Fanart, Fanfiction and Fangirling

I posted this on Instagram and Tumblr yesterday, but I didn't have time to post it here. The usual silly birthday doodle for schwimmerin, featuring a certain guitarist from a certain band aus Berlin. :)

So, my birthday was less than ideal (I think it was the most depressing bithday I've had in the last few years, and in 2020 and 2021 we were in the middle of a lockdown, so that's saying something), and now I'm stuck at home until next Friday. It sure looks like life is having a little too much fun at my expense lately. At least my mood improved drastically compared to last week.

Anyway. Here's yet another CSI ficlet. What can I say, I've been craving fluff lately, and these two have done wonders in helping me keep my sanity.

Title: Soft
Fandom: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG-13
Category: fluff
Summary: Nick's sweater is just a little too big on Greg, the shoulders a little too wide, the sleeves a little too long. Then Nick notices something else.
A/N: Inspired by this super cute fanart by Peanut_Booi

Read on AO3.

I celebrated my birthday with my friends last night. It was actually a double party, as one of my best friends' birthday is in a couple of days, so we did a "combined celebration" at a Mexican restaurant.

The food was delicious and I got A TON of presents. Also, my friends know me SO well. XD

( ♥♥♥ )

I've finally started working on this year's Christmas cards, I should be able to send the first three by the end of the week. I began with the ones that are flying to another continent, you never know how long that might take.

I also made a birthday invite for a friend of mine who turned 30 last week. Most of my friends usually celebrate in a pub or a pizzeria and maybe we go dancing somewhere afterwards, but this time we're going to a "disco restaurant", that is, a restaurant that turns into a club after dinner. I looked up their website and it looked so incredibly posh, then I checked the address and I couldn't believe my eyes: it's inside a golf club! Everyone will be filthy rich, I'm sure. Well, this friend of mine is filthy rich as well, but we've known each other since primary school and she's not one of those people who always need to show off. It's not her fault her mother sent her to a very expensive secondary school and always bought her clothes in the Italian equivalent of Harrod's. >_>

And a meme stolen from irisbleufic:

If my blog were a place, what would it look like?

I can't believe I haven't posted a Frankfurt report yet. But I've really had no time so far and won't have time tonight either, my neighbours are coming to Berlin and I'll have to meet them. And tomorrow night I'm leaving for Milan. I'm at work right now and I'll try to write down something, hoping the day won't be too busy. Pictures are still in my camera, I don't even know how they came out, I haven't saved them on my computer yet.

I left quite early on Saturday morning and was in Frankfurt around 5:00 PM (Schönes-Wochenend-Tickets are great to save money, but man, the trip was looong.) It was well past 6:00 PM when I arrived at the venue; the usual faces were already there, of course, but it wasn't too crowded, so I ended up in the front row with no problems. Almut arrived just before Smokestack Lightning began and gave me chocolate for my birthday. Thanks. :3

I enjoyed Smokestack Lightning very much, I had already seen them as opening act for Bela last year.

Bela's show was cool, but he should really try to learn his own lyrics. ;) And for Heaven's sake, why did he grow that ridiculous moustache again?! D: It's like he must change his look for every new album/tour and, since he can't do much to his hair anymore, he goes with the moustache. ARGH.

Anyway. "Rockula" was introduced by a very atmospheric strings-intro, during which Olsen, Lula and Paule came on stage. Olsen stood in the back with the guitarist of the HR3 Big Band, Lula and Paule on the left. The strings were introduced as the "Swingo Wings", the "Minderjährige Streicher" (at which a couple of girls looked fake-appalled, as they were obviously not underage) and some other names I can't really remember.

"Schwarz/Weiß" was supposed to be a homage to Frank Sinatra, so Bela sang it holding a whisky glass and a cigarette. Cigarette that was lit using a lighter Paule was keeping in her stocking. The idea in theory was good, too bad he got too caught up in his Frank-Sinatra-character-thing and forgot half the lyrics. And he even threw the cigarette at the audience! WTF? First he threw a pick and I thought "Did he just throw the cigarette?! Ah, no, that's just a pick. I mean, he wouldn't be so careless..." And 30 seconds later he did throw the cigarette. Thank God it landed on the floor and one of the security guys crushed it and kicked it under the stage. WTF Bela! I'm sure the girls standing right in front of him would've fought to have it, but I thought he would have more sense than to throw a lit cigarette at the audience like that. ¬_¬

All right, enough ranting. The concert was very good and the songs sounded great. At the end Bela asked the audience to stay for Wayne's concert, even if it was quite late, because he had invited him personally; he even watched a bit of Wayne's gig from a corner of the stage with Paule.

Wayne's show was also very good, I love his songs, both the album and live versions. He sang a bit of Heroes in the middle of a song, like he had done in Berlin (was it "Shine on"? I really can't remember) and ended the concert with a really cool version of "Love will tear us apart" by Joy Division. I love that song and had just added it to my MP3 player the day before, talk about coincidences. He also spoke some German (phrase of the day: "Ihr seid geil!") and was his usual tongue-in-cheek self.

After someone had thrown a pack of Mentos at him and hit him in the face, he started explaining how dangerous that could've been, then proceeded to jump down the stage and hand the Mentos to a girl in the front row, then said "See, that's the safe way to pass Mentos along!" Crazy bloke.

Almut and I only stayed around a little after the concert, then went to our hostel (we were staying at the same place totally by chance). The next day I went all the way back to Berlin, met up with my flatmate at Alexanderplatz and then we went to Friedrichshain together. While we were on our way, we were even hit by a sudden hailstorm. WTF, hail in March!? Whatever, we took shelter in a bar, where I ate a delicious omelette, then went to the pub where her daughter works and drank their homemade cider for free.

All in all, an exhausting but brilliant birthday! :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JENNY!!!

I wanted to draw something for you, but I'm always so tired when I get home in the evening... *FAIL*

I hope you have a nice day! *hugs*

First of all: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NICOLE! I wish you tons of happiness, you sure deserve it. *hugs*

And then.

I'm quite pissed off. As you probably know, I'm helping a certain party with the local electoral campaign (somewhere along the way I became a candidate too, but that's not important). The elections are getting closer, and the people in charge decided to invite a very famous politician for Sunday. Someone thought it would be a cool idea to have a band play as well, so I told them some friends of mine play in a band and sent them the link to their MySpace page. And that pretty much started the list of things that are currently pissing me off.

1) No one replied, not to the email about the band, nor to another one in which I'd asked something about the campaign. So much for internal communication being important.

2) I met the guy who was supposed to choose the band and he told me they can't let my friends play because of their name. They're called "Deluded by Lesbians", the name probably disturbs the Catholic part of the party (which, unfortunately, is quite strong, I've noticed). All right, you don't want them? Just fucking tell me so I'll inform them, they can't sit around all week not knowing whether or not they're gonna play on Sunday.

3) No one had thought of informing the head of the party about the concert. One of the councillors was there and she was quite pissed off when she found out.

4) No one had thought you need to actually organise things, a concert won't just pop out from nowhere. One of the guys told me some time ago he was very happy I decided to help them, because he wouldn't know where to start if the had to organise an event. Yet, I was told nothing about this big event. I thought that maybe they had asked a pro to take care of things, what with the big politician coming to our town, but no, it's quite the opposite. You want to know just how disorganised they are? This is the state of things as of last night:

- The event should take place in a park and no one thought of asking a licence to play a concert on public ground. They just took it for granted they'll be allowed to, because the councillor is one of us. Needless to say, the councillor was not amused when she found out.

- No one thought of asking a permit to use electricity. Hello? How do you think all that stuff is going to work in the middle of a park?

- No one thought about getting an amplifying system. But if they didn't think of electricity, how could they have thought about amps?

- They didn't think of getting a STAGE! But this is something the head of the party should have taken care of. What the fuck, an important politician is coming over and you don't even have a small stage and a mic? They are going to have a stage somewhere else on Friday, but they can't pull it down and put it back up in the park on Saturday, because they have no technicians in the weekend. Well, why didn't you organise the two events in the same location?! That would've saved you a lot of troubles!

I don't know, maybe I'm too fussy, maybe these are details I only noticed because I want to work in that field, but things like these really piss me off. I mean, putting up a concert isn't so difficult, the only difficult part is finding the money. As for the rest, you just need to sit down and make a list of the things you need. Hell, I'm not a pro and I've never organised a concert from scratch, but I've been to enough gigs and studied event management after all, if they had just asked me, I could've explained them all the things they needed to do. Most of the work consists of getting licences and permits, anyway.

Also, I find it quite disheartening that one of these people is a young environment engineer and he had no idea you need to contact the electric company to use electricity in the park. What the fuck do they teach in university these days?

Hahaha, I was watching the newspaper review this morning and there was an article about a course aimed to teach Berliners to be kinder to strangers! XD Mwhahaha, too bad I can't find it anywhere, that newspaper only publishes articles online the day after they are printed on paper.

And before I forget:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JENNY!



Here, have a piece of cake.

Do you want to see the rest of the picture (I'm actually quite pleased with how it came out) and find out who's holding that delicious cake? ;)

( Happy birthday to youuu... )

It's been quite a while since I wrote smut, I even thought I wasn't able to anymore, but I wrote this pretty quickly, in a sort of flu-induced trance. Sammy, I hope you like it!

Title: Another wasted night
Fandom: Die Ärzte (RPS)
Pairing: Bela/Farin with a bit of Bela/Rod and Farin/Rod
Rating: NC-17
Summary: "You shouldn't even be able to get it up!"
A/N: Birthday fic for schonste, who casually mentioned she would've like something involving sex and drugs. Sorry it took me so long!

Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. The people portrayed in this story are real, but I use their "public personas" as if they were fictional characters. No libel or copyright infringement intended.

( Farin didn't know how long he had been lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. )