That would be Optimistic to the Point of Foolishness.

um... when I tried to log on just now my password wouldn't work. I was doing everything right. that is weird. I had to reset it.

So if my account has been hacked and somebody is making horrid comments or something under my name, IT WASN'T ME. I only make nice comments, on very few sites.

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Hey this is interesting!!! About gay stuff cut from the original From Here to Eternity manuscript. I got there via the Guardian article here. Now we are all going to daydream about Frank Sinatra/Montgomery Clift/Burt Lancaster slash - like we weren't doing that already.

Also: No computer is a banana. *snerk*

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I was 10 when the wall came down, I'd only been living in Germany for 3 years and had only a rather hazy notion of what exactly was going on or quite how important it was. My parents were glued to the TV of course. A few months earlier though a boy from the DDR had joined my school class, and at a similar time there was an Eastern kid in my sister's class too. This was quite something special. And yes, these kids were bullied because of their funny accents and general otherness.

Couple of years later my history Abitur class went on a school trip to Berlin - I remember taking a bus through the Brandenburg Gate! When I actually moved to Berlin in 2001 you couldn't do that any more, I guess they were planning/building the Pariser Platz etc as it is today.

Although as a Wessi and a foreign one at that I didn't get the significance at the time the wall fell, just by living in Berlin for 6 years - no longer in the mythologised 90s, now gentrification was starting to creep in - and the strip of wasteland where the wall used to be, and the difference between East and West still visible (virtually no tram lines in ex-West Berlin) - I slowly got an idea. A line of cobblestones runs where the wall used to be; I crossed it on a regular basis, living in the ex-West and going to art school in the ex-East, and every time I crossed it, I was glad the wall wasn't there any more and was reminded that every now and then, good things happen in the world.


On a slightly related note: something I never found out - those golden bunnies that are in the asphalt on Chausseestrasse at the bit where the wall used to run - what are they all about? Anyone know?

buy the Edinburgh Printmakers Calendar! I contributed :)
Also: on Nov 14th it's Open Day there.

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also:
When novelists or screenwriters want to telegraph that a character is boring or unimaginative, they often make him a dentist—in the Harry Potter series, for example, Hermione Granger's parents aren't just muggles, or nonmagical people; they're dentists. from here

- funny, I never thought Hermione's parents were boring because they were dentists. I thought they would be rich, though! And also they'd encourage Hermione's studious attitude, because they'd have studied so much themselves.

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normally I don't talk like this, but this guy has "mad skillz" (with a z):



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KITTEEEEEEH!!!!



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and

in response to clicky - I have 81 comments on the deviantArt page!!! But most of those are replies. So I consider this thing closed now.

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a picture of Sirius, thinking exactly that!



So I think I got over ten comments on deviantArt - it says 34 comments but so many of those are replies. Does this demand another drawing, like I said I'd do?

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I posted this on my deviantART journal, just to see what would happen, and I know some folk aren't on dA but might want to comment anyway, so:

In the spirit of this article, bring me your woes!!! Comment here with your experiences of blatant and/or casual sexism, even if it's random name calling in the street, or whatever incident you want to moan about - even if you feel like an uptight humourless little prude for complaining about those stupid magazines that flash their whatsits at you every time you're queuing for the check-out - and for every tenth comment I will draw a Harry Potter picture. Which will probably have nothing to do with gender issues or sexism or anything, but just be a nice illustration of our favourite books.

_{(And I do kind of expect there to be over ten comments, I must admit. But we'll see. You can tell other people about this too! although insulting comments - and I get to decide what's insulting - will be screened and maybe reported. This isn't some voyeuristic thing on my part, and also, don't write about stuff you don't feel comfortable with putting out here.)}

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