Entertainment

I feel bad for only fulfilling 15 of 100 basic skills for geeks. Ah, it seems my nerd days are over.

Instead, I find myself enjoying this Kendo video way too much. I want to play it over and over again, just to enjoy that feeling of pure love that Kendo gives me and to exult in the joy of gogi. Every inch of that video speaks through body language (which I'm probably only reading because I understand at most 5% of what is said ... taisho, shimpan, shiai, ippon, yuko datotsu, tehehehe). The people clapping, the kenshi's utter look of bewilderment. Pure love.

Another lovely film is this stop-motion production. Very cute.

***

Der Rechberger Mittelaltermarkt fand wieder statt, und nach dem wunderbaren Erlebnis letztes Jahr hatte ich natürlich hohe Erwartungen. Leider wohl zu hoch, denn dieses Jahr fand ich ihn etwas enttäuschend. In der Lagerwiese waren "Löcher", wo letztes Jahr Gruppen waren, und einige der hochwertigen Händlerstände, die mir noch gut in Erinnerung waren, fehlten auch. Dafür gab's Jonglage zum Mitmachen und die Möglichkeit einer Quickie-Hochzeit.
Das Ambiente ist allerdings unschlagbar, daher: Nächstes Jahr wieder!

21 Steps to Enlightenment

While I was gone, Joss Whedon's Dollhouse started to kick in real good and came to a (temporary) finish. Looking at the big picture, I didn't like the first couple of episodes too much. They had potential, but only so much as the series as a whole had - the premise, plot, etc. After five episodes, though, all the good stuff came rushing in. I became involved by all the plot reveals and turns and, above all, the fantastic acting that most of the characters showed (all except Eliza Dushku). And Alan Tudyk in the final episode - hell yeah! Rarely have I seen such a fun and entangling acting. The world needs more well acted multiple personalities. The quality of acting made me feel compelled to re-watch several episodes of Firefly; which is probably the only series that I regularly re-watch (I sometimes watch the first episodes of Buffy before I get bored, don't ever watch B5, although I dream of Star Trek Voyager).
The second season looks promising.

Auf WDR gab es eine Diskussionsrunde über die Trickserei, die im Lebensmittelbereich mit Kunden gemacht wird. Das ganze kann man sich per WebTV hier ansehen und ist sogar viel unterhaltsamer, als ich angenommen hatte.

Ein weiteres interessantes Detail, über das ich stolperte: Man vergleiche die Pringles-Wikipedia-Einträge in englisch und deutsch. Der deutsche ist ungleich kritischer und zeigt, was für ein Mist in den Chips eigentlich drin ist. Im englischen keine Spur davon.

Recherchebedingt war ich im Haus der Geschichten. Eine nette unterrepräsentierte Kulturstätte, die tief berühren kann, wenn man sich darauf einlässt. Auch schön, dass sie interaktiv ist - was mich dazu veranlasste, einen Teil meiner eigenen Geschichte dort zu lassen. Fotos:

Among the Living

I'm back. I have tons to write, and I'm writing tons, only in tons of places. Sort of ;)


There's a bad photo of the costume I designed and made some time ago:



In April, there was an exhibition on Japanese art in Salzburg. I wrote a report on it here, with photos.

In the Biologiezentrum Dornach the exhibition "Gefangen in Bernstein" is currently taking place. Quite nice for a short afternoon trip.





This Saturday, there will the the Fairplanet Festival in Linz. A week later, there's the Fest der Sinne in Wels. In September, we'll have another installment of the Wearfair. Nice!
(I just wish the Wearfair didn't always take place when I'm out of town.)

I'm also now co-habiting with six Kendo-infested beings.



And because I adjust to all kinds and tastes, I have given them both names:



and numbers:



And I also revamped my website. Go check it out.

Goodbye, Life

That was a short visit. Hope to see you again in a couple of weeks.

As you might have noticed, this and the last posting lacked the picture/painting I had intended to post with every blog entry. Alas, I still have no camera, and the cam on my phone stopped working as well, so I can't take photos of the stuff I produced in the last couple of weeks. But since I'm probably going to disappear again for a few weeks, there won't be that many postings without pictures. Quid pro quo. Or something like that.

Watched Watchmen. Then read the comic (which, surprisingly, was available in our University library; I love my English department for its open-mindedness). I liked the film. It was intriguing, partly confusing and left certain stuff open (which is neither good nor bad). Upon reading the comic, I figured the confusing stuff mostly came from the changes that had taken place for no conceivable reason. The film seems to push the vigilantes into harsher good/bad-directions, while the comic leaves them pretty much in the middle-field. The comic also and unsurprisingly explains their behaviours better. It's nice to have such well thought-out and complex personalities in the superhero genre.
I guess Heroes tries to follow that direction a bit, since its characters are quite grey, as well, but that might just be due to a general lack of a well thought-out concept, resulting in a change of character-direction in order to surprise the viewer again by putting the character into the other party. (Yes, Heroes is slowly starting to bore me.)

What does not bore me, but rather gets better bit by bit, is Joss Whedon's new show, Dollhouse. While I'm not too fond of Faith's, err, Eliza Dushku's acting, I like the direction of the show and hope it gets beyond the damsel-in-distress stage.
I miss Joss' humour. It's what made Firefly brilliant.
Still, lots of potential in the show.

***

In Linz eröffnete vor einigen Wochen die Tolouse-Lautrec Ausstellung in der Landesgalerie - eine sehr empfehlenswerte Ausstellung mit vielen beeindruckenden Bildern des Malers der Pariser Bordellszene. Mich beeindruckten vor allem die verschiedenen Stilrichtungen, in denen die Gemälde angefertigt wurden, und natürlich begeisterten mich am meisten die Bilder, in denen deutlich der Einfluss der japanischen Malerei zu sehen war. Hat mich auch etwas überrascht zu sehen, dass der japanische Einfluss damals schon so groß war. Und weil das so toll ist, geht's demnächst in die Sensai-Ausstellung in Salzburg.

Hello, Life

Well, life has me back. For a while. The question is whether this is a good or bad thing, considering that life's a bitch and all.

But, disappointingly, there are only a few links to post. The rest will follow (soon, as my former Arindal colleagues would have said).

To begin with, I have a nice video on guerilla gardening.

On the other side of a mirror, there's a shocking article on the consequences workers making antique style jeans face. The cynical part of me thought "How handy. With stuff like that, you can both make fashion and kill people."
Then it came to me that this thought isn't so ironic after all. Fashion and death are actually closely linked together - sweatshops, ridiculous beauty ideals, pesticides in the cotton plantations, etc.
Sad world.

For something more positive:
Very exciting deviation about digital comics. I love the interactive-ness and it feels so much more alive than traditional comics.

And to finish off, two in German.

Ich bin ja nicht so der Fan von Raps, Der hier hat's mir allerdings angetan.

Nachdem im deutschene Raum die Petition zum Grundeinkommen so gut durchgegangen ist, hier ein Film über's Grundeinkommen. Sehr interessant und informativ.