Where Rebels shop

Over Christmas and New Year we have been renovating. We have been going through a room swapping stage. The swapping is now concluded, but the renovation still carries on.
We live in house. Downstairs we have a kitchen, a small bathroom, living room with dining room (separated only through a halfwall so they appear as almost one unit), a conservatory and one bed room, which before was the twins room.
Upstairs we had one bigger bedroom where my husband, Lucy and I were sleeping. Next to that a small room that served as a changing room, where our wardrobe was placed, a bathroom and a study.
First my husband and I had to pack all our clothes into suitcases and boxes and our son got the small former changing room as his new pirate cave. Then we had to all 3 of us move out of the upstairs bedroom and that became the new girls' room. Then my husband and I moved into the former twins room. Then we collapsed.
And after alltogether almost 6 weeks of renovations in various stages of chaos we even decided to get a new cupboard for the kitchen. Despite sore backs and being sick of the mess, we are still not finished. Ian and I are currently sleeping in a room that still has a cheery animals-at-the-zoo border und a glow-in-the-dark-starry wallpaper. But for now I am weary. Even the upstairs rooms still need little things to do here or there like new curtains, a new lamp etc
One of the side effects of all this was that I have been visiting IKEA at a weekly basis. As I did - again - today. If you are feeling sick at the sight of Köttbullar, it's a sure sign, that you have been at IKEA too often.
IKEA is a phenomenom. It attracts people of all age groups, all professions and all kind of mental states. Today I was parked next to big van painted in matt black with the skull and crossbones, top-down crosses and Antichrist paroles included. On the back there was a statement, that the van was the means of transport of ... the big city rebels. ... Hmh? Should satanistic rebels be shopping at IKEA? Don't they have an image to keep up? Like making their own furniture out of real bones and steel or sleeping in used coffins? I'm kinda disappointed. Punks, Goths and all other kind of rebels should live in style. Like this:


I remember that my friend used to live in a flat over a goth-punk couple and she was immensely amused by their all-black washing hanging out in the sun to dry, and their very normal and un-gothic, un-punky behaviour including lovers-quarrels about who's turn it was doing the dishes. They even complained occasionally that she should please turn her music down. Seems sometimes what's inside is not what the outside suggests. Satanists buy the striped Ektorp-Couch at IKEA and Goths can be unmasked as wish-we-were-Goths. The real punk was probably my friend, whom people who did not know better thought normal or possibly even boring.

Stupefy!

I have been reading a lot of Yaoi in the last two, three months. Too much maybe, because it seems that my brain is affected. Over Christmas I have been watching the first five Harry Potter movies with my husband and while I always enjoyed that, I never had as much fun as this time when my brain started grouping the story characters into yaoi couples. Here's my favourite couples. The alltime winner would be Draco Malfoy/Ron Weasley. Followed by Sirius/Lupin. And Serverus Snape/Harry Potter. And Lucius Malfoy/Sirius Black seemed another interesting combination ...

My husband thinks I have finally started my mental decline, a rapid journey to dementia. But I found that I am not alone. There's plenty of Harry Potter-Yaoi-fan fiction and Harry Potter-yaoi-graphic fan work out there. Their favourite couples seem to be Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter and Lucius Malfoy/Severus Snape and Snarry (obviously Snape/Harry).

I think, after you read a lot of yaoi, many people (and I don't exclude myself here) get a bit addicted to it. What I find so fascinating about yaoi is that it has a better chance of breaking the settled rules of romance, it's often less kitshy while still dealing primarily with romance. It's like you get your favourite childhood dish served in a new style. Refreshing. Intoxicating. And addictive.
After a while you turn everything into yaoi. Frodo/Gollum. Aragorn/Legolas. Mozart/Salieri. Mr. Darcy/Mr. Bingley. Goethe/Schiller. Mark Anthony/Gaius Julius Ceasar. Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson. L and Light Yagami (both from the Death Note Manga). Once the yaoi virus has infected your brain cells, there's no stopping them. Nothing is sacred, nothing is spared, neither members of the church or politicians, for every man in the news there seems to be a perfect uke or seme waiting just around the corner to complete him.

It's not porn ... it's art!

I am still enjoying my yaoi phase and the more I read the more I know that my taste runs towards a special subgenre of yaoi - hardcore yaoi.


When I was younger I felt astounded and bewildered by the growing display of sexuality - some of it rather explicit. I saw Pasolinis "Salo or The 120 days of Sodom", a movie loosely based on the book by the Marquis de Sade with a group of friends when I was 19. I don't know if the other people in my group really were as untouched as they behaved. We were sharing a pack of Haribo Cola bottle-gums while the actors were displaying the various kinds of sexual perversions known to humankind - plus lots of violence and the joy of living under a fascit regime (you get it - this movie is kinda hard to swallow to say the least ...). Whenever I reached into my neighbors Haribo pack I was keenly aware of the fact that he was male and I was not and even more aware that I hardly knew him and couldn't even hazard a guess as to what he might be thinking. As the movie continued I tried to make out the outline of my shoepoints in the dark while the movie characters were moving on to the world of having fun with feces. I never quite enjoyed cola bottle-gums anymore after this. I tried to let my eyes wander but keep my head still, so that it wouldn't be apparent that I was looking anywhere but the big screen in front of us. I did not want to loose face to my pals - maybe they wondered why I behaved so cool and gut-hardened while they were secretly feeling just as sick as I was.

After the movie we were all moving to the only bar we could still find open for a drink and a chat and I was surprised that we actually discussed the movie. That must have been were I heard it the first time - a sentence which should feature again and again in my later life: "It's not porn - it's art!" Huh?!
The eighties and nineties (I guess other decades as well, but I wasn't as aware of it then) have served us lots of sex under the disguise of art. Mostly I think that is just an excuse for people to indulge in their primary instincts under the pretence of being cultured. This whole movement presented us with magazines like "MAX" which was solely bought to admire the newest starlets unclad bossom while pretending to be interested in the article about lifestyle, pop-music or whatever. Or the sex education shows by Annie Sprinkle. I remember a local TV broadcasting company making a life interview of the people lining up at the entrance to ask why they wanted to visit the show. Some people gave reasons like wanting to get rid of their own inhibitations or sex problems, but most people tried to hide their faces from the camera - they knew they were just in it to once compare if Annie Sprinkles organs looked the same live as they did on the videos.


Despite all that I do believe that the sex-art-movement is founded on truth.
With mangas and anime take hardcore mangas like "Under Grand Hotel" by Sadahiro Mika or "Junai Fetizm" by Kanzaki Takashi and compare that to real porn. In both you'll get to see lots of sex, including close ups, dirty language and body fluids. I like hardcore mangas. I don't like porn. The difference lies in the plot, because the plot in a porn is just a sorry excuse of stringing one explicit sex scene after the other.

Let's take "Under Grand Hotel" as an example. This is a story about two originally straight men who meet in an high-security prison in the US. Sword (he is the man candy on above pic) is a black drug dealer, convicted in three cases of murder and sentenced to 200 years of prison. He made it to shut call, which is something like the gang leader of the inmates. New in prison is Sen, a Japanese who went to University and is sentenced to 80 years of prison after killing the husband of his (female) professor with whom he had an affair. The two end up as cell mates. Sword offers Sen protection in exchange for sex. He has been in prison for a while and came to accept doing it with men because ... well, because there aren't any women around and he still wants to have sex. Sen is very reluctant, but eventually sees that there is not much choice about having your backside used for someone elses pleasure in prison - only with Sword he can at least chose who is having a go at it. And after getting to know their bodies really, really well the two eventually fall in love.
If you decide to read the manga, all of the 3 published volumes are scanlated and available for free at mangafox.com - don't get confused at the first chapter: the real story starts at chapter 2.

This manga is really explicit, it shows very graphic hard sex plus it has lots of violence as well. It's also hot - so hot, you should turn your heater down and keep a cold shower available when reading it. Still to me "it isn't porn, it's art". Because in the end the manga is not about sex - it is about love. Plus the plot involves more (like prison life, drugs, social gaps) is well made and exciting and has excellent art work and intriguing characters (plus even the uke is cute and no 15-year old, chicken breasted wimp). I would definitely list this as one of my favourite yaoi mangas, but it is nothing for the faint hearted ones out there.

Of course between black and white there is also grey. To me the manga and anime "Sensitive Pornograph" was borderline - the anime even more so than the manga. It still has plot - sometimes it even has a plot with originality and potential. But (maybe because it is a collection of short stories) the plot doesn't develop much of that potential so that it gets lost in the abyss of too many all the same sex scenes. To me that is really borderline towards being merely porn, and not art.
As a final goodie I want to let you know of this 13-page-short manga story added as an omake to the manga "Shine" by Hoshino Masami. This short story called "H na kaze no yoru" (A night that should have been perverted) is about women who never saw any porn and want to try it out. It's a cute yet strange story and feels absolutely true to life. http://www.mangafox.com/page/manga/read/2364/shine/chapter.46661/page.3/

Women's 7 deadly sins: # 2 Chocolate

When God created man, she was only doing a trial job. Or according to another interpretation
when God created man, she was drunk and horny. Well, both give you a hint about the result... The second project worked was much improved, but still - it pains me to admit this - not completely without weak points.

I yet have to meet the woman who is not slave to her own cravings for something sweet. Ice cream. The Haribo Collection. And especially chocolate. Chocolate are rumoured to work as an aphrodisiac, to release endorphins and as such even serve as a substitute for sex.

Based on how much you like sweets and how much you depend on them to survive, I must be super woman. I am still waiting for the invention of the chocolate diet (okay, for the chocolate diet that actually serves to make you lose weight). But lately I am especially addicted to a super yummy chocolate bar, which has started to infiltrate Germany's sweets shelves: Cadbury's "Wunderbar".



The Wunderbar has a center of chewy caramel with peanut butter covered in chocolate.


It is sweeeeeet. Despite being that sweet it also has a distinctive saltiness which goes well with the peanut butter. I love it so much, I have become a real addict. And that when I am not normally a great fan of all things peanut. Snickers, peanuts, Mr. Tom, Peanut butter etc are usually rather tolerated than loved. Still the "Wunderbar" is everything its name promises and has me completely hooked.

Finally an explanation

I guess normally, when you start a blog this should be the first thing, that you explain what you are going to do. But I have to admit, I started this blog for various reasons and I was not quite sure how I would be going about it.


I called the blog "Letters from Bedlam" in reference to the well-known psychiatric hospital in London. Because my life feels a bit like a madhouse sometimes. And if you wonder about my nick "GeishaX", that is an old name I have been using online ever since my first times on the web. So for well over 10 years. Back then I liked the name, it has a relation to Japan to which I have an affinity. It stands for an entertainer versed in the arts, something I would like to be (without much hope). And the X was meant to supply a touch of mystery, coolness and style. (Mangareaders please note that in "Get Backers" a unknown boy child was found inside a bag with the name tag "Makube" on it. An X was added to stand for the unknown factor, and Makube X then became Makubex.
It is a long time ago that I made all that up, by now I just use the name because I feel that it has in a way become my name and I am not overly thinking about any of these things. (so when people meet me only for the first time as GeishaX and feel it as a come on I usually don't even get it until I am directly told about it. So forget all you know or think you know about Geishas - I am an entirely different type of person. I won't play koto or recite poems or laugh in an artful and come-hither way. I won't bow. Unless I feel you deserve it. And you'll have to work hard for that. My avatar picture is a colored-in cut-out from "Akuma de Sourou" (The devil does exist).

So here is what you can expect: I don't know. Or rather I don't know the limitations. Or let's just say: anything goes. It was never meant to be a manga blog. But of course I will write about the things that I am currently juggling in my mind. And as I am going through a rather hardcore manga phase, you are going to be served mangas till you are heartily sick of them. (What? You already are? Sissies! No endurance. You better brace yourself for more of the same fare.)

But in the end I will just ramble about whatever is currently on my mind.
As you see I have started two "series"-threads. The "Parallel Universe"-Series (which basically are a what would my life be like if things had gone different-thingy) and the "Women's 7 deadly sins" (a series about things that women like - maybe too much). I will definitely deliver more blogs in both series, though it might become difficult to decided onto which 7 sins I am going to pick - the pool from which to chose is to big for such harsh limitations.

Back on Horseback

I believe that 3 out of 10 girls undergo a phase of horse madness. I certainly did. When I was a girl I took riding lessons at a riding school called "Bonanza Ranch" in Katzweiler near Kaiserslautern. The horse I was riding was Crusoe. I think he was a Haflinger, definitely had the colouring. The Bonanza Ranch was not a very refined riding place back then - it looks a lot more professional today. The motto was more something like "up on the horse, have fun and try not to fall down". Still it WAS fun for as long as this phase lasted. Then I swapped the saddle for a motorbike and boys seemed even more interesting than horses, so I gave up on horse riding.

But now - years and years later - I wanted to do some sports and here in the countryside the only thing I could find in the mornings was some kind of bum-shaping gymnastics for housewives or fitness studios with bad techno music and over-cheery studio-tanned animators with very wide and very false smiles. So I decided I just had to start my own thing and I was lucky to find 3 other mothers with similar problems. The one sport that all four of us had an interest in was horse riding. The marsh countryside where I stay is horse country really. There are lots of stables out here. We decided on a riding school 3 villages away and started lessons there in October. All four of us have a little prior experience with horse riding - but a long time ago.
I am usually riding Mandy. She's a brown mare - technically a large pony, but she could almost pass as a small horse. That's her on the portrait above and she's the one on the left side here:

I liked her from the start. She is gentle and kind; she likes getting cleaned and even helps me putting on her bridle (I don't think I could do it without her help). She does not like to go in the front of the formation however and can be very stubborn about this.
I was able to reconfirm that riding is indeed sports. It's not just sitting on the horse and letting yourself be idly carried about. Today Mandy was not having a good day (maybe that time of the month ...) and was unwilling to do anything on her own. I had to convince her with everything I had. Afterwards I felt tired and my legs still have a distinct jelly-o-feeling.
Sometimes in the morning I look out of the window see the fog and the uninviting look of the November weather outside and think I would prefer to stay home, roll up on the couch and watch anime. But once I'm at the stable I'm okay. And once I'm on horseback I'm glad I came.

Cat in the box

I was reading the manga "Extra Heavy Syrup" (see picture) by Ogawa Yayoi lately and it got me interested in the concept of quantum mechanics and the thought experiment of Schrödingers cat. I'm not a scientist and I like to transfer difficult ideas into a context that I can understand. I can not claim to understand quantum mechanics, but I found the idea of it and the experiment of Schrödingers cat fascinating. Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) was an austrian physicist who apparently had a very lively imagination and a disturbed relationship to cats. In 1935 he came up with the following theoretical experiment: Imagine a closed box in which you put a cat and a canister containing poisonous gas which is triggered by a device with an unstable radioactive nucleus with a 50% chance to decay within one hour. Leave both for said hour. If you think in the lines of the typical human brain you would expect that after that hour the cat is either dead or alive. If you are a follower of quantum mechanics there would be a state/time at which the dead cat and the living cat co-exist. The intent of Schrödinger's modell was to prove the absurdity and/or paradox of quantum mechanics, which was based on the behaviour of atoms and obviously does not easily translate into our every day life.



I like to think of Quantum Mechanics as "anything goes as long as we can't see it". (because "every possibility that is not proven to be wrong must hence be correct" just sounds a bit too wild). Let's say I lock my children into their room and leave the house for an hour for a quiet walk around the romantic November scenery of northern Germany. They could completely destroy their rooms (most likely scenario) or they could sit patiently and wait for me to return. Does that mean in terms of quantum mechanics I have two sets of three children for the time of that walk? Three realistic seeming children who would completely misbehave and go for each others throats and another set of three children who sit quietly to be released from their room possibly while reading Dostojewski? As much as I would like to see that, I know I am stuck with the first set. And of course I know that my ideas are far from Schrödinger's - his idea of the cat being simultanously both alive and dead was referring to the quantum superposition which goes back to the theory that unstable nuclei undergo a in-between state of transition in which they are both decayed and undecayed. It is a theory that does not go down easily in every day reality.
Just imagine my face if I would ever open the door while realitiy is still in quantum mechanical modus and see 6 children sitting in the room - all mine. Or wait - who says that only two possibilities can co-exist. There could be a third set of my children performing open heart-surgery on the goldfish. And a fourth set talking swedish and discussing the best investment strategies and the future of world finances. The more I think about it the less inclined I feel to ever go on a walk all by myself.