Ratcon 2013

Wie die letzten Jahre üblich geworden, fahre ich mit einigen Bekannten zur RatCon, die nun zum zweiten Mal in der Stadthalle Unna stattfinden wird. Und natürlich werde ich auch dieses Jahr wieder Bilder mitbringen, sowie Erklärungsmaterial um den Daheimgebliebenen einen Eindruck zu vermitteln davon, was sie dieses Jahr verpasst haben und was es an interessanten Neuigkeiten gab. Und natürlich meine persönliche, unnachahmliche Perspektive auf das ganze. 

Und nebenbei werde ich den Stress der vergangenen Wochen abbauen und mich auf andere Dinge konzentrieren können. Zum Beispiel auf die Tatsache, dass in nichtmal einem Monat bereits die Namenlosen Tage 15 anstehen. Da muss noch organisiert werden was das Zeug hält! Und natürlich nicht zu vergessen ein paar andere Projekte an denen ich noch arbeite.

Past the Point of No Return

Finished. I might just have handed in my final exam paper. Now begins the waiting game, but for all intents and purposes, I have left my shackles behind. Freedom!

Of course, that is, unless freedom is a curse like the binding was. If one cannot decide for himself, then where is one to go. Contingency plans, where art thou? Bah. What for do I care? For now, I shall concentrate my efforts on the coming weekend. 

To Unna!

Final Exam coming up

This is it. The last exam. The final hurdle. Do this, and I am freed from all conventions of my currently chosen path of learning. Come now, cast of the chains that have bound you to this shallow plain and ascend with me for the final climb, towards the promised place! ONWARDS!

University Life - Almost Done

Week 2 of final exams. I hate these, you have to start way too early in the morning and then it turns into a kind of endurance race for five hours in which you can only hope to have learned and understood enough to solve the particular problems turning up in THAT ONE CASE. Today, tomorrow and Thursday, then it´s in the hands of higher authorities than mine. Heres to me and hoping for victory. Just in case, I might fail, I will have to prepare for some contingency plans.

Wish me luck.

Dinge die ich hasse

Zum Beispiel wenn ich, wie vorliegend, vor einem wichtigen frühen Termin nicht schlafen kann, weil Aufregung, Nerven, Stress und Erschöpfung sich mit Adrenalin zu einem wunderbaren Cocktail versammeln der dafür sorgt dass einem gleichzeitig schlecht und aktivitäts-suchend im bett sitzt und sich fragt warum man den Geist nicht bändigen kann, der einen wach hält. Der Schnupfen tut sein Übriges. 

In diesem Sinne, Gute Nacht...argh

August Movies

These past few days I took the time to watch a few, nothing too exciting, just a few things I really had wanted to see and which were helpful in taking my mind of other, more difficult to-approach-things.

Now You See Me

4 street magicians are bound together by an ancient cult promising them real magic if they can impress them with modern magic while being hunted by the FBI and Interpol at every step, robbing banks, corporations and a filthy rich Michael Caine. Now let me be the first to say, that yes, it is okay, but it´s not great and when you are outperformed by your supporting cast, then you have made something wrong. Now, except Woody Harrelson who seems strangely out of place in this story, the others are quite the weak link against Caine and Freeman, but this is frankly embarassing to watch. Not to mention that the plot is weak and the twist is rather telegraphed. Also, in a movie about people trying to impress with magic TRICKS, because boodyhoo magic isn´t real too bad, seeing tricks that are rather impossible without the help of sci-fi-tech is a sad revelation about the screenwriters ability to fit their tricks in a realistic path. If you have nothing else to do, you might see this. But it´s not really worth the watch, maybe on christmas when you are at your families and nothing else in on in the telly.

R.I.P.D.

A buddy-cop movie with Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges about playing undead cops hunting the evil souls led by a undead Kevin Bacon. The action is standard fare, the effects are lacklustre and the story is so-so. It has a few laughs but mostly Jeff Bridges plays against a wooden Ryan Reynolds. Once again the latter dissapoints, as I had so much hope for him after Buried but this is just sad. It´s ok, but don´t expect something big from it. Worth a rental, not for going to the movies.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Steve Carell is funny and the movie is interesting but far too short and rushes through the necessary steps to make his main character, a pompous 80s-magician learn the hard way, how being a good person can help you with life.

World War Z

Blech. I know the book. This movie is bad. Brad Pitt is uninspired, the zombies are lame and mostly never shown in full light not to mention far too often full CGI and the solution is so stupid it isn´t even worth it. It´s no wonder Straczyinsky disowned the screenplay they used to make this.

Joseph Campbell about modern societal culture

In the United States there is even a pathos of inverted emphasis: the goal not to grow old, but to remain young; not to mature away from Mother, but to cleave to her. And so, while husbands are worshipping at their boyhood shrines, being the lawyers, merchants or masterminds their parents wanted them to be, their wives, even after fourteen years of marriage and two fine children produced and raised, are still on the search for love - which can come to them only from the centaurs, sileni, satyrs, and other concupiscent incubi of the rout of Pan, either as in ther second of the above recited dreams, or as the in our popular, vanilla-frosted temples of the venereal goddess, under the make-up of the latest heroes of the screen.

Joseph Campbell - The hero with a thousand faces (1949)

I think that Campbell, who stylised this short sentence in his prologue of the explanation given about the mono-myth he uncovered in his comparative mythology-study, has trod on more than a fleeting point here. What he speaks about is one of the most concise statements of the current culture of western civilization and the development of the younger generation in power since the past 60 years.

I have come to theorize the absence of rituals as Campbell puts it to be one of the reasons for the overwrought emphasis in our current streams of philosophical and modern cultural context, which might even be damnable considering its content.

However, the idea of rituals helping to move along from the childhood to manhood or comparatively the same for females as the pathing from girls to women is one primarily either culturally or historically dictated by necessity or religious emphasis, like the roman-catholic communion, the protestant confirmation, the east german Jugendweihe or the aboriginal circumcision as signs of breaking into the new community as a reborn individual.

As such, removed from these, even if its importance is a given, should such rituals be reintroduced or can their effect be imitated with other scenarios?

Considering I have only started reading his book though, I may have missed societal development that already did so or dismissed these claims in these past few years. I will confer my findings at later dates.

Poetry!

Two loves has the earthly man
of body and of mind
neither noble nor debased
and each, in their time, often mistaken

 Anonymous