mothwing | Recent Entries

29.

A Series of Unfortunate Events - The Wide Window, Daniel Handler.
I hated this one with the passion of a hundred flaming suns. Why? Because of the fact that one of the brats thought that the henchman of the sinister Count Olaf whose gender is unclear is the "scariest", and apparently because of that alone, and because they called hir an "it".
The "hooked arm" and "wooden leg" things were bad enough, but this one was really over the top, as it seemed to be the only reason for the person to be horrible.

28.

A Series of Unfortunate Events - The Reptile Room, Daniel Handler.
Even as a young child I would have found Mr Poe too aggravating to believe. I do wonder about the dedications of the books, though, and I've come to like the tone. On the whole, the backstory of Lemony Snicket is far more interesting to read about and think about than the children's predicament. The two layers of the story work very well together.
Maybe it's only because I've gotten used to them, but the characters seem rather likeable all of the sudden, and although I still find it very difficult to actually sympathise with them, they do seem likeable.

27.

A Series of Unfortunate Events - The Bad Beginning, Daniel Handler.
I think I'm only reading the series because I couldn't resist the temptation and irresistible appeal of the cover and design of the books.
I have to say that I hated the movie, but that was mostly due to the presence of Jim Carey whom I really can't abide. I think that the Eternal Sunshine and The Truman Show were the only movies which feature him which didn't make me aggressive and nauseous in equal parts.
Something about the books strikes me as incredibly phoney, which may well be the attempt to stuff as much Gothic-novelesque imagery into this book as humanly possible combined with the language. It's like a Tim Burton movie in book form for early readers.
The language of the narrator annoys me slightly, but I think that I would have enjoyed the books as a young child, before the missing logic would have gotten on my nerves.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Universität Hamburg, Germany

I absolutely loved Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and I'll try to get hold of some of his story collections ASAP. Seems like other people like him, too, though, all the books at my library are out.

26.

Homoplot - The Coming-Out Story and Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Identity, by Esther Saxey.
I hate coming out stories, and this book raises a few very interesting and critical issues about the genre. So far it's very interesting.

( Why I dislike coming-out stories )

Current Location: Uni Hamburg, RRZ
Current Music: Printer

Does your perception change when your mood changes?

I bet it does. Mine certainly does.

This is what a park around the corner normally looks like:

( Through my eyes... )

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Uelzen
Current Music: Crocky snoring

I really should stop reading several books at the same time. It usually means I don't finish all of them.

25.

Dress Your Family in Cordoroy and Denim, David Sedaris.
I have to admit that after reading the enthused voices of various newspaper critics on the first page I would have expected something completely different, but I am by no means disappointed. I love the main character, Sedaris' style and the way he effortlessly combines autobiographic episodes with social commentary and humour.
Not as "Hilarious!!!" as the critics said, but I love it nontheless. Or maybe I misunderstand the meaning of "hilarious". I always thought that that meant something like "pant-wettingly funny", but that's not what this book is to me; it has a rather heart-warming, if sometimes slightly wry humour? Hmm.

( So complete was their power that I actually felt honoured when one of them hit me in the mouth with a rock. He'd gotten me after school, and upon returning home, I ran into my sister's bedroom, hugging my bloody Kleenex and crying, 'It was Thad!!!' )

24.

Who cares about English Usage?, David Crystal.
Oh, this is a book that several of our prescriptive grammarians need, need, need to read. It's both short and also a really funny read, and illustrates some of the things very nicely which grammar nazis on the intarwebz regularly throw fits about and which are just evidences of language changing, as it tends to. Good heavens.

("S.O.S., as everyone knows, stands for 'Save Our Syntax'. At various places in this book, I'll be discussing under this heading a grammatical point which regularly causes people to send up distress rockets, and demand linguistic lifejackets.")

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: RRZ Hamburg
Current Music: Scratch-scratch-scratch sound of the wheel of my neighbour's mouse, scrolling

( ~Yoodi)

For Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg.

And also for Alzheimer's research.

I love that initiative and the amount of time and effort fans put into it, especially

auronsgirl.

Current Mood: fannish
Current Location: Uelzen
Current Music: Johnny and the Bomb - Audio Book

It is important that some parents are alerted to the dangers of internet addiction, but I somehow don't really think that the protagonist is to blame for looking for friends elsewhere, seeing as NO ONE (except possibly his girlfriend) seem to mind that he keeps dropping dead.

Ok. Back to trying to find a driver for my external harddrive (there is no brand name on it anywhere, which makes things much more fun). It SHOULD work on XP, but somehow, it is Plug&Play resistant.

23.

Drachen, by Joseph Nigg. (How to raise and keep a dragon)
This probably doesn't even count as a book, but it is so incredibly cute I wanted to include it.

22.

The English Language - a guided tour of the language, by David Crystal. For my semester, or at least the WS0203 IELS course, the Welsh professor probably is the godfather of Linguistics, as we were treated to a taped lecture he held in Hamburg a few semesters before by our teacher, Ada Whitaker.
("Accommodation has gotten me into the worst sort of trouble. I was talking to another arts enthusiast in Glasgow the other day, and we were agreeing about funding and exhibitions and all sorts of other topics, and after a while, Ah felt me voice go like thes. And then it happened. My partner in conversation was delighted and asked, 'Are ye from Glasgow?" Now, there's the problem - the Glaswegians are used to having their accent ridiculed, and react rather violently, so what was I supposed to say? 'No!' - he would think that I was making fun of him, and he would hit me. 'Yes!' - 'Which part of Glasgow?' - 'Uh, I don't know!' - and he would hit me again.")

21.

Eric, or Little by Little, by Frederic William Farrar.
A boarding school novel. A gripping tale of the snares of moral corruption that lurk behind every corner in the every-day life of a schoolboy in the nineteenth century (like cheating in exams, smoking the pipe, or using bad language that god does not delight in, oh my).
Most of the conflicts that arise between the students and the teachers seem absolutely ludicrous (one boy pinned a note that said "[teacher] is a surly devil" to the board and did not confess when he had the choice. As a punishment, he was "tried" in a mock trial by the entire student body. Their punishment for him was making him "walk the gauntlet", a beating from all of his fellow students. He was also subsequently caned in front of the entire school by the headmaster and expelled afterwards) from today's perspective - or at least my perspective, but it is still a charming window into a world that is comparatively whole and simple.

20.

Middlemarch, by George Eliot.
Mostly because I couldn't remember what happens towards the last third of the novel. I like it a lot, although there are parts that are incredibly tedious, and parts that are incredibly charming.

19.

Reading Lolita in Teheran, by Azar Nafisi. (Reading "Lolita" in Teheran - a memoir in books)
A fascinating read with many unbelievable insights into the daily life of an Iranian college professor. It made many of the things I already know about more real and thereby more horrifying.

18.

Mein Herz so weiß,by Xavier Marias. (A Heart so white)

17.

Homeland, by R. A. Salvatore.
Ever since duckygirlrocks wrote that entry in her LJ about the main character I wanted to read the series.
It is good so far, although I had to take the book back to the library before I finished reading it, though, so I still need to take it out again to find out how it actually ends. Needless to say, someone else has it in their clutches now and won't give it back.

Current Mood: recumbent

This is more than slightly old news, but I only found out about this today and I am rather worried about this. The DSM (Diagnostic Standard Manual for Mental Disorders) series are standard manuals that every psychologist uses. It is originally a US American manual, but has become the international standard diagnosis manual, Europe as well as in the USA, from what I know. It's the one we've used in Scotland, it's the one we use here, it's the diagnosis bible.

There have always been scandals surrounding the DSMs, the last one was about the 1994 edition when it became clear that some of the scientists on the board's interests had been possibly affected by being on the payroll of pharma companies, if I remember correctly.

Now, the APA is working on the DSM-V. So far so good. What does not seem so good is the choice of people they've put in charge of the sexual and gender identity disorders section:

( Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group )

Now, whom do we have here?

The chair, Zucker, is fairly well known for his work in the Clarke institute and his work on children and gender identity disorders. I found something on what Zucker proposes for Gender Identity Disorder in Children - diagnosis and treatment on NARTH, although the "National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality" is not a very objective choice.

Here's a blog entry on an example case and what Zucker would propose vs. what another doctor would propose. And here's the backstory.

I can't understand why they have chosen this man. From what I have read on Zucker, his studies are concerned mainly with treatment of, of course, the cause, diagnosis and treatment of gender identity disorders in children, but also with establishing correlations for cross-dressing behaviour in males and homosexuality, poor social conditions and GID in children as well as later homosexuality, depression in the parents and homosexuality/GID, unattractiveness in girls and GID, and a significant correlation of depression and GID.
Altogether his studies are not methodologically convincing to me, but then, my view is as biased as his.

A.E. Brain has a rather good summary of who else is on the board and what they are doing at her blog, here is a shorter summary:

( Board members with summary of background and field )

Obviously, LGBT activists are less than happy about the influence that Zucker is could have on the group. Someone who seems to reinforce the gender binary, pathologises gender deviations and links gender deviation with later homosexuality in a way that makes clear that he most likely does not even recognise that sexual orientation and gender are two entirely different things is not likely to have a good effect on the symptoms listed in the DSM-V, or the "disorders" these will indicate.

I always thought that the people who advocated the kinds of therapy Zucker recommends were, well, a minority on the outer fringes of the scientific community, and it is shocking to see what kind of power they suddenly received. It's bad enough to see that there are still people in there with a Freudian background. I wonder why the APA chose them, as their concerns do not seem to be the pathological varieties of SGIDs and sexual orientations, but the pathological nature of sexual and gender deviations.

Maybe I am overestimating the influence that Zucker and Blanchard could have on any section that deals with gender identity disordered people and their diagnosis, but since the other members on the team have such different areas of expertise it is likely that their influence will be rather important.

And because I suck at write-ups, here are two blog entries on the topic:
Kat Long: DSM-V Gender "Experts" Anger LGBTs - Trans Groups Oppose Psychologists’ Background in Reparative Therapy
A. E. Brain: Transsexual Causation, the American Psychiatric Association, and Interpol

Again, I know that the NARTH is not exactly a wonderful source for unbiased material, but there are a few articles which include quotes from Zucker and details of his works in their gender section.

I'm really curious about what the DSM-V will look like.

Current Mood: anxious

The holidays have basically been a paper-writing-and-panicking marathon for me. I did manage to get a lot of the reading done I wanted to do, though. Still, I wish I'd have time for myself again that actually felt good instead of having my brain shut down at the internal list of all the things that need to be done.

( Tetris - The Movie. My brother showed me this, and it is completely awesome. )

Ok. Back to an oral presentation on Georg Forster's Frische teutsche Liedlein.

Current Mood: rushed
Current Location: Uelzen

( So, twenty minutes walking distance in the other direction from where I live, not into the 'inner city', what is there? )

Not much, if you are not into walking and cycling. I did go for the walk I mentioned in the post with the map earlier today. Due to the good weather, I met a lot of other walkers and couldn't make up my mind whether it was polite to greet them, as a teacher at the uni once had told us to once we were in small villages, as it was considered impolite not to, or to ignore them and just quietly walk past as I would in the city. Both got the same results - strange looks. I settled for a sort of half-nod in the end.

( The walk there was much shorter than I thought it would be. )

( The Oldenstädter See. With ducklings and clouds mirrored in the water and altogether too many pictures for this pretty but unspectacular lake. )

EDIT: My brother

niaseath 's monosyllabic comment was: "http://www.xkcd.com/77/ ?".
I think he has a point.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Uelzen

Part 1.

What could be more interesting than looking at scores of pictures of a town with all of 35k inhabitants? Especially since there is little that is actually worth the visit in Uelzen unless you are a rabid Friedensreich Hundertwasser fan (and there aren't that many of those out there). I do love the little chapels that are there, though, and the old buildings. Since not many things were destroyed in the wars, there are still many buildings which are several hundred years old, old churches, old headstones, old schools.

( St. Gertrud's Chapel (9) )

It's a shame that it was closed, I would have liked to take a peek inside and see more than I could through the barred windows.

( The Ratsteich and the small river Ilmenau (10) )

I love the Ratsteich. I think that one day I'll try to get myself to go to one of the cafés on the banks, it must be great, especially in the evening.

( St. Katarinen and pretty headstones (17) )

There are really interesting headstones around the church, most of them of clergy and their families, and some of them of city notables. Especially the ones from the seventeenth century are fascinating.

( Propstei (3) )

( City wall (3) )

( Theodor Heuss Realschule (10) )

I LOVE that school. It's SO beautiful - especially compared to my school, which was an ugly, uniform building from the seventies that looked more or less exactly like the four other grammar schools in cycling distance which were also a product of the suburban flight in the seventies. Nothing compared to this pretty building.

( Other things I've seen on the way home (6) )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Uelzen

I went for a two hour walk today to take some pictures of this town, as I realised that I barely have any.

Sorry about the length of this entry.

After this walk, I also remember what I dislike about Uelzen. People stare at you wherever you go. I know what you think - and yes, I would probably also think so if they did not - but if a person keeps following you around a church and keeps whispering to their husband, I think I do have the right to be suspicious - especially if they are clearly uninterested in the headstones.

It's normal that in this town, people have so little to do that they keep following every moving object until it is out of sight, the more so today, as it is the first of May and many Uelzeners don't have anything to do apart from sitting in the cafés or cycling around town. Or going for walks, or following around young chubby women taking pictures. Well, and some of them also were chanting drunken paroles.

The weather was great, I managed to take a couple of the pictures done I wanted to take for ages.

( Park around the corner (4) )

( A curious abandoned house around the corner. I SO want to go in there. (4) )

( Snails. I could have spent the entire day taking pictures of these. (6) )

( St. Viti chapel. Also abandoned. (7) )

( Inner city and old timbered houses with inscriptions (21) )

I love the many timbered houses in Uelzen. The oldest I've found was built in the fourteenth century, destroyed later on and rebuilt on the site. Most of the other beautiful timbered houses I found were first built in the seventeenth century - but most were refurbished at a later point or destroyed and rebuilt.

Part 2.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Uelzen

I found that are a variety of really pretty emblem sites out there today. There's a project they're doing in Glasgow. Why, why did I leave? There's also a really pretty educational site hosted by the project they're doing in Utrecht with explanations and quizzes in English and in Dutch, it's really good and worth a visit - it's a kind of introductory course on Dutch love emblems.
One project is hosted by Wolfenbüttel, which I will get to visit in May, then, there's the Munich emblem data base, and a site on the Memorial University of Newfoundland who have digitalised the emblems of Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), who is probably my favourite.

Here are a few examples:

( Silentium (Silence) )

( Reverentiam in matrimonio requiri (Respect is to be sought in marriage) )

Submovendam ignorantiam (Ignorance must be banished)

Quod monstrum id? Sphinx est. Cur candida virginis ora,
Et volucrum pennas, crura leonis habet?
Hanc faciem assumpsit rerum ignorantia: tanti
Scilicet est triplex caussa et origo mali.
Sunt quos ingenium leve, sunt quos blanda voluptas,
Sunt et quos faciunt corda superba rudes.
At quibus est notum, quid Delphica littera possit,
Praecipitis monstri guttura dira secant.
Namque vir ipse bipesque tripesque et quadrupes idem est,
Primaque prudentis laurea, nosse virum.

What monster is that? It is the Sphinx.
Why does it have the bright face of a virgin, the feathers of a bird, and the limbs of a lion?
Ignorance of things has taken on this appearance: which is to say that the root cause of so much evil is threefold. Some men are made ignorant by levity of mind, some by seductive pleasure, and some by arrogance of spirit. But they who know the power of the Delphic message slit the relentless monster's terrible throat. For man himself is also a two-footed, three-footed, four-footed thing, and the first victory of the prudent man is to know what man is.

It's a fascinating genre, and it's a pity it's been banalised so much. What was most interesting for me was reading the Dutch pages - I hardly know anything at all about the period in Netherlands, it was a fascinating read.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Hamburg
Current Music: Schelmish - Das Moor

The part of your brain which is responsible for your sarcasm detection is probably the left Brodmann's area 47.

"[S]arcasm detection activated the neural circuits involved in mentalizing processes, as well as those of the semantic executive system. This is consistent with the notion that pragmatic processes, such as sarcasm, are closely related to mentalizing functions (Frith and Frith, 2003). We suggest that the left BA 47 might be where mentalizing and language processes interact during sarcasm detection."

"Sarcasm detection activated the left temporal pole, the superior temporal sulcus, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann's area [BA] 47). The left BA 47 was activated more prominently by sarcasm detection than by the first sentence. These findings indicate that the detection of sarcasm recruits the medial prefrontal cortex, which is part of the mentalizing system, as well as the neural substrates involved in reading sentences."

( And if you fail to detect sarcasm? )

Ok. Back to topic. Ahem.

Current Mood: curious
Current Location: RRZ Uni Hamburg, Germany
Current Music: Other people typing

Genesis 4:9
Und der HERR sprach zu Kain: Wo ist dein Bruder Abel? Und er sagte: Ich weiß nicht. Bin ich meines Bruders Hüter?
(Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" And he said, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?")

( 'Abel steh auf' - Hilde Domin )

( Slightly jerky translation - Get up Abel )

( Brief musings )

Current Mood: okay

Moment #1

It is raining in Uelzen, not any respectable rain, but the kind of drizzle that can't make up it's mind whether it's fog or rain. Of course, since it did not look like rain, I had not taken my umbrella along in the morning and am trudging along the cobbled street as fast as I can, laden with my full army backpack and a bag of books.
Suddenly, there is a feeling of slight suction at my right foot and then something wet and cold. Looking down I find myself facing not my black shoe, but my white sock. I look back, see my shoe a few feet back and realise heel of my shoe must have gotten stuck between the cracks between the cobbles.
Through the rain, I hop back, on one leg, to my stuck shoe, while a lady on the other side of the road who is walking her dog starts to laugh her head off.
I put my shoe back on, nod at her, and get home as fast as I can.

Moment # 2

I am signing up for my courses at the uni for next semester, am checking and double-checking my applications and am filling in my time table - courses I have been put into in pen, courses pending in pencil. I usually stick the pencil behind my ear when I am using the pen.
Around me, a basic computer skills class for students is in progress, but it is so empty that they told me I could check up on my courses nontheless. The two girls behind me are having serious trouble inserting pictures into the power point presentations they are doing and changing the size. The instructor, who sounds like someone with nerves of steel reaching the end of his tether, is explaining over and over again the magic of clicking the corners and dragging them, or right-clicking and changing the size. He tells them to try it again now and they are left to try by themselves.
I finish my time tabling and get up and start packing my bag. Suddenly, snorts of laughter erupt behind me. From the corner of my eye, I see the person who does not know how to change the size of a picture in a PPP point at her ear, whereupon she and her associate erupt in snorts again. I finish packing my bag and leave.

17.

The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane.
Blegh. This is one of the coming-of-age stories we really can do without.

16.

Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy.
I love this book. It is the second of Hardy's books I ever read, in a small cottage in the Brecon Beacons, and in spite of the prominence of the love plot, I always loved this book. Gabriel Oak is one of the most likeable characters I ever read about, and his and Bathshebas love plot one of the most interesting, too.
Why can't all couples in all love plots be like this? I liked it such a lot during my teenage years that I am worried that if I reread it now, it will be worse than it is in my head.

15.

Pompeii, Robert Harris.
Watch the manly, grieving widower battle the forces of bisexual promiscuity (although the terms are apparently interchangeable in this book) and see the world's first volcano with moral awareness who spares the innocent.
In spite of the fast-paced account of the final hours of the city this book does not live up to my expectations at all. This could have been so much better.

These are olds rather than news, but I only discovered this today and it is fascinating.

A team of international scientists have studied Antarctic deep sea life and found the most bizarre sea creatures.
Of course sea creatures always tend to be somewhat more bizarre and alien than land-dwelling creatures, but these things are even more alien - like the things in the picture above, plankton eating creatures, apparently. So beautiful!

My favourite, however, was a spidery thing that has the greatest swimming style.

( I come bearing video footage )

( Oklahoma state legislator Sally Kern wants us - or rather does not want us - to know that the homosexual agenda is destroying the USA )

Good to see that there are nutcases in other countries, too.

I'm still ill, though. After two coughing fits in Latin yesterday I did not dare return and am now translating my In Catilinam at home.

Current Mood: sick

Gespräch mit meinen Pantoffeln

Die verlassenen Schuhe
zurückgelassen
am Rande
eines Kraters
eines Flusses
eines Betts
diese Schuhe
aus denen die Füße
fortgingen
an einem Rande
barfuß
in das schuh- und kleiderlose Land

Meine Pantoffeln
die mich ansehen
sie sitzen vor meinem Bett
und sehen mich an
Seite an Seite
wie sie mich ansehen
die zärtlichen Tiere
Ich kniee nieder
und streichle
meinen verängstigten
Pantoffeln
das Fell.

~ Hilde Domin: Ausgewählte Gedichte

( English translation by Meg Taylor )

Current Mood: working

I've got the flu. Again. On Friday I thought my wooziness was due to the fact that my eyes have to get used to the new glasses, but when I woke up with all slimed up on Saturday it was clear that I'm really ill again.

Why is it that I always get ill during term paper time? I hate that.

The good thing about not being able to walk very far is that we stayed in all weekend, cuddling and baking muffins.

From left to right: chocolate-caramel muffin, After Eight muffin, Milchschnitte muffin.

The chocolate-caramel muffins were bastards. They refused to let go of the muffin tray and held on for dear life, so we could only get them out of there by decapitating them. That's they ended up looking like Frankenstein's muffins. They taste awesome nontheless.

After Eight muffins

( Read more... )

Frankenstein's muffin

( Read more... )

Milchschnitte Muffins

( Read more... )

Nom nom nom.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Uelzen

Whenever I read about them, I find another reason to hate the asylum systems of most Western countries (probably because I only ever read about stories where they tragically), but I had always thought that Canada and the UK sucked just a little less, were a little less scary.
Not so, I found after reading a post on

queer_rage.

From the Independent, today: Gay man facing death due to impending deportation from the UK, to Iran - where he might face execution.

( Choice quotes, favourite being: The Home Office's own guidance issued to immigration officers concedes that Iran executes homosexual men but, unaccountably, rejects the claim that there is a systematic repression of gay men and lesbians. )

From the the Montreal Gazette, today: Gay man facing death due to impending deportation from Canada, back to Malaysia - where he might be sent to prison.

( Choice quotes, favourites being: 'His refugee claim was rejected, however, on the ground the panel hearing his claim did not believe it was credible.' [...] 'There have been women told they couldn't be lesbian because they have long hair and showed up for the interviews in high heels. These people have no training whatsoever in how to deal with these issues.'> )

I don't even want to think about what the German authorities would do in these cases. I can't shake off the nagging suspicion that the people in question would already be on the plane home and none of our daily newspaper could be bothered to cover the story.

Current Mood: enraged

My brother and I played a game today - not WoW for a change, but the fairy tale game called "Es war einmal...". The players tell fairy tales prompted by cards they receive, the goal is to end the story with the sentence on their "ending" card. The cards have characters, events, traits, places, and objects on them, or ending sentences. Each narrator tries to finish with their sentence, the other other players can take over whenever one of the terms on their cards is mentioned or with special cards for taking over. The person who has used up their cards wins, obviously, but this game really is not about winning so much as it is about telling a story.

We played it with one ending only and tried to get a collaboratory fairy tale, and the results were fun. Due to the fact that you can't choose the cards you get but have to work with the ending, there are some rather forced constructions, but also room for general funny awesomeness and changes from original fairy tale scripts and hilarious things introduced by the other player forcing themselves into the tale.

The first one we did had a transsexual shepherd who marries a princess he saved from drowning in a river while he was in the shape of a wolf, a later one one with a princess and a queen who fall for each other and have to appease an evil, homophobic witch and do so by vowing to change one of them into a king (our ending was "And so he reigned forever" or something, our characters were all female). We also had enchanted swords, magic fire birds, and witches cursing a king and a queen with stupidity.

Great fun.

Current Location: Bed, almost
Current Music: Schandmaul - Galliard

I've visited the counties in yellow.
Which counties have you visited?

made by marnanel
map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data
by permission of the Ordnance Survey.
© Crown copyright 2001.

Fun to see how that changed from four years ago.

I can't help feeling that I've forgotten some. Hmm. I seem to have covered both Wales holidays and our Scotland exploits, though.

14.

Slam, by Nick Hornby.
So the drooling in front of the shelf with the hardcover version is finally over. I could not wait to get my hands on this one. So far (p.13), it's a really good read, not that I seriously had expected anything else. Nick Hornby is one of the few authors who really have never disappointed me. Even though there are recurring patterns, especially as far as the structure of his characters is concerned, his books remain very distinct, probably because the topics they deal with are so different.

13.

Imperium, Robert Harris.
An account of Cicero's life told by his slave - this biography actually existed, but was lost. It covers his life until he is elected Consul.
Even though the main focus of the story is obviously the political manoeuvres necessary to get him there, my favourite character will forever be the orator's wife Terentia. She is such an incredibly strong woman, and I admire her greatly. I will never forgive Cicero, the historical figure, nor the character in this book, for leaving her for a much younger girl late in life. Of course I can't know the circumstances and he probably did have his reasons, but I find it very hard to understand how anyone can want to leave this amazing woman.
Brushing up names of speeches and politicians as well as some of the affairs while reading this did not do any harm, either, considering that I had to translate parts of the very speeches he was writing in the book in my Latin class this week. It's a nice way of bringing the world back to life.

I really should read more historic novels, they are usually fun ways of reading an interpretation of times past, and looking up on whether they are historical correct is also good for jogging the memory. Which reminds me, I really need to check out the series by Rebecca Gablé that

lordhellebore recommended.

Current Mood: chipper

Look, Crocky - a study:

Moving Down: Women’s Part-time Work and Occupational Change in Britain 1991–2001, by Sara Connolly, Mary Gregory.

They found that women who change to a part time job - those being mostly mothers during childcare years - from their full-time job usually end up with a job far below their level of skill and of training. That does not happen because mothers want easier jobs to be able to concentrate on their children, but because so little part-time opportunities exist in interdemediate and upper levels and they are thus forced out of those jobs. So most women in part-time jobs are wasting their training and knowledge on low-status, low-reward, low-skill jobs, which is snappily called a "hidden brain-drain".

( They conclude... )

Rather alarming, especially considering how unlikely it is that there will be greater flexibility any time soon - apart from in the social sector.

Current Location: Hamburg

( Numbers of colours and countries in five minutes, Number of five-year-olds I could take in a fight, my chances of survival in a Zombie attack and my advantages as a human shield. )

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Uelzen

Segesta oppidum est pervetus in Sicilia, iudices, quod ab Aenea fugiente a Troia atque in haec loca veniente conditum esse demonstrant.

That he should have had the time to do that at all while he was fleeing is a miracle. I certainly would not have stuck around to found the odd village while I was on the run, especially considering he was carrying around Anchises.

I never realised how much I had forgotten, but at the same time, it's vaguely reassuring how to realise how many of the things I learnt back in 2002 are still there. Too bad that my motivation deteriorated towards the end and I don't have the sound basis of half remembered knowledge on the subjunctive and more complex constructions involving relative clauses that I have for most other things.

I've spent the day I should have used to write my various papers poring over the speech against Verres, and while I can absolutely sympathise with the Sicilians, I'm lost in the constructions more often than not. It would be fun, reading Cicero again (... even though, irrationally, after reading Harris's Imperium, my sympathy for Cicero has diminished greatly because he left Terentia, who was one of my favourite characters in the novel) if there wasn't ( this horrible exam at the end of it all. )

Other than renewing my acquaintance with Cicero's language and works I've spent the day fangirling Michael Praetorius and Giorgio Mainerio (especially the ( Schiarazula Marazula ). One of my favourite pieces ever, probably due to happy memories with

angie_21_237 and Angelo Branduardi's version and holiday tapes back in 1999.

Ok, back to Verres and his collection.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Uelzen
Current Music: Johann Hermann Schein - Suite No 4 in D Major

Er... after A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, there was...

12.

Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby.
I love Nick Hornby. Whenever I buy one of his book I get uneasy and hesitate, worried that it might not be as good as the preceding ones. It was the same with this one, but of course, again, I have not been disappointed. This one was no exception, of course.

11.

New Moon, by Stephanie Meyer.
I am not sure what to say. I enjoyed reading it a lot and was unable to put it down, while I was not thinking about it and merely concentrating on the characters, who have really grown on me. I love Jakob, in particular, which is most probably because I love werewolves. Lupin is probably the only werwolf in fiction I did not get exited about in the slightest. Oh, well, and the ones in Holbein's Wolfsherz or what it was called were not too great, either, but that's mostly down to the awfulness of the author.
As soon as I put it down, the months of discussing the role of women in Harry Potter and the resulting voices became difficult to close out and I am ( not so sure about it now. )

10.

Art & Lies. A Tale for Three Voices and a Bawd, Jeanette Winterson.
Not sure what to make of this yet.

Penguin's Poems for Life, Laura Barber (ed.)
Oh this made me so angry. It sucks. The poems don't, but the selection isn't very good to fit the (megalomaniac) title. It should be called, "Poems for Life for Men over fifty" or something, because the way she presents "life" and it's relevant issues through her selection clearly is not intended, by and large, for anyone who is not a British heterosexual upper middle class white male over fifty - although there are a few poems that are not exclusively directed at that target group. Well, maybe she has a point, maybe only that part of the population would buy and read a Penguin anthology called "poems for life". The "love" section especially is aggravating. It's almost exclusively men's experiences of first love.
It is difficult, of course, as the vast majority of canonical poets out there are heterosexual males who wrote for heterosexual males, I am aware of that. Still.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Home

These were made before Christmas and I never got round to posting them until now. So. Here they are.

( Christmas market and decoration of the main station )

( Fun with food - cookies and radish mice. )
I didn't take any pictures of the tree at home this year - funny thing, usually I do, but since things were a little different this year, anyway, it might have been more fitting to post a screen shot of the virtual Christmas trees in Ogrimmar with my character and my brother's instead, as that would have been a more representative picture of what Christmas was like.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Uelzen
Current Music: Sagradar trobar - In Extremo

This is so silly.

In Mass Effect, there is a sex scene with an alien -and depending on character the player chooses, it can be interpreted as a lesbian sex scene - which had the thing banned in Singapore.

So, what the fuss is all about:

( Sex scene. It's probably even work safe. )

I didn't cut the first one because you've GOT to see this.

Rivers, "Sign Language".
Great performance encorporating the experience the poet made when working with deaf children and doing poetry slams with them. Fascinating to watch, and those poems are beautiful.

( Rives, 'If I ran the Internet' )
( Bassey Ikpi, 'Apology to my Unborn' )
( Mark Gonzales, 'As with most men' )
( Javon Johnson, 'Elementary' )
( Gemineye, 'What Are You Fighting For' )
( Shannon Leigh, 'Sudanese Children' )
( Vanessa Hidary, 'PhD in Him' )
( Jason Carney, 'Southern Heritage' )

Current Mood: awake

Stolen from

rizardofoz.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4.Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.

Current Mood: calm

I just discovered this poem by Steve Colman because someone had quoted it over in

literaryquotes. I really like it.

Performance:

( Read more... )

( The poem )

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Uelzen
Current Music: that adjectives start holding pro-noun rallies at city hall

Land unter [lant 'ʔʊntə] is an expression used to describe flooded grassland - well, the fact that the grassland is flooded, really.

Due to severe rains, every river, stream, lake, or puddle between Uelzen and Hamburg has grown to enormous size during the last couple of weeks. It looks as though the entire northern German lowlands are under water and I wonder what the farmers are doing with their fields now that they are so swamped.

( Take a train ride with me )

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Uelzen

How scary is that?
Apparently a group of individuals (their blog)has been planning a protest against Scientology and fighting them online for ... maybe two weeks now, I'm not sure when it started, but I'm probably late as usual. The group - Anonymous - is planning a world-wide protest in front of Scientology churches on the 10th of February.

NBC News:
( NBC on Anonymous vs. Scientology )

The Tom Cruise video that prompted all this:
( Tom Cruise video )
"We are the authorities of the mind... We are the way to happiness."
( Tom Cruise on his cult )

Quoth Anonymous:
( Video 1 )
"Knowledge is free. We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."
( Anonymous 1 )

And No. 2:
( Video 2 )
"We want you to be aware of the very real dangers of Scientology. We want you to know about the gross human rights violations committed by this cult. We want you to know about Lisa McPhearson."
( Anonymous 2 )

And, in case you think about going, this is the code of conduct:
( Code of Conduct )

Anonymous's reaction to the News coverage:
( News )
( Anonymous on News )

Oh, and a video No.3

Whoa. This is so... Matrixy.
I kind of want to go to see what happens on the 10th.
Oh, also, they actually seem to have been able to access data from the Scientology servers. o.O
Here is a German article with a link list, and here's a German report on RTL.

Oh, here's a world map listing all the events. o.O

LOOK AT THIS AND REJOICE WITH ME IN FRENZIED ALL-CAPS:

This is the copy of "In Memoriam" that Crocky was allowed to use as the "old book" read by Mr Hardcastle in their initial scene in the play. The owner gave it to her, and she gave it to me.
It's a really beautiful little book, bound in green leather that's turning brown around the edges, with that leaf pattern burnt into it and almost faded gold leaf at the top, and, to my great pleasure, a handwritten dedication from someone who gave this book to a "Stella" as a present.

( In Memoriam )

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Location: Uelzen
Current Music: A song sung by a Finnish church choir

A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, by Marina Lewycka.
I loved that book and I fell in love with the notion of mixed languages that is ever present in the book right away - even though there are no passages in Ukranian, there are frequent references of things being said in Ukranian or a mixture of Ukranian and English, and I know how that feels well enough to enjoy the reference a lot. I also fell in love with the main character and her idiosyncratic ways of describing her family right away.
It's not as funny as I thought it would be, it's a tragicomedy more than a comedy. Still, the relationships of the characters and the light they shed on the history that many people in my country would probably not find on their internal map is great.
Even though there are many books on migration and immigration and otherness in a strange country, there are not many books that address the situation of immigrants from Eastern European countries, that made it even more interesting for me to read this novel.

Tintenherz, by Cornelia Funke.
Yeah. I whined about it here. I do not like the characters, the names, her language, the way female characters are treated (sigh. Again.), the way she always immediately ends any suspense she might create, the predictability. I don't get why this is so popular. But maybe I never gave her a chance. I'm going to re-read it in English and see if there's a difference, I am really curious about that. I have the feeling that many of the things that set my teeth on edge- for whatever reason - like the names ("Staubfinger") will probably sound better to my ears in English ("Dustfinger". Huh).
I kind of want to buy the book because the cover is so amazingly pretty, though. Silly. Still, maybe Crocky's and my F1 will enjoy the books when they are ten and under.

(Oooh, there's an interview with the author here. Huh, her English is better than I would have thought it would be.)

The Stone Gods, by Jeanette Winterson.
I love this book and I was really sad that I had to take it back to the library, I would have loved to re-read it. I rather enjoyed Winterson's style and the refrain-like passage:

The new world – El Dorado, Atlantis, the Gold Coast, Newfoundland, Plymouth Rock, Rapanaui, Utopia, Planet Blue. Chanc'd upon, spied through a glass darkly, drunken stories strapped to a barrel of rum, shipwreck, a Bible Compass, a giant fish led us there, a storm whirled us to this isle. In the wilderness of space, we found...

Even though I usually do not like love stories, especially not if they are so freighted with doom and foreboding, I did like this one, and the circular world it is set in.

Current Mood: cold

Happy Birthday, Greg!!!

Current Mood: groggy

Which is a play by Oliver Goldsmith, first performed in 1773 .I saw it yesterday, performed by Crocky's theatre group.

(Unsurprisingly,) it was absolutely amazing.
I love seeing Crocky act, she is such a good actress, and plays her role (Mr Hardcastle) with much vigour and enthusiasm. It was wonderful, watching her, and I am insanely proud of her. Yesterday, the audience consisted mostly of lecturers - like Crocky's piano teacher and son, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves, too. Pride-inflated, I agreed to everything she said about Crocky's great acting.

Most of the other actors I remembered from the King Lear production they did two semesters back, and it was great fun watching them perform a comedy now, how differently they approached their characters. Especially the girl who starred as Dorothy Hardcastle did an absolutely wonderful job, as did Kate Hardcastle - she was perfect for that role, as was the actor of Tony Lumpkin. Everything they did seemed to have such an ease about it, which surprised me after what Crocky had told me about the problems they had with getting the language right at first.

So, a wonderful night out, and I really regret that I can't see them every night this week, I really would have loved to! They are really doing a wonderful job, and their audience loves them.

Current Mood: proud
Current Location: Library

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Anyway.

Crocky's away, doing her production of "She Stoops to Conquer". (If you're curious, here's a performance on youtube.)

I can't wait to see her act tomorrow!

Current Mood: tired

I know that as a German from Hamburg and a lover of German children's literature I should not be saying this, but I really loathe her writing.
I don't know what the woman has done to me. I think it must have been Drachenreiter (Dragon Rider). It comes with purple prose, random metaphors, a very predictable plot and boring characters. My brother had to read it for school years ago, and since my entire family loves Fantasy literature we ended up reading it together with my mother, reading it to each other in turns as we so frequently did read books together back then. All three of us weren't able to cope after the first few chapters, because every single interesting complication was immediately explained, resolved, clarified. We abandoned it half-way through, after we had checked that our theories about how it was going to end were correct (every single one was) and I never picked up a book by the woman again.
I thought that she was a local author and that that was the main reason why the school teacher had taken an interest with her.

Not so.
Suddenly, Tintenherz (Inkheart) is hyped, and people from all over the world are developing an interest in this woman whose style rubs me the wrong way so much.

So I decided to read Tintenherz, trying to see why it is so popular. I am probably not giving her enough of a chance, but something about her style and her settings and her characters just drives me up the wall and makes it impossible for me to enjoy the story. I am not sure whether it's the names, the return of the random metaphors, the book obsession which is emphasised to the point of kitsch, the extremely precocious heroine who has read novels that fit in nicely with the highly anglocentric ideal curriculum of children's literature a teenager would have read - maybe fifty years ago, or just the fact that again, the characters are... well, boring, and everything that could be potentially interesteing or suspense-creating is immediately explained away.

Maybe the book is better in English, but I have the feeling that to like this book one either has to be really, really young, or someone who doesn't have German as their mother tongue, or really willing to make a huge effort to read these books. TIME said the book was, "her most elegant and accomplished work to date" and the New York Times even had it on their best seller list, and I really, really don't see why.

Maybe I am going to like the movie better.

Current Mood: calm

Your Birthdate: June 5

You have many talents, and you are great at sharing those talents with others.
Most people would be jealous of your clever intellect, but you're just too likeable to elicit jealousy.
Progressive and original, you're usually thinking up cutting edge ideas.
Quick witted and fast thinking, you have difficulty finding new challenges.
Your strength: Your superhuman brainpower
Your weakness: Your susceptibility to boredom
Your power color: Tangerine
Your power symbol: Ace
Your power month: May

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Hee. Tangerine is one of my favourite colours.

Now back to translating a distributor contract. I am SO scared about getting all the legal vocab right in the German version.

Current Mood: cheerful

Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman.
It's been ages since I've read anything by Neil Gaiman. I think Stardust was last. I like his writing, and I fell for Fat Charlie almost instantly. I love, love, love Neil Gaiman for incorporating a West-African myth, that happens so rarely.

Current Mood: calm

So, I want to become a teacher. There are many slightly derisive voices saying that our teachers are only really fit for teaching the middle class population they came from, and they do have a point. Now most of the students in my class have far more experiences with different cultures than I do and radically different backgrounds. Most of them migrated to Germany before they came to school here in Hamburg. I can't imagine what it must be like to be from Turkey, from Albania, from Bolivia - even from Bavaria in Hamburg. Germany must be the most xenophobic country I have ever been to, and living in Willhelmsburg on top of that is not likely to make it any better, as that is one of the areas that other Hamburgians usually tend to look down upon.

I must say that I keep feeling intimidated. How can I, with my rather limited background, be the right teacher for people whose experiences and contexts are so different from mine?
For example. I try and use topics that might interest my students and relate to their world (using popular books, movies, TV shows in my classes), and with my suburban, upper middle-class grammar school classes that usually worked and was not too difficult, as their experiences were very, very similar to mine, but with my current students, I haven't got a clue.

Another example for differences: I looked up some of their favourite artists I didn't know. I didn't have to look up Rihanna or Christina Aguilera, but I'd never even heard of Massiv or Muhabbet. So. Contrasts.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: Uelzen

"OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada has imposed sweeping restrictions on who can donate organs for transplant -- including a ban on gay men who have been sexually active in the past five years. [...] The restrictions, which also cover drug addicts, prisoners, prostitutes and people who have had tattoos or body piercings in the last 12 months using shared needles, came into effect last month.
"A gay man who had practiced abstinence for the five years prior (to making an organ donation) would be acceptable," said the spokeswoman. "Likewise a heterosexual man who had had a single sexual encounter with a male within the last five years would not be considered acceptable even though he is not gay."

( Canada tightens rules governing organ donations )

Well, let's hope that the situation in Canada has improved so much from 2004 that they don't need additional donors.
Here's an online petition.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Location: Uelzen
Current Music: Finnish choir music

In a clubby thing near the main station they're putting on a discworld musical: Mort - das Musical, and I only noticed yesterday.

I want to go I want to go I want to gooo.

But since there are only three performances left I doubt I'll get any tickets now. The worst thing: the only evening when I would be able to go I can't because it starts at eight and my course only finishes at a quarter to eight. I'll never make it on time, and I doubt they'd let me in fifteen minutes late.

Life is unfair.

Although I'll try to get tickets, anyway, and see when we finish. We usually finish about thirty minutes early, but there have been exceptions before.

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: Uelzen
Current Music: A Finnish choir performing modern church music.

Since this is such a nice way of what I have been doing in my free time all year, I decided to keep up this challenge. With a two-hour commute each day it's not much of a challenge, but it's still a nice opportunity to share what I have been reading.

4.

Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer.
Mostly to see what all the fuss is about. A few months ago read the first three pages on Amazon.com after more and more of my teenaged friends had erupted with praise of the book and it was hate at first sight.
After I listened to the audiobook of Eclipse, though, I decided to read the first book, because even though I still dislike Bella, the other characters grow in you. Reading it is like chocolate, and, as one of the girls on a message board summed up so accurately, it is a "McDonald's kind of book" - easy to read, easy to like, and somehow, you just end up liking it. The one thing that makes me wonder is the semi-abusive relationship between Bella and her sweetheart. It is an odd thing to be so attractive to so many teenage girls, even though the way he completely takes all responsibility off her must be attractive to some.

Benachteiligung gleichgeschlechtlich orientierter Personen und Paare, von Hans P. Buba (Autor), Laszlo A. Vaskovics (Autor).
Really interesting study from 2005 with unsurprising conclusions. Much better read than Sexualitäten. Diskurse und Handlungsmuster im Wandel (Geschlechterforschung) by Heide Funk and Karl Lenz von Juventa, which has a somewhat ... biased view, and also almost exclusively uses data from the eighties to support their view that homosexuals don't want to be able to marry because it's incompatible with their lifestyle, because most homosexual relationships only last a little longer than one year. It was shocking.

Winnie and Wolf by A. N. Wilson.
A novel about the probably fictitious romance between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler, told from the perspective of another of Winnie's suitors, Philosophy post-grad N., who is writing this book as an "extended meditation or letter" to his daughter, Winifred Hiedler, Winnie's and Wolf's daughter, his adopted daughter.
It's difficult to tell which of the parts Wilson spins together are invented and which are not, but it's an interesting insight into not only into the Wagner Clan, but also into middle-class Germany before and after Hitler's seize of power. What makes me wonder is how much he manages to humanise the kind uncle and opera geek and mass murderer Hitler, and also what the purpose of that might be. Of course, it might either be intended to make him seem more monstrous, or it may be a very interesting depiction of the mechanism that the war-generation used later on to explain their own behaviour and convictions during the war. I am not too sure about it, but as a German, I always get edgy around portrayals of that man.

Wicked, by Gregory Maguire.
This is one of my all-time favourite novels and has one of the best female characters I have ever read. A great novel, it is amazing what Maguire can do on the basis of Baum's novel, which I always hated and still hate. His Elphie is unforgettable.

Current Mood: calm

Last year:

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum
Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire
A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby
Palgrave's Golden Treasury
The Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling
Shadowmancer by G.P. Taylor.
Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts, Heinz Joachim Müller, Eberhard Späth
Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes.
Son of a Witch, by Gregory Maguire
Die Vermessung der Welt, Daniel Kehlmann
Mirror Mirror, by Gregory Maguire
Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett.
Love that dog, by Sharon Creech
Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Blood, Bread and Poetry by Adrienne Rich
The Gay Teen, ed. Gerald Unks
The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters
Fünfzig Gedichte des Expressionismus, selected by Dietrich Bode
Die wunderbaren Jahre by Reiner Kunze
Arts of the Possible, by Adrienne Rich
Incidences in the life of a slavegirl, by Linda Brent.
The End of Alice, by A. M. Homes
Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett.
Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett
Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett
Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J. K. Rowling
Dragonsbane (albeit in German, Der Schwarze Drache), by Barbara Hambly
Imperium, by Robert Harris
Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
Making Money, by Terry Pratchett
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters
Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood
Glenraven, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Glenraven II, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Zeit der Maskierung - Lebensgeschichten lesbischer Frauen im dritten Reich, Claudia Schoppman
Der Umgang der nationalsozialistischen Justiz mit Homosexuellen, Carola von Bülow
The Robber Bride, by Margaret Atwood
Lesbische Identität in der Adoleszenz, Karin Kolbe (Lesbian Identity in Adolescence).
Ganz normale Mütter: lesbische Frauen und ihre Kinder, Birgit Sasse. (Completely normal mothers: lesbian women and their children)
Lesbische Frauen: Lebenswelt - Beziehungen - Psychotherapie, Kristine Falco
Beyond Sex and Romance? The Politics of Contemporary Lesbian Fiction. By Elaine Hutton
The Wee Free Men, Terry Pratchett
A hat full of sky, by Terry Pratchett
"... ist unstreitig homosexuell": Diskriminierung von Lesben und Schwulen in Arbeits- und Zivilrecht, Manuela Malt
Daughters of a Coral Dawn, Katherine Forrest

Books between years:

Elling by Simon Bent, based on the novel by Ingvar Ambjornsen
Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney
Suicidal Behaviour in Europe. Schmidtke (ed.) et. al
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
Prince Caspian, by C. S. Lewis

Current Mood: calm

I became addicted to them in Scotland, but due to my mother's nightmarish experiences with molten sugar and caramel in general I had shied away from the task until yesterday.

Ingredients
100g sugar
100g sesame seeds
1 ts butter
(4 ts honey)

All you need to do is to melt the butter, the honey and the sugar in a pan, add the sesame seed, spread it on a flat surface, slice pieces or stripes or at least indicate where you want to break it later on, and let it cool down. It takes about fifteen minutes, and the things are absolutely delicious.

Also, my brother showed me to a funny comic and a video today. I love chatting with my little brother.

WoW - The Edge of Real Life

Ok. Back to work.
Sigh.

Current Location: Uelzen, Germany

Profile

Mothwing

Books

January 2022

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Page Summary

50 book challenge
50 book challenge
Perception
Book
(no subject)
Ad against PC game addiction
50 book challenge
The DSM-V - a reparative therapist becomes chair of the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorder section.
Papers
Oldenstädter See
Uelzen in May picdump # 2 (58)
Uelzen in May picdump #1 (42)
Random findings II: Emblems
The Lowest Form of Wit
One of the most problematical and most beautiful German poems I know
Two moments typical for the last two weeks
Book challenge
Antarctican Deep Sea Life
WTF of the day
Part of the reason why I love Hilde Domin
Muffins
Deport-a-gay day?
Transsexual shepherd saves drowning princess
Cool Map thing II
Book challenge
Connolly/Gregory: Moving Down: Women’s Part-time Work and Occupational Change in Britain 1991–2001
Memes
Saturday with Cicero
Book challenge
Assorted Christmas Pics
Game banned
More cool performances of poetry
No wonder we never got famous
Wanna Hear A Poem
Land Unter
"We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget."
Best present ever
50 book challenge
(no subject)
She Stoops to Conquer
That's pretty cool
Cornelia Funke
Snatched from princess_magpie
Book challenge
Culture clashes?
No gay hearts?
Mort
50 Book challenge
The 2007 50-book challenge masterlist
Sesame Snaps

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