What I got this weekend

If my blog were a school essay, this would rather be titled "What I did on my holidays", I know. But as this isn't a school essay (it would be waaaaay to late anyway, I've been out of school for 12 years now), it will only feature what the weekend brought me.

To make it short: one more "Girl Genius" comic, my You Higuri art book "Jewel", a sore throat and a common cold.

How I managed to get a sore throat, is beyond me, but the common cold definitely came from a colleague at work (which is over now, actually) who came to work even though he had one himself (very dutiful, but in essence also very stupid, risking to make everyone else sick).

I had planned on going to see the movie "300", but due to the first bouts of my sicknesses (can't I just have one at a time, please?), I didn't go. I guess I can live without seeing all those almost-naked men. (My main motivation, actually, I don't care about Sparta loosing a battle, they fought enough of them anyway - if men go to see a movie because there's a good-looking and scantily clad woman in it, then why can't I go see a fantasy-history movie just because of the good-looking, well-build, almost-naked guys, huh?) And I know what the story is about, thanks to Harald Schmidt, a man who can explain everything with a couple of children's toys and some food. (Watch for yourself, I hope you understand German, it's not half as funny otherwise.)

I'm now waiting for two more "Girl Genius" comics. One is on it's way … if you can trust the last email from amazon I got. I've gotten volume 1, 2 and 5 at the moment and will have volume 3 before the week is over (if I'm right and it's the one with the slaver wasps and the big battle on board the airship). Volume 4 will follow - some day. I can't really say when.

I'm also really, really happy about the art book. I own a couple of them by now - among them a Frank Frazetta art book (he painted covers for a lot of cheap paperback novels, but his pictures are great, most of the time better than the contents of the novels), a Brom art book (the guy is specialized on fantasy environments and monsters, works for books, role-playing games, trading card games and other stuff), an art book from both "WarCraft" and "World of WarCraft" and two Japanese ones ("Angel Cage" from my favourite manga artist Kaori Yuki and the "DragonBall" art book). With "Jewel" - a 'best of' of You Higuri's work - I have a third Japanese art book now (I used to own 6 "Sailor Moon" art books, too, but I'm selling them).

I like You Higuri's work (even though I like Kaori Yuki more) and most of the pictures in the art book are awesome. Some I know already - or can at least identify -, because they come from manga I know. There's a lot from "Cantarella" (a fantasy variety of the story of Cesare Borgia - go and google for the guy if you're interested in the historical background). Then there's almost all the coloured stuff from "Gorgeous Carat", a story set in the 1920s featuring an Arabian-French thief called "Noir" and a French aristocrat with the name "Floréan". I love the characters and the story (but would have liked a coloured picture from Solomon Sugar or Azura). Then there seems to be one "Gakuen Heaven" picture (though it's not the cover of the German version). Apart from those I can't recognize much, but I've already fallen in love with several, among them a very good picture of a vampire and some male couples (slash/yaoi - one of my great weaknesses). I would have liked some stuff from "Seimaden" (especially Titius, the angel-demon and his lover Zadei), but I guess those coloured works are in another art book, maybe "Poison" which I would still like to get.

So that's what I got this weekend. The sore throat is already passing and the cold will be over soon enough, too. The comic and the art book, on the other hand, will stay. While my nose is running and I think I'll be coughing up my lung soon enough, I'm really glad that it isn't the other way around...

UPDATE: I've gotten volume 3 of "Girl Genius" today, so I'm just waiting for volume 4 now...

Wasted Youth?

Another discussion on TV and another question for me: Are the young people in my country as bad as they seem?

It's true, there are bad things happening: violent videos on their cell phones, sexual phrases in their language (which my generation of 30+ did not know at that age), flat rate parties (where they can drink as much as they like after paying the entrance fee) and other stuff like that (including, of course, violent music and violent games - but this is not a "Killerspiele"-Update, so I'll keep it short).

On the other hand ... what did we have at that age? We still had "Sex, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll" (although not the 'old-school'-stuff), violent videos on TV and video cassettes and sure, we did drink alcohol as well (though usually beer, because 'alco-pops' were not yet invented).

Violence has increased, they say. That is statistically true, I think, but I wonder if there doesn't seem to be even 'more' of it because of the media. There aren't many reports about the good kids who go through puberty the 'normal' way (with a few rows with his/her parents, maybe a few beers even though he/she was told not to drink, a little sex with the first - or second - boy-/girlfriend). That is the normal way to grow up - and yes, I think it still is.

But on TV the only teenagers you normally see are those who commit crimes, drink until they (almost) die or do other 'horrible' stuff (like playing "Killerspiele" - sorry, I couldn't help it here). You hear about teenager mothers - but nobody tells the audience "actually, about 90% of the girls have their first sex between 13 and 15, but most of them know how to use a condom or the pill correctly". You hear about violent teenagers (who usually come from the lowest classes and live in a violent surrounding in which only strength and brutality grant you respect and relative safety) - but nobody tells the audience "actually about every boy between 12 and 18 gets into fights sometimes and may or may not hurt an opponent gravely".

It's mainly due to the media the teenagers today seem to be 'bad'. They pick out the bad examples and make it seem as if that is the majority. But I think - even though I only know a couple of kids myself - that most teenagers aren't that different from their parents during that time. They want to grow up and they slowly outgrow their parents' life and rules. They want to learn about life and have to make both the good and the bad experiences themselves (like the first hangover or the first romantic date). They want to lead a good life one day - and today that means working hard at school to get good grades so you have a chance to get a good job after school.

And what is society doing about the 'problem'? Not much, actually. There's talk - but talk is a cheap way not to solve a problem. There are a few isolated tries to actually change the situation of the kids from lower classes which usually live in some kind of ghetto. But there's no straight lines, nothing that's the same everywhere.

Germany still has to change its rather unfair school system (which splits the kids up into three different types of school at the age of 12), we still don't have day-care for all young kids, we still have to solve the problem of the many kids whose parents both work, leaving them alone during the whole day.

Maybe solving those problems would also solve the problem with some of the teenagers (there's no way to solve the problems of all teenagers, of course, but there could be less violent or pregnant teenagers around).

Anger = Fear?

When I went to work this morning, I had a lot of ideas about posts for my blog. I still had them when I went back home. I'm quite sure I even still had them while going over the last chapter of my current "web-master"-booklet about web-design. But then I read a thread in the MangaSzene-Forum and suddenly they disappeared. They were, in fact, overwhelmed by this one.

What was I reading, you ask?

One of the other people posting in this forum said that anger always equals fear and thus people who are angry always are afraid of something. I can't agree with that.

Yes, there are situations in which we get angry because we're afraid, sometimes we get afraid before we get angry, sometimes we get angry before we get afraid (mostly because of what we've done while we've still been angry).

"Don't get afraid, get angry" was a watchword of Susan Sto-Helit (a character of the "Discworld"-novels by Terry Pratchett) - in her case that leads to beating up a bogeyman instead of hiding from him under a blanked. To me this suggest you can either be angry or you can be afraid. This seems right to me, because from my experience fear makes me want to hide or even paralyzes me. Anger on the other hand propels me forward, makes me do things and start fighting (in my case usually with words, I'm not a big believer in physical violence).

If, of course, you see the primal survival instinct of every creature as fear, then you're probably right. A lot of our anger, I think, comes from there. But that's not what I would see as fear. Fear suggests for me that there is something (a person, a situation, a thing) to be afraid of. I've found I've been getting angry (and started bitching in this blog) a lot without being afraid.

I watch the world around me and see things which are amiss - for me, not because they threaten me in any way, but because I hate injustice. And if I hate things, I get angry about them - most of the time, that is.

But injustice is not fear, and neither is it in any way related to it. I don't see something as 'not just' because I fear it, I see it as 'not just' because I have a list of 'just' stuff in my head and it doesn't fit with that list.

Animal getting treated badly are on that list of 'unjust' stuff, because I see animals as living beings and thus they, for me, deserve respect. The same goes for women - or men, it starts these days - getting treated like things, because they look good, or don't. It's unjust to judge a being by it's looks alone. Sharks, spiders or snakes usually aren't 'pretty' or 'cute', but the are useful and deserve to live - and to be respected. The same goes for an ugly man or woman who have their use (in other words their talents and suchlike) as well.

Sometimes we attack out of fear as well, yes, but that's not anger than, it's just a reaction because of the fear itself. So even in those cases the equation 'anger=fear' does not work.

So by now I wonder about two things: what happened to all those ideas for posts I had until around eight this evening and what kind of life do you have to lead in order to think this equation is right? I doubt I'll get an answer to any of those questions...

Some more games

Some time ago - January, if my .zip-archive is right - I wrote about a computer game I bought online: BeTrapped. A couple of weeks ago I bought two more games: "Mystery Case Files Ravenhearst" and "Inspector Parker".

The two games are different in some ways (the "Mystery Case Files" are a game where you have to search for certain objects while "Inspector Parker" is a logical game in which you have to sort the suspects, weapons, motives, victims, clues and means of disposal through statements made by the suspects), but similar in another one: they're both set in a 'crime solving' environment. I love 'crime solving' environments.

Let's have a good look at Ravenhearst first. To the left of this paragraph you will see a picture of the picturesque front porch of the large mansion. As you can see, Hercules with his mobile river would have been quite welcome for the spring cleaning...

The point of Ravenhearst actually is to find a certain number of objects in this picture and gather them as evidence. By playing through the many rooms of the house you will slowly unveil the mystery of the young woman who has disappeared inside - but I still have to find the right seven-letter-word to open the final door...

In addition to the search inside the very odd pictures of the various rooms (can you find the steak in this picture?), there's a number of puzzles in which you have to rebuild pictures to get new pages of the woman's diary. They are quite interesting, too. And there's various doors with ingenious lock-mechanism you have to open.

Inspector Parker (see picture on the right side of this paragraph for the Inspector, the victims and the suspects) on the other hand is a logical game (as BeTrapped, which actually features the Inspector as player character). It is set in a large mansion whose owner - Aunt Agatha - has been killed.

In every level you are given a certain number of rooms - from six as three rooms a row in two rows in the first level to 36 as six in six rows in Level 10 - and a certain number of statements (as, for example, the dagger was left of the poison in the same row). By working your way through the statements (starting with weapons and suspects and working up to suspects, weapons, motives, victims, clues and means of disposal [six of each] in the last levels), you sooner or later find out where everything and everyone was. Then you learn about who did it with what to whom and so on...

During the game you work your way up from police academy to the post of Chief Inspector - quite a career.

I have to admit that I like "Inspector Parker" even more than "Mystery Case Files Ravenhearst", mainly because the levels (which change with every game) keep me entertained longer than the search on the pictures in the other game (and I'm still frustrated about not finding any clue about the word I need to open the last door...).

Oh, by the way: the steak is on the lower right side of the large cello (or whatever else that musical instrument is).

Is it really always discipline?

Discipline is something I can't really grasp most of the time.

For example, as I'm overweight, I guess people look at me and say "she doesn't have the discipline to exercise and diet, that's why she's fat" ... though usually not to me.

But do other people, people who are slim and exercise regularly, really have more discipline? After giving it a thought for over a week, there's just one thing I can really say to this: "I don't think so!" And this post is about the "why".

I don't like to exercise, so for me doing it regularly would afford discipline - and yes, I know I'm lacking it, but I fight my lack of discipline every day, even though I can't always win. But is it discipline if a person who likes sports exercises regularly? Doing something you really like has, for me, nothing at all to do with discipline. Doing something you really like is fun. And we all like fun, don't we?

Spending about two hours every evening in front of the computer and writing (posts, stories, other stuff) is fun for me, but I guess a lot of people would need a lot of discipline to do that.

So does it necessarily mean that somebody has more discipline, if he or she is thin? He or she might, for example, absolutely adore all sorts of sports and thus exercise very regularly - then it doesn't matter what the person eats or drinks during the day. He or she might also just enjoy living mostly on vegetables and other food that is low on calories and will not appear as fat on his or her body.

I was, by the way, inspired to this post by last weeks edition of "Hart aber fair", one of the TV-magazines I watch regularly. There a woman who admits she doesn't like sitting still somewhere and "doesn't feel well without jogging at least once a day" claimed that all the overweight people are just too weak to be as disciplined as she is. Well, if I "didn't feel well" without running a couple of miles every day, I surely wouldn't be overweight either, would I? But I probably wouldn't have the time or the discipline to write a post like this one after eight hours of work (even though, as I'm writing this on the Thursday before Eastern, I won't have to get up early tomorrow and I will go to bed late - what can I say, I'm a night-owl).

"Killerspiele" Update (The "I start to believe some journalists have lost their minds" Edition)

And another update on the "Killerspiele"-crusade.

A couple of weeks ago "Panorama" reported about "Killerspiele" in a way that made my blood boil and made me write a long email to them in order to complain (I've written about that in another post). This time they reported about people getting dependant on computer games - and before the actual report was shown, they expressed their surprise and concern about the many people writing heated and even angry letters and emails about that last report. They, or so the people at "Panorama" saw it, "were afraid to loose their favourite games". Of course, they could not have been angry because of the stupid and outright wrong stuff told in it...

This really has made me wonder about the worth - and the mind - of some journalists. I can understand that every person - and every TV-station - has a certain point of view on things. I can even understand that someone who is not interested in computer games might see some of them as brutal and dangerous for children.

What I can't understand is the way they use every means possible - especially the ones people will not realize immediately - in order to make everyone else believe this is a true, unbiased report. Okay, they don't like computer games. Okay, some politicians don't like them either. But to use the "Killerspiele"-hype just to get some more viewers or readers?

This isn't 'investigative journalism', even though the people at "Panorama" may think it is. This is just appealing to the non-player's lowliest instincts.

So, the way I see it, either the journalists have lost their minds or their morals … let them decide which would be worse.

Got my first "Girl Genius" comics

On Saturday the first two issues of "Girl Genius" arrived - I have ordered all five of them over amazon.

Now, as I already wrote, "Girl Genius" is an online-comic - so, in essence, I could read them over the internet without having to pay any money ... as I do have a flat-rate. But to me there's even more than one good reason to actually buy the comics.

1) I like reading comics while lounging on my couch - and I can't do that while reading them online.

2) I know how fast a website can disappear ... and that would mean not being able to read them any longer - hardcopies are more reliable.

3) The pages definitely look a lot better in print than they do on the screen - and even if I downloaded them all, I still would not be able to get them printed out in this high quality (or only for a price even higher than the comic books).

I'm still waiting for the other three issues (volume 3-5 of the series), but they should arrive sometime during the next two weeks. Then I'll have them all and even be able to actually read what happens in the gap between "Girl Genius 101" and "Girl Genius Advanced" online. (Both areas are still growing and that means that there's actually something happening between the first page of "Girl Genius Advanced" and the currently last page of "Girl Genius 101".) In addition there is a side-story I haven't read before at the end of volume 2 (the one at the end of volume 1 is online, but the other one isn't it).

What I find most amusing - as I am German - is the very generous use of German words in the comic (from names like "Klaus Wulfenbach" or "von Pinn" over the "Jägermonsters" [and their hilarious German accents - I love them] right to "Götterdämmerung"). They are fitting, but it's not something you find often in comics.