chaosworks.org

20 September 2015

ðə ˈspɛlɪŋ ɒv ˈɪŋglɪʃ

ˈɛvə ˈwʌndəd waɪ ˈɪŋglɪʃ ˈspɛlɪŋ ɪz səʊ keɪˈɒtɪk? wɛl, wiː hæv tuː θæŋk ðə ˈnɔːmənz fɔː ðæt. wɛn ðeɪ ɪnˈveɪdɪd ˈɪŋglənd ɪn 1066, ðeɪ rʊɪnd ˈɛvrɪθɪŋ. bɪˈfɔː ðæt ɪnˈveɪʒən, ˈɪŋglɪʃ wɒz ə ʤɜːˈmænɪk ˈlæŋgwɪʤ, wɪʧ keɪm tuː ˈɪŋglənd wɪð ði ˈæŋglz, ˈsæksnz, ʤuːts ænd ˈfrɪzɪənz ɪn 449. ɪt wɒz ˈvɛri kləʊs tuː ðə ˈlæŋgwɪʤɪz ˈspəʊkən ɪn wɒt ɪz naʊ ˈʤɜːməni. ɪt wɒz ˈɔːlsəʊ ˈriːznəbli kləʊs tuː ðə ˈlæŋgwɪʤɪz ˈspəʊkən ɪn ˌskændɪˈneɪvɪə. səʊ ˈækʧʊəli, ði ˈɜːlɪɪst ˈlæŋgwɪʤ ˈkɒntækt ˈɪŋglɪʃ ɪksˈpɪərɪənst wɒz wɪð ðə ˌskændɪˈneɪvjənz, huː ɪnˈveɪdɪd ˈnɔːðən ˈɪŋglənd ɪn ði eɪt, naɪnθ ænd tɛnθ ˈsɛnʧʊri. bʌt sɪns ðiːz ˈlæŋgwɪʤɪz wɜː ˈvɛri […]

16 September 2015

Американцы (The Americans)

On Netflix, a TV series with the rather unobtrusive name The Americans caught my attention. I wondered why I hadn’t really heard much about it before, and I also wondered what kind of show this could be – seriously, who would name a show The Americans? It sounds so obscenely patriotic. And you could argue that the show actually is obscenely patriotic – but definitely not the in the American sense. It is a show about two KGB agents in deep cover, living the normal 1980s American family life by day and spying for the Russians by night. These two […]

14 September 2015

My Little Pony

I went to visit my parent’s house last weekend, and there I learned that my first and oldest pony Flörchen has died. I am surprisingly un-sad about this; I guess I have plenty of distance to most things around that house by now. Nevertheless, I think after roughly 25 years, Flörchen has earned an obituary in form of a blog post. I got Flörchen when I was six years old. I was one of the horse-obsessed kids, and since my parents had plenty of space for all kinds of animals, it was only a matter of time until I demanded […]

13 September 2015

The Fall

In a sea of formulaic film fads full of replace heroes and exchangeable plots, it’s getting harder and harder to find films that are truly fantastic, fabulous and fascinating. But they are out there, and one such film which I have seen only this year, is Tarsem Singh’s 2006 film The Fall. The frame story is that of a curious little girl in a hospital in 1920s Los Angeles, who befriends a fellow patient, an injured stuntman (played by Lee Pace). He tells her a fantastic story of five peculiar heroes on a quest to find a woman. In her […]

12 September 2015

Five Places I Want To Visit

I love traveling, but one of the problems I have with traveling is that I can never really decide on new places to visit. In the past ten years, I primarily traveled to English speaking countries such as the USA, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand and Malta – and to many of them, multiple times. In fact, I’ve actually only been to non-English countries four times in the past ten years, which were Austria, France, Sweden and Finland (let’s not count the day trips to the Netherlands for shopping). I’m guessing that is because I just love […]

11 September 2015

Victorian Gothic Embodied: Penny Dreadful

Gothic is a literary genre that is as popular today as it was in the past. First attributed to Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), it has inspired an entire array of subgenres, such as horror, the supernatural and even science fiction. Not only do these genres still play an important role in present day literature, film and television – also, the Gothic genre has sparked an entire subculture that mostly defines itself around its music and dresscode. A recent television series that embodies everything about the spirit of Gothic literature is Penny Dreadful, which is set in a […]

9 September 2015

The Upcoming Semester

Even though I’m still in the middle of the semester break, I’m becoming more and more nervous about the upcoming semester which starts on 19th October. It will be my last “real” semester at my university, since I only need to take three more classes to fulfill my curriculum. Out of these three, I will have to take one exam, which will be in the form of a presentation at a conference in February on front of about 20-50 people. For this conference, I will also have to take part in a project seminar which organizes the conference, making this […]

23 May 2015

The Future is looking Grimm

Or is it? Over its past four seasons, Grimm has established itself as a rather serene show. Despite it dark and gritty outward appearance, its serialized plots always tend towards a happy ending – as one would expect of a show that is largely inspired by fairy tales. The world of Grimm is inhabited by creatures (‘Wesen’) that cannot be seen by the majority of the population. They are sort of creatures that live inside people, but the people themselves are the creatures. They only show this when they want to or when they get emotional (‘Woge’). Some of them […]

29 December 2014

Twenty fourteen in tv show stats and other geeky stuff

Every year, I create a “what I did this year” blog post on my blog, meticulously organized by month. But this year I don’t feel like it would enrich my blog. The years are accelerating at an incredible rate. It seems only yesterday that I wrote my 2013 post, and I’m starting to get the feeling that soon my blog will only contain these posts, one every year, since I hardly find the time to blog about other things. Seriously, who still reads/writes a blog…?! 2014 and me The year 2014 was a strange experience. It was the year I […]