Art is dead

Yes, I'm spamming today; expect a fandom post next!

( Real life ahead! )

I whish you all a very Happy New Year and all the best in 2009!

So, the first of a few posts: I've decided to start posting more in the new year and thus I start doing it at the end of the old.

This is a books post, one of the posts I would like to make more of. I read a lot; four to five books a week, some of which I've read several times, others who are new. Let's start at the end of November, when I bought several books with my birthday money.

( Spoilers ahead for books by Neil Gaiman, Audrey Niffeneger and Phillipa Gregory. Also talking about Pratchett. )

I'd been drifiting away from the Harry Potter fandom for some time; I still read fic, but only of known authors or from recs. I actually found a new fandom:

( TORCHWOOD! )

So, the obligatory post-election post. Congrats to the Americans for putting the right man in office. I don't know if the Americans knew this, but you've earned a lot of respect in Europe because of that. Let us hope that the image of America as a bully to its allies and enemies will change for the better.

On Prop. 8 and all the other propositions banning equal rights I call bullshit. Yes, the votes were close and in ten or twenty years everyone will be equal. Do you realise most countries in Europe has had gay marriage and abortion legalised years ago? In the Netherlands it has been over a decade since gay marriage, abortion and euthanasia have been legalised. We fought for it and we got it. It was not easy, but the best things never are.

I support the people protesting against the ban on gay marriage, and I cheer them on for daring to hold the churches and religions who sponsored Yes on 8 responsible. Religion and law should be seperate in every way. The news of protesters being assaulted by the police sickens me, and what enrages me is this comment, made in a LA Times article :

Loder said he had not given money to the Yes-on-8 campaign because finances are tight raising five daughters, but he did put a sign in his frontyard. It was vandalized, he said.

"As a member of the LDS church we have known [and still do] the feeling of being ridiculed and mistreated because of our faith," he said.

If you are familiar with the feeling of being ridiculed and mistreated because of something you chose to do, then why are you doing the same to others who have no choice in their sexual orientation? GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS AND STOP BEING STUPID!

This is where my intense dislike of religion in any shape or form comes from: it gives people an excuse not to think for themselves. They do slavishly what they are told by their interpreter of the holy book/scroll/stone and never dare question them, for fear of doubting their reason of existence. I need no reason for existence, life after death or judge of my behavior: I was born, I will die, and the only way I will live on is through teaching the young tolerance and equality and above all to think for themselves and be critical of what people, myself included, tell them. I am the only judge of my actions, because I think before I act, and it is my choice how I act.

America, you are the biggest country in the world, and in your own eyes the best country in the world. Change can happen in America: your President-Elect said so, and you will have to remind him to keep is word. Equality for all; women that have the right to decide what happens to their body; women who earn the same as men; marry who you will in what way you will; believe what you will: but never, ever force your own beliefs onto others. Debate with them to try and make them see your side of the argument, and let them do the same. Respect isn't ignoring the other: it is treating them like you would like to be treated.

All rights are worth fighting for, and the right to make your own choices unhindered by anyone is the most important one.

Your result for The Famous (and Not So Famous) Art Quiz...

Art History Major

100% Artiste!

Take The Famous (and Not So Famous) Art Quiz at HelloQuizzy

Not bad for a Bachelor, soon to be Master, in Art History, is it? Even if I specialised in 16th century Italian architecture...

New recipe for summer sorbet!

Strawberry-Orange Sorbet

150g sugar
500g strawberries
2 oranges

Blender

Remove the orange zest from one orange. Squeeze both oranges and put juice with zest and sugar in a saucepan. Stir over medium fire until sugar has dissolved. Let it come to a boil and boil softly until syrupy. Let cool completely.
Cut strawberries into pieces and puree in the blender. (Optional: strain to remove seeds). Mix with syrup. Put the mixture into a container and place without a lid in the freezer. Stir every half-hour for three hours.

I made this for the first time with kiwi and lemon, as all the strawberries were sold out and kiwi-orange doesn't work. I tried it with melon yesterday, and that turned out fantastic. I replaced the fruit juice with water, as I couldn't think of something that would go with the melon. I think this could be made with almost any fruit, except maybe watermelon, as that would be too wet. Peaches, anyone?

I found this recipe via a comment thread in copperbadge's journal. The commenter asked for an experiment making ice-cream without an ice-cream machine, so the old-fashioned way. Poor student that I am, I decided to do so. Here follow the results and my commentary to the recipe:

The cream itself isn't all that hard to make. Curdling can be prevented by having the eggs at room temperature before adding a bit of the milk-and-cream mixture.
It takes quite a while to thicken the liquid enough. Make sure that it never boils, it'll go to ruin! The right concistency is hard to judge, but still very liquidy, more cream than custard.
Let the liquid cool completely. This may take more than an hour, maybe even two. Stir every once in a while. It'll thicken considerably!

Here comes the old-fashioned part:
Put the cream in a container. Put it in the freezer without a lid. Stir every thirty minutes for three to four hours. Make sure to scrape the frozen ice-cream of the sides of the container and mix well with the rest. This is to stop it from becoming one huge lump. You really need to do this! It follows that to make it you have to have most of a day free, in total it will take five to seven hours. After the last stir, put the lid on. (leaving the lid off is mostly because it'll be liquid for a while, and getting the lid off could be messy...) The results, however, are OM NOM NOM NOM.

I let the Earl Grey flavour it strongly, which makes the ice the colour of, well, stong tea with milk. This is also what it tastes like, wich caused the bf to call it "A new take on 'iced tea'". I like it, but it's not something you can eat by the bucket. Also, very high on the sugar and cholestrol scales, which doesn't bother me, but might bother some others.

Bon appetit!

For the past five days I've been listening obsessively to the new vid on youtube by feltbeats. Feltbeats is basically Tom Felton. He sings original songs while playing the guitar and he is quite good. I've pimped him to several people, but now the songs are on iTunes and I wanted to discuss them. The viewing count on the vid has surpassed the 200,000 already (!). He is also incredibly hot in that vid. Look at his hands and his smile and the little frown when he starts singing the third song. The trousers made me giggle...

There are three songs from that vid on youtube, Time well spent, Right place, Right time and Under stars. I think the fourth will be up shortly, they were added today.

The lyrics to all are fantastic. From the vid you would expect all love songs, but they have some nice twists built in. My favourite line form Time well spent would be 'I made her leave her mobile phone at home'. They are not cheesy, rather very realistic. Sometimes there are lines which make you pay attention again to the song, which makes for enjoyable listening. Under stars is a ballad, and possibly the song I adore most. The intro is made of awesome, just plucking the stings of the guitar. It feels very fragile, just the guitar and his voice, which is possibly why I like it so much.

Other point that I like of his guitarplaying is that he makes a bit of a rythm by stilling the strings. You can see him doing it with the side of his hand in the vid.

The sound quality on the fist is excellent, the other two are a bit heavy on the bass line of the guitar, but not so it bothers. He has done some mixing, so there are other instruments in the background and he is his own background singer. His voice is not as smooth as we have come to expect form singers, but that gives him quite a bit of charm. It gives a sense of realness to his singing. His accent makes it all the more fun, as does the deepness of his voice. He is a proper tenor, not a falsetto as is so popular at the moment.

This has been on my mind since last night, and I'm just going to ramble about it a bit. (waring, contains discussion of sex)

( Ramble )

As some of you may have heard, Heath Ledger died yesterday. If you want to, there's a guest book here to sign.

I still can't comprehend it, its seems so unreal. It makes me very sad to know such a wonderful actor and kind man has left us.

I'm sure you've seen this already. The new flagging service by LJ, where your entries can be flagged as 'adult' or 'explicit' and you will not know about it! The explanations are, as always, in the comments, which have reaches 25/26 pages already.

Oh, and LJ itself can't be flagged. Lovely, innit?

Some of the explanations I managed to find were:

- You can only flag something five times in one day, and only when your journal is over 30 days old.
- Abusers will be punished, how is unsure.
- Your flagged and unsuitable entries will be marked by LJ, not by you.
- What is and isn't adult is not clear anywhere.
- It is all for the benefit of the children!!1!
- The Abuse Prevention Team will consider the content of the flagged post.
- Nowhere it's said how many flags will get you considered.
- Your age will be taken from the date you gave when creating an LJ. (this will make sure you're over the age of whatever for viewing a flagged entry)

*eyeroll*

twocorpses has posted the TOS of Scribblit here. There's also the option of getting an Early Donator's account for a donation before the 18th of November.

Spread the word!

minuial_nuwing tagged me for the userpic meme!

Comment on this post and I will choose seven userpics from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are using them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so others can play along.

As I only have six, Min said to do them all. ( Here they are: )

I got organized!

Yesterday I organized all my fic links into pairings. That was over a hundred links to go through, as I was such an idiot to never include the pairing in the name.
Also! Found some very spiffy userpics here. Lots of themes to choose from, including funny quotes, books, POTC and Monty Python.
Will now try to get myself to study for my exam next wednesday. :-(

Everything works! Sorry for the spam, I'm just happy that I understood how is was supposed to go, being a dork where computers are concearned and trying to figure it out in a language not my own... I think you get the picture. Also, finding out that having Sematic mightbe useful was a step in the right direction.

I promised to do this, so if anyone is spammed, sorry, but this is important to me (crossposted to my LJ, GJ and IJ).
imaginarycircus has a post here on the refusal of LiveJournal to stop calling fan art 'child porn' and as such, the people who view/make it pedophiles. She is trying to count all the people who are insulted by LJ this wording, even after several requests for changing the wording. imaginarycircus has a link in the post linked above to her correspondence with rachel, an employee of LJ/SixApart.

If you too feel insulted by this wording, comment to her post and be counted!

Edit: the usernames are all meant to be LJ's, so no harm intended to those users here on Insane Journal!

The third journal in a row, due to the recent madness on LJ. This one is just to follow my friends, just like the one on GJ. I'm not a person who says much, so I'll not spam anyone overly (at least 'till I learn how to make a cut).

I am such a sloth, I haven't updated this in almost a year! Just a brief update on my life: I got engaged to my boyfriend of almost six years. He asked me last June, on the day we met five years previous. We are going to live together this spring. Am now in my second year of uni and it's going splendidly, it's so much fun.
Am up to date now in the LOTR fandom and the HP fandom. I recently discovered the Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb, which has become my newest addiction. Haven't made it to the fanfic yet, though I heard Robin Hobb dislikes fanfic. Such a shame! Will search in all nooks and crannies for fic though.

So, second update in one week! Go me! Ahum...
Tough day today. Had to model for my little sis' exam. It went well though. And we're going to scatter grandad today. Am NOT looking forward to that.

Not much to tell, really, when I update twice a week. I'll do better next time.

Last time I promised to keep up... RL got in the way though.
So many things happened. I got my driver's licence, university is going extremely well, so that's okay. There was also bad news; my grandad died in February at the age of 80. He fell down one day, was brought to hospital and died a week later. He had a stroke, but died of pneumonia. He was cremated and we will scatter the ashes on Wednesday, his birthday.
And the odd thing is that my 'aunt', whom I love very much and has recently defeated breastcancer, will celebrate her sixtieth birthday this week too. Am so messed up.

Better news is that I introduced the boyfriend to slash. I deemed the Magic Rat's Original novel SPIT excellent for the job. Haven't heard yet what he thought of it... Am a bit nervous.

Oh, I bought the last two cd's of Gazpacho, a Norwegian band. They will have to come from across the Channel, so it will take a while before they are here. That is something I'm looking forward to.

Am going to catch up with all the LOTR RPS I have been missing during my foray in the HP fandom. Bye!