authorship of this and oh god, there is a twitter and an article on the Guardian (thanks, Bron).

Oh, I'll be needing some more popcorn for this.

Glory be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him.

- Gerald Manley Hopkins

... with apple sauce filling because I loved the different textures in my Blackout muffins so much. They did not turn out as pretty, but they are tasty and the smell is amazing.

I used lordhellebore 's recipe, halved, because I did not want to make as many cupcakes. I also used two apples for both cupcakes and apple sauce partly because I enjoy the rich taste of the apples we bought last week and because they needed eating up.



For the sauce, I used two diced apples, a table spoon of cinnamon and a pinch of ginger. Instead of anything fancy I just eased a spoonful of the stuff into the still warm cupcakes - unfortunately, they collapsed during the process, resulting in the crater look above. I lost track of time half-way through and was scared that I had not baked them enough to boot, so I put them back in for another five minutes in the already cooling oven - now the dough is golden brown and crunchy, but sadly, they remained in their collapsed state.

Crocky loves them, even though I used too much cinnamon in the dough. I'll give them another shot next week.

The Church of.... Body Modification?

Really?

I found another reason today to hate Psychology Today. We all know that we're not suppose to dress like those filthy, filthy sluts, right? No short skirts and no make-up and nothing that invites the poor driven rapists to rape us, because of course those poor people can't control themselves, right?

So, don't wear something too riling, otherwise you might have been, "asking for it". And don't walk too confidently, because you might be riling them, anyway:

 

For this reason, robbers are especially apt to target people who are flaunting material possessions or even just displaying a cocky, superior attitude. Street predators have their own word for such behavior—"flossing"—and it infuriates them. "It's a very visible reminder of their situation," Wright adds, "of being poor, that they've got nothing in their pockets."

Psychology Today would also like to inform you that if you dress too modestly, you are as, if not more likely to be attacked because high necklines and full-body cover as well as bowed down walk = submissive personality and a flirty invitation for sex.

"The same team also found that rapists tend to be more able than average to interpret facial cues, such as a downward gaze or a fearful expression. It's possible this skill makes rapists especially able to spot passive, submissive women. One study even showed that rapists are more empathetic toward women than other criminals—although they have a distinct empathy gap when it comes to their own victims. A highly attuned rapist and a woman who's oblivious to hostile body language make a dangerous combination.

Even personality plays a role. Conventional wisdom holds that women who dress provocatively draw attention and put themselves at risk of sexual assault. But studies show that it is women with passive, submissive personalities who are most likely to be raped—and that they tend to wear body-concealing clothing, such as high necklines, long pants and sleeves, and multiple layers. Predatory men can accurately identify submissive women just by their style of dress and other aspects of appearance. The hallmarks of submissive body language, such as downward gaze and slumped posture, may even be misinterpreted by rapists as flirtation."

So you can totally prevent being raped or robbed by wearing confidently, but not flaunting what you have, not wearing provocative clothes, but not too modest ones, not engage in conversation with men and walking away, but not in a submissive way because that might just be too flirty, and everyone knows that flirty women were asking for it. Because being a rape victim can totally be prevented and is all about the personality of the victim rather than that of the rapist.

I know that walking around while on the phone in back alleys is about as bright as entering the Shades before the times of the Thieves' Guild, but the attitude of this article seems to be that those who do the right things will never be raped or mugged, and that is just bullshit.
 

( They offer some tips on risk reduction. )
So, be a good girl and stay at home, and always make a point on dressing the right way!

Given the entire purpose of MMORPGs it's rather strange, but I used to hate instances. This is why I didn't do them very often, which is why I sucked at them, which is why I didn't like going - especially with my Shadow Priest, because even though my DPS sort of sucked, I sucked even worse at healing, which I was usually forced to do, because, "Of course you'll manage! It's not that hard!" - which of course it was, especially in Ulda, where it's at times nigh impossible to see anyone and people kept running out of reach or not wait for the drinking casters, which is why no heals arrived, which is why they ended up dying a lot, which is why they got angry at me, which is why I avoided dungeon invites.
So - not really my thing.

Until I started going with people who know what they're doing, and until I started playing a class I enjoy rolling in a dungeon. Yes, I know, everybody loves them, they are ridiculously overpowered, they will be nerfed and stop being so awesome, but to my battered cloth-wearing little heart it is such a relief to be able to play a fierce and plate-encased imba melée class, it's bliss.

In other words I have just spent the evening on a different server than usual doing ridiculously fast Hellfire Ramparts/Blood Furnace runs with three other DKs, among them niaseath, of course, and a Priest and Shammy, rounding it off with an stint into the Slave Pens. And I Had A Good Time.



My DPS didn't suck, either, but maybe that was just everybody else only having played their DK for a couple of days and in one case being two level below the rest of us. Still, during the fight with Quagmirran I ended up top of the damage meter for the first time ever, and seeing as this is about my seventh time in an instance at all, I'm rather pleased with myself.

Fun. Me. In a dungeon. Go figure. 

Yesterday evening I discovered that the full moon was reflected in our skylight in a way that, to my delight, made it look as though we had four moons. I did not manage to take proper pictures of it, but it looked pretty awesome. Ever since I went to the planetarium with my mother for the first time and heard about the amount of natural satellites in our solar system I regretted that we have only one (hey, Saturn has over fifty, Jupiter over sixty, even Mars managed to catch himself two, but out loser planet sticks with one).



( More moon (3) )

Other than that, I am still shocked about the tragedy at the German school in Baden-Württemberg yesterday. Another school shooting, more cookie-cutter articles on it which read exactly like the ones from last time, covers full of crying teenage girls, speculations about shooters, Counter-Strike and porn and still no idea what to do to keep students from running amok in our schools. I doubt that any of the suggestions that have been made - psychologists at schools (didn't help Finland), metal detectors (didn't help the US), even stricter gun control (didn't help us)- is going to help.
What is so baffling that it is nearly funny is what is going on in the comment sections of major German papers - some blame the "injured pride of the German middle class male which does not commit honour crimes like lower class children with a background in migration, but run amok with guns". Another user "blames the miss-matched gender ratio in the German educational system", the "lack of role-models", and yet another user muses that it might be a good idea to force parents to notify the school if they have weapons so that those can have an eye on their kids, yet others want a nation-wide ban of Counter-Strike.
And I? I don't know. I really don't. It is horrible that so many students feel left out at our schools that some of them snap and shoot their teachers and fellow-students, and I think that if something has to change, it ought to be that before our gun laws become even stricter, or we implement a nationwide male quota in the educational system, and school psychologists can't hurt there.

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me!

My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

* I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
* What I create will be with you in mind.
* It'll be done sometime this year (2009).
* You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be something written, some physical thing made, could be anything at all, but I will make it myself. It's entirely my choice what it is. No quibbles, no refunds.
* I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch?

Oh, the catch is that you put this in your journal as well. If you don't, you don't get anything.

EDIT: #1: lordhellebore , #2 angie_21_237 , #3 moonystone , #4 fourthage , #5 crocky_wock .

Best get crafting, then! I doubt that I'll do anything extremely strange, though. Mildly, maybe, but not extremely.

~~~~

Sounds like fun and a good excuse to spend time crafting instead of working, I love it. Also, don't feel pressured into posting this yourselves, I know how busy some of you guys are.

Weirdest recipe ever, but it was perfect because we had two eggs left and loads of ... I have really no idea what to call it in English, and apparently, other people don't, either. It's called "Quark" in German, and you can buy it as "quark" in some supermarkets in Britain, but people also call it "fromage frais", "curd", "low fat curd" or "farmer's cheese". Wiki lists it as "quark (cheese)". Huh.

Anyway, it turned out great. Very tasty with the mild flavour of vanilla due to the custard.

Seeing as I am going to write my final paper on the man's poetry I thought I'd waste time today creating some motivating Donne icons.

Teasers: 


( 12 )

x-posted to book_icons, sorry about your flists, my fellow members!

Stupidity in the Sidney Morning Herald brought to my attention by feminist_rage :

( Your partner wants sex but you don't? STFU already and put it on the to-do list! Your sex therapist wants you to! )

I don't know what bothers me more, the lack of earth logic, or the fact that this is the opinion of a sex therapist. Who works with real patients.

( Indeed. )

Ok. Off to bed.

I have always had a soft spot for the Cardassians, but "Civil Defense" is one of the episodes which have Gul Dukat at his best. I had completely forgotten about his little speech. There's also some very nice Quark/Odo interaction.

We've taken to watching DS9 during breaks, and watching Star Trek again is great. The plan I hatched some time back in 2006 after we watched Buffy seems to be working - Crocky really likes it, although probably not as much as TNG, and although she does not take to my favourite characters as much as I'd like her to, my tastes have changed since I fell in love with the series as a teenager, too. I have found that I actually started to rather like Kira, for example, which came as a huge surprise.

I hit level 80 on my Death Knight today, which has become my main. Somehow, melee is a lot easier and a lot  more fun to play than I thought at first. I am torn between feeling guilty about all the hours that went into the game and feeling rather pleased. Some of my in-game buddies were even online to congratulate, that was nice. Now I only need to find someone to do those group quests with that I can't solo with my lousy green quest reward gear, everyone is off raiding. I'm also contemplating respeccing and rolling a hybrid rather than my "unholy only with some ice"-build.

In other news, I am procrastinating because I am scared out of my wits because of the appointment with the dentist tomorrow.

During our year in Glasgow we used to eat naan all the time, and I've missed it after coming back here. You can buy it in some supermarkets over here now, luckily, and you should definitely try it if you haven't yet - it goes great with all the dishes that bread usually goes with, and I love dipping it in spicy sauce. Seeing as It's not a very difficult recipe, I've been wanting to try it for some time.

I used the following recipe I got from this site:

( Recipe and musings )

Now I only need to learn how to make something to go with it. I've been thinking about trying Moong Dal with Spinach, but I'll need to find a shop that sells some of the ingredients that our local supermarkets don't provide.

Someone in environment  posted a rather alarming article about the effects of plastic on the oceans -  and there was a statistic on recycling in the US that caught my eye: 



Three to five percent? That's not a lot.

As far as I know, this is different in the EU. Not only are 80% of all wastes recovered in most member states, 40% of plastics are recycled and rising. Many of the well-off member states don't use landfills at all any more, our newest member states still do, and there is of course the problem of waste being shipped off to China for recycling or to other countries to be put in landfills, anyway.
Still, on the whole, I was shocked to find that things are SO much worse in the US. Although maybe, considering what even EU recycling can look like, I maybe didn't have reason to think too highly of it.

One of my Christmas presents was a macro lense. I tried it out on various items in our flat today, like a critter I caught in the tub and Crocky's flowers.

Surprise thermobia is surprising:



The species of the bug above, firebrats or Ofenfischchen, is over three hundred fifty million years old, though it is difficult to date these exactly from what I've read. Fossils are found from as early as the late Devonian and the early Carboniferous period. They lived in the hot equatorial regions on which tree ferns and 15m relatives of today's horsetail evolved and spread, forests which would become our coal deposits. Their species evolved before winged insects had, their order is thought to be the link between winged insects and their wingless ancestors. They retain their flexible abdomen in contrast to many other insect species which helps them to move quickly, and their long feelers and bristles function as an early-warning system. They can live up to four years and live in warm areas, feeding on lichen, algae, and anything else organic that they can obtain.

Unless, of course, you are a creationist, in which case ignore the above: these were specifically created by the Lord to live under our floorboards.

( 'You think you can catch me? Kiss my cerci!' (4) )

Scary flower face is scary:



( Yay, gerbera! (7) )

Yeah. Back to work.

On the way to a social networking event with the other students already registered for their finals in Hamburg.



( +6 )

The meeting itself was not too eventful or sensible. They went through the organisational stuff once more, when to give which examiner which topics, what to discuss with them, stuff I've already done a year ago in most cases. In terms of actual networking, it was also pretty worthless for me.

I met angie_21_237  for a coffee beforehand, though, and Crocky and I finally bought a wireless router when I got home, those were the high points of that nine-hour roundtrip. I wish there were someone with similar topics here in Hannover. Maybe I should post a sign on the library notice board after all, I always dismissed that as completely useless.