Because I just can't keep this jewel just for myself!!!

The Current (Minnesota Public Radio)


What you have to know, in order to understand the importance of the next sentence, is that I usually loathe radio; especially italian radios, since they seem to use something like 10 songs over and over and over again, and generally I don't even like those ten songs to begin with XD but seriously, I don't listen to the radio. Period.
But!
It's been three days, and I just can't stop listening to this station! I love, love, LOVE the music, and they talk so little that they don't bother me XD Also, in three days it just happened ONCE that I heard the same song.

Sooooo lovely ♥

I hate WoW patches -.-

Maybe it's time to come back, or maybe it's just peer pressure (val, se pensi che io stia parlando di te... hai ragione XD)
I just think I'll probably forget about all the "translating my italian blog in english" because it just didn't work!!!
Maybe, I'll just use this space as a place to collect beautiful things that I find online and such.
Maybe, I'll just wait and see what happens :)

The Chipmunk Adventure



More!

Sorry I didn't post in a long time.
Been busy, and translating into english everything I wrote on the other blog seemed like too much.
But I kinda decided to try again.
Sooooo...
Happy Easter to everyone!!!
:D

preview


The rest :D

Made for icons100

Please credit if you use it. Comments are welcome :) Note that some icons may have explicit language, because in the film there was. Textless icons are not bases. Resources list at my icon journal http://tide.iobloggo.com

Teaser:   

Announced and last minute defections.
Little number of people, but still interesting.
Freezing, tights are not enough, I want wool knee socks ;___;
As usual, parking in front of Agnesi (my high school).
Looking swiftly at windows, so that we won't be late and because it's too cold to stop walking.
Wanting to have dinner at Kapuziner, and instead ending at Rossopomodoro, and finding out that it's not so bad after all.
Restaurants that don't have pizza margherita
Gossiping in Corso di Porta Ticinese you can almost forget the cold, almost.
The Nox that from the outside seems like a sadomasochistic club (not my words) and that seems closed.
A piece of an old door over my head pillory-shaped.
Really long lists of drinks, even a Scottish beer (but not Young Pretender ;___:), but no hot chocolate.
Two drinks for me and Cathy, celebrating the fact that we weren't driving XD
Chemical toilets candle lit, but I remember a real toilet at the Nox.
Passing by Agnesi again, to get our car back (necessarily, I would say)
Taking Cathy and Laura to their car, parked a little farther than ours.
Going back home following roads that are not the same as always.
Then stopping outside my house, just a little talk, and in one minute three hours have passed.

It's was a great birthday, oh yes.

And now, presents!!!
Mum and Michele (step-dad): a sort of neck-massaging cushion (really cool and really beautiful and really soft) money
Bro: a pair of earrings really nice
Parents' friend nr1: a necklace made by her with hematite.
Parents' friend nr2: the catalogue of the Biennial Exhibition of Modern Art in Venice
Cathy: japanese bowl chopsticks in japanese box with japanese greetings :D a little toy of pucca, which wasn't of Pucca at all but actually of Pucca's boyfriend XD a glittering blue eyeshadow and lots of Nuvenia's promotional kits XD
Maggie: Moleskine London ♥
Laura: two little golden hairpins star-shaped and green pendant-earring with flowers

I missed you, and I didn't even know.

original title: A world out of time

I admit it, probably I would have never bought this book, if I didn't find myself in the prospect of 45 minutes of bus without a book XD and I payed for it like two euros at a books kiosk in Piazza Mercanti, and that adds glamour to every purchase :D
Yes, books kiosks are my favourite shops, at the moment XD
Well, however.
It's kind of a strange book. At the beginning, it seems one of those distopic books that I love so much, but it's like the author wasted cheerfully all of his potential of describing a State that is the only form of world govern in a future earth that is overpopulated and hyper-organized (in every aspect of life). Then he moves on, and reaching the first third of the book I was wandering how could it go on, since I felt like I was reading a story that was drawing to an end.
And instead you find out that the whole part the I was so interested into was actually a preamble of the real focus of the novel: Earth, three million years in the future.
It's a scary idea, right? How could possibly be earth within three millions years? My mind paralyzes, it feels like I have a huge blind spot. Not to talk about describing it.
Niven, at least, tries to. And he gives an interesting description, weird enough to be believable. Maybe the only point that he underestimate a little is genetic evolution, but I believe that actually in the years this book was written (70s... another world) genetic still didn't have the importance that has today in imagining the future (if not in post-nuclear scifi... but probably that was more 50s/60s scifi now that I think about it).
Actually, and I was thinking about it just while I was reading this novel, reading scifi written before your own birth it's a tough challenge. I mean, if I read a 70s novel set in the 70, the greatest effort I'll have to do would be forget 30 years of technological progress, and that's all. Seriously, if something it's not there, it's not there. It's unlikely that I find myself thinking "Why doesn't he call him on the mobile phone?" or "She should search on the internet". After all, I'm not so stupid XD
But when we're reading scifi, we're already entering a different universe, the one generated by the author's mind. And this universe, more or less, is an extrapolation made by the author of themes and problems contemporary to him, an exaggeration of a situation that him, and who is metaphorically near him, knows perfectly. Us "reader of the future" instead, have first of all to forget of 30 years of technological and social change, and then face the elaboration of a reality that we never experienced.
In short, even if it's true that reading just one scifi novel written in the 70s will probably make me understand more things on the 70s that five "normal" novels of that time, it is also true that this novels can be terribly tiring (and boring, since the themes and problems often are not the ones that matter for us right now XD)

Birthday post!!! :D
What to say: I'm officially 22 and I was born in the time of the year with more birthdays then any other, apparently (theory: could it be the result of the spring hormonal storm? XD), and that makes organizing a party of sort harder XD
But still, birthday! Yeah!

(tomorrow, no, sunday the presents post :D)

Quest for Camelot - The Magic Sword

Stardust is after all a great movie. I had fun, was never bored, and this is obviously good. At the beginning there are some minor , understandable, changes from the book, but also some scene there are actually the same (that was for fans, I'm sure XD). But then, toward the end, the screenwriter must have become an anarchic, and decided that he could do better (better of Neil Gaiman! sacrilege and stupidity!). I won't say anything specific for those who didn't see it, but for those who have I'll just say this: the whole final scene in the Lilim's palace comes from where?!?
On the contrary I totally approve the modification of the Captain, because Robert De Niro was marvelous XD
And then there was the wind. A little too much wind probably, given that I washed my hair in the morning and at noon they some sort of electric tangle XD and it was really cold. But the wind is beautiful, always. The sky was really clear, and the light was crisp (only my schoolmates at IED could really understand this XD).
About 80/90s anime (the ones I saw when I was a little girl, I'm not actually sure about when they were made XD): I started watching The secret of Blue Water (superlove! it's a steampunk anime! and it's really beautiful, except for Nadia -.-), then I passed on to Sailor Moon (I've seen first and second season, and clearly I'm seeing the others three too; until now, I noticed that the plot of the single episodes is rather banal and repetitive, but the themes of the seasons are really interesting. So, yay for Sailor Moon!), and now I'm watching Daddy Longlegs. Consequently, I decided to find out all anime of my childhood and watch them :D
Obviously, I didn't stop watching tv series. At the time I'm seeing Heroes (♥ i totally loved 2x07 ending), Gossip Girl (more interesting that what I thought at first), Desperate Housewives, Scrubs, How I met your mother (favourite sitcom ever, and there Willow from Buffy :D), Ugly Betty and Smallville (not quite sure why I'm seeing it... but I am XD).

And in one of those moment of revelation and perfect circularity, while I was reading the Neil Gaiman's page on wikipedia, I found out that it isn't true at all that I discovered him this summer.
Actually I know him and love him since 2000, even though I didn't know it was him XD
It was his the Snow White tale inside "I tesori della fantasy", a book that I read, re-read, lent, and that came back to me so many times that is almost worn-out but not too much.
This is
enlightening.

La Matrice Ombra - Marion Zimmer Bradley
original title: The Shadow Matrix

The re-reading of Darkover continues, fascinating as always.
This is a strange book. Seriously, it's like two books in one.
The whole first part, where Mikhail is in Elhalyn, is totally useless for the second part set in the past.
However.
It's a nice book, even if it's not one of the best of Darkover (probably also because it's written with Adrienne Martine Barnes, and you can tell it's not pure Marion). Mikhail gets a little more depth, but he will never be one of my favourite characters. Regis in this novel reaches peaks of unpleasantness that I would have preferred never to read. And as usual it's full of inconsistencies on telepathy and matrices, but I fear it's an inevitable problem when there's a second writer...

Attacco a Darkover - Marion Zimmer Bradley
original title: Traitor's Sun

Probably this is the less darkovan Darkover book that I've ever read. Besides the wide part about the Terrestrial Empire (sorry: Terrestrial Confederation, as it has been called in the latest books. I never quite understood why they changed its name...), it's like we saw Darkover from the outside, and it's not pleasant. The presence of Herm Aldaran's Rennian wife changes the point of view, and it's like every particular but nice thing on Darkover is not nice anymore. I don't know, it's something really weird.
And the departure of the Empire... books over books saying " the terrans will not disappear just cause we want it" and then suddenly the terrans are going away because the lease of the ground of the spaceport is expired? I don't know, it's kinda absurd. But of course, this an Adrienne Martin Barnes book (even if the cover says something else), and it's obvious that she's not Marion Zimmer Bradley, unfortunately ;___;


Stardust - Neil Gaiman 
original title: Stardust

Probably I was expecting too much.
Also because actually I've known Gaiman just since this summer, but I believe I'm more than a little in love with him.
But this book disappointed me a little. It was difficult for me to enter its world, and I kept thinking about others things while I was reading.
BUT.
I probably read it at the wrong time, when I actually had something on my mind that wanted to distract me.
And there are many interesting things in this modern fairytale.
And then I discovered that a) it is born almost as a comic b) there is an illustrated edition as a book c) the version I read was cut in some parts so they could sell it as a children book -.-


Starplex - Robert J. Sawyer
original title: Starplex

If I don't remember wrong, it's one of the first books Sawyer wrote.
And well, there are many others better book in Robert's production. Yet, I've read it once years ago, and I had a terrible memory, while this time it surely fascinated me. The idea of giant creature made of dark matter, and the alien species are original and well characterized as usual, and the complexity of the idea of timetraveling and immortality... there are interesting things, and actually now that I think about it the problem is the main character XD who, let's say it, is not the best Sawyer's character that I ever read about!


Year's Best Fantasy 2 - cured by David G. Hartwell

And after 5 years, I finally end this book XD
Okay, five years ago I dropped it when I was half through the first story, so it doesn't count. But it still took MONTHS since when I re-started it, and that sounds like a judgement to me.
Like every short story collection, there are beautiful and terrible, slow and fluent, fascinating and boring, original and trite stories... problem is, in this anthology the terrible stories are much more than the beautiful.
And, well, it's not easy reading a book like this.




La strada del Destino - Larry Niven
original title: Destiny's Road

This book is one of the Urania (famous series of paperback science fiction novels) that I read when I was 12/13 taking them at the library, and then they disappeared XD
So now I wander through bookstalls looking for them XD
However, we were talking about Niven.
I had a really faint memory of this book (that I always confuse with John Crowley's Engine Summer, because in both of them there was The Road - but they're actually two different things with the same name) and in fact it was like reading it for the first time, the only thing that I actually remembered were speckles (that for some reasons in italian are called stelline, that means little stars -.-).
It's a strange book; it's quite interesting and nice, but it's not really focused on something. And then there is a time jump of like thirty years, and it always kinda weird when it happens.
Anyway, it's a colonization scifi book (anyone can tell me if this thread really exist? XD or if it has another name maybe...), that is one of my favourites subgenre.

Pretty late, but...
Halloween is one of my favourite festivities.
It is a time to dress up, that is one of the things that I always loved.
It is a kitsch festivity, and I love kitsch.
It is a festivity to pass with Cathy, since when we were fifteen, and festivities with Cathy are always worth it.
It is a festivity during which you can go outside wearing tons of black eye shadow, and it's okay.
And this year, it's been a festivity of witches struggling between the forces of the nature and the forces of darkness, and a festivity of white wigs and black lipsticks.


Cathy and me, as usual :D

Another picture of my costume

Comments&credit are very much welcome :)

 

I love getting lost in Milan.
Forgotten railroads, unforeseeable shops, roman ruins, houses covered in ivy, bookstalls selling Urania and Librogame for 1 or 2 euros.
And if there's a shiny sun which brings a magic light like yesterday, you would never stop wandering between unknown alleys, not even when you feel like you're really lost.

And then, yesterday I finally went to see Hairspray!!!
And it's so nice! I giggled all the time, and clearly I can't stop listening to the soundtrack.
But above all, I realized that I'm actually a twelve years old fangirl.
How else can you explain that every time that Zac Efron was on the screen I kept smiling like a teenager in her first crush?!?
And even '60s James Marsden is not so bad XD