Fanart, Fanfiction and Fangirling

I'll be spending next week in a small Ligurian town, eating too much focaccia and trying to relax and recharge my batteries, because the rest of the summer is going to be tough. Hopefully not as tough as last year, also because my attitude is quite different, but it's not going to be a walk in the park either. I never got around to writing about my long weekend at Cinque Terre (also in Liguria) at the end of May, but that was amazing too: that area is stunning, with crystal clear sea and some lovely hiking paths, I wish I'd visited sooner.

Things are still extremely busy at work, and in the middle of that, I had to fly to the U.S. with a two-day notice to attend my aunt's funeral at the end of June, bringing along my other aunt and uncle (my parents didn't feel like they could face such a big trip). I felt like a bit of a Transatlantic babysitter, but at least I could take a few days off work and see my cousins again.

And of course I fell into another fandom, as it often happens when I'm stressed. I wouldn't really call it an obsession, but Stranger Things has been my main fandom focus for the last few weeks. I posted a ficlet the other day and have something else I'm gonna post for Harringrove Week at the end of the month, but I'm mainly consuming content at the moment, not creating it.

But while I was browsing the harringrove tag on Tumblr, I stumbled upon some NSFW audio files and... Well. I had no idea that was even a thing, no f***ing clue. Damn. Is it possible to fall in love with a voice? Because I think I did. So I dug around online until I found the performer's page, on Reddit of all places. I haven't listened to all of his recordings, because, frankly, some of the themes are a little too extreme for me, but that voice... I should probably feel embarrassed, even ashamed, but it's so soothing.

Like, these two files? God, I could listen to them all day. They are 100% completely safe, btw. They're kind of ASMR, I guess?

https://soundgasm.net/u/UndertheMonstersBed/I-Came-As-Soon-As-I-Heard

https://soundgasm.net/u/UndertheMonstersBed/Its-Just-an-Audio-Aftercare

And I love the next one because he sounds so different when he plays the two characters. I wanted to become a voice actor when I was a teenager, so I'm always in awe when someone can use his/her voice like this. There are a few swear words and the dialogue is a bit allusive, but it should be quite safe.

https://soundgasm.net/u/UndertheMonstersBed/Phone-Call-and-Thank-You

Anyway. Nothing much to add, I'm just trying to survive the summer. And looking forward to seeing Die Ärzte in Berlin at the end of August. ♥

I'm SO glad you can listen to BBC radio on their iPlayer even from abroad, this is exactly what I needed today:

On the Town with the League of Gentlemen - A Guest at the Dentons

Oh, the irony of listening to this on the day when I actually have a job interview. XD

EDIT: I didn't want to create a new entry just for this, but angrylogic and kiviraat, I got your card! Thank you! :D


So, the silly little post I had in mind the other day before the LJ comment drama exploded in all its glory. I saw a ASoIaF meme in matitablu's journal a few days ago and thought it was cool. Sadly, I know nothing about ASoIaF, but I really wanted to post a new accent meme, (the last one had been fun), so I looked for other fandom-centered versions of it and found the perfect one. :)

It's always weird listening to my own recorded voice. Also, I noticed I tend to talk way too fast, I had to make an effort to slow down. And I say "um" an awful lot. Anyway, for those of you who didn't have the pleasure of hearing my fake English accent:

ACCENT MEME (SHERLOCKIANS)



(Player found here)

Name / Username
Location / Where you wish you were
When did you get into the show?
Your favourite character / actor? Why?
Your least favourite?
Your favourite episode? Why?
Your favourite line?
Say each of these: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, “damn my leg!”, Mrs. Hudson, “Afghanistan or Iraq?”, Detective Inspector Lestrade, adulterer, psychopath, high-functioning sociopath, Mycroft, the police, “pork or pasta?”, Jim Moriarty, book code, The Thames, The Golem, violin, “probably my answer has crossed yours”, good example.
Your reaction to the end of episode 3 (if you have seen it):
What you want to see in the next season?
Any additional Sherlock comments:

I saw this meme in irisbleufic's journal earlier and just couldn't resist. I wanted to start recording right away, but there were workers still hammering away in the afternoon, so I had to wait until I came back from the usual Thursday magazine meeting.

Also, please remember English isn't my native language, so this is probably going to sound a bit fake, but that's the way I sound when I speak English. The volume's a bit low, sorry.



Instructions:
1) Your name and/or username
2) Where you're from
3) The following words: Aunt, Roof, Route, Wash, Oil, Theater, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Probably, Spitting Image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pajamas, Caught, Orange, Coffee, Direction, Naturally, Aluminium and Herbs.
4) What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
5) What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
6) What do you call gym shoes?
7) What do you say to address a group of people?
8) What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
9) What do you call your grandparents?
10) What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
11) What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
12) What is the thing you change the TV channel with?

13) Read this passage from The Speech Accent Archive:
Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.

I've wanted to make a post like this for some time. It's no secret I'm quite a language freak. On top of that, I adore dialects. My parents speak dialect most of the time and you could probably say Milanese dialect is their native language, not Italian (they pretty much learned standard Italian in school). I mostly speak Italian, but for some expressions I use dialect too, either because I'm so used to hearing them, or because there's no Italian equivalent.

Most of my foreign LJ friends probably never even heard Milanese dialect, so here are a few popular proverbs/expressions. By the way, this isn't the "real" Milanese pronunciation, but the one spoken in the northern area of the province, so I should probably call it "Brianzöo", not Milanese. Also, I don't know if I wrote everything correctly, as we don't really have a standard written form. For example, we have ö and ü sounds, someone uses the French equivalent (oeu and ue?), but since I didn't study French, I'll just use German umlauts. :P

Brianzöo for dummies - Lesson 1

- "La boca l'è minga straca, se la sa no de vaca" - Very famous proverb, it literally means "The mouth isn't tired, if it doesn't taste like cow", meaning you should always end a meal with a bit of cheese.

- "Se la va, la g'ha i gamb" - One of my mother's favourites (she actually uses a half-dialect, half-Italian version of it), it literally means "If it goes, it's got legs"; that is, if no one finds out what you did, then good for you.

- "Vegn giù dal murun!" - "Come down from the mulberry!", meaning "Open up your eyes!", "Wake up!"

- "Scarliga merlüsc!" - "Slip, cod!" aka "Keep away from me!"

There are many more, I'll post some of my favourite ones if anybody is interested.

Hahaha, Wayne was slightly offended by my last cartoon, because I don't "seem to have a very high opinion of his bodily beauty". XD Oh man, I should definitely draw more often.

Anyway! Concert report is done! I need a little help from my wonderful German-speaking friends, though: I'd like to add a quote from Rod, it's in this MP3 file, about 6 minutes into it. I'm having trouble understanding what he's saying at the beginning, I can only understand "blablabla euch aus, ihr Pfeifen!" I know he's asking the audience to form a bigger circle for the "Wall of Death", but I'd like to know what exaclty he says. Danke. :)

After lunch break I'll re-read the report and then post it here in a locked entry, so you can tell me what you think of it before I send it off.

And now: FOOOOOD!

I'm feeling melancholy these days. Maybe it's because of the sudden weather change; maybe it's because of those comics I read the other day; maybe it's because there are some old issues that were never really forgotten, only hidden away, and sometimes they come up again and remind me that I'm still the same old Alex, no matter how hard I try to change. I know I've changed a lot, but apparently that's not enough. And I'm afraid it'll never be.

But instead of boring you to tears with a useless whiny post, I'll bore you with a useless random post.

- I was watching TV while having lunch today and ended up on All Music, an Italian music channel. After about 4 seconds I thought "Wait, isn't that boy with dreadlocks..." And the following shot: "Fuck! That's... Bill from Tokio Hotel???" o_O Tokio Hotel on Italian TV with a song in English (Monsoon), Oomph! on Italian radio with a song in German (Gott ist ein Popstar), Rammstein everywhere and no sign of Die Ärzte. Life is unfair.

- Driving in the rain while listening to Pulp's "His'n'Hers" brought back so many memories of England and reminded me just how much I loved them - and that country. Why did they split up before I had the chance to see them live???

- My friends asked me to draw something with the graphic tablet they got me for my birthday and to send it to them. My hand still trembles a bit when I use it, so I tried tracing over a picture using the "marker" option. It could be better, but hey, it's a start!



- I took the nationality quiz and I got and incredible result: It says I'm 75% Italian! *rolls eyes* Let's see: I like noodles (but I could be Chinese - no wait, that was a European nationality quiz), I roll the R (but I could be Spanish; and I don't roll it when I speak English), I like strong coffee (all right, this is typically Italian I guess) and I greet my friends with a kiss on the cheek (God, I never know how to greet people when I'm abroad!) Oh my God, I can't escape my origins! :P Hey, do you want to hear a nice rolled R? Here's an Italian tongue-twister.

( Quiz results )

May I ask what is typically Belgian? I honestly have no idea. And no, there weren't questions about chocolate. Also, 50% German and only 38% British. The fact that I don't particularly like beer must have counted A LOT. X)

PS: A joke only my German speaking friends will find funny:

Two strangers meet in London. They start on a conversation but they have to use their dictionary quite often.

- Hello Sir, how goes it you?
- Oh, thank you for the afterquestion.
- Are you already long here?
- No, first a pair days. I'm not out London.
- Thunderweather, that overrushes me. You see not so out.
- That can yes beforcome. But now what other. My hair stood to mountain as I the traffic saw. So much cars give it here.
- You are heavy on the woodway if you believe that in London horsedroveworks go.
- Will we now beer drink go? My throat is outdried. But look, there is a guesthouse, let us man there go!
- That is a good think: Equal goes it loose. I will only my shoeband close.
- Here we are. Make me please the door open.
- But there is a beforhangingcastle, the economy is to. How sorry! Then I will go back to the hotel, it is already retard. On againsee!
- Oh, yes I will too go. Auf Wiedersehen!
- Nanu, sind Sie Deutscher?
- Ja, Sie auch? Das wundert mich aber. Ihr Englisch ist so hervorragend, dass ich es gar nicht gemerkt hätte.

Christmas decorations are up, Christmas cards are (almost) ready to be sent, birthday card for Demi and Paolo is done. I still have to buy most of the presents for my friends and family, but there's still a couple of weeks before the 25th, so no need to hurry.

While I was tidying up today I took down some of the pictures on the wall in my room and replaced them with photos from last summer's concerts. So now I have a Los Helmstedt wall. ♥♥♥ How old am I again? 13, right? *shakes head*

And while we're talking about silly things, here's my awkward attempt at speaking German:

The butchering of the German language - take 2 (WAV file, 75KB)

The quality is quite bad and you'll probably have to turn up the volume quite a bit to be able to hear it, sorry. Not that you'd be missing much if you don't hear it, mind. And I'm always surprised when I listen to my recorded voice, do I really sound like that in real life?

I went to St. Ambrose market yesterday and bought a lovely jacket, black with red seams and a long pointed hood. I've wanted a jacket with a hood like that for a long time and it's just so warm, I'm going to take it to Germany for New Year's Eve, I'm going to need it. I'm shivering at the mere thought of it, I still remember just how bloody cold it was when I used to go to the midnight Mass for Christmas. Hopefully it won't be so cold during the concert, it's going to be so crowded we'll keep each other warm, but what about before and after? I'm gonna freeze my arse off, I'm sure. >_<

Oh, the things I'm doing because of this band...

Random thought of the day: Is it normal...? (mp3 file, 147 KB)

The volume is a bit low, but that's the best I could do. :P

I have an idea for a drabble but I don't seem to find the right words. But that's nothing new, is it? And I'm going to Milan with my mum this afternoon, so I won't have time to write anyway. Oh, my life is so exciting. *rolls eyes*

It amazes me that people are already thinking of buying tickets for Farin's concerts, I mean, the tour starts next October! Do I need to buy them so early? Are they even on sale? I started checking flights/trains, but it's still so early that infos for October aren't available yet.

Also, could someone please explain me why a flight from Milan to Berlin with Air Berlin costs 47€ (taxes included), while a flight to München costs 89€? WTF? München is much closer, why does it cost almost twice as much? *sigh* Maybe I'll go by train, but you can't check prices for international trains online, I'll have to go to Milan Central Station and ask there. The journey's more than 7 hours long. Ugh. And then the next day München - Innsbruck, I think that's gonna take only a couple of hours. And then Innsbruck - Milan, about 5:30 hours long because I have to change train somewhere along the way. It would be a pretty intense weekend, but it'd be so great if I really managed to go.

Anyway, I said I'd post some audio files, didn't I? First a little thing for schwimmerin, who wanted to know how to pronounce "che sfortuna". The volume may be a bit low, but it sounds much better compared to my old crappy mike.

Che sfortuna! - .wav file, about 8Kb

And since I wanted to post something else in Italian, I chose the inscription on Hell's door from Dante's Inferno, just because it's the first thing that occurred to me and I know it by heart. The inscription, not the whole damn Divine Comedy, of course. :P

Canto III - .wav file, about 77Kb

( Here's the original text )

Also, I went to a demonstration for women's rights in Milan yesterday and it was great. There were about 200,000 people, luckily not only women, and some of the banners were hilarious. We protested, among other things, against the constant meddling of the Catholic church in political matters and a couple of my favourite banners said "Stop Ratzism" and "Priests, stay out of our pants". XD God, I should go to demostrations more often.

All right, off to learn some new kiwido tricks now. But before I go...

The Five Things Meme

You post a topic, list, category, whatever, in my comments section. (examples: "5 Sexiest Things About Ron Weasley" or "Top 5 things to drink"). Then, in a separate post, I'll post the answers to all your Top 5 ideas, according to me. Then you post this offer in your own journal.