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Archive for September 2010

Link post of free stuff.

I've come across some neat things on the internet in the last couple of days, and since you guys are my favourites I thought I would share them with you.

I found this album via Kinokofry (an excellent collection of webcomics, by the way), and I strongly advise you to download it, as well!


Sound Club Sweet by Patrick Alexander （パッチ）

Cute and cheerful chiptunes-esque music. I listened to it all day yesterday and it filled my heart with nothing but peace and joy.*

On that note.

(NSFW!)

While the Pope is in the country, you can download Tim Minchin's Pope Song free from his website. (Tim Minchin's website, not the Pope's.) (Obviously.) It pretty much expresses my opinions on this topic.

Also, audiobooks! Audible is giving away free books in the Guardian, which is crazy cool, and people have posted all of the links in this forum. (If you go through the pages, there's direct links to Audible, as well, instead of through the Guardian website). I think it's a one-week only thing, so the earlier ones may not work anymore, but at least some of them should.

I've been listening to Down and Out in Paris and London on my way to and from the library (while getting ground into dust over and over again by Karen from the Elite Four). I'd never heard of it before so I had no real expectations, but it's really interesting so far. Also the reader does brilliant voices and accents verging on the silly, which makes it twice as good.

*So much so that I decided to show my appreciation via the medium of PayPal. Which you should totally do to, if you want and can! Paying people for rad stuff they make is the way to go.
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16. 9. 2010 9:04 am | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , | Comment

Austria Episode IV: A New Hope

LAST AUSTRIA POST I SWEAR. AFTER THIS WE CAN ALL MOVE ON WITH OUR LIVES.



In this post, we finally get to Vienna itself! That means this post is going to be all perving on statues and architecture all the time. B) If Jugendstil was a person I would ask it to marry me right now.

There are also more photos in this than in the previous two entries combined, so be warned.



My dad has some kind of Hilton business membership, so we got upgraded to these ridiculous executive suites with separate living rooms. They were pretty much the size of my flat.



The rooms had the Teachings of Buddha as well as a Gideon Bible. Also a compass rose stuck onto the bottom of the drawer, which I assume is so people can point themselves the right way when they're praying towards Mecca. That's the only reason I can come up with, anyway.



It doesn't really look like it from most of these pictures but you can't step anywhere in Vienna without running into a horse carriage. it's hilarious seeing them hold up traffic on narrow streets.





Moor pharmacy. Yyyeah. ¬_¬



Stephansdom! (St. Stephen's Cathedral)



Monk!



The cathedral has the coolest roof. Also check out the birds circling on the right. Leap of faith point around there Y/Y?



Maybe this has something to do with the crusades? I have no idea.







Pllllague pillarrrrr.



It shows the plague as an old woman, being struck down by the ~power of faith~.









Who can resist those sexy neoclassical ladies? I certainly can't.







Badass double clock and moon-phase indicator.



The Austrians say "Fussgeher" instead of "Fußgänger" for pedestrians, it seems.













Oversized gate for the Spanish riding school.





Tiny little memorial for the fallen of the royal dragoon regiment.



The lion and the angel are seriosuly bored with this funeral already. Just get on with it, dudes.



Court confectioners for the King & Kaiser oh yeah.







Oh hey it's some pictures of me! :O Stuffing my face with delicious mille feuille. ♥ Also that is my dad in the one above this, but whenever I post pictures of him online he complains, so you shall never see his face.





Did not actually try their ice-cream, but I liked the signs.















Café Central: pretty fucking amazing. I could sit in there every day.



Tried to hit on the Café Central papier mache man, but he was not impressed.











Sculpture of L.H.O.O.Q. by Subodh Gupta. I enjoy finding myself suddenly walking past bearded lady sculptures.



We did not actually go into the Secession, but it's a very pretty building.





More importantly, though: that print of the naked woman is obviously hung in the entrance so that when you exit, you walk out of her crotch, right? But everyone I saw go in and out walked around the side of it instead, the philistines. Not I:



Ladies' crotches: totally awesome.



Fat Marc Antony agrees.















The personifications of industry and agriculture are looking down on you creepily.





The prettiest operational art nouveau public toilets you will ever see.





Surprise fire-breathing lion from below!





That Roman on the bottom is totally enjoying his situation. I mean, look at his face:



He is so getting off on this.



I really like this clock. it shows a famous person from Austria's history for each hour, but I neglected to photograph the plaque with all of their names on it. >_>









My BFF Gutenberg! No idea why there's a statue of him there, though.





"In memory of the foundation of the republic." Like this one because it's so different to all of the more classical national hero statues everywhere. Makes me want to read up on who these gentlemen are.



"Those who do not use the chances of democracy see to it that it does not to remain one." I guess there are/were some elections coming up in Austria.



Lastly, here's a video of some super-cool breakdancers we saw when we were walking back to the hotel one night.



Listen out for my mum's "Oh mein Gott!" whenever someone balances on their head, and my dirty laugh whenever something perverted happens! XD

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12. 9. 2010 10:27 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , | Comment

Austria Part III: Schönbrunn

Palace time!



When we got to Schloss Schönbrunn these people with oak leaves in their hats were holding a very small parade outside.



Never found out why, but that one at the back looks like he's trying to sneak off into the crowd.



What you should know about Schönbrunn is that it's really big.



Really,



really,



big.



we went on a tour of the inside, as well. Some of the inside. 20 rooms out of 1441. But of course no pictures were allowed.

But that's alright, we took enough pictures of the grounds.







Fffff I want this to be my garden.















What is the symbolic meaning of a statue of a suit of armour sitting on a log held up by lions?





Obelisk out of nowhere.







Entire park area dangerous!

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6. 9. 2010 10:23 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment

Austria Part II: So many stained-glass windows.

Alright, let's get through some more of these photos. It's entirely my fault that there's so many of them, but I just have a thing stained glass windows, you guys. I can stop any time I want to, ok? I just don't want to.



The first few days we spent at this fancy-pants hotel in the countryside a little way outside of Vienna. It has a biotope-pond pool thing with an imperturbable koi carp and a lot of dragon flies and water-striders.





Beethoven wrote his 9th symphony in a nearby town, so they put up a plaque.



Plague pillarrrr. Giving thanks that the plague left the town.

These next pictures are all from the Heiligenkreuz monastery. Most of the pictures in this entry are from Heiligenkreuz, actually, because they were pretty much the only place that allowed photos.





Plague pillar!























Ok, done with stained glass now.







NO WAIT I LIED.









This is an abbot's tomb. The dancing skeleton ladies are there to show that death isn't really that bad. See, they're having fun.





Creepy Pope baby!





This lectern depicts the common Catholic image of Disco-Jesus fighting a hydra.



Monasteries are nice, but the thing with active monasteries is that along with the pretty and impressive architecture and so on comes the slight pervading creepiness of people still locking themselves up in the place for the sake of a man in the sky. Not that it didn't look like a nice place to live, and it's their choice and all, but Catholicism is always a little bit creepy, even at the best of times.


Let's talk about the things Austrians love:



Austrians really enjoy Mozart.



And Sissi*.



And creepy old men, for some reason.





These two are from an 18th century mansion we visited, which pretended to be a medieval knight's castle, because some prince was really into knights and took a lot of furniture and fittings from old castles and monasteries. It was all a bit silly, but probably the only old castle still being used entirely for its original purpose: to show people around and show off the old things.



Next up: Schloss Schönbrunn, which gets an entry all to itself, even though we weren't allowed to take pictures inside.


*The only things I knew about Empress Elisabeth before this trip (when I did some reading on Wiki) were that she was the main character of this TV series (which looks just as bad as I remember thinking it was back when I was 10 years old and all the girls in my 5th grade class were addicted to it), and that she was killed by being stabbed between the ribs with a file, which I'm pretty sure I remembered because I thought it would dismay all the girls in my 5th grade class.
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5. 9. 2010 8:02 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment

I Shall Wear Midnight launch.

The internet at the flat has been fixed, and I've got a small backlog of entries to post.

First of all: on Wednesday, I went to the midnight launch of Terry Pratchett's new book, I Shall Wear Midnight, at the Waterstone's in Piccadilly Circus.



The queue in front of the store was longer than I expected. Oh hey, I guess Terry Pratchett is pretty popular. ¬______¬




The bag the book came in. I see what they did there.




There was a Q&A/"In Conversation" bit with Tony Robinson, and then we all lined up to get our books signed. You can see a bit of the person dressed up in a witch's outfit! I tried to get a better picture of her, but the queue was too quick for me and swallowed her up.




I didn't manage to get a proper picture of Terry Pratchett himself, but here's one from his Facebook page:



I would've liked to shake his hand or at least thank him for signing my book, but it was all kind of quick and assembly-line-ish. Well, there were a lot of people there, so it's understandable.




The book~




Officially signed with an official signature.




And there's a print of the cover art inside. :3



I got the book around 11pm Wednesday night, and I finished it last night at 2am. I didn't mean to stay up that long, but it's hard going to sleep when you're near the end of a good book. And this book was really good; I wasn't that impressed by Unseen Academicals, but I Shall Wear Midnight defiitely made up for that one's deficits.

I always forget how much I love witches books until I read one; they invariably have great characters and a wonderful atmosphere. I've also missed out on some of the Tiffany Aching novels... I guess I dismissed them because they were meant to be for kids. So that's an oversight I'm going to have to go remedy as soon as possible, because she is a total badass.

Also without spoiling anything, a Discworld character I adored when I was younger and had given up any hope of ever seeing again is in this book, and it makes me really happy. :D


That's it for tonight, tomorrow I'll get on with finally posting my Austria pictures.
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4. 9. 2010 10:19 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , | Comment