Tag Archives: life

The awful moment when you can't properly write…

As I mentioned last time with my new instalment of The Weekend Guess I can’t really put my thoughts into proper posts right now.
And yes I don’t consider this rant to be a proper post either.
There is so much stuff I’d like to write or write about.
So many stories floating in my head fighting for attention.
So many ideas popping up, reminding me of unfinished drafts.
I think I just don’t know where to start…
I really like to complete or add to my stories, but I can’t seem to be able to find the proper motivation for sitting down, planning and actually typing it.
As you know I do dabble in Fanfiction.
I already have a story that awaits its completion since 2012 and I don’t really know why I don’t feel like finishing the next chapter. (Well, maybe it’s because the Manga it is based on are quite weird „lately“…)
I also have plenty of other ideas that I currently don’t feel like working on (see my profile on Fanfiction.net for a look at those).
Still, my mind seems to always wander back to The Return of Magic, a Merlin Fanfiction (season six-thingy) I started recently. I get all kind of ideas for stuff happening towards the end, but I only have a little bit of what should be going on in the next few chapters, where the characters actually meet each other again and stuff…it’s bugging me, but I can’t help it, my muse is weird that way…
I also have brought it upon myself that I want to re-do The Elevator story as Multi-Chapter Multi-Fandom Crossover story. Again, many thoughts on how to continue and little on how to start and finish…
Muse and Imagination thou art* unfair…
I also want to write some proper original stories again, like continuing with the stories of the dwarves that we last saw on their Quest for Ore.
I’d like to finish the missing reviews and reports from concerts and festivals I’ve been at last year and many more things I still have only drafted.
But as soon as I think „Yeah, I’d like to get that done.“ my mind wanders off to totally unrelated thoughts and the procrastination begins.
It’s enough to drive you up the wall (in frustration) or „Es ist zum Mäusemelken“ as we’d say in German (Mäusemelken roughly translates to „milking mice“, so the literal translation is something like: It’s like milking mice. Or something like that).
But on the bright side:
I get more and more comfortable with writing posts that have less than a thousand words…though on the other hand I annoy you with my ramblings instead of posting something proper.
I’m so sorry for that, but as I said: I don’t like it myself, but I can’t seem to help it right now.
Other than that there are a couple of nice things coming up for me, that are also kind of urging me to hurry up with my festival and concert reviews/reports.
Next weekend (after picking up my Bachelor’s degree certification in Elmshorn, a former fellow student in Hamburg and driving back) I/we’ll be having a look at the Jazz Frühling (jazz spring) in Neubrandenburg. Something entirely different to the music I usually listen to.
In early April I’ll be visiting Liathano again in Germany’s capital city and stay for a concert of Van Canto and possibly a medieval market as well.
Just a week after that Brüllmücke and I will return there to see Schandmaul live.
I’m quite looking forward to all of that and maybe it will spur my imagination enough for me to continue or write the stories that are still eagerly waiting to be typed.
See you around and sorry for the rant.
PoiSonPaiNter
* Sorry for possibly misused words.

WriteTheWhite-Activity: Sir Gregor

When I skimmed through the WordPress Reader not long ago I discovered the WriteTheWhite-Blog and I have to say that I have read far too little of what is posted on there. But when she published a post called Are You Going to Read This Post? – Conflict I was naturally inclined to do just that in a „Don’t push the big red button“- or „Don’t think of a blue elephant“-kind of way (the latter is by the way the translated title of a book about thought processes).
And it proved to be an interesting read about why we include conflict in a story and a little activity that I’d like to cover in this post. Apart from it being an interesting topic (a Knight with issues) did I spent so much time recently to watch, read, think and write about the BBC Series Merlin that the idea of writing/thinking about a Knight just clicked with me.

But let’s have a look at the activity:

> – Gregor is a character that is very hard headed, but kind. He is very rash, but brave. He’s a knight, but one of the hardest things for him to do is ask for help-he just won’t do it. Think about some things that could happen to Sir Gregor in order to loosen him up to the idea of accepting help? Here’s a hint: Think about what pride is.

My first thought, when I read this activity was that I would have never thought of this behaviour because of pride. I’m not sure if this is due to my own disability to ask others on occasion, but I read self-consciousness into those few sentences. Of course pride is also a huge factor in inquiring things from other people, but also the view you have on yourself.
With doubt in your own abilities come many problems and asking a simple question becomes the most complicated thing in the world.
You do not wish to bother anyone with your questions, because on the one hand you think what you ask is stupid and you should know the answer already. On the other hand you think that the people you ask have way more important things to do than answer your (stupid) questions or lend you a hand.
Of course Knights are usually not known for being insecure, but it could happen, if regardless of it they are still capable and acknowledged fighters…
In conclusion this activity can be looked at from two different angles:

  1. Sir Gregor – The Proud Knight
  2. Sir Gregor – The Insecure Knight

I guess I’ll have a go at both…
Though regardless of the angle something quite drastic would need to happen for them to change their attitude towards asking for help. Because simply put: Overcoming something like that is not easy and will take a lot of time.

The Proud Knight

As the hint went into the direction of pride I will start with this one.
For a Knight to overcome his pride he has to learn humiliation and the only way I can currently think of how that could happen would to throw him into a situation where he had to rely on others to do something he can’t do.
Like for example an outpost duty in a farming village, where he is granted land. This land however is large enough that it could be used for farming, so he would not need to buy everything he needed from the villagers or in the market place.
As a proud and wealthy Knight he could just hire people and wouldn’t need to care about it. But what if he had a tight budget and wouldn’t be able to hire servants and buy fresh nutrients regularly and would need to grow them for himself?
So his hard-headedness and rash nature would cause him to start farming his land when he is not on duty or is not needed otherwise. But being a noble-born Knight he has no idea what he is actually doing. The villagers see his struggle, but as his station is way above theirs they do not dare to speak out, give him tips or offer help.
But what if one villager would be brave enough to walk up to the Knight and show him how he has to do something to get it right?
It would change the Knight.
Of course at first he’d be furious. A villager showing him, the proud Knight, how to do something! How dare he! But then – thanks to his kindness and hopefully existing reasoning skills – he would realize that the villagers advise was useful and helped him to actually grow something on his fields. Even slower and with more freely offered advise from the villager the Knight would then become used to the villagers presence and might even find himself conversing with him. And from there it wont take long for him to turn the conversations into a direction where he includes small questions in everyday conversation, so the other wouldn’t notice and he would get his answers. Much later when he is used to the villager and their conversations are frequent and long, he might even walk up to him and directly ask him how to do something. Maybe even with a joke that the proud Knight does not know a thing about farming.
Or when the villager is busy with his own grains the proud Knight might become a tiny bit insecure about his inquiries, but that’ll be covered later. 😉
An alternative to this would be an injured Knight that wouldn’t let a healer help him.
‚Tis but a Scratch‘ as the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (which is by the way called „The Knights of the Coconut„/„Die Ritter der Kokosnuß“ in German) so nicely put it when he lost his first arm.
A proud and stubborn Knight would not want to be healed, he would walk with the wound until he bled to death or a healer forced himself unto him. Either way he would be pretty screwed if his pride overtook his sense of survival. A proud Knight that is also smart might acknowledge the fact that he indeed needed some help to be useful again and grateful when it was granted.
And I am certain there are way more variations of this.

The Insecure Knight

This Knight is a different shoe altogether. He might not even think he deserves his title in the first place. A lot of time and persuasion would be necessary for him to form enough courage to ask, but as with the other Knight: If someone walked up to him when he struggled with a task and offered help and/or advise, he would slowly open up to that person, his kindness maybe playing largely into this.
There always are certain people you feel more comfortable asking, those people mostly don’t judge your questions and are more interested in simply answering them. People like this are the ones the Insecure Knight will confine in and turn towards if he needs advice.
Other people that barely answer the Knight’s questions and make him wait and feel like he is getting in their way will slow the trust process immensely. In his hard-headed and rash mind he will start thinking that the helpful Knights are just too kind to tell him off and will start asking them less. Making it worse to ask other Knights as well.
This Knight doesn’t have it as easy as the other one.
Here the described traits will backfire and if more unhelpful Knights cross his path than helpful ones, he will never truly come around with asking others for help and just work in his little bubble trying to find as many answers as possible before turning to someone else.
Furthermore a Knight like this – and the other one as well I suppose – would not just try to do everything on his own, but overwork himself in the process and that would kind of be the worst outcome of the whole situation.

The Important Lesson

Even though you – as the Knight – are the one to make the final step in asking someone, be it through overcoming your pride or your anxieties, it also greatly depends on the people that offer or decline their help.
But regardless of that one has to understand that one can not know or do everything and that there are moments where we just need the help – be it in form of knowledge or doings – of another person.
PoiSonPaiNter
P.S. Sorry for not actually using the name in the descriptions of the Knights…

Two Years…

Today it’s been two years since I announced my „Hello World“ on this Blog.
And as always: I nearly forgot about this in the first place…
I knew it was sometime towards the end of February and today I just remembered that I wanted to look it up.
According to the „Trophy“ I got last year from WordPress the anniversary is on the 21st, but the first post was published today, so that is the proper day…and I just got this years trophy to prove my point.
Anyway.
Two years aren’t really a big milestone to pass (not like the ones I mentioned in this post), but if you are as easily sidetracked as me, than it is something to accomplish…
I mean, I started this Blog to write stuff down and have a side to collect all my writings and in these two years a lot of things have happened that could have caused me to stop working on this.
You can see that by the amount of stuff I have posted within this two years, as I mentioned before: I merely managed to write about 50 posts in two years…
Apart from the fact that I need to be in a writing mood, I think the biggest problem is, that I don’t like short posts. They just feel weird. If I really have a topic I can easily fill about a thousand words, but if I just have a short thing to say and the post is shorter than that, it is kind of strange. Though I don’t think this post will be that long either…

But what have I accomplished in these two years and what do I plan to do now?

Hmm…I’m not sure about either…
I kind of finished studying (though I haven’t gotten my final mark yet)…
I kind of started to write a bit more regularly (at least once a week)…
I kind of visited a few places and managed to write about or still have to write about it…
The how, in the schedule and stuff however still is a mystery to me…
But I’ll think up something…I guess…
And now I’m already at a loss of what else to write about concerning this anniversary…
Guess I’ll just end with a bit more than four hundred words for a change and hope I will continue with this Blog a bit longer, as it is a nice companion down the road of life.
See you around
PoiSonPaiNter

Done

It is finally done.
The thesis arrived at my lecturers place and now it is time to wait…
Wait to receive my final mark (and subsequently my degree).
The last mark I will receive for this studies that I spent the last 4 1/2 years on completing. (Which was supposed to take a year less.)
It’s a strange feeling and I can’t quite grasp it yet.
I took my last vacation days from last year to get some bit of relaxation before starting to work again and everyone keeps saying I deserve the break.
Somehow I am not so sure about that.
It feels like I could have done so much more with the thesis.
Added more information, made something practical, written stuff differently, covered different aspects, simply changed stuff.
But on the other hand I think that I managed to fit everything important quite well into the required pages.
Beside that, I am relieved that I finished it in the first place.
I am certain that if I had written it last year – as I was supposed to – it wouldn’t have turned out like this.
Back then I was anxious, nervous and petrified whenever I thought about the thesis.
I probably would have worked myself up that much that I wouldn’t have been able to finish the it. Let alone start it.
So I made a choice to take a break from everything studies-related and just work for a semester. A so-called vacation-semester.
It turned out to be a real good decision.
During the semester, I guess, I just lived. I worked, I wrote, I went to festivals and concerts, I travelled a little. It was a nice change to all the stress I had gone through beforehand.
After the semester I was way calmer and more prepared for what was ahead of me. I could look at a timetable and not freak out about it. I could make an outline and read sources to get a basis for my thesis. And that was more than what I managed to do back then.
I managed to get through a situation that could have been enormously stressful.
Not just the start, but also throughout the months I had to work on it.
I simply made sure I would take breaks between working on the thesis and get it done in a pace and a way that would not make me nervous again.
Guess I can be proud of that.
If only just a little bit.
Now the time has come to get to all the stuff I couldn’t do throughout the work on the thesis.
To continue or start with posts and stories that are waiting to be typed.
To plan my vacations for the upcoming festivals and concerts.
To read all those books that still stand unread in my shelves.
To simply enjoy that I don’t have anything else to do for studies any more. That is if my thesis passes and I manage to finally end it.
It’d be bad if that would happen…
It’d mean the whole writing-thing would start anew and well, my company wouldn’t be to pleased about it either. And of course I’d be devastated. All the work – and money, as the printing was relatively expensive and absolutely nerve wrecking – for nothing and another failure added to the list.
I try not to think about that though.
Just distracting myself with working on my several projects and working at my company.
Though not thinking is not really one of the things I do best…
Still, one can try…
On a completely different note is this is also my 50th post.
It only took me nearly two years to come this far.
Although I doubt I’ll manage to get to a hundred posts during this year, I’ll try to post more regularly, now that I have a little more time at hand.
I’ll just see what will happen now.
What I’ll think of and how things will turn out to be.
It’ll be interesting, I guess.
PoiSonPaiNter

Of Karl the Moose and Ponies with Horns

At the beginning of this month my flat got a new inhabitant.

Meet Karl:

Karl

Karl the Moose

What is there to know about Karl?

He is absolutely fluffy.
He is a Moose.
And he was supposed to me a Pony with Horn.

But how did he get into my possession?

He was a birthday gift from Black Kat, Schnitzel and Anice.

Yet, his story is way more fun than that.

His story includes an inside-joke, a thought spoken out loud and a horrible pun.

But let’s start at the beginning …

At last years Wacken (which I still haven’t reviewed yet) the following scene played out:

DarkFairy and I were waiting for Rammstein to start, when she discovered a man with a strange drawing on his back.
Without warning she proceeded to point at him and partly yell: „Look! He has a … Pony with Horn! … Unicorn!“ („…“ are pauses 😉 )

This description was so ridiculous that we kept on using it throughout the whole festival.
You didn’t have a proper argument for a conversation? Pony with Horn.
You didn’t know what else to say? Pony with Horn.
You agreed on the weirdness of something? Pony with Horn and an acknowledging: Pony with Horn.
We had great fun with the Pony with Horn that weekend … 😀

When later that year Kat, Iron Eve and I were in Hamburg for the HellNights (that are also still waiting to be reviewed), we ended up in a shop for flat decorations.
In that shop we saw several fake trophy heads that looked pretty cool and were awfully fluffy. (They had a bison, a shark, a mammoth and others hanging at a wall and thrown into a bin.)
When we skimmed through the catalogue I discovered that they also had a unicorn-version of this.
Without second thought I then said something out loud that I probably shouldn’t have said:

„When I have a proper flat, I’ll get that unicorn-thing for my wall.“

What a bad idea that statement was, became clear throughout the evening of my birthday earlier this month.
When I arrived at our meeting point Kat handed me an enormous package that I was not allowed to open before the other two arrived.
This in turn caused a weird conversation with the barman of the pub we went to:

„Should I put the package away?“
„No, I still need to open it.“
„Oh, so you don’t know what’s inside? A proper present then.“

Through shaking the package I knew that something plush was inside. Though I expected it to be something different.
I also didn’t remember my statement from several months before.
So when I could finally open it, I didn’t understand the present, until Kat reminded me:

„You said, you wanted to get it when you have a proper flat, but I thought you shouldn’t wait that long. Before Christmas there were some Unicorns left, but afterwards it was hard to find anything. So we got you the Moose.“

And this is how Karl the Moose came into my possession and I’d say he is one of the most hilarious birthday presents I got so far.
They even thought about adding a paper-horn. 😀

When I couldn’t quite stop petting the poor thing (the artificial fur is really soft and fluffy…) Schnitzel gave the Moose its name:

„If you go on like this he will be bald („kahl„) soon. You should call him Karl to make it seem like he is supposed to be bald.“

In retrospective a quite fitting name.
As I had recently seen it again the name „Karl“ reminds me of a crow (I think) from an old adaptation of  „The Snow Queen“. (I was shortly tempted to call my new laptop that arrived on the same day „Klara“, because of the crows companion >_< )
The other Karl it reminds me of, as I just noticed, would be the one whose Latinized name is in discussion for becoming the name of the Nameless King in the book I’m co-writing.

What also is fun, is the English version of his name.
As I said: „kahl“ means „bald“, following the pun, the English name would be „Baldur“.
Which by the way is a name-variation for „Baldr“, the god from Norse mythology, whose story I mentioned in this post.
I think it’s funny how those things tend to connect if you look a bit closer …

Short version: I have a new flatmate. 😀
(That has nothing to do with the Moose from Supernatural)

PoiSonPaiNter

P.S. It finally snowed! 😀

Annoyances

To get my mind off of my Bachelor’s thesis for a moment I’d like to just write up some stuff that’s been bugging me recently.
So basically this is just a rant post and you can skip it, more serious posts will be added when I can properly concentrate on them.
And nothing I’ll write down here is in any way meant as offence! It’s just me being annoyed and ranting.
Anyway, the end of my thesis is drawing near and at this point I am pretty much annoyed by the whole editing circle, that I just want the work to be over.
That annoyed that I even made a friggin sketched graph for it…with crappy arrows…

The vicious editing cycle

The vicious editing circle


I know the notes I get are helpful and every re-work improves the thesis, but I really would like to finish the whole thing already…
I can’t help it though. The thesis gets into print on the 23rd and until then I’ll have to go through the circle a couple of more times.
It is supposed to be a proper thesis after all.
It annoys me that my old laptop died shortly before Christmas. Expensive machines shouldn’t be allowed to do that! The new one came just in time for my birthday, but Windows 8 is something I still have to get used to. And I still haven’t finished to properly set it up, as this and everything else is postponed until I’m finished with the thesis. And that still doesn’t change the fact that my notebook from work is one of the most annoying things I’ve ever worked with: slow, loud, old and evil. (It loves blue screens)
It annoys me that I am barely able to work on other writing related stuff right now.
Occasionally my mind drifts off to think about things I could write, but after hours of staring at letters on paper or on the screen I really don’t feel like adding more letters – let alone some in a different language.
This also includes writing this, as I am annoyed that I am writing this, but less annoyed as I can use it to rant and complain.
It annoys me that I can’t finish any of my drafts that I could have posted otherwise.
It annoys me that the last proper post I managed recently was posted nearly two weeks ago (It is however not unusual for me to take long breaks between posts, but still.) and was about a totally random Fandom problem, with a totally unnecessary analysis and fanfiction-like tale about characters being stuck in an elevator…
It annoys me even more that when I posted it on my newly created Tumblr-page, people were liking and re-blogging it, but many just saw the image and didn’t look for the actual content of the post. (Including re-posts with comments like „Someone should write that fanfic“ and „All hell would break lose„, which were both covered in the post.)
This however is partly my own fault as I cryptically described the fact that there was an analysis and a fanfiction-thing involved (Fixed that, but the wave of reblogs died down already, so no one really saw that…). Well, at least some of the Fandoms should have gotten it and a few found their way here from there…
Anyway, the post was still clicked at by a bunch of people (90 so far, to be precise) and the tale-version on fanfiction.net was also favourited, read and commented by some others. And followed, even though I said that it will not be continued. (Though some of them replied by saying they would like me to continue it….what strange ideas people have…)
So basically I am annoyed that people refuse to read properly.
But as I am doing this myself at times I can’t really blame anyone.
It also annoys me that I managed to write that ~4k post in less than a day and it took me several months to write my ~12k thesis…yes I know, research takes time away as well, but it’s still awful…
I’m also annoyed that there wasn’t any snow yet.
I don’t want it to be as horrible as in January 2010 and 2011, where the snow mountains on the motorway were twice the size of my car, but some snow to make it at least look like it’s winter would be nice.
On Christmas Day (24th) I sat in our living room and couldn’t see a thing on my screen, because the sun shown as brightly as if it was just a normal spring day. To emphasize that: Christmas Day felt like a day in spring!
It was snowing in Egypt, why can’t we have at least some of it here?
Though if the snow were to come I would probably complain about freezing and awful transport.
Whatever the weather does, it does it wrong…or we are just too picky.
It also annoys me that Christmas and New Years Eve didn’t really feel like either because of the high temperatures and my thesis was constantly at the back of my mind.
15 days in and I still don’t feel like we have a different year.
And apart from remembering that it is 2014 and not 2013 I now also have to remember a new number for my age…again….that is so annoying…Why can’t we just say our year of birth and people do the Math themselves? That’s what I have to do anyway when I’m asked how old I am…just can’t remember the flipping number…
Anyway, I kind of feel like I’m coming to an end with things that annoy me right now. At least I can’t think of more…
Well, this is kind of more than enough for a random rant…
I’m sorry to bother you with this, but I had to let off some steam.
If you like, you can share your annoyances as well.
I’ll gladly listen.
This way everybody can be annoyed. 😀
PoiSonPaiNter

Happy New Year

I hope you all had a good start into the new year. 🙂
This year will be full of changes for me.
In March I will stop being a student (at least I hope so) and get a real contract with my company.
This’ll finally give me more time for some of my projects.
Amongst other things I would like to start reading more again. I miss it, but I was mostly too tired of looking at stuff to take out one of my many unread books.
I also want to write down some more of my stories. Proper fiction mostly, but I also want to finish Crossing Over and try out some new Crossovers.
And I think about refreshing my Russian and instrument skills.
Though I think, figuring out where I want to go from here will be the most difficult thing next year.
A few changes for this Blog will be made as well and I also still have things to write from last year.
Like the reviews for the Wave Gothik Treffen (WGT), Wacken and M’era Luna, as well as for the Die Ärzte concert and the HellNights I attended. And my report for my journey through Germany.
Apart from that I’ll try to get some kind of schedule for this Blog.
My idea so far is to post once every week. Each post will be for a certain general topic, like: Movies/Series; Books/Manga/Comics, Music/Concerts/Festivals and Thoughts. I’m not so sure about the actual order, though.
I already have drafts for the six posts from last year, several different series, some thoughts and one for the Books category, but they are mostly far from being finished.
Additionally to that new reviews will be added, as I will be attending the Metalfest Loreley again, but also the Out&Loud festival and the tickets for concerts of Van Canto and Schandmaul are already bought.
My journey this year might be a little shorter or even non-existent as a former fellow student and I are trying to figure out a trip to London.
And who knows what I will come up with throughout the year.
I also created a Tumblr site during the last hours of 2013: Random Poison
Not sure how and if I’ll use it, but at least I am able to follow some people more easily this way and am able to promote my post a bit more. 😉
Anyway.
Today I’ll leave you with a quite short post, as I don’t want to spoil too much of what will be written here.
I wish you all the best for this new year and hope you manage to do all the things you aspire to do.
PoiSonPaiNter

Why Wikipedia should be a quotable source

and why it won’t be for a quite a while…
The most annoying thing when you are writing a scientific or research paper is that you are not allowed to quote Wikipedia. And while writing my Bachelor’s thesis I was (and still am) confronted with this problem quite often.
Looking at Wikipedia to get a general understanding of what whatever I am looking for is has become some kind of second nature for me. And in most situation it was enough to satisfy my curiosity or even end a discussion with the proof needed for a point. Wikipedia is a great source for free knowledge that I’d seriously miss if it was ever shut down. Clever people sit down and write (in most cases) wonderfully understandable articles that combine so many thoughts and view points that it would be a shame if you didn’t use it.
But in a paper you can’t.
I don’t know what it’s like in other countries but in Germany it is looked down upon if  you use Wikipedia as information source for a scientific paper. In school teachers would scold you if you simply copied and pasted stuff from Wikipedia, but they would at least accept it if you took information from there and formulated it in your own words. One of the first things you learn about quoting in university, however, is: Never quote Wikipedia.
But why is that? Why can’t we simply use these great roundups for certain topics that are provided to us for free?
From an objective point of view this becomes apparent quite soon.

#1 EVERYONE (with access) can edit articles on Wikipedia

This is probably the most problematic reason for disregarding Wikipedia as a proper source.
The one writing the article can be an expert in the field he is writing about, but he can also be someone who just wants to mess with people or thinks he has an idea of what he is doing, but in reality doesn’t know a thing.
With aliases and everything you never really know who actually wrote it and you also can’t properly pin an author to what was written.
Therefore you can never be certain if what is written there does really represent the truth.
And because

#2 Articles do not quote properly

you can’t even prove it. This is not always the case and many articles have an information that says that points in the article aren’t properly quoted, but still. Without proper references to the original sources you can’t draw your own conclusions, like the author did for writing the article.
With no proper background for conclusions and explanations they are considered to be wrong. (For finding a truth value in a statement this would be different, but that’s beside the point.)
For a paper it would be more helpful to be able to look – and quote – the original sources, but if the roundup doesn’t provide those that is not an option. To make my own decisions I look into other opinions – in this case other sources – so I can use both things as reference.
And what if an author researched something and no one ever heard about it, because there is no official paper on it, just a seemingly wrong paragraph in an Wikipedia article? We wouldn’t know it and another editor would simply delete it.

#3 Articles can always be changed

When an article is written it is not written in stone, it is rather written on a chalk board. You can wipe away what you deem wrong and add your correction. If it is an old board you might even be able to see what stood there earlier, like what you can do with the page history. This makes it hard to pinpoint a version of the article you could use in a proper quote. As far as I know it is a common practice to include printed versions (at least PDF versions) of websites for references, but with an ever changing source like Wikipedia this is always a bit tricky.
Those three things can be summed up into:

#4 Formulating a source is complicated

A proper quote for a paper includes: Author, Release Date, Name of the Source and an URL.
While the name and the URL are easy to find, the others are not so much.
It is not really clear who should be credited as author. The one who generated the page? The one who wrote the most part of it? The one who edited it last? I’d say the one who wrote the most, but I certainly don’t want to look through the whole history to find out who that was. To be save you might even include a „Last edited by“, but you still only have user names and no proper authors.
Same goes for the Release Date. For an ever changing article like this the date the page was created can’t be seen as Release Date. It makes more sense to use the date the current version was released as reference for that. But what if it changes tomorrow again and you don’t look because you have your source? Well, then you better make it safe and add another date that says when you last looked at the source or made the print version.
You certainly can find a way to quote it, but it’s not really a satisfying way.
There are most likely way more points to this than I can currently think of, but I am going to leave it at that.
To turn Wikipedia into something quotable a lot of things would have to change.
Author’s would have to be marked as main author and editors.
Articles need way more references to underline their points.
Versions would have to be declared as quotable (acknowledged by experts, etc.).
And so forth.
There have been many discussion regarding this topic and there will be a lot more until we find a proper solution for this.
But from my personal point of view it would be a really useful help to be able to use the roundup as your source and as reference to other media.
Until then I need to search for other sources that I can properly quote and use as reference for my thesis (and only use „Wiki“ to find them 😉 ).
PoiSonPaiNter

The "Cast" of this Blog

Apart from the fact that I still have many things to write about – including concert and festival reviews, some of them even from last year – I thought before I do that I should get some clarity on all the people I’ve been referring to in my previous posts. As this is most likely to get even more confusing.

So this is the time to get a closer look at the people that provide me with stuff to write about on this Blog. People I’ve mostly met throughout the last few years, with whom I had one or the other adventure – if you want to call it that way. Therefore I tried to collect everyone I’ve mentioned so far  into a list on this page: *click*

But why?

Simply because I think it already got pretty confusing as to who I mean when I say „a colleague“, „a fellow student“ and so forth.
Each of them now has a little description and I tried to put them into groups of where I know them from and so forth.

As for the reason why I put them into a list .. .well … as much as I like chaotic things, as much do I prefer order at some points. And I do have the tendency to make lists or congeries of notes for some things. This way it is just better to understand and to look through. You also can scroll down if you know that what you seek is in another part of the list … and so forth … it’s just clearer that way.

And why all these vague names?

Duh…this is the Internet…of course I am not using real names … especially not for people who are not me and where I am not the person to decided whether I should use them.
It’s annoying enough that you have to use your real name to get an account for some sides, there is no need to have it on your Blog anywhere else beside the Impressum.
Well, this also might seem a little cowardly if you look at it in a way that you are hiding behind a nickname. But even famous authors occasionally use pseudonyms to get other work published. 😉 (See Richard Bachman for prove. ).

I just don’t want people to associate what I write with who I am right away. I want them to read and enjoy and than maybe have a closer look at who is behind all this rubbish. I want people to like „me“/my work for what I do/how I write and not for who I am. If that makes any sense.

Besides: Everything you say/write or do can and will be used against you.
Luckily so far I’m not victim to any shitstorms or CyberMobs, but who knows.
I might some day write something that pisses of a great deal of people and then having your real name portrayed on a side is not always the best way to keep them away from you.
Unfortunately in German law you have to include this stuff on the side, so everyone can find out my real name without much ado, yet I still wont use it for signing these posts.

I created the nickname PoiSonPaiNter in 2007 when I started using the (old) forum I frequently mentioned. Back then I listened to Edguy a lot and was thus inspired by their songs: „Wash away the Poison“ and „Painting on the Wall“ to create exactly that name. Two amazing ballads that somehow just fit rather well when it comes to my overall mentality and somehow the name ended up becoming something entirely different to this.
Since then I saw this name as a possibility for me to get things out of my head in forums, on this Blog and so on, to gain a little more confidence and courage to stand up for my opinion. Sure I am occasionally hiding behind it, but it is still I who says all this, it just feels better to not stutter and squirm or feel all flustered when trying to bring across what I actually want to say. I suck at describing what I think or plan on doing verbally. Writing about it is way easier for me. Though either way people tend to not understand me and get me wrong … well, guess I’m just complicated like that …

Anyway, the point is: On this side I’ll be using nicknames or vague descriptions of people I’ve met or had adventures with – and to be absolutely clear here: I mean adventures in the sense of exploring places or attending concerts and such …

I myself take pride in my chosen nickname.
It gives me confidence that slowly but surely seeps through into my real life.
It occasionally provides giggles as it already was misread as „PoisonPanther“ or miss-spelled as „PoisenPainter“.
And it is simply: Just me.
As often as I can, I stick with this name – and if you see a PoiSonPaiNter out there in a community it might possibly be me. (One of main other names is Mod Soul from my Fanfiction.net-Profile)

You can even check me out on Facebook using that name as I recently created an extra-side for this Blog and the stuff I do beside it – or at least try to do.

So, I hope the Cast-list – that will be updated irregularly – helps you get a better overview of the who-is-who and you understood a little as to why I did that and why my name is important to me.

PoiSonPaiNter

On the Road: Taking the Bus

As I am currently not driving that often with my car – except this week I in fact was, but only for familial visits – I thought I might as well write about my other means of transportation: The Bus; or more precisely: The City Bus.
One of several possibilities of public transport that probably shows a similar attitude towards its passengers in all kind of cities in all regions of the world. It is somewhat like trams and underground railways, just with a different atmosphere due to its seat layout. Well, and the attitude people have towards it is probably pretty similar everywhere as well.
Anyway, I’d like to talk a bit about my experiences with these things.

Helpful but untimely

I have to say if you do not have a car – or a proper place to park your car or the money to pay the gasoline bill that comes from too often using said car – public transportation can be pretty helpful.
That is, if their timing is right…
Using public transportation means, you are bound to take them at a certain time and not whenever you feel like it. They have a fixed schedule and nothing will change said schedule.
Not even standing right before closed doors of the vehicle and asking for entrance and the driver SEES that you do so and refuses to let you in, but never mind.
They’re a good thing for reducing costs for gasoline and the traffic in general, but there are quite a bunch of problems accompanying them. The City Buses in the German cities where I have actually used them look pretty similar: They’re either Articulated Buses or a normal version of those. The inside depends on how young/old the bus is. If it is a young one you have a huge area for baby buggies and wheel chairs. (Basically meaning: The younger a bus, the more spacious is this area and the less seats you have.)
Still, depending on when you use the bus, this area and the whole bus is pretty much cramped.

Annoying changes

But this is a thing that the bus company in my city kind of just re-invented…
When I returned from studying in the end of last year they had made some pretty annoying and ridiculous changes.
First of all: All people – except those that would use the area(s) mentioned above – had to enter through the first door. This caused people to either just stand around in the front of the bus, so you had to squeeze your way through them or actually walk to the back of the bus as the company had „planned“.
The second thing was: You have to show the driver your ticket, every freaking time you enter the bus.
This however was not as publicly noted as the entrance change had been.
While the first had posters on the bus itself, the second had a hand out for about a week or so – of course a week where I was NOT taking the bus.
So I just entered like always without taking out my ticket and the driver just grabbed my arm and rudely told be to take out the ticket.
As I complained that it was at the bottom of my bag pack, he stayed stubborn. Furthermore, a woman that stood just behind his booth chimed in and told me that everyone had to do this. When I told them that this never stood anywhere she told me that there had been a hand out before. I just grumbled that I hadn’t been there to get that information.
This of course all took place while I rummaged through my bag pack for the annual ticket that by now costs more then one month of my rent.
It is not surprising that my mood that morning was even worse than before as I am not that much of a morning person. A fellow student of mine had to suffer through my tirade back then, but sometimes you just have to let out the bad emotions to come to peace.
Well, or at least stay calm for the next things to follow.
Oh, and they did all these changes for our safety no less! And of course every now and then there are still the patrols to check if all the tickets, that have been shown to the driver – or not if he was not busy cashing other people while you walked in – are correct/existing…
Everything for our safety…suuure…stumbling through the cramped bus, long time-consuming lines at the entrance where everyone squeezes in at the same time and hurried bus drivers that don’t care if the (older) people already found their seats or that there is a speed limit…but I digress…

The Crowd

Taking the bus in the morning however leaves me with three choices, where my sleepiness more or less decides which evil I pick:
– Mainly noisy, annoying school-kids, some sleepy adults, annoying teenagers
– less school-kids, more awake and talkative adults and teenagers or
– quite a bunch of loud, crying, screaming, annoying babies and children and still the adults and some teenagers
If you do not have your music player with you, the ride can be pretty nerve-wrecking. Especially if there are other people that also listen to music but way louder than you or the driver tries to find a fitting radio station and so forth.
Well, I was once the person with the far too loud music, but I wasn’t used to listening via my mobile phone and another passenger had to inform me about the drivers complains. Though I am sure he didn’t really notice WHAT I was listening, as that would have been even more awkward (*cough* it was Edguy’s Sex, Fire, Religion *cough*). Though thinking about this, I never really saw a bus driver ask for quieter music again, even if there were some pretty loud ones, might have been the late hour…
Anyway, a bus ride can be fun too (except all those things above). You can meet interesting people or coincidentally meet pals and/or colleagues.
There are also people that simply greet me because we saw each other time and time again in the bus. There even was a woman for a short time, whose toes I nearly stepped on every time I stood up… >_<
Beside that there are two stories that are somewhat funny regarding this.
The first is about a member of the „group“ I am more or less a part of: I saw her every now and then at the bus, before I met her through the group. I thought the whole time that she looked familiar, that I have seen her somewhere before, but I just couldn’t remember where. When I saw her again at the bus after one of the groups celebrations I actually recognized her and realized that it was the bus where I had seen her before. 😀 By now I saw three people of the group in the bus and depending on the mood and how talkative we felt, we even conversed.
The second story is about a girl that I saw reading in the bus. I always thought about talking to her as she mostly read Fantasy stories, but I never really had the guts to do so. Well, one day I just seated myself beside her and she started a conversation, telling me that she had seen me reading as well…
By now we had one or the other weird bus ride, with me being grumpy and only half-awake and her being far too lively and loud  for my sleepy mind, but it is still fun and a better way to wake up then screaming kids…

But not everything is bad about buses

As I said it can be fun with people you know, but it also gives you time to wake up some more before work. You can close your eyes again and doze off for a short time. Or as I occasionally do: You can scribble down a story/idea that has been on your mind throughout the morning/night/day. I’ve gotten quite used to writing while the bus is bumping through the streets. Though this does not mean I always am able to decipher what I wrote…
Additionally it gives you time to think. You also have that time in the car, but you do have to pay a little more attention while driving, just a tiny bit more. 😉
Think about said ideas, think about what you would need to do that day and so forth….or just listening to the music that is currently playing and let your mind wander…
See there is good to taking the bus. 😉
I don’t really know much about City Buses in other cities – only those I went with – but I guess the perception of other people is not that much different from my own. Everyone is happy to get out of the bus again, unless you have something to write or talk about and would like to continue that.
But what I know a little about are the Intercity Buses in my region: They only drive very rarely (once a day being often) and take long. Would I take such a bus for driving home it’d take twice the time as if I’d take my car, not to get started on the prices….
In bigger cities you also have trams and underground railways. I always get confused about which ticket would be the best for me to buy or which way to take, having people around to show you the way is a pretty helpful thing here 😉
And speaking of underground railway: I’ve read (and saw) in Clive Barkers story from the Books of Blood about some pretty interesting inhabitants of the New Yorker underground railway in the Midnight Meat Train that I do like to mention whenever I take such a means of transport. 😀 (This story even has an interesting watch-tale that I might write about it at a later point.) Am I right to believe that  no one has actual prove of that? 😉
And on a completely different note: This Blog now has a FaceBook Page as well: RandomPoison on FaceBook and if you don’t want to follow this Blog via WordPress, you can keep up to date through that side as well.
PoiSonPaiNter