Roads to Safe Places

I'm done! I couldn't do much during the past five days because of my cold, and here is the result:



Even though as you can see there are some unevenness when it comes to flower centres and yarns I'm very pleased with the result. I'm not sure what to do with this happy little fellow now, but it was still great to make.

CONGRATULATIONS to all of you who won the Spring Fanfic Polls - you all deserve it and I feel proud to have you on my flist! ♥ 

I hope you celebrated your own abilities accordingly and had a lovely Easter. 

Thank you so much for all the pretty glass hearts, kellychambliss, pale_moonlite, lordhelleboreand moonystone! ♥

I hope you all had a pleasant day on the 14th, however you spent it. 

A lot, especially when it comes to her singing and the choirs she can sing in. Her ensemble performed "Lux Aurumque" at their last concert, which is beautiful piece by the conducter and composer Eric Whitacre (here's also a TTBB only version of this here commissioned by the Gay Men's Chorus of LA). 

Whitacre is not only noteworthy because of his beautiful music, but also because of his virtual choir- this is them with Lux Aurumque:



I love the VirtualChoir project, you can join here.

Ooh, I've fallen in love with this series, and Maggie is a delight in it - her character is superb. I think I need to change my answer in woldy's meme, this is needs to be this year's discovery. It's about a grand Edwardian estate, its family and servants in the early the years before WWI. The characters are delightful, as are the actors and actresses.

You ought to give it a go, if not for Maggie or the characters, then for the accents, clandestine gay characters (though I doubt he'll get much action after the first episode, poor dear) and good Lord, for the clothes: 

 

Bake these.

They're not difficult to make and they're absolutely fantastic.

Unless you don't like peppermint, and if you don't like peppermint, well.

Taking to heart this TED-talk as well as Jane McGonigal's book and this ExtraCredits episode on gamifying education I'm working on ways to make my class more motivating next year. If all things go well, I'll be teaching an 8th grade and I'm going to try to apply some of the things they propose.

Researching this is fun, too, because through this I've discovered awesome things like: 

ChoreWars - a browser-based game in which you can enter an epic chore competition with your roomies

and

Plusoneme.com - which lets others give you points for your RL stats.

I've been rather too happy about my discoveries on Etsy lately and decided to treat Crocky and myself.

First off, I got myself some earrings because I needed accessories that underline my decorous, understated professionalism, seeing as how I'm going to be a teacher and all-around respectable person soon: 


And I got this for Crocky: 




Quite apart from the possibilities to tattoo on her own arm, there's always the possibility to adorn either her uni work or deserving student's work with the Dark Mark.

Let's have some ducklings!

Let me preface this by saying: Don't feed ducks bread. It's unhealthy for them as well as the lake (if you are hell-bent on feeding them, and ducks looking as cute as they do and these birds being tame, anyway I can understand that, either use feeding pellets, or stuff like grapes or peas). The ducks on the Maschsee in Hannover are being fed by the students from the school across the street as well as the scores of visitors to the lake that come every day and they're so used to humans they're practically tame, more so than any other inner city birds I've ever seen. They'll even take food directly from people's hands.

And now on to the mallards and their offspring.



( Many many ducks and ducklings... )

My most recent acquisition is a German book on essay writing for German students from 1868, though the book I own is a later edition from 1893. The author, Karl Leo Cholevius, a German teacher teaching at a Gymnasium, issues his advice in letter format to an imaginary addressee who is an Abi or A-level student in need of essay writing advice.

The book, Praktische Anleitung zur Abfassung Deutscher Aufsätze (Practical Guide to Writing German Essays) was a success at the time because it wasn't a collection of rhetorical figures of speech, but offered a how-to approach for, as the author says, "weaker students" who might require it. As one of the few of its kind it was an immediate success at the time.

In the second letter (and the second paragraph in the excerpt below), he addresses tutoring and its lack of usefulness when it comes to essay writing:



I'm too lazy to translate, but the short version is that he made the experience that it's usually the sons of rich fathers who'd like some tutoring a couple of months before their finals and think that paying for private lessons will fix everything.

Right now, I can think of three students I've been tutoring in the course of this school year to whom this applies. Heh.

My school is going to undergo a TÜV test in April, as my boss informed me yesterday. Turns out they don't only come to check on how our students like us and to examine the administrative portion, they also audit our lessons, and I didn't really like the sound of that. When I replied half-jokingly that I'd have to prepare something extra-special for them, she said that what with my "outstanding preparation" I "wouldn't have to worry one bit", and she'd try to schedule their visit so that they could audit my lessons specifically, because I'm such a credit to the school.

Made my day. I suppose it's not such a big deal in the greater scheme of things, especially considering the nagging thought - which Crocky echoed once I got home - that the fact that I distinguish myself from the others because of preparation is not really a sign that the school is doing that well.

Still. Outstanding preparation, people. Credit to the school. Excuse me while I try to squeeze my inflated ego through that door to do some late lunch now (I bought 1kg of fresh spinach to celebrate and I'm now not sure what to do with it, really. Spinach lasagne?).

And for something completely petition-unrelated: kindkit on discworld shared these promotional pictures for the adaptation of Going Postal that have been published on Sky's official page:



I haven't been following this, and I'm mostly looking forward to this as this is really not a series I care about that much. I am not sure how I feel about Witchfinder Aredian/Mr Tulkington/Christopher Lilly/Lord Stockbridge/Maxim de Winter being cast as Lord Vetinari, but Im not likely to agree with whomever gets cast in that role. Well, unless the acting is going to be what it was in large parts of Hogfather, then I'm not sure I'm looking forward to this at all.

( 4 more pictures )

I rediscovered this on Youtube today. It's a French children's series from the olden days on the body which I watched religiously. There were series by the same producers on history, inventions, space, and other subjects. They were fun to watch and taught me more about the different jobs the individual parts of the body have for it than any biology lesson I ever had later on.

Now also available in Colorado, and I learned that there's Clitoraid for those who can't afford it. I know that the surgery has been available in Germany for years (it's covered by the insurance), and it's a good thing that there are people offering it in the USA, I didn't even know that it wasn't available over there.

What always absolutely floors me is how often people feel the need to state that there is little known about female sexual organs and that many articles on the subject feel it necessary to point out that FGC is usually a whole lot more invasive than the male counterpart that isn't. Why on earth don't people know that?

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I was honestly surprised that there could be any other answers to this than Margaret Rutherford as Mrs Marple, and had to check the other answers to find out what other people think.



... although Evelyn Hamann as Adelheid is awesome, too.

To dussem dantse rope ik al gemene
Pawes keiser unde alle creaturen
Arm ryke groet unde kleine
Tredet vort went iu en helpet nen truren
Men dencket wol in aller tyd
Dat gy gude werke myt iu bringen
Unde juwer sunden werden quyd
Went gy moten na myner pypen springen.*

Last Saturday, my Middle High German course, niaseath, other guests, and I went on an excursion to look at the Totentanzkapelle in Lübeck as well as an exhibition of modern-day hommages to the danse macabre from Lübeck in the St. Annen-Museum. We had a really lovely day enthusing about late medieval art, modern art, the church service and the beautiful church with other course members and our Professor.

While searching for the text of the Totentanz online I found this wonderful Danish site (click that link, you know you want to! Though be warned, it means goodbye to the rest of your day), which, in its introduction, mentions that the idiom "like death warmed over" is "at ligne Døden fra Lübeck" in Danish, which means, "like death from Lübeck".

"Death from Lübeck" used to look like this before the mural was destroyed in WWII:



...although that is the 1701 version, the original is believed to have looked something like this (Tallinn-fragment):



----
*To this dance I call everybody, / pope, emperor, and all creatures / poor, rich, great and small./ Step forward, because grieiving does not help you,/ but remember, at all times,/ to bring good works and deeds with you / and all your sins will be good again / because you must all dance to my pipe.

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. 

The University of Hannover is hosting the German Tolkien society's annual seminar this year. It's free, it's this April and it'll be on conflict, violence and war in Tolkin's works. The organiser is the Professor whose seminar on "literary masculinities" I was allowed to attend for kicks at Hannover university in spite of not being enrolled there (he is an awesome teacher and has worked on Tolkien, too).

I am tempted - and I'm especially looking forward to "Tolkien as war poet", "violence and song" and the talks on the "just wars". My knowledge of Tolkien's works may not be sound enough to fully appreciate everything, but I'll try.

In case any of the more Tolkieny-inclined among you are interested:

I discovered something awesome today: Fantasy rants by limyaael on InsaneJournal, and I find myself nodding emphatically while reading a lot.

The collection of IJ memories above is a collection of essays and rants on this my favourite genre, in which she shares some of my main gripes - for example the fact that all queer couples must angst and end in tragedy, the fact that in gender equal societies, males and females both just so happen to take on our traditional gender roles and that things domestic are just not considered to be as important as warfare, the stereotypical, boring use of music in Fantasy, a plea for making heroines more human 3D, or the typical problems which arise when writing about oppression and oppressive socieites (she also includes a part on race and class).

There are a plethora of interesting topics she addresses, this is just a random selection of things that immediately struck me.

I had a really lovely day today. My father is kind enough to repair my computer. Its cooler had fried the motherboard and the CPU, and he's setting my PC up with a new motherboard and even better video and sound cards we still have from my brother's old PC. I really appreciate that he is willing to take so much time to set me up with a PC that I'll only  be using when I'm staying with my family. My family will be using it as a data storage PC, too, so it's not for my benefit only, but I'm still extremely grateful that he's willing to do that. My brother and I tried to help, but we couldn't really, so we went and watched this movie:


In the afternoon, my mother and I looked at the algae which grow on the walls of our aquarium. There were myriads of snail's eggs in them and weird little worms we couldn't identify and (uncharacteristically for her) didn't bother to find out about. I have had a silly and over-romanticising affection for labs and microscopes ever since I was about three and I still sometimes envy my family for being able to work with microscopes on a regular basis. I'm the only one who doesn't. My father only occasionally uses them, though, and my mother analyses car accidents involving wildlife for insurances, and she has her lab with microscopes at home.



( Greenery with eggs (5) )

Later today, after dark, my brother and I scared the neighbours and passers-by by taking pictures in the dark to test my camera's abilities at night and my brother's tripod - that was awesome. There's light frost on all the plants in our garden, some of which had already started blooming because of the warm winter. Still, with or without flash, it's hard to get things focused in the dark, and my live-view function doesn't really work well with little light - so we had to use torches to make sure that our pictures were focused. I guess our neighbours are used to our crazy.



( Random plants and our front lawn (5) )

I know, I know, don't even have the 1am-excuse today, but I was curious what the graph would look for games (also, I really like graphs, embarrassingly enough). The sheer number of fanfics has always startled me, but the distribution befuddled me even more. 



It was not surprising to me that there are such a large number of fanfics for Final Fantasy, but I really would have expected more WoW fanfic featuring NElfs falling for BElfs or similar tacky crap.
Pokémon fanfic I expected, but the existence of Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic was news to me. Also, I would have expected more Star Wars or GW. Huh.

( Larger graphs )

Yesterday was pretty much the perfect day. Perfect. I had asked Crocky whether she'd like to see What the Butler Saw with me, and so she came along and spent the day with me in Hamburg, which is always a good foundation of a perfect day.

At first, I went to see one of my examiners, the didactics one, who is just generally wonderful and awesome and who chatted to me about my final paper and was very interested in my topic. I love her. Then, I picked up two Scheine, which I was very pleased with, as well.



Since by then it was only around 3pm, there was a lot of time to kill until 7.30pm. Thus, we went to see Hancock, which I had unwisely not read any reviews of and which I was exited about because it features a Will Smith as a superhero.


Why I Did Not Like Hancock In Spite of Will

After three quarters of an hour, feeling vaguely self-conscious and nerdy for doing so, I leant across to Crocky and told her I was wondering whether this movie is actually worse from a gender perspective or a race perspective only to find out that she'd been trying to make up her mind about that, too.

Of course now some people will roll their eyes and marvel how she and I can even be bothered to care enough about such things to let them interfere with watching a good movie, and rest assured that I really wouldn't have, had there been a decent enough movie to watch. Now, it's not as bad as The Happening, which had me wondering and thankful for watching it, because it may actually be the absolutely worst movie I have ever had the privilege of seeing, but just generally... sort of... wrong on several levels.

The only good things were probably the special-effects and the mere fact that it has a black superhero! As a main character! As the title role! Which was awesome.

Not so awesome was pretty much everything else.

The blatant, really unnecessary nationalism, which was probably only to be expected of a movie that opened on the fourth of July - and still I think that the film could have afforded to lose a few eagles, especially the random real eagle that made a WTF-inspiring appearance in the closing scenes.

The way the hero had to be told to adjust to the role of the tradintional, white superhero to be accepted by society, guided by a wise, well-adjusted white mentor figure and with the vulnerable white, blonde woman as the ultimate prize at the end. How- in spite of her freaking super powers- said white, blond woman's purpose was to be saved by the male hero, for heaven's sake. How this is also a movie about a poverty-stricken, aggressive alcoholic being polished up for society by the nice upper-class, white family.
How the backstory stayed lame and vague and was only introduced in the last part of the film, making a rushed appearance.

How, in spite of Hancock, there was just one other black character, who was of course a male news presenter, and a few criminals without lines, and no black women at all. This especially made Hancock not only "the only of his kind" as a superhero, but also the only of his kind as a black character, which is sad, as the film was promising.

So, I did not really like it. I still love watching Will Smith, but the first black superhero could really have deserved a different context in my eyes.


We then went and watched the University Player's performance of Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw, which was very, very enjoyable.
Even though I know that some people had had their doubts about the effectiveness of having the characters played by cross-dressing characters of the opposite sex, that made the play all the more enjoyable to watch for me.
The skill of the actors and the professionalism of the production once again made me marvel at the skill of the people involved.