Pictures and Stuff

I am still ill, I am still bored, this is the result:

Have a great and colourful day,
The Countess

About Social Networks and Stuff

Did I mention I'm addicted to the internet? 
Well, I am. 

I have a Facebook profile, 3 tumblr accounts, a Twitter (To be found here), an instagram account (the_countess_of_fairytales), a YouTube profile and this blog of course. I mostly use Facebook because I have a group of friends with whom I am in PM contact whenever we are awake. Actually, this goes for me and the internet in general: 
If I'm not online, I sleep or have uni in one of those rooms that have neither windows (yup, seriously...) or an internet connection. Other than that I'm pretty much online all the time.  I don't actively browse the whole time but even when I'm with friends I tend to check my emails (of which I get about 91827634567831920 a day since I became an active member in the Green Youth) or post a quick tweet or instragram picture. For some it's annoying but most of my friends are the same and I honestly enjoy it. 

The Count and I don't have much time together, we only see each other about once or twice a week so it's nice to stay in contact via Whatsapp or Facebook over the day to feel a little more connected. We just tell each other random little things that are happening or plans we have, what annoys us, what makes us laugh... 

Of course, I also read all news on the internet, mostly The Independent, The Guardian, the TAZ (German) and the Kölner Stadt Anzeiger (KSTA, a Cologne based local paper) but also random articles of other papers when they appear on my Facebook feed for example. I try to stay updated but sometimes I tend to forget it because I get lost in the wonders of the mighty internet. I tought myself how to stitch via YouTube, I get my ukulele tabs from various websites, I send a gazillion mails a day, I read other peoples' blogs and watch their YouTube videos about art, make-up, veganism, politics, everyday life and I don't even know what. At the moment I try to get better in calligraphy and I googled some pictures as inspirations.

What about you? What's your opinion on using the internet a lot? What do you do most when you're online (I know, the internet is for porn but I don't want to hear about that, thanks ;) )? Would you sometimes like to change the amount of time you spend online? I certainly do but look what I'm doing at the moment^^

Have a great day,
The Countess

I Got Tagged!

The wonderful Fee from Scenes From The Cutting Floor and N. Finternis from Nebelviolet tagged me! Yay and thanks, I was abandoning this blog way too much again... Shame on me.

Rules:

• Link back to the person who tagged you.
• Tag 5 blogs with less than 200 followers.
• Get them to tag more bloggers and keep this thing going.

5 things you need every day:

1. Tea. I can't go without a nice cuppa in the morning. Or ten. I drink tea though the whole year and the whole day and I certainly don't want to miss this steaming goodness in my life. 
2. My netbook, Tinkerbell (yes, she has a name). Firstly, because it is my connection to the mighty internet, of course and therefore to the real world and the ones that are dear to me. Secondly, it has all my music on it. I only started buying CDs very recently, I know, stupid me but I'm poor and have to spend all my money on train tickets to visit my loved ones that I met on this cursed internet. thirdly, it's where I do my writing. I prefer writing with ink on paper but due to practical and environmental reasons I write almost everything on Tinks.
3. My bed. My bed is my home within my home, my safe spot, my Tardis. It's where I sleep, write, think, love, eat, sew, get drunk and read.
4. My creativity. I try to make something everyday and if it's only a stupid short piece of writing, something creative gets done everyday in these walls. 
5. My loved ones. My soul mates, my harbour, the ones that make my life oh so wonderful.

5 books you would recommend:

1.  Kaitlin Moran- How To Be a Woman. This woman is a genius, she combines feminism and her critique on our patriatical world with wit and humour. It's addictive and simply hilarious. 
2. Oscar Wilde- The Happy Prince and Other Stories. it's Oscar bloody Wilde, do I have to say more?
3. Mary Shelley- Frankenstein. It's less the story but the feminist approach that makes me love this book so much. We talked about it in uni in a class called Gothic Fiction and I don't even know where to start with my reasons of why it's a great book but let me try anyway: It's part of the first famous Gothic novels. It was written by Shelley when she was between 19 and 21! A woman in 1818 writing Gothic fiction!!!
4. Ben Aaronovitch- The Rivers of London. Harry Potter meets Sherlock Holmes meets The Mighty Boosh. Very British, very weird and thus amazing!
5. Charles Dickens- Oliver Twist. Take your time to read this and realise that you always have to fight for your rights or they will be taken away from you.

 5 materialistic wishes for Christmas presents:

1. I'd love to get a Deutschlandpass. It's a train ticket which gives you the possibility to travel through the whole of Germany for a month. The Count and I are planning to get one for the month of August, we have 10 cities on our list, I'm really excited to travel around for almost a month!
2. A flat in Cologne for the Count and me with room for a cat from the shelter
3. A fuckload of money for more train tickets, my friends live all across the country and I miss them so very much.
4. A new laptop (sorry, Tinks), this one is heating up way too much and not doing anything she's supposed to do... Opening a document takes at least three minutes in which you can't do anything else and Youtube is quite a hard task for poor old Tinkerbell.
5. A camera as I only have my mobile phone to take pictures.

5 places you wish to visit:

1. London, again. I miss London, my friend Sonja and I are planning to go there in October, i really hope it's going to happen!
2. Barcelona because a dear friend of mine lives there. At the moment she is studying here in Germany but she'll go back soon and Barcelona is supposed to be beautiful.
   Hamburg, Hamburg, always Hamburg. I've been there loads of times, it's where my friend and I always meet and I can't wait to go back in the beginning of August!
3.  Iceland because it's beautiful.
   Sweden for the very same reason.
4.  Ireland because it's my dream country.

5 Adjectives that describe you:

1. Creative.
2. Illogical.
3. Smart. (Sonja called me "wise" today, I wouldn't go that far but it was a nice thing to hear)
4. Patronising.
5. Well read.

5 things you'd say to people about life: 

1. If you have no kind words to say, you should say nothing at all. This is actually a quote by The Maccabees.
2. In the end, when you look back, it's not about what's listed in your CV and what you have done but about how happy you were.
3. Before you set out to change the world, go through your own house.
4. Don't judge a book by its cover or a person by their heritage/sex/gender/clothes/dress size/age/....
5. It's only money.

People tagged:


Ugh, this is hard... I don't follow that many people, I have no clue who has already done this and I don't know the number of followers in every case so uhm...

1. Laura Morrigan
2. Goldkind
3. Beyond The Veil
4. Phoenix
5. HajaMiel

Okaaay, done! I really enjoyed doing this survey, thanks a lot for tagging me!
Have a great day,

The Countess

I Try To Make Music

I am not very talented when it comes to music. As every little child I learned how to play the recorder, I had two years of guitar lessons and I have always been in at least one choir. Still, I don't have much of musical talent. The only thing I can play on the guitar is the intro of Come As You Are by Nirvana and that really says something.
Anyway, I always wanted to be able to play an instrument. Something that is fun, cheap and easy to learn. Therefore, I bought a ukulele.

Amanda Palmer inspired me to simply go for it and try to learn, because as she stated in her amazing Ukulele Anthem: "They're only 19,95$, that isn't lots of money."

So here we go. This is Sebastian. He comes from Ebay, has the colours of Loki and I love him, thus I put glitter on him. I can play happy Birthday, Radiohead's Creep and I am working on King Of The Road and Come Up And See Me (Make Me Smile) at the moment!

Do you play any instruments? Which ones would you like to learn? Talk to me =D
Have a great day,
The Countess