#there's like no way to access this film in German btw

[salvadorbonaparte]

I keep finding out really cool things on eBay. Did you know the film "the heart is a lonely hunter" was screened in the GDR and also the film posters spoiled the ending???

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Would you have any recommendations on where one could hear/learn a German accent? I'm learning the language but my most recent teacher said that my accent/pronunciation is not very good despite being at a B1 level. I think this is probably due to I have not one, not two, but THREE separate American accents already because of how many times we moved when I was younger, so adding another accent is hell my mouth cannot keep up. Thanks for your time.

Hey sorry that I took my time answering this.Okay, first of, Josie’s personal opinion time (feel free to skip this lmao): It’s not bad to have an accent. Everyone has an accent - not just because of your native tongue but also because of the people around you, your class, family, friends or whoever you practice with. I have a German accent and probably always will have, because I learnt English from teachers with German accents, with partners and fellow pupils who had a German accent and now I study English at a German university and people around me still speak with the same accent. 90% of the conversations I hold in English are German-accented English. But at this point, I refuse to consider my accent “inferior” to...a Yorkshire accent or a New York accent just because those are “native” accents. Of course, it’s also not bad or anything to want to sound like a native speaker and I’m not going to tell you that if you truly want to speak like a native-speaker you shouldn’t pursue that interest - but it’s something few people really 100% accomplish, so pls make sure you’re not putting the actually important things like vocab, grammar and you know - enjoyment - on hold to pursue something really elusive that your teacher thinks is important. It is very hard to accomplish especially for someone not living in Germany and Germany is a country with a lot of different regional and foreign accents, so most of us have some experience with different pronunciations - so you will most likely be understood.

Now, the my actual answer to your question: 

Listening to people always helps, so does talking. I noticed it when I was still in school. I started watching American shows and it strongly affected my vocabulary and pronunciation - mind you, we were taught to speak strictly British English, American English was an evil taboo - but later I discovered my love for British films and tv shows and I reverted to the English I learnt at school, for the most part (not regarding the language level but the variety). So I definitely recommend exposing yourself to native German-speakers bc otherwise, your main influence will be your fellow students.

There are a lot of German shows on Netflix - you can check if some of them have English subtitles, I know “Dark” for example does. (I’m not sure about Vorstadtweiber, but if you want to get a taste of a Viennese accent, this might also be fun to check out. “Extra3″ is a German satire show that puts all its episodes on Youtube and with a VPN you can also access the ZDF Mediathek and RTL-Now, two very big German tv channels). 

It’s especially helpful to watch out for words you’ve so far only seen in their written form so that you know you struggle with. If you hear them, maybe stop the video and try to repeat it. If you’re interested in specific accents from specific regions (which might be a bit hard, mind you) you can also look for some source material from different regions. For example the German audio of “My Fair Lady” has her speaking with a very thick Berliner accent instead of Cockney, so that’s something you might find interesting bc it’s a film you might already be familiar with. Another tip: I noticed about myself that I easily start thinking in another language, even if I’m really far from fluent and miss words. And doing that I noticed that my inner monologue still has a German accent but it’s much weaker than when you know. my actual physical mouth is involved, for some reason. I can also imitate different English accents in my head much better than I can when I speak - you might try that and even talk to yourself. If there’s no one to tell you you are doing it wrong, it becomes much easier to experiment and have fun with language. 

In my experience, it also helps to imitate the accent the speakers of your target language have while speaking your language: I noticed that when I was practising Russian on duolingo: Now, duolingo makes you repeat sentences to practice your pronunciation and my Russian pronunciation was horrible - until I purposefully tried to sound “Russian” - suddenly Duo understood what I was saying. So you might try to speak German with what feels like an exaggerated German accent to you, even if it feels weird at first. (I do the same when I want to sound British)Another thing that helped me (much more than teachers ever did) is to watch English people contemplate and imitate and play with German accents - because even if it’s something I made fun of a lot these last days, it’s interesting and helpful, because if done for comedic or storytelling purposes (I’m going to give an example of that later on), it often highlights the aspects that make it sound different from a native pronunciation and help you localise these aspects in your own language use. That said - the reason I make fun especially of British people playing Germans is that their accents are often based on other British people pretending to be German, not actual Germans so it sounds...very different from the way we speak English. So keep in mind that it’s not always authentic. (Personally, I still think I learnt how not to pronounce the word “convenience” from an episode of Blackadder but that’s another story)

Okay I threatened that I would add an example on how accents in media might help you understand your own accent better:

There are many examples of English-speakers pretending to speak German, but since you are already at B1 and probably speak better German than most of them (many just say stuff without knowing the words or even...just make up sounds that they think sound German), so I picked a film scene that I mentioned in a post a few days ago: the pub scene from Inglorious Basterds (which I saw on youtube is apparently popular for language teaching purposes). 

It’s interesting because Michael Fassbender is half-German and knows the language somewhat so he at least knows what the words he’s saying mean. Also, he’s surrounded by native speakers which make for good comparison material. (mind you, Inglorious Basterds is obv. a film about the NS-era so while the German they speak sounds rather modern, I can understand if you would like to avoid that content. Especially since the second video ends in a shooting.)  I couldn’t find the whole scene online but if you have the DVD, you might want to look into it, because it’s much longer than the excerpts I found online and maybe you can spot more of the language patterns I will point. (It also has Christoph Waltz in it and his Austrian dialect which might also be interesting to you)

Now, what you need to know is that Fassbender plays an English spy pretending to be a German officer - but when someone points out his accent, he tries to pretend to be Swiss. He does a pretty good job speaking German actually and a German would understand every word he is saying (unlike we do with some other actors pretending to speak German) - but it’s also very obvious with every word that he’s not a native speaker (and no one would actually mistake him for Swiss.) (btw if you want to check out what an actual Swiss dialect sounds like: (x) (I could imagine it’s very difficult for English speakers, because it has a lot of “ch” sounds and is very guttural. 

Now, back to Inglorious Basterds:

The first thing that’s very interesting to look at is the first 30 seconds of the first video because it’s clear that they made Fassbender exaggerate his accent because in that scene it leads to a German soldier he’s talking to noticing and pointing out his strange pronunciation. At 0:35 in the first video it’s very, very obvious when he yells the word “zurückkehren” (which finally makes the soldier address the issue)- because he pronounces it “zurück-kerr-än” - a very typical pronunciation with an English accent. Whereas a German would usually say: zurück-kehr’n”  (You can compare it to one of the Germans saying “zurückkehren” at minute 2:30) It is also interesting to compare how Fassbender pronounces an “r” vs. how the Germans do it - because he pronounces it like you would in English, while the German “r” sound is a bit harsher and produced a little bit further back in the throat. (Tip: If You can feel it vibrate in your mouth, you’re doing it rrrright). 

When he says “rrrrrüpelhaft” it seems as if he’s trying to pronounce the “r” like a native speaker there - but overdoes it. (Fassbender does the same exaggerated “r” sound at 2:56 with the word “Regisseur” and at 2:33 with “Riefenstahl”) - which just sounds a bit off. Compare it to Til Schweiger at 1:00 saying “betrunken (oder völlig) verrückt”. btw If you compare the way Schweiger says “sprechen” in that sentence with Michael Fassbender saying “sprechen” at 2:35 you will also notice the difference in the way they pronounce the “ch”.In that sequence at 2:30, Fassbender also says “gesehen” a lot - and always pronounces it G-esehen, while a German would probably pronounce it ge-seh-’n

Something that many German learners struggle with - that you can observe in these videos as well - is the pronunciation of infinitive verbs. German verbs, as you know, usually end in “-en” (gehen, sagen, sprechen, hoffen. etc). Now, German speakers usually barely utter the second “e” at all, it’s often: geh’n, sag’n, sprech’n - it*s something that sounds a little off sometimes when Fassbender speaks, because he often puts more emphasis on it than a German would for example when he asks “Haben Sie den Riefenstahl Film gesehen?” or at 3:24 in the second video when he says “aufsteh.en.”You can also observe the impact of the native English - at 2:50 when he says “Brüder” it comes out as “Brüddr” which sounds a lot like “brother” - while in German, the “ü” is stressed and the “r” is almost inaudible.I think the biggest challenge for English-speakers is the “ch” (which unexperienced speakers often turn into a “k” sound - for example turning “Nacht” into “nackt”, always fun). You can see Fassbender struggle a little with that a few times as well (it’s particularly important to keep in mind that there are two “ch” sounds - the one produced in the front of your mouth like in “ich” or “frech” or the one produced farther back in your mouth like in “Nacht” or “Bach” - so if you encounter a word with a “ch”, it’s best to check out which one it is.You can also see him struggle with the long words in German - he basically forces “tausendjähriges” out very quickly which sounds very strange and mechanical and at 3:20 in the second video he has a different strategy and stresses EVERY part of the world Hauptsturmbannführer: “Haupt. Sturm. Bann. Führer.” which sounds ... strange even when done for dramatic purposes. You can compare that to the way the German actor says the same word at 3:31. (especially if you pay attention to how they pronounce “Führer” you will notice the proximity issue. “Führer” is a word that many English-speakers find difficult to pronounce and I think it’s a) because many English-speakers are familiar with the word “Führer” but never heard a German pronounce it b) because of the close proximity of an “ü” and two “r” sounds. When Fassbender pronounces “Führer” it sounds very much like an English person would pronounce the world in an English context while the German guy pronounces it like a German does - that’s something else to keep in mind, that words you might be familiar with like “Volkswagen” or “Weltschmerz” or any of the others are usually pronounced with an accent when English-speakers use them (The same is, of course, true for any other loan words)

There*s a similar scene in First Class also with Michael Fassbender sitting in a pub with Nazis (seriously that’s... a huge part of his repertoire it seems) which you might want to check out bc again, he speaks German and the other guys are native speakers so if you want to keep looking for different pronunciations and accents, it might be interesting. 

(Also “Auslautverhärtung” is a big issue with English-speakers and German-speakers. The reason why German speakers tend to say things like “sayin-k” and “goin-k” and “leavin-k” is because the last sound of a word is usually spoken harsher in German than it is English. English-speakers often have the opposite problem and swallow the last sound a little. I didn’t notice particularly jarring examples of that in these scenes, but it’s still something to keep in mind)

All of that said and done and dissected, I think natural development and interacting with native speakers is much more effective and fun than just trying to avoid certain pronunciations or imitate how other people sound, especially bc I don’t want to bore you with technicalities or even worse, make you nervous about speaking because honestly? Accents are fun and everyone has them. Don’t worry too much about it

If you speak slowly, people will understand you and if you spend some time around native speakers, it will help a lot, it has a strong impact on the way you speak (so obviously i recommend listening to a lot of spoken German, watch films, shows, youtube etc.) And yes, pronunciation is important - you need to be understood after all - but having an accent is natural. Everyone has at least a regional accent and I don’t understand why foreign accents are automatically considered a flaw or a sign that someone isn’t able to communicate fully in that language they learnt. 

I recommend you focus on words and grammar and listening and reading comprehension and let things grow naturally and don’t actually enjoy having an accent. There’s nothing wrong with it.

[prairiedust]

The Folklore of Supernatural

Part two of a series I started with this post.

I’m reposting this as the second installment of my midseason hiatus “The Folklore of Supernatural” series, even though it was originally written as kind of a long cracky way of looking at the “sleeping beauty trilogy” of episodes in season 14 (The Scar, Mint Condition, and Nightmare Logic.) The original question I was tagged into was “Is Dean actually dreaming?” and I can not find the original post about this, so I won’t tag anyone in particular (you know who you are and I love you because this was fun to write.) I posted it once in the dead of night with no tags, but I’m republishing it as part of my larger take on folklore as a theme in season 14 of Supernatural. Bear in mind that this was written before Optimism, when it became clear that these were not part of an extended dream-sequence, BUT ALSO before The Spear when it was revealed that Michael could repossess Dean. (I’m going to talk a little bit about timing and writing meta, further on.)

I want to say a couple of things before the cut, too. This is a big old Sleeping Beauty post. I know there’s a lot of SB ideas out there in the metasphere but I’ve deliberately avoided them because I wanted to get my thoughts out here and I am Very Slow. Feel free to tag me into other posts, send me asks, whatever, because I think it’s fun to talk about. However, just because this is a “sleeping beauty” meta does not mean I want to go all the way to the end of that metaphor in this series. This particular post is general audience meta. I can’t tell anyone who might read this that no, you aren’t allowed to see a DeanCas parallel in a meta which relies heavily on a romantic fairy tale and one that was a destiel fandom in-joke after Cas died, at that. I will say, though, that I see it, so if you want to duck out now because I’m a lowkey shipper feel free. Also, I can’t endorse predictions based on meta, either, even my own, even when I think there is a big neon “Texan Star” sign saying “destiel goes here;” there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone involved in the show from making a hard left when the signs said we were going right. So rather than seeing this as a defense of DeanCas subtext, let’s call it an experiment in close reading. If nothing else, it will be fun. (Bear in mind that I am a massive dork so my definition of fun involves Charles Dickens.)

Aaand... here we go.

Is Dean asleep, and have the last three episodes (The Scar, Mint Condition, and Nightmare Logic) been a dream? How can we possibly “answer” that question at this point in the show?

We’re trying to speculate about a text that is a constantly moving target. If, for instance, you start to read the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and you know from a blurb on the back of the book that she was an anthropologist who collected African-American and Caribbean folklore, and you get to the place where the protagonist Janie’s second [redacted] ends, but there are a lot of pages left ahead of you, and you think, wow if this happens a third time, I have a theory that the third [redacted, go read this book] would be special based on what I know about folklore and the “rule of three,” well by the end of the book you will know whether or not you were right. Janie either finds a third [redacted], or she doesn’t, and it’s either special, or it’s not.

Supernatural has not ended, so there is no way of saying “Oh, the main theme we are supposed to take away from this show is ____.” I mean, we can put big money on “family” but still. With a television show, it’s hard to even say, “The over-arching themes in this season are____” until the season finale, because it is a text that is being written, filmed, and published serially. The fluid nature of subtext in serial literature was something I studied under a Brit Lit professor– she said, when we set out to read David Copperfield, that sometimes themes in Dickens concluded early or evolved late, or didn’t pan out, because Dickens changed his mind or was pressured by readers to maintain a character that he hadn’t planned to keep around (I think that character was Micawber but I can not find a shred of evidence anywhere, even in my notes from my Brit Lit class, because she kind of mentioned it in passing and I didn’t like Dickens very much when I was younger, so obviously I didn’t learn it well.) And even when you get to the end of a Dickens serial, you still might not get closure– he totally rewrote the conclusion of Great Expectations because his friends wanted angst with a happy(ish) ending.

But this particular “sleeping” symbolism that has been pointed out is really, really structurally sound and can be very well supported. What it means is (shrug emoji)

Going back to the first post in this series, the support for this reading comes from an understanding of folk tales. I’ll be primarily using European Sleeping Beauty stories, as that is what is most accessible to an American/Western audience. And, it was deliberately alluded to in the text of the show. But first let’s talk about formula tales in more depth because that is what sets this theme up in the very first episode of season 14.

Michael met with three different beings in the season opener Stranger in a Strange Land and asked each of them “What do you want?” This is in no uncertain terms a formula tale found in folklore all over the world, and you know about the rule of three even if you’ve never actually acknowledged it. In Goldilocks and the Three Bears, for instance, Goldilocks tries two bowls of porridge before finding one to her liking. She tries two chairs before settling on Baby Bear’s chair. She tries two beds before falling asleep in the one that was “just right.” There were three challenges, two of which failed and one that satisfied her. Goldilocks is an original work (and please read the Wikipedia article, it is fascinating how many revisions this story has gone through, and in fact “Goldilocks” wasn’t even the original main character) but it was based on a folk formula and has entered American oral tradition. Similarly, in the German folk tale The Three Little Pigs, the first pig’s house is destroyed because it was made of straw, the second house failed because it was made of sticks, but the third house was made of brick and withstood the huffing and puffing of the wolf. So the pattern in the rule of three is often two challenges that fail or are flawed and one that finally succeeds or satisfies the necessary conditions. For short, I’m going to call this grouping 2/1. In the Michael story, 2/1 is human, who fails, then angel, who fails, then monster, who Mikey likes. In addition, there is a primer to the rule of three in that first scene, just to make absolutely certain that the audience notices it-- Michael has Jamel guess his identity three times.

This 2/1 formula could be just something Dabb did because he wanted to do it. It’s ancient, and Michael is an ancient being. But. Can it also mean that “folktales” is a theme on the show now?

As the saying goes, “Once is an occurrence, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.” Folklore continues into the season in many different ways.

In Gods and Monsters, the scene where Dean shakes loose and punches the mirror probably lit up everyone who saw it with “mirror mirror on the wall” vibes, from the story of Snow White. The enchanted mirror is such a common “trope” in folklore that it has an index number that folklorists and others use to refer to it in their scholarship– it’s Aarne-Thompson index number D1163. So, another solid subtextual reference to folk tales. There is so much more in that episode about storytelling and retelling and  the concept of sequels, but that’s for another discussion.

We get to The Scar and Jack mentions Sleeping Beauty and no lie I ascended for a full minute. “Sleeping Beauty” is Aarne-Thompson-Uther Classification of Folk Tales number 410 because this is another story that is found freaking everywhere. (I have to make an aside about the use of the term “folk tale” just because it is in my nature not to leave things like this ambiguous– it isn’t completely certain that the Sleeping Beauty we know of Brothers Grimm and Disney fame is 100% for shore an oral tale, or at least isn’t a tale that got a little finessed when it was first written down. See, a guy in pre-Renaissance Naples named Giambattista Basile included a version of it in a collection of child’s tales hundreds of years ago (it’s horrifying btw, cw for non-con at the very least if you go looking for it) then Charles Perrault (of Puss in Boots fame) got hold of it and rewrote it in French, and folklorists are pretty certain that the story of “Briar Rose in the Forest” that the Grimm brothers collected was the Perrault story that had made its way back into oral tradition in Germany. And, like, it’s not a huge reach to say that the history of the Sleeping Beauty story that is explicitly mentioned in the show’s dialogue by Jack is more subtext about how stories are transmitted, how they are told, what happens when they get loose in the wild, etc. That’s how allusions work, and that’s coming up in my third post.)

So, three times means green light to consider “folk tales” an official thing this season, at least for a while. And the cherry on top is that Sleeping Beauty was the third story referenced. It’s neat.

But NOW. On to THE question the OP posed:

Have the last three episodes been Dean’s dream?

I’m going to pass up surface mentions of dream states and solely focus on the actual “sleepers” in these episodes in order to get at the allusion’s architecture.

In Nightmare Logic, the sleeping beauty OP has identified is Sasha’s father, who is locked in a dream-state by a djinn. In Mint Condition, the sleeping beauty is Stuart, who is in a mysterious coma-like sleep after an attack by a possessed chain-saw. In The Scar, Lora is in a sleep-adjacent death-state after being hexed by a witch. (I saw that her name on the iTunes subtitles is “Lora” which is a variation of Laura but spelled this way evokes “of lore” and that was pretty neat. Another tiny detail that bolsters the theme.)

Is Lora really a sleeping beauty, though, and why is that important?

Remember our rule of three pattern that we were given in the premiere– 2/1. Two people in this group will be more similar to each other than to the third. Both Stuart and Sasha’s father are alive, while Lora is technically all the way dead when she is in the sleep-like state. Superficially, Stuart and Sasha’s father are men, whereas Lora is a woman. Just throwing that out there. If I were writing this post for a grade, that right there is called “padding for word count.” But it is also a valid point, so we’re going to use it. Neither Stuart nor Sasha’s father are shown to resume consciousness by the end of their episodes– Stuart not at all, and Mr. Rawlings only stirs fitfully. Lora is revived when Jack breaks the spell. On the other hand, Stuart is never in continued danger in Mint Condition after his “touch and go” operation (he’s presumably safe inside the salt circle) and is expected to recover naturally, whereas both Mr. R and Lora will die/stay dead if the threat against them isn’t neutralized. Mr. Rawlings is similar to Lora because they are both under “medical care”– Mr.R is ostensibly in hospice and Lora is in the Bunker’s sick bay, and to top things off Stuart is the only one who was treated by an actual doctor: Mr. R‘s nurse was a djinn and Cas is not a doctor he just played one on TV.

The thing about close readings is that anything you can argue is probably valid, but one thesis might be better supported than another. I’m really really tired and there might be more differences and similarities that I am missing. But when you’re gathering the evidence to support a theory about a text, you can end up going a bridge too far and you’ll find yourself staring into the void, completely unable to make any progress, so at some point you just have to stake out your foundations and start digging. (Yeah, I mixed metaphors, I mixed three of them, it’s awesome, get off me.)

So. There is more evidence that Stuart and Mr. R are more similar to each other than either one is to Lora. If we apply the 2/1 template, Lora is the character who satisfies the parameter of being “odd man out.” That still might not make her a sleeping beauty for the purposes of answering the “Is this Dean’s dream” question, and here’s why.

(This is the speculation part. I love this stuff, but again I offer the caveat that using subtext to make plot predictions in Supernatural is like trying to write on a cloud with smoke. Anyway.)

If she’s the sleeping beauty, the subtextual message is that Dean might actually be dead (or might have to die to satisfy the condition that Michael is destroyed.) That possibility was brought up in both 14x01 and 14x02, before Dean came back. And eugh no one wants that. It also means that we had to have read these three episodes backwards to find the character that fits the template, because if Lora is a sleeping beauty, and if she is “the” sleeping beauty for subtextual purposes, she actually came first in the series, and you have to run the episodes backwards to get to the 1. That is subverting the trope. However, if you get the thing you want the first time why go on to the other two challenges? There is a lot in this season about calling back to earlier parts of the narrative to contextualize the present– for instance, in Gods and Monsters, Michael says to the werewolf, “You think you were picking me up in that bar?” or something to that effect and then revealed that he was, in fact, the one stalking her. In Mint Condition, we are introduced to the Janitor Victim as a Dean mirror, but we do not know for certain yet that Hatchet Man is a post-Azazel John Winchester mirror, so that scene is given greater meaning by information that is revealed later in the episode. Structurally speaking, it would be fair to say that the information we have now, that Lora the dead girl is “the” sleeping beauty, based on having seen the other two candidates, means a dead Dean reveal has been primed by the subtext. And like, no thank you?

The other possibility is that Lora, since she was dead and not unconscious, is not “the” sleeping beauty. The third “sleeping beauty” (IF there is one) would show up in 14x06 Optimism. (That title is really stressing me out.) Why would that be Dean and not some other random character? Because if we exclude Laura, the pattern resets from 1/2 to 2/1 beginning with Stuart. Stuart is a Castiel mirror, though, which is not quite right. Mr. R is a John mirror (although that episode is a lot murkier and I’ve said before if someone wants to say he’s a Dean mirror because of the djinn connection I’d agree, in which case BLAM we already have a winner.) [editor’s note, I only left Jack out because we already knew he was dying and thought this subtext was priming a twist, more at ten, this aside has been brought to you by the letters LOL.]

But then, where have the last three episodes come from? If he is dreaming, it could be one reason why the djinn couldn’t wring a nightmare out of him, and that the moment before he killed the monster with a bookend was his subconscious trying to signal to him that something is wrong…

I have said a couple of times that subtext isn’t always predictive. Some authors will have multiple subtexts or will use subtext to straight-up fool you (*waves to thriller writers.*) But the exception proves the rule here– we as readers/viewers rely on subtext to prepare us for what might be coming next. Subtext helps provide that slow build to climax that makes, say, Neville Longbottom’s absolutely stunning house cup win in The Sorcerer’s Stone such a stand-up-and-cheer moment, or that makes Harry Potter’s realization that it is his patronus, not his father’s, that saves his past self in the Prisoner of Azkaban so satisfying. Lack of subtext is the reason there is so much grumping over Mary/Bobby. I mean, they what? Had a walk in the woods together? She called him “old man” once, is that even a term of endearment??? [full disclosure I never liked those two together until after Nightmare Logic.]

And scene!

That up there is where I stopped, and now it’s clear that the person who all this was pointing at was Jack, who fell into a dramatic swoon at the end of Optimism. There were two “sleeping beauties” in that episode, too in the 2/1 pattern of the folktales we’ve discussed– the zombie, who is in sort of a dream state, and Charlie, who is knocked out by fly guy. (Again, fully dead is a red herring and doesn’t count. That’s some positive subtext.) That was basically a lot of words to be able to summarize that, yes, sleeping beauty and dreamstates is a thing so far, but where it was going was hard to predict.

There is something really important that can be taken out of this close reading, though, that is carrying throughout the season.

Jack was the character who actually said the words “Sleeping Beauty.” Jack sort of volunteered himself as tribute. Another theme this season that was made explicit by Subtext Primer aka Mint Condition is that the words characters are saying are more important than they ever have been.

AND ONE MORE THING! The above was written before Unhuman Nature and Byzantium and The Spear! Dean has been put back to bed by Michael! But but Castiel stepped into the Sleeping Beauty deal! Where are we going! There’s no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going…

Anyway in the next installment of this really long meta that will probably never end I want to explore what the history of the Amero-European Sleeping Beauty brings to bear on this season.

[catherine-2014-tv]

I just started this show and I'm already in love with it but something bothers me. I'm curious about why everytime they speak in french or german this dude's voice translate what was said? Wouldn't subtitles be more practical? Or is some russian television thing?

It is more of a tradition in Russia to use dubbing rather than to subtitle.

Personally, I’m in favor of the dubs, as opposed to subtitles, especially when it’s not an entire movie but just certain scenes. Subtitles are not accessible to lots of people (including me). For people with disabilities, such as blindness/low vision or dyslexia or really any disability that makes reading, or reading quickly, difficult, dubbing is the only way to go. We just can’t watch with subtitles. I know the dubbing may seem a little jarring, but it’s only a few scenes and “jarring” is far better than “can’t really understand what’s going on in this scene” or “have to pause the film after every sentence of dialogue to figure out what’s going on.”

I don’t mean to tell you off, btw. Lots of people don’t like dubbing and find it jarring. But, yea, that’s what Russian tv typically uses and for me it’s a blessing :)

[umi-klouh-is-an-adult]

Nickname: Clèm, Clémi, feel free to add more, I crave for nicknames <3

Star Sign: Sagittarius, I don’t know a thing about zodiac sign, but honestly, a centaur with a bow, what could be more awesome ?

Height: 5′5 or 1m67

Last film I watched: I don’t want to admit it, because it doesn’t reflect my better movies tastes, but I watched Fast & Furious 4. I liked it tho, godd way to spend your time without thinking (at all)

Favorite Musician: probably a french singer called Jeanne Cherhal

Song stuck in my head: Rewrite the Stars or This is me these days (guess who’s listenning to The Greatest Showman ao repeat for the last week ?)

Other blogs: @umi-klouh, my main, for everything not hp related usually, and @french-side-of-klouh, for everything france related ^^ I have a few others, but only used to organize stuff I want an easy access too

Blogs following: 436, but half of’em are probably not active anymore, some others switched fandom (i do follow a soccer blog, i don’t know how that happened...)

What I’m wearing: pyjamas !! funny tho, the one I’m wearing is from a french brand called “Le Slip Français”, meaning “ The French Briefs” (that does sell women’s underwear and pyjamas too)

Dream job: actually, right now my dream job is my actual job. I’m so lucky ! I would change some stuff, like some member of the team, some details, but overall, it’s great. I’m a part for health care system, and my job is a link in the chain of cancer healing.

Dream trip: NEW ZEALAND, honestly, The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia movies just hypnotize me every fucking time. Also, so many parts of the US are attractive.

Play any instruments: cello, my first love

Languages: Mother tongue, french. And I guess i can manage english. I used to learn german for 7 fucking years, but i forgot almost everything except some lines i had to learn by heart when i was 12. (aua, my fuss tut weh, ich can nicht mere bewegen ! but i can’t remember how to spell it tho... i remember the most random words too, like Schmeterling, or worse : Meerschweinchen)

Favorite food: too hard. waaaaaaaay too difficult to choose... oh my bad, i know : BLUEBERRIES PANCAKES

Favorite song: too difficult too. Everytime i just add another favorite song to my list of favorite song. But no song is at the first place. My newest favorite song is This Is Me from the Greatest Showman tho, i can cry to it...

Random Facts: I’M BUYING A HOUSE !! in less than 2 month (or a bit more, we don’t know yet), me and my bf will move in our very own house. We will have a lot of work to do in it, but it will be OURS and we can’t wait <3

Saddly, I don’t know who to tag, I don’t want to send this to someone I don’t know enough, might feel weird for them. I would send it to @owlswithfins, but that’s how I got it in the first place XD Thanks, btw, I always like these !

Tag game

Tagged by @beingofthebooks, thanks!

✨ Rules: answer seventeen questions and tag twenty-one blogs✨  

nickname: None

starsign: Capricorn 

height:  5ft. 4in.

last film I watched: Dark Phoenix

favourite musician: sleeping at last, journey 

song stuck in my head: Hey, Soul Sister by Train

other blogs: I have a few

Do I get asks: Not really

blogs following: 300

what I’m wearing: wolf t-shirt and a pair of jeans

dream job: author

dream trip: I want to go to as many places as possible. I want to go through Europe and Africa. I want to see the world. 

Play any instruments: no.

Languages: English

Favourite food: I have no idea

Favourite song: Can’t just choose one  

random facts: I have eight siblings, I started writing four years ago. 

tagging: @fantasy-shadows, @maramahan, @writings-of-a-narwhal, @lightningmastertrilogy, @griffinwriting, @incandescent-creativity, @cassius-mortemer, @myhoniahakah, @flyingfalconflower12 , @madammuffins, @ownworldresident, @minusfractions, @luckycatsidereus, @adenhamcreations, @princesswritesstuff, @writer-jessicac, @whynotwriting, @tayluin, @aslanwrites, @purpleshadows1989

[mychristopherstokes66world]

Including CNN's Chris Cuomos Daddy

http://documents.gawker.com/jeffrey-epstein-s-little-black-book-1681447470 http://archive.is/qcJEO Don't forget the CDs in Epstein's safe in his Manhattan townhouse. Those were labeled "Young [name] + [name]." You can bet that those second "[names]" are more than a little worried. Then there is the ranch in New Mexico where the NM attorney general is cooperating with the FBI. There is a lot more to this than just Pedo Island. Dustin Hoffman?!?! OH NO NO NO no no no no!!!!! Hook was a pirate that kidnapped children. Please tell me it wasn't a real story. At least let me believe that Robin Williams was trying to save them. It will be hard but they will make a blind eye to most evidence. Remember, Epstein has everyone by their balls, so like in 2008, either those high profile people start working on getting him an excelent deal, or someone is getting doxed.... Epstein will NEVER have more than 5 years jail, and probably at home or in almost private comfy prison It seems like they've got two types they use in this blackmail operation. The first type is rich, powerful, influential, and easily bought with the second type, young, naive, easily swayed with lies. Both of them are the blackmail targets and both of them get used. The powerful ones get placed into positions where their influence can be leveraged whenever and however it is needed. The young ones get supported and raised into media personalities, anchors, actresses, authors, musicians, whatever they want so long as it serves the desired social ends. If you consider that such an operation could have been ongoing for more than one generation, then the implications get a whole lot weirder than they already were. They basically breed with each other and select each other's most attractive offspring to molest and groom for future generations of the cult. In fact, this would go a long way towards explaining why the cult seems to be too stupid to succeed at controlling the world anymore: too much in-breeding. I have been SAYING ALL ALONG that we will one day find that its not just powerful men who are pedos and rapists, but that all powerful people become warped by easy access to every common hedonistic pleasure. As a result, the truly perverse becomes the final frontier of hedonism and indulgence: pedophilia. Satanism rendered art. Or outright claiming intimate and full ownership over another human. And, look, here we are! Barbara fucking Walters and a host of other up-and-up women right next to their disgusting, guilty male counterparts. Hang them all. Alec Baldwin - Page 6 Sir Anthony Bamford - Page 6 Lord & Lady Baumont - Page 10 Tony Blair - Page 11 David Blaine - Page 11 Mike Bloomberg - Page 11 Richard Branson - Page 12 Jimmy Buffet - Page 13 Prince Pierre d'Arengberg - Page 18 Duchess of York - Page 21 Duke of York - Page 21 Ambassador & Lady Fairweather - Page 23 Princess of Firyal of Jordan - Page 24 Lord & Lady Giliford. - Page 27 Lord & Lady Hanson - Page 28 Elizabeth Hurley (as "Liz Hurley") - Page 32 Michael Jackson - Page 33 Mick Jagger - Page 33 Ted Kennedy Jr - Page 35 Senator Ed Kennedy - Page 35 Christoper Lambert - Page 36 Dr. Henry Kissinger - Page 36 Courtney Love (circled) - Page 38 Cheryl Mills - Page 43 Rupert Murdoch - Page 44 Joan Rivers - Page 51 Jessica Rothchild - Page 52 Hannah Rothchild - Page 52 Duke and Duchess Rutland - Page 53 Edouard de Rothschild - Page 53 Evelyn de Rothschild.- Page 53 Saudi Crown Prince Solman - Page 54 Kevin Spacy - Page 56 Peter Soros - Page 56 Baroness Francesca Theilmann - Page 58 Ivanka Trump - Page 59 Donald Trump - Page 60 Chris Tucker - Page 60 Barbara Walters - Page 61 Lord Weldenfield - Page 62 Serena Williams - Page 63 Prince Michael of Yugoslavia - Page 64 Don't just look up the famous people, some of the non house hold names return very interesting data. Lots and lots of businessmen from London and Israel are in here. It seems London, New York and Israel are the sex trafficking capitals of the world My suggest is not to go through the big names. A lot of the non household names are powerful people and those connections reveal more. Every single person in this document has a Wikipedia page, only a select ultra old rich people don't have much of a trace except foundations and events Nobody cares.  Kids are killed at Disney World/Land due to negligence, people still go. Everyone knows there are pedophiles in hollywood, people still pay to see movies. Everyone knows there is something suspicious about how many Nickelodeon girls turn out to be messed up junkies, people still let their kids watch it. Nobody cares. 1000 British girls were raped by shitskins and there were no lynchings. Why do you think it would happen here? http://documents.gawker.com/jeffrey-epstein-s-little-black-book-1681447470 What is bunk1-5? Also anyone got a txt document that is searchable? someone must have done it by now I'll get a round to it. Bronfman was the ones in on NXIVM. Honorable Charles Pearson >Honorable https://ift.tt/2jM0nSY >Charles Pearson is a Director of The Dickinson Trust Ltd, The Cowdray Estate Trust Ltd and the Cabardunn Development Company Ltd. He is the principal partner in the Dunecht Home Farms Partnership, a farming business operating over 3,000 acres (12 km2) in Aberdeenshire. Enterprises on the farm include cereals, oilseed rape, beef cattle and sheep. Charles Pearson and his immediate family are owners of Dunecht Estates, a diverse rural property based in Aberdeenshire and Kincardenshire. Dunecht Estates extends to 53,000 acres (210 km2) and comprises seven estates - Dunecht Estate, Ramoir and Campfield Estate, Dunnottar Castle, Forest of Birse, Edinglassie Estate, West Durris Estate and Bucharn Estate. Interests on the Estates include farming, forestry, field sports, minerals, let houses, commercial property, tourism and development land. Dunecht House, the Category A listed building that is the centre piece of the Dunecht estate, was sold to the Scottish business entrepreneur Jamie Oag in 2012.[1] BTW, Epstein isn't Trump's only link to pedophile networks. Look into Trump's connection to CIA pedophile ringleader, Roy Cohn.

Anyone have any thoughts on the power outage in NYC being connected to this?

Servers "wiped"?

Accounts "wiped"?

Destruction of documents?

Someone here has to have some better ideas than me.

Jeffery Sachs. Jeffrey David Sachs (/sæks/; born November 5, 1954) is an American economist, academic, public policy analyst and former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he holds the title of University Professor, the highest rank Columbia bestows on its faculty. He is known as one of the world's leading experts on economic development and the fight against poverty.

Sachs is the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs and a professor of health policy and management at Columbia's School of Public Health. As of 2017, he serves as special adviser to the United Nations (UN)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs

I’d say NXVIM and Podesta are the two biggest connections these people will have. we know NXVIM is way way way bigger than we’ve discovered so far since it involves the Bronfman daughter. And Podesta/Alefantis have fallen off the map. we also have it confirmed now that Epstein paid women to bring other kids to him which is what the Smallville girl did in NXVIM. HOT SHIT DONTCHA Podesta probably psych-tortures the kids. NXVIM used to recruit recruiters. Shit is all connected.

Peggy Siegal. 

https://ift.tt/2GcFBDL

>The publicist and hostess isn’t just a fixture of New York’s Oscar circuit; she’s the engine that drives the whole thing, organizing lunches and dinners and receptions and screenings that introduce Academy members to the year’s Oscar hopefuls and drive the conversation about every single film in contention. The best way to win an Oscar is to make a great film, but the best way to guarantee it is to get Peggy to shine a light on it.

She is the one you go to, if you want to win an Oscar

Peter Soros, needs no introduction

https://www.pdsoros.org/fellowship/governance/peter-soros

PETER SOROS lives between London and New York and has managed his family’s investment office since 1998. Their investment activities have been concentrated in a relatively small number of venture capital, private equity and hedge funds, and a broader range of direct investments in the energy, technology, telecom, consumer and financial services sectors. Prior to that period he worked as an investment banker and managed a hedge fund

Leonard Stern

https://ift.tt/2jLEIu9

Another (((Philanthropist))) and investment broker.

>Leonard Norman Stern (born March 28, 1938)[2] is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist.

He is the chairman and CEO of the privately owned Hartz Group based in New York City. The company's real estate portfolio was owned and operated under its Hartz Mountain Industries subsidiary company, of which he is also chairman and CEO

>Stern was born to a Jewish family,[4][5] the son of Hilda (née Lowenthal) and Max Stern.[5] Max Stern was the German-born vice-chairman of the board of trustees of Yeshiva University for whom its Stern College for Women was named. He had emigrated from Weimar Germany to the U.S. in the 1920s after his textile business proved unprofitable, bringing along 2,100 canaries from Germany to sell on the U.S. market. By selling caged birds, bird cages and other pet bird supplies to U.S. pet owners through Woolworth's stores over the next thirty years, Stern's father built up the family business: Hartz Mountain Corporation (HMC), also headquartered in Secaucus, NJ. HMC later grew to become the flagship subsidiary of The Hartz Group. The business was named after the Harz Mountains of Germany. Though Canaries originally come from the Canary Islands the Canaries in trade are the result of selective breeding by farms located at Harz.

I was digging on day one when the emails dropped, from comet to the tunnels to Pegasus to worldcorp to Epstein’s temple to brocks parties...we’ve been blue ballsed with dead ends so many fucking times that it’s hard to get excited but this looks like it could finally be the big one worth digging into and Pandora’s box has only just been cracked open

i published the world corp videos to my bitchute channel CIA CLOWN 

https://www.bitchute.com/video/xSIaA8fJ0oje/

Francesca von Habsburg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_von_Habsburg

Francesca von Habsburg-Lothringen (born 7 June 1958) is an art collector and the estranged wife of Karl von Habsburg, current head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. 

The amount of women in on this shit, blows my fucking mind! Me fucking too...me fucking too baka

I hear that fren.. pizzagate fucked me up for a while, I had to take a break cause I couldn’t get a decent nights sleep or stop thinking about the horrors going on and how all these people are involved and covering it up and then the useful idiots on the left helping them cover it up with their TDS and all the border invasion with no one even mentioning the child trafficking going on which is fucking weird why isn’t that every trump and conservative response to AOC and any other leftie crying over child separation. Just drop the child rape sex slavery trafficking stats relentlessly and they’ll shut up fast. But I guess the general public isn’t ready to hear it and have the reality of what’s going on shoved in their faces yet

Governor Charles Turnbull. Governor of the Virgin Islands where Epstein lives at little st james island

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wesley_Turnbull

https://www.instagram.com/elizabethhurley1/?hl=en

If you saw her instagram, you would think she 

was a 22 yearold instagram 'model'. She posts bikini pictures literally all day everyday like shes 20.

I mean she looks great, but its inexplicable to behave that way at her age. its attention whoring of the lowest order.

>pic sorta related

the type of girls she competes for likes with

>The amount of women in on this shit

“Women are wonderful” effect. no one wants to think women, the nurturing motherly caregivers of our children, are capable of the horrors they can commit when they’re emotionally convinced it’s justifed. ask yourself how it’s possible that with modern medical technology and knowledge SIDS is just a totally unexplainable random thing that looks a whole lot like a baby being suffocated in its crib in its sleep in the middle of the night by a frustrated emotional mother. Never find a kid dead from SIDS in the middle of a grocery store at 2 in the afternoon with witnesses around, funny that.

Daisy’s destruction had a female participant that was just as sadistic as the man. Smallville actress was bringing in children for sex slavery. Female child abusers are some of the most sadistic. But nobody ever holds them accountable everyone assumes the man involved forced them to do the things they do

Robert "Bob" Weinstein. Creator or Miramax and Dimension films. Ran Harvey Weinsteins shit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Weinstein

>2 years ago this looked like insane conspiracy by wackos

It’s hard to remember how innocent things felt before the 2016 election....when AJ was just a funny conspiracy nutjob and stuff like this just wasn’t realistic. Even just the alefantis Podesta stuff was like what the fuck. Like AJ sneaking into the bohemian grove and you’re just like oh okay that’s a thing. That’s a thing that actually happens. Eyes wide shut is a thing and everything conspiracy theory around Kubrick and his death and the actors involved in his movies is now a thing and what the fuck rabbit hole is this

Steve Wynn, he runs NUMEROUS casinos in Vegas

https://www.forbes.com/profile/steve-wynn/#7ebf6643498a

Prince Michael of Yugoslavia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Michael_of_Yugoslavia

The Hillary timeline is a dark one fren. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Everything would be censored and shut down. You would have Dem rule forever as she floods the borders with 3rd world illegals while sending legal citizen males off to die in Russia and letting ISIS run wild to kill off the ones that don’t go to war while they all rape and breed the women and all Hillary’s debts to these elite sickos would get fulfilled as the pedo circles expand and get more blatant about it knowing they can’t be stopped

Police, Sergent Robert Goldberg...

All about Israel and the Island Massage parlor

Well hello David Rockefeller!!

just waiting for the connections to most powerful sub-par pizza joint operator in DC.

selling pizza to politicians is evidently enormous business in Washington

jimmy "hit the kids like a comet till they vomit" alefantis

james "enslave the kids in my pizza parlor" alefantis

ole' jimbo "my pizza sauce is made out of ground kids" alefantis

james "scott tenorman is a true story" alefantis

jimmy "dungeons, chains, leather & shipping container human trafficking " alefantis

jimbob "monroe in the front door, never leave, in to the museum behind my house" alefantis

james "live in DC, my museum is the pedo embassy" alefantis

big jim "drop 'em off at my house, chop 'em up in my museum" alefantis

james "just dont talk about my museum" alefantis

jimbo "what pedophile network?" alefantis

james "we don't even have a basement" alefantis

ayyy it's old jimmy "bloodthirsty rage upon the vulnerable" alefantis!!

jimbo "dont eat the hotdogs" alefantis

jimmy "dont even get me started on the punch" alefantis

james "the water in my museum" alefantis

jimmy "somebody poisoned the waterhole" alefantis

jimbo "most of my friends are homosexual pedos" alefantis

jim "after it was discovered my websites contained hidden downloadable content, a criminal destroyed my computers harddrive" alefantis

jimbob "i can help you burn down your island" alefantis

Ohhhhh hoe hoe tay! 

Ask Caroline Orr...how she like living in VA. Sampson Rd, Dahlgren, VA 22448 amirite???

Ask Tommy Christopher how he likes living on Newton Ave, Oaklyn, NJ 08107 and how 

Ellen T Thomas 69 1947

Kathleen J Thomas 39 1978

Matthew J Thomas 45 1971

Megan E Thomas 34 1983

Robert J Thomas 74 1942

Robert S Thomas 53 1964

Ryan R Thomas 34 1983

Dana M Thomas 52 1965

Ethel Thomas 97 1920

Jack C Thomas Jr 54 1963

Jeffery S Thomas 43 1974

Kelly L Thomas 44 1973

Kimberly A Thomas 49 1967

Margaret R Thomas 76 1941

Clara P Thomas 74 1943

John F Thomas 46 1971

Are all doing...tell them hiya from me...will ya 

Ask Oliver A Willis' fat ass how southern MD is. Sweetwood Pl, Waldorf, MD 20602 right? Wait...I ALREADY KNOW HOW IT IS! But, ask him how 

A Wills 46 1971

Ann Wills 48 1969

Beverly L Wills 40 1977

Cheryl D Willis 49 1968

Cheryl M Wills 57 1960

Christopher N Wills 38 1978

Frank Crosson 46 1971

Jane T Thomas 54 1963

Karen A Wills 64 1953

Oliver A Wills 65 1951

Seth T Sahid 37 1980

Sheila Sanders 61 1956

Ricky B Wills 57 1960

Tina L Wills 46 1971

Are all doing XDDDD tell them, suuuuuuuuuuup XD

Wait wait wait...here's his mammy and daddy

Mom and Dad 

Karen And Oliver Willis(Sr.)

Montezuma Dr, Fort Washington, MD 20744 is a shithole XDD

His sister Tina Sahid, Arbory Way, Laurel, MD 20707 Laurel huh??? My ex is from Laurel...blow them a kiss from me, k? 5/10

And don't forget you little bitch...you wanted this

https://thedevilman666.blogspot.com/https://www.facebook.com/groups/qanonreports https://twitter.com/CIACLOWN1 https://www.bitchute.com/channel/ciaclown16661/

[mightbedamian]

#TMIishTuesday #51 - DHL - Drama Help Line?

Hey, Before we start: This Austrian human rights organisation “SOS Mitmensch” has called for people to participate in their “Populistenpause”, so ignoring any populistic, anti-islamic, anti-foreigners messages spoken out by people from the right-winged parties. The goal is to not mention anything the political right say - and just ignore them for the entire month of March. I’m going to participate in this campaign, even if I’m from Germany. So, if AfD or CSU or whoever else talk shit from tomorrow on, you won’t hear anything from me on that. It will be hard, but it will be a message. Obviously, the more people participate, the more the impact will be noticable. Feel free to join! Also: Last week I told you that this post would be about dubbing, aka. the synchronised German (or whichever language's) version of the original dialogues of films. I also debated whether I should share my two cents about carnival. But things changed - and so did this week's topic.

Btw, next week's post will be a special one (which is happening upcoming weekend), so the post on dubbing will be up in two weeks. God! So much planning ahead going on. But okay, enough of this rambling. Let's get the drama started! Hey there mighty people of the internet! And welcome to issue #51 of #TMIishTuesday - my weekly Tumblr post about what goes through my weird mind and on what you guys want to know more about. It can be something very personal, it can be something political, it can be completely pointless - but in 99.9 % of the cases, it involves opinions. And mine as well. // Last week was not only the 50th post of #TMIishTuesday. I also talked about my water-proof trousers. Oh, and self-confidence. That's the most important topic. Have a read, if you haven't yet. // Right. Where to start this rant? Probably with the reason that I got into all this shit: My phone. The on/off/unlock key of my beloved Wiko Stairway had had some issues for the last two weeks or so. It wasn't working first touch all the time. On Wednesday afternoon it stopped working completely. Naïve Damian thought, maybe taking out the battery and putting it back in would solve the problem. Erm… But how to turn this thing back on? Mind you: The on/off-key wasn't working. So the only thing that taking out the battery did, was turn off the phone. GG! After a good 30 minutes of trying to loosen the screws to check the inside of the phone, I gave up and accepted that I needed to take the phone to the repair shop the next day - or get a new one. After all I'd had this phone for 4 years. Btw, shout-out to Wiko: I was really satisfied with it! Anyway, given the age of the phone - and remembering that I had thought about replacing it early this year anyway - I decided to look for a new phone. So I spent about 5 hours researching phones on the internet - aka. reading up on test reports. In the end I had enough of it and decided for the Sony Xperia X (which ultimately sent the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the OnePlus 3 to second and third place). And I tried to get it online - with speedy delivery. It turned out that all three electronic shops in Osnabrück didn't have it in stock. It was in stock in ALL stores in the surroundings, though. Typical. I ended up placing an order at Saturn and paying 360 Euros. They told me it would be at my place within 1 or 2 working days. Fair enough. Amazon needed 3-5 days. Would have saved me 40 Euros, but I already couldn't stand the phoneliness after those 6 hours. And I didn't want to spent the entire weekend without one. As usual I put in my Packstation address. If you don't know what Packstation is: German delivery company DHL put up some lockers at basically every other supermarket in German cities. You can register online and then use any of these lockers as delivery address. Advantage over the usual home delivery: They can put it there - no matter whether you're home or not. And you can collect it 24/7. So far - so good of a concept. But I used the locker as delivery address a fair few times so far. And it didn't quite work: Two times the lockers were full - so I had to collect it from the post office. Another time they returned it to sender cause the address options on Amazon didn't indicate my "post no." - the number needed to tell the locker I can retrieve it with my pass. One time I ordered it to my home address cause I was already fed up by this - and they took it to a Packstation further away after I wasn't home. Great job! Oh, and I have to give you that: Last month it actually worked for once! Anyway, I knew I had school all morning and half of the afternoon on both Thursday and Friday, but wanted to make sure I could actually collect the phone the day it arrived. So I thought sending it to the Packstation was a great idea. And it looked like that. I mean… DHL decided to let the parcel sit at the distribution center for an entire day before putting it in the van to Osnabrück. But it's not like I had expect speedy delivery anyway :P And you might be thinking that this is coming to a quick and happy end now. And so did I. But... Things took a turn! At 3.08 pm I got an email telling me: "Hey! Your parcel is ready to be collected at Packstation No. B." I mean… I told them to send it to Packstation No. A, but hey! At least it was there. And given that the post office was closing at 4 pm, I was glad they put it into the other Packstation (assuming that the one I designated was full again). And I got really excited to retrieve my phone! But: Drama gets really drama-ry right now. Get some popcorn! In the email it said: "Hey! When you retrieve your parcel, remember to bring your pass and your one-time pin that's been sent to your phone." When I read this sentence my face turned into utter shock and terror! What the hell!? You need a pin to retrieve parcels from the lockers? I had only done this once before, so I just had forgotten. I was getting really, really mad. So I googled basically anything I could imagine to come up with a solution. Result: It seems you indeed cannot retrieve parcels, if you don't have that stupid pin! I tried, if my phone provider offered an option to look into your messages online. Cause that would make sense, right? But the customer support chat told me "no." (shoutout to the simplytel customer support, btw! Really easy to access the chat and really quick reply!). I then rang all my neighbours' doors to see, if I could borrow their phone for a minute, put my sim card in, get the code - and I would be done. But: Since lots of my neighbours are students and it was carnival, it so happened that none of them was home. So I called the DHL customer service (thank God, they don't make you pay for that!) asking, if there was any way around this? Or if they could send it to my email instead? Nope. No chance. Only by phone. Great! Mine was broken - and I told the kind lady on the other end of the line exactly that. She just said: We can't do anything about that. But you could change the number of your account online and press the “send new pin” button. That's exactly what I did: Called my father to figure out, if he was available. He was in the middle of drinking a coffee at a café with friends, but technically, he was available. Btw, I was REALLY lucky that I have a landline telephone! Don't want to think about how the following conversations would have been, if email had been the only option. So I changed the number of my Packstation account to my father's phone (his secondary phone cause the system didn't accept his first number - it's already saved for his account - great feature, too, DHL! Really handy!) and pressed the "send new pin" button. A moment later, he called telling me the code. I thanked him for his help and made my way to the Packstation my parcel was waiting for me (10 minutes one way). I got really excited when I entered my pass and  the four-character pin. But it said: Incorrect pin. I retried. Incorrect pin. Double-checked on the paper that I had taken with me on which I had put it down during the call: That's the one! Why don't you work then!? Entered the same code a third time. "Entered incorrect code three times. Your parcel is now locked. Call customer service to unlock." - Great! I was out of my mind at this point! WHAT THE HELL WAS HAPPENING!? I stormed home - with no parcel. On the way back I already thought about just hitting the road and driving to the next electronics store that had the phone in stock. That would have meant at least 30 minutes one-way on the road. But at least I would get my phone! At home I saw an email from my dad: "Hey, I just got sent a second code. Hope, you see this in time." - Clearly I did not... And he had sent it only five minutes earlier. That was when I was on my way back from the Packstation already. Shout-out to DHL! So I did the only thing I was left with: Call the customer service again. Thank God, it was a Saturday! Both times my call was answered within one minute, after I had denied the robot service. Anyway, I decided to not tell the customer service about all my anger, but rather just ask them to reset the pin. A minute later my dad rang again: "Hey, so… I just got a third code. Did you ask for that?" - Yes, I did. I thanked him again and both of us hoped the code would not be reset again. Luckily, it wasn't this time. I entered the code and - FINALLY - collected my parcel. A full two hours after the time I would have, if they just had sent the code to my email. -.- Anyway, that's probably the last time I used their Packstation "service". You know, it's a nice concept and everything. But your just screwed when you don't have a phone! Well… A working phone. (Update: I wrote this Monday night. But I already collected another parcel from the locker. This time it worked fine. Cause my phone worked...) Oh, by now I figured out that the first pin DHL sent my dad, after I changed the number on the DHL website, was actually the pin they had sent me earlier (which I couldn't see because of acute deadphonitis). Apparently the website couldn't cope with SO MUCH information - changing the number and "ordering" a new pin - that it took 30 minutes to send the new pin. GG! -.- To end this on a positive note: Shout-out to my dad for supporting me all the way! And: My new phone works perfectly fine! As far as I can see, it's definitely worth the money! Downside: I lost all my contacts (cause I had saved them on my old phone - and you can only access the storage when the phone is turned on. Which it won't anymore. Screw this!). Slowly but steadily collecting all the contacts again now. Anyway, thanks for listening to my rant. And if I may give you one piece of advice: Only use the Packstation “service” when you have a back-up plan! Get a back-up phone first. Instead I might send everything to the post office directly from now on. Extra work for them. Revenge is sweet! Before I go let me know your thought on DHL and the Packstation thingy. Have you used it? Were you more lucky than me or was it quite the disaster I experienced? Place a comment, tweet me, dm me, or do anything else you can think of to get to me. Queer Shoutout you say? First off: Massive congrats to everyone involved in the Moonlight film for winning the Best Picture Oscar! So cool to see an LGBTQ+ film rocking the Oscars! And congrats to Mahershala Ali, who played the drug dealer Juan at his younger age. And finally congrats to Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney who won the Writing Oscar for the story! Queer Shoutout of the week: An article in German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung - a story about an Israeli family. In short: A gay guy is looking for a lesbian to make a baby. They move in together, take care of their child - and each of them still has a(nother) partner. Sounds strange? It is! But very much worth the read. As always: Next #TMIishTuesday next Tuesday. If you have any questions in the meantime, just ask away. Whatever you’re curious about - I don’t bite. :)

Until then: Stay mighty!

Linkage: - Populistenpause: http://www.sosmitmensch.at/populistenpause - Queer shoutout: http://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/texte/anzeigen/45579

 Oh, and here’s some self-promo: - Last #TMIishTuesday: http://mightbedamian.tumblr.com/post/157536488943/tmiishtuesday-50-being-me-or-self-confidence - All #TMIishTuesdays: mightbedamian.tumblr.com/tagged/tmi - More #TMIishTuesdays on random topics: http://mightbedamian.tumblr.com/tagged/me - More very cool stuff: www.twitter.com/mightbedamian - Even more very cool stuff: mightbedamian.tumblr.com