I am watching a documentary called Jesus Camp and it makes me so angry. So mind-blowingly angry. There are these people who turn kids into little evangelist with psychoses. At the very beginning this woman who runs them actually says that when muslims indoctrinate their kids young - Christians should even be better at it because they have the 'truth'. And then they indoctrinate them against the separation of church and state and to disbelieve in global warming and tells them Harry Potter is sin and that he should be put to death.
I'm just so incredibly digusted right now. Even if I wasn't against all religion by now - they don't understand the message of Jesus at all - how can you call yourself a christian and care shit about the creation, about the environment, about the people.

"Whenever I meet someone who isn't christian, I feel like something isn't right. My soul feels yucki." This says a ten-year old kid. Obviously this is fed to him by those ministers and his parents and obviouly they preach hatred.
I'd rather put my lot with terroritst than these people, really. 25% of Americans are evangelists and that scares the fuck out of me. Oh and since I am at it - can I say fuck some more? FUCK! Becaue apparently that is the devil speaking.

And its so obvious - the manipulation because they keep mixing in politic views. Making the kids praise and pray for Bush, slamming cups bearing 'government' with hammers and saying that a non-cristian government has to be destroyed...
This world is so sick and fucked up and these people are poison.


These are two great free documentaries about some important things - about our monetary system and how they use religion and government and a lot of other important subjects:
www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

Book 19/50: Erwin Moser - Der Mond hinter den Scheunen (The moon behind the sheds)








The moon behind the sheds is a children's book, set in a small, rural village, populated with characters from the animal kingdom. Raffi, a black cat who develops a strange affection towards the mice he is supposed to hunt. Grauschnautz, a little mice from the fields is picked up by a big field-machine and taken to the farm where he finds friends among the farm-mice. And finally, Gelbzahn, leader of the farm-rats is forced to flee from a black-furred stranger who takes over his leadership. He finds refuge among the rats who live in the sewers and from there plots his return - but also among the sewer rats, there are problems with the leader that need solving.

It took me a long time to find this, as its out of print but I remembered it from my childhood and wanted to get my hands on it. It's really sweet and well written. From my perspective now, there are a few spots where its intentions to tell children a bit about the adult world - about love, friendship, politics etc. are a bit obvious but that didn't really bother me as a kid so maybe it's just the present me who spots it.

It was a nice break from all those serious books and my uni-fixation. Plus, if I ever expect to maybe write children's books myself, I need to read myself into a store of them. (Weird mix though - women's erotica and kids' books. lol)

Hiya, just a short message because I am totally flying over the moon right now: I have been accepted into the Master's Program I wanted to get into (MA Specialized Translation). They take about 35 of over 200 applicants and I had actually been seriously nervous. But they want me! I am good, whohooo! And in Spanish, too! (I had been worried they might only accept me for the English Programm but I can also go on with Spanish.
Lol so I just got myself into another 2 years of studies but this is good. This is great, it just qualifies me for a number of interesting jobs and it means I don't have to go out and find a job with how the economy is right now.
*off to imaginary celebrating - after 4 hours of choir-practice, I'm too knackered to actually celebrate lol*

I have internet again - in a manner of speaking.
To avoid having to wait 3 weeks until a new company could claim my account (in which time I would have been offline) I chose to go with a mobile internet provider - at least for the time being. But this is the shittiest connection since dial-up. I am so frustrated right now, if that wouldn't mean 3 weeks offline I'd send the thing back right now. But as it is I'll cancel the contract for end of next month and go back to a DSL.
And they promised to be faster than DSL 6000. Seriously!

Book 18/50: John Boyne - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas






Worst book I have read in a long time, and I am not exaggerating.

It's the story of a young boy of 9 years old; he's the son of a high ranking NSDAP Officer who appears to run the concentration camp Auschwitz. They just moved there for that assignment and the boy, Bruno has a hard time adjusting - he doesn't like their house and it's so far away from everything that he has nobody to play with.
After a while, he begins exploring - there is a fence and behind the fence there are a lot of people in what he perceives as striped pyjamas, but nobody can explain to him why they are there and what it all means. On one of his exploring trips along his side of the fence he comes upon another boy - Shmuel. A jew who is held in the concentration camp and there with the fence between them, they develop a friendship.

So far so good. I personally think the idea itself is a bit cheesy: what is easier to attract a reader's sympathy, there are all the key elements: war (and well here the holocaust just takes the cake) and children. But it could have been made into a good book, no doubt about that. Unfortunately, for me, it wasn't for a number of reasons.

1. The author writes as though he doesn't know any children up close and the ones, he has observed from far away, he didn't like. Which of course forces the question of why he writes about children (and especially a whole book from what he calls a child's perspective) at all. I like books like that (The incident with the dog at the night time - someone actually had the cheek to compare them, or a less known but beautiful book called Meg Rosoff's How I live now.) but each of the ones I read before felt like it was written from the perspective of a child. This one absolutely did not - it tried but it was so constructed and just bad. The style annoyed me to no end.

2. Dialogues. This follows point one - but the dialogs where just riddiculous UN-childlike. No child usues so many big words and sentence structures you hear only from posh 40-year old women. Now you could argue that the kid is just precocious - but as I will go into later, he is stupid and naive to the point of a mental disabiliy and so I think not.
Examples: "Bruno, will you please explain to me what you meant by that last remark?" (Gretel, age 12)
"Well, you have been brought here against your will just like I have. If you ask me, we're all in the same boat and its learking." (Bruno aged 9)
It's just so... I personally can't imagine this coming from a child's mouth and it irritated me so much...

3. Bruno's stupidity. This was the worst actually - Bruno, the boy of 9 I should remind you, is so stupid it boarders on making you think something is seriously wrong with him. I know children, I babysit a lot and I enjoy talking to them - and I know kids of 5 or 6 who are a lot smarter and more aware of the world around them than Bruno and his sister are. He doesn't know anything about the state of the world - he doesn't know who the Führer is and what he does, he doesn't even know what a jew is. I mean that he wouldn't understand why German's have to hate jews that would make sense - but what does John Boyne think, how hate propaganda works? From the earliest time in school kids were programmed to hate jews, to love Hitler and to feel like the superior race. Its disgusting but that's how it is. For Bruno not to know what a jew is, is simply inconceivable - especially considering he has a high-ranking Officer as a father.
One one occasion, he exchange the hitler-greeting with his father and he seriously doesn't stand for or what he is saying. He is just very very irritatingly stupid.

4. There are these wordgames in there - they have something to do with Bruno's low mental capabilities. He doesn't know how to pronounce "Führer" and always says Fury - this is upheld throughout the book. The same goes for Auschwitz, which he calls "Out-with", because he thinks the people who have been there before them have been thrown-out. Now apart from the idea that a nine-year old boy can't pronounce "Führer" and doesn't know what it is - this simply doesn't make sense! A German boy would know that - but a German boy would never come up with Fury or Out-with. It's weird - thee are english plays on the sound of the words - and sure its an English book, but this German history and a book about a German boy and this doesn't make sense. If he wants to play with words he should write a book about the Ireland/England conflict - which I would recommend anyway if he isn't prepared to properly research the history of the country he writes about.

5. Bad research. This might sound minor but it seriously annoyed me because it contributed to the idea that he only wrote about the Holocaust because its a topic that easily finds a lot of readers. The reearch is just poor. He tried to use German names - but then kept throwing some in there that aren't: Isobel and Louise for example. There are German names like that but they are spellt Isabelle and Luise. And well, Isabelle isn't strictly German and probably wouldn't have been used in that time to begin with.
Of course the book has been critized also for how it portrayed Auschwitz, and rightly so! The idea that a nine-year old boy along with hundreds of others (as the book suggests) just freely roams about there is riddiculous to the point of insulting to the people who were actually there. It makes it sound so much less... horrible. There were no kids in Auschwitz - they were killed when they got there, like the elderly and the ones with disabilities were - or if they were twins or in any other way of interest, used for medical experiments. This is horrible and it makes me shudder to think about it - but making it sound nicer in a book iss for me absolutely unacceptable. The same goes for the idea that the fence was just a normal fence where a boy can crouch through. The fence was electric (I heard they changed this in the film) and nobody could just have held it up and crawled under.

So suffice to say, I really didn't like the book and I actually find it offensive that it gets so much praise. I don't understand why at all, I don't like the way children are portrayed in it (any of the three children, none of them are actually likable or well constructed 3-dimensional characters. He seems to think just because they are children he can go light on characterization. He tries with Bruno but its just not enough - he's a stupid, selfish idiot with basically no redeeming features except for the fact that he is a kid and very naive. Not really enough for me.

Anyway, go ahead if you want to read it, but there are enough REAL stories about the Holocaust that are brilliant. There is no need for bad fiction on the subject. I'd recommend The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman. THAT is chillingly touching. The boy in the striped pyjama's certainly is not.

Pages: 215
2/5

A friend and I came up with a new graphic's challenge community. It's called maniptopmodels and, inspired by various reality tv-shows, we created a competition where you claim a celebrity and photoshop a series of challenges - the shoots if you will. It'll be great fun and we are currently looking for people to compete with us!
More info here:maniptopmodels maniptopmodels maniptopmodels maniptopmodels maniptopmodels maniptopmodels maniptopmodels maniptopmodels

Book 17/50: Daniel Glattauer - Gut Gegen Nordwind






Through a bit of a coincidence, I ended up starting with the sequel Alle Sieben Wellen and only now read the first book. This one. I had been in need for a completely recently published book to translate for my BA thesis and so I took Alle Sieben Wellen, in fact at first I wasn't even aware of the fact that it was the sequel to anything.
When I realized, naturally I was curious about the beginning of the story. How the two protagonists meet, how their much spoken of Email-romance begun etc. In a few short words, Leo and Emmi start sending each other emails and fall in love - but, complication! Emmi is married.

To be honest I was just disappointed. I mean the sequel was ok. Entertaining at first read but really I am not too fond of the female character - even though I get why a male writer would write her like that. We must seem that way to men sometimes.
But this one - after everything that was hinted at in the sequel - that amazing email relation ship, I really didn't see it. It seemed constructed to m. Not real and not nearly as much chemistry as the author believes there is.
Or maybe I'm just spoiled by my and Adams internet love ;) Except that we actually met after 3 weeks because we realized we'd be completely insane not to. Maybe we insane for doing so in the end, who knows.
But I didn't actually like this book very much. Kind of weak. Sorry. And I'm too tired for a better review.

Pages: 219
3/5

Book 16/50: Ian McEwan - The Child in Time







Finally another Ian McEwan - I'm almost through his complete works now, especially the more famous ones. He only very rarely disappoints me and this one was a definite winner.
There is something magical about his writing - something that makes it precise and beautiful and gives it a wonderful flow while it is about so many things at the same time. All these different strings and different ideas should make it choppy and hard to follow - but it never is.

The child in time in a way reminded me of Saturday in that way. It is about a man, Stephen, and the way his past and the times and the circumstances around him influence his life and help him grow. Stephen, a successful children's books writer, has lost his little daughter when she was abducted from him in a super-marked, it tore his marriage apart and, of course, he never actually got over it, always wondering where she is. He has been called into a special sub-committee of the government who are trying to come up with new and better ways to educate children, his committee working on child literature. And then there is a fascinating side story about a good friend of his and everything flows together so well.

Stephan is a fascinating character and so are all the others, especially his friend Charles and his wife Julie. There is depth to them and subtlety, he leaves enough unsaid to let him grow alive in your head but says enough to get a good understanding of him, to emphasise with him.
Its a small book, just a little over 200 pages but there is so much in it. It's so full and so well written. It takes longer to read then another book of the size - each page is so full of ideas and interesting structures. I found myself re-reading a lot of passages because I wanted to enjoy then again. I totally loved it, I loved its strangeness and the odd themes and odd people and the odd ideas and it makes me love Ian McEwan all the more.

Pages: 225
5/5

Here's a story about my night at the opera experience (oh, how romantic that sounds). I went to see Mozart's Cosi fan tutte with a good friend and her mother.

I had really been looking forward to it because I know parts of the opera - the music anyway, and I always thought it was incredibly beautiful. So this couldn't go that bad, right? And I am older now (my first opera experience when I was 17 were 4 hours of incredible boredom, exacerbated by my brother's boredom).

But I digress, lets start from the start. I felt strangely both over- and under-dressed. My best friend and her mum came in normal clothes, while I tried to make a bit of an effort, but everybody at the opera was not just well-dressed but obviously really rich and beautiful and dresses and skirts and beautiful fabrics and colours and things you really don't see a lot. Lol I felt poor with my charityshop suit ;-).

We had ok seats - the ones that are affordable but you can still see well and the acoustics were pretty good. The two male protagonists just didn't have enough volume in their voice to really cover the opera-hall but the women and the others were amazing. The stage set - absolutely beautiful. So classically pretty and all I wanted to do was take my camera and play fashion photographer in it. The lighting, the backdrop, huge pillars and a ship and everything :). (I didn't take the pics by the way, wasn't allowed, so I took them from their website)

But here comes my problem: I just don't think I'm an opera person. I do theatre, I looove theatre and musicals... but opera, I don't think its my thing. It not... REAL. And its terribly annoying when you listen to music that is so beautiful and so emotionally charged you're just in awe - and then you look at the stage and it's a comedy! It's weird and disconnected and just strange. It all doesn't fit together.

Because its sung in italian (and I suspect I wouldn't understand a terrible lot more if it were sung in German or English) and because some people (like me) sit very far away, they have to overact incredibly to make it apparant what is going on. And the overacting is comical and silly and the story is absolute rubbish (two men are told all women are sluts so they decide to test their lovers by dressing in a costume and switching partners and the women give in and in the end they marry anyway, because apparently women are like that and you can't expect more from them), the characters are stupid, the idea of love is grotesque - and yet, the music is so beautiful it makes me wanna cry.

I think I'll stick to listening to opera recordings in the future and go actually watch more musicals and plays. Its infinitely more worth it. And it is beautiful - like this part if the piece: Soave sia il vento
 

Made some more shiny icons. Some Richard Armitage, some Alexis Bledel and 6 that were made for a stock-icon challenge I partake in.