I.
I've finally seen "Wonder Woman" (it did come out later in the Netherlands and then I was travelling and had no time to breath). I left in love - it was a flawed movie (that boat trip was just hilariously wrong), but oh, did it do things right. I did stay out of the overall discussion, for various reasons, but two thoughts that I keep coming back to.
1. Am I happy that they went for the "wrong war". I am so, so, so tired of American stories using WWII as a backdrop. I know that it is part of the history of the character, but well ... Sometimes, if we tell the stories anew, we need to change them.
2. When writing this, I am sitting on a plane, the passengers boarding walking past me on the way to their seats: people flying from Munich to Amsterdam, from Germany to the Netherlands. And it brings it home once again: Gal Gadot would stand out among them - for being somewhat darker, somewhat different, foreign enough to be seen as "not one of us". Is it my own experience talking? Perhaps. I'm pretty sure they have not thought of this, making an American movie. But to me, with my experience of being the other in Western Europe, with the movie taking part in UK, Belgium and France, with Gal Gadot's own Israeli background, this is an Jewish woman, a woman representing an ethnic minority, a woman representing a certain Middle-Eastern look that would draw racism and discrimination, being powerful on screen. This gives me so freaking many feelings.

II.
American Gods. (Thanks, giallarhorn!) I'm two episodes in and I love it. I found the Bilquis sex scene less impressive than the online discussion let me to believe, but it *was* well done. The casting so far has been superb - different from what I thought (in my imagination, Shadow was rather Native American than black), but working in a way that is definitely overwriting my assumptions. The only thing I wish for were proper prononciation for the Zorya's names, especially among the Zoryas and Czernobog. But oh well.

III.
They did change Druckfrisch to a bi-monthly schedule, didn't they? I am so freaking sad about it, it still is perhaps the only German TV show worth watching D:

IV.
Also seen the two first seasons of Voltron. Meh. I will give it another try - in the end, the next season has Lotor. But so far it gives me zero feelings. It does certainly not help that even as a kid, I loved the vehicle Voltron version a lot more than the lion one. I'm kind of sad about this - I really wanted something else to be fannish about (not that I grow tired of Marvel/Loki but I have the distinct feeling that the whole universe goes into a direction I do not like). Oh well.
(Both Wonder Woman and American Gods are too good. Fannish needs a story with enough holes to feel them up with imagination but at the same time not enough to totally throw me off. I'm strange like that, it's hard to get me there, only very few shows ever managed.)

Crossposts: http://pax-athena.dreamwidth.org/777244.html. There are comments over there.

Sandman (I am hope)
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Lucifer (The Yahwe Dance)
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EDEN - It's an endless world (This is the first time I've ever felt this way)
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The Authority (We are forcing change on the country. You can't expect it to be easy.)
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DC: Trinity (And what do you usually do when I act like this? // I am the void.)
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Michael Moorcock's Multiverse (Sorry Sam, did I scratch you?)
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The Incal
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Watchmen
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Batman: Hush (You know, for a loner, you certainly got yourself a lot of strings // ... there is one thing I wouldn't have a slightest clue how to mend)
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Saga
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-- Taking a lie and making it the truth. Telling a story to the Universe so utterly, cosmically perfect that for a single shining moment the world believes a man can fly.

- Al Ewing, Loki: Agent of Asgard #1 -
In (slightly) fannish news:

I.
I have seen Coriolanus! Which I highly enjoyed, especially given how much the play itself was very political or rather about someone who does not know how to handle politics. This never fails to get me. I can also very much recommend the Arden Shakespeare version of the play - the commentary is both great and hilarious (disclaimer: I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I'm on the way there). I may have even went to see it a second time today, if I did not have a talk on Wednesday, which I did nothing for because I spent the last week and especially the weekend in a corner being miserable for no reason. And if I did not forget my wallet at home today - I have both my ticket and the keycard for the institute extra in my jacket, so yeah, I can actually leave my flat without my wallet and get into work. And not be able to buy a last minute cinema ticket.

II.
I have finally seen the last episode of Sherlock! Mary! Mary! I've been slightly spoiled for the last episode, so I did not want to tell you how much I fell in love with her during the first episode already, but now I've seen all three and I can tell you: I love Mary. Also: the mind palace sequence when Sherlock [Spoiler (click to open)]gets shot is one of the most amazing sequences I've seen on screen in ages. Like: whoah. WHOAH! I have all kinds of feeling. And I've been thinking a lot whether this would have worked in a book (no) or in a comic (no, I don't think so) - perfect use of the medium to show just the perfect scene.

III.
This is a tor.com article on Sherlock vs. Elementary, which is not a topic I'm having an opinion on since I have not yet seen Elementary (I want to, but you know how it works with me - see how long I needed to watch the three Sherlock episodes) and which [the article, not the series] I don't think to be particularly good. But it touches a point that I wanted to write about anyway: it's not about worshipping a character. It's about relating and identifying (about what I did call "wearing a trickster god's skin" just a while ago). Now we may end up having a longish discussion why I end up identifying with the emotionally unstable / unavailable / damaged male characters on one hand and with strong women on the other and it has a ton of both personal layers and media/depiction of gender roles layers to it, but yeah ... I may want to sit down and disentangle this at some point - or not, because it would also mean going all the way into my own stories and who wants to read about characters that only exist in my head (but who are so, so, SO important). But anyway, I stumbled over the article and I wanted to point this direction out.

IV.
And since I'm using and AoA citation as title (and icon) and am linking to tor anyway, here is another candy.
Sad thing though: even AoA does not make me feel the way DC comics make (made?) me feel; the was Hush (I, II) made me feel; the way Trinity (I, II) made me feel. Oh well, perhaps I'm expecting too much from just one single volume as opposed to a 12 (or even 52) volume storyline. Not that AoA isn't amazing in a way, it is as the link clearly shows, I'm just yet lacking the overwhelming emotional response I want to have!

I am very close to panicking now. So I guess that's the right time to do something distracting, right? Bullet points post, that is.

• Life can be mean sometimes. I bought 600g shortbread and I can't open it. Because there is no way I'll eat it up before I leave for the conference on Sunday (uhm, I also have to make a talk for the conference, but I ignore that for the moment, because - thesis) and it's all one package. I mean I *could* eat it, but I definitely should not. But ... Shortbread! I want shortbread!

• This SMBC comic made me bawl like whoah. Really, really beautiful. But you may not want to click it if you feel sad already.

• 23 Signs You're Secretly An Introvert -- or not so secretly in my case. But I loved the list anyway. I could identify with the most, but 2 (You go to parties -– but not to meet people.), 7 (Downtime doesn’t feel unproductive to you.) and 8 (Giving a talk in front of 500 people is less stressful than having to mingle with those people afterwards.), 14 (You screen all your calls -- even from friends.), and 16 (You have a constantly running inner monologue.) are so spot on and so me it almost hurts to read it spelled out. Especially given how I'm one of those introverts, and I am very much one, really, whom people usually don't perceive as introverted.

• Scary thing on Charles Stross's Blog The next moves in the Spooks v. News cold war (UK-centric) and on Sean Carroll's blog National Science Foundation Cancels Call for New Political Science Grant Proposals (US-centric - that made a round in the astro community, so I was not unprepared, but still). (I should also get something Germany-centric, for the symmetry of it, alas I seem to read few German blogs.)

• Got my absentee ballot paperwork (for the Bavarian elections, not the federal one, in case you start worrying why you haven't gotten yours yet). I'll not be in B. for both elections anyway.

• Some very pretty fantasy and Art Noveau inspired Art by one Thomas Canty can be found here. (I stumbled over him in the comments to an entry on Ray Bradbury covers on tor.com - he has made a really pretty one for "Dandelion Wine".)

• And another article from tor.com: Collateral Damage: Blockbusters and the Changing Narrative of War. Now the text itself is not the most wow thing on the topic you'll read, but what it made me realize (next to the fact that I really did not like the second instalment of NuTrek, although I loved the first and that I'm still firmly on the side of "love DC comics, hate their movies") is that what established The Authority as different from other superheroes and what marked Midnighter as a relentless killer, was how he drove the Carrier into the city Gamorra. That ... that wouldn't be something special anymore, right? And as much as I love The Authority (hey, I even have a tag for them!), it makes me very sad.

• And to finish the entry on a happier note: Oh, and how comes that I did not remember that "American Gods" is dedicated to Roger Zelazny?

Answers to your questions. Finally there are some. Three to be exact. Did I mention that I tend to talk and talk and talk? Perhaps I should have. Anyway, here they are. I tried to go for questions which came first and for topics which would make something of a coherent post. Sorry for the typos, I'm tiiiired, I'll try to weed them out later. Or tomorrow.

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(This entry becomes more understandable towards the end, I promise! And yes, the title is a citation.)

It's embarrassing to admit, but I've never before fully read that classic Shakura & Sunyaev paper from 1973 "Black Holes in Binary Systems. Observational Appearance" (Yeah, that paper still got 300 referred citations in 2009 and has an overall count of above 4000). I've heard a whole lecture on accretion which was partly heavily based on their ideas, but never came along to read the original. The paper is amazing. The English is slightly tiny bit wacky (well, they are two mainly Russians speaking people - back then really living in Russia, not being Max Plack directors), but the argumentation is so well done and so understandable. Except for some formulae I'll have to meditate about, but the rest is wonderful. And they have this plots, which were mostly done by hand, because they did not have computers for that back there (and would not spend days trying to make a plot, perhaps ...). And they even have a figure with something resembling a jet. I'm happy :D

What I'm not so happy about are computers. I have some strange numerical artefacts which make the routines making fast fourier transforms complain because they think that my data do not look as they should, namely that my lightcurves have gaps. I think I know a very crude way around it, but well, it will be a very crude one.

And for your amusement, this is how the B. mafia works - an excerpts from two e-mail from me to M. and from M. to me (permission to publish them asked, of course, and granted):


I love working at this place! (Though there always are some idiots, but well, I don't know where they don't have any ...)

By the way, among things one should not do is staying up till 2 a.m. watching the Superman/Batman: Public Enemies movie. Though you did not even like the comic - Superman/Batman is a roller coaster, between crazy and trashy in a highly amusing way and the absolute catastrophe, imho. Anyway: I want more of those movies! They really, really need to turn the second of the Superman/Batman TBP (Supergirl) into a movie.

Yes, I just did squee over a highly theoretical paper on astronomy and a superhero cartoon in the same entry. Why are you asking?

One of my favourite skirts is torn :( And the fabric is too thin to stitch it up properly. Will ask my grandma to crochet me some little flowers and look whether I can conceal the hole with them. I know, I could just buy an other one, but I really like the one I have.

Anyway, meme stolen from telpi:
01. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper at their LiveJournal.
02. Explain why you're using that wallpaper.
03. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this. The point is to see what you had on.

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Well, that picture on a laptop named Starscream, it could be misunderstood, I know... *sighs* But it is just sooo beautiful! And I'm just in love with fallen angels (as if one could not tell from the stuff I write and my favourite book *coughs*). The artist's website is here: www.sandara.net


Then two tests I found rather amusing (yes, it's again the balance theme):

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And last but not least - I finally got my hands on the last issues of ‘Trinity’ I was missing. Given that I'm so into symbols and pictures, no wonder I liked the series. And #48 contained a page, which was almost as good as the one from #12 (obviously, spoilers follow):

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After the stress with my minors in October I promised that I'll never again do two final exams in the same week. So guess what happened with my appointments for the major subjects? Oh yes... But I'm happy: I got the profs I wanted, I got the focus I wanted (Nuclear Physics and Quantum Mechanics respectively - everything else will still be asked, but at least there is a focus) and I'll be done by the end of April, assumed that I don't fail one of those. You see? I try everything to see things in a good light.

I got two tickets for the Residenz-Theater. One for Büchner's 'Woyzeck' - yes, exactly, the play I did not manage to see last year, because I bought the ticket just to find out that the play was canceled half an hour before it started. And another one for Henrik Ibsen's 'Brand'. Do not know that work of his, but Ibsen is always great. The only minus is that I'm going alone. But well... Not anymore! Theatre is great!

A friend pointed out that as long as I'm student of my university, I can take courses with the Virtuelle Hochschule Bayern (Virtual University of Bavaria) for free. So I'll get the lecture in Political Economics I always wanted to take and never managed because of my obligatory courses being at the same time. Unfortunately, they do not offer anything literature-related, but there still are some other lectures I'd be interested in, like 'Webdesign for Beginners' (because I just can't kick myself hard enough to finally start doing something on this regard and this would be a reason to do so), 'Ethnology' or 'Gender and Diversity' and some more. Let's see how the learning for my exams goes and how much time I'll have left for anything else once I've moved and started working on my thesis.

I have a mobile phone again - or to be exact the same old thing, but now it works again, this time with a pre-paid card, because I just don't use the thing often enough for everything else. But I'm not Stone Age anymore.

After wild fits of laughter that made people doubt the state of my mind, I bought, with the help of a friend, the Superman Batman Annual 1. Because sometimes I need things which are absolutely undemanding and fun and funny. To counterbalance that I have a pile of good books waiting to be read, including Sorokin, Wolf, Sontag and some others.

Perhaps I'll go to B. for a housewarming party. And certainly to the Neue Pinakothek tomorrow. And we'll make sushi at some point this week and have the great instant miso I finally found as a starter.

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Because, for various reasons, I feel a bit of depressed today (but I will spare the world the whining) and because I'm running out of Trinity issues to read: this page alone would have been enough to make me read the whole series so far:

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It is also hilarious in many other regards. And very comic-bookish. And I hope for a happy end, because I need one (but I will not find out before my exams are over, ugh...). I'm afraid I'm back to "I want my comics simple and happy and ending well".

(I said "obsessed", didn't I? And yes, my sense of humour is beneath all contempt...)

Note to myself: stop getting obsessed with comicbook-characters. It is so not healthy. So not.

And you'll so not guess who my current obsession is. Except if you happen to know who seems to have been killed for the first and perhaps final time in the (very long) history of the character just yesterday. Yeah, I've luck with such things ;_;

Tralala... I'm still ill, so just don't mind me, OK?
[By the way, one of the downsides of not having been able to properly eat for almost a weak, is that my tummy got used to these tiny portions of food I forced down and does not like to be faced with normal portions at all anymore. Kind of nerving, because I'm still hungry.]

Also read AHM #6. Meh... It might be because of Kup. Of all the characters in Transformers, Kup is the only one I cannot stand in any continuity. And he is playing this prominent role. And all the others seems so terribly OOC, especially to how they were in IDW-verse so far. And everything is kind of slow. In short: me = unhappy. But it might really be just because of Kup. I still buy the comics for at least the art  is okay (and because I'm that fair and support the artists, silly me). But I really wish for a story that keeps me waiting for the next issue like the -ion - series did. Which also had their downsides, but were much more fun to read, imho.

Besides, I'm packing my things for Germany again. I so want a permanent place and the whole moving to be over. No love for packing and moving here.

My plan for yesterday was rather simple: work, stop by at my own flat to pick some things and drop others, go back home, eat, see some superhero movie, perhaps write an e-mail or a page of a letter, read some comics, bed.

I slept over, rushed to the institute, visited a flat with a friend of mine who is flat hunting here in Amsterdam, going to a Turkish groceries store on the way (Mmmh... Quinces and pomegranates!) , got back to the institute, got a panicked e-mail from a friend, searched for a headset to skype, found one which my (working) computer would not see, decided to better go home, since it was almost 7 p.m. anyway, but still had to stop at my place. Finally 'home' fed the cat I'm pet-sitting - also known as 'the monster' and was mercifully allowed to scratch behind her ear. Spent too much time on phone/skype looking over PSDs and stuff and generally chatting, ate something in between and had to shoo away the monster who thought my laptop to be the perfect scratching post, just because I was sitting on the floor with the stupid thing, as I needed my computer which I only have a cable Internet connection with right now and the cable is just really short. Then decided that a cheesy comic might be the very thing to read at 1 a.m. when one can't fall asleep and took "Superman: Godfall" from the shelf. I guess this was the first Superman/comic read for - uh - 9 years or so? Anyway: Nice!
Oh, and there were other things between all those, of course: El Jay, the dishes, 'The Golden Compass', discussing some stuff I might need for my own diploma thesis, discussing where we want a flat in B., waiting for the bus in the cold...

Such days are fun as long as they last. But the next day I feel knocked out. I need time to digest things (therefore perhaps the entry, to sort it all out...). Quite a lot of time, in fact. Otherwise I lose this painfully acquired balance, feel inclined to get into political discussion on the Internet (the worst possible thing to do!), read articles and blogs I just get indignant over without being able to do something about them (xkcd summed the feeling up here) or write whiny e-mails, neither of which makes the balance return. I know, the best cure is to get a life outside the Internet and I promise I will as soon as I'm back in Germany. But for now writing it down helps.

[Edit:] OK, the knocked out feeling was actually because I was getting a cold. Damn! Not that there is any proper time for a cold, but that is certainly the absolutely wrong one!