Mini Blog

I missed my September update even though I tried several times. I simply didn't feel motivated and worked on other projects. I did mention months ago that work was becoming intensely researched and results in less activity for a while. I wasn't joking! I don't want to spoil every topic and surprise. Here's some hints anyway so you understand productivity behind the scenes.

It's obvious you're looking at the new URL paul-landers.info and realized. The gallery converted to paul-landers.pics (hehe). I opened the Rammstein publication archive to help alleviate fandom disorganization and laziness. It will help with people searching article names, publications, or random citations with dead URLs or things from memory. I will point to articles with an alive URL on my server to be found. The archive runs on Omeka classic as a database back-end, which I customized a theme for. I firmly believe nobody should be gatekeeping and preventing others from learning about this band or making you ask them for information. You should be able to find anything yourself and not rely on others to tell you what to think.

🌻 - I received a few new pieces of merchandise. One was a French PL1 interview nobody has bothered with before. A Live aus Berlin themed official postcard, leaving only the rare Mutter one to go. And a 2005 Rosenrot era pouty man poster for the ladies of an image session very rarely ever printed. It's huge!

There's a variant Paul Staramba figure. This one is 17cm, my old one is 20cm. I wrote about this a little and added everything to the collection page.

🌺 - I solved part of the 2004-05 Ahoi tour rack through brute force against a 329px image corner. As well as finally found visual confirmation of the CAE MIDI controller footswitch I noticed before. Those have both been added to the gear page. My recent French article addresses the Fractal Axe FXII rumor and I'll be putting quotes in once I get someone to look at the text. (Obviously, I can't read it and need to ask for help.)

Speaking of guitar lore, I have a special post about something big to rewrite Paul history books 💅

🌸 - I contacted DEFA/Progress films to get access to the Wydoks collection. This, if you didn't know, was many tapes/films held by Aljoscha's estate that was obtained by the company. These were digitized in very good quality. Many DDR era documentaries use Feeling B b-roll footage from their collection when mentioning the band and show tiny 5-20 second clips.

Currently, the Rammstein fandom acts like they have never seen/accessed these files in their lives. Why not? Because their own statement was: "Alle Kassetten sind vermerkt, in unterschiedlicher Tiefe erschlossen und werden für die Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht. Dokumentation ist alles."

Yeah, well I discovered why fans cannot get in and never try. The DEFA and Progress Films pages are extremely company oriented and talk excessively about licensing. When you explore the catalogs, Wydoks are listed but give you zero clue how to access. Their FAQ page wants you to go to government catalogs without Wydoks, buy DVDs of unrelated films without Wydoks, and heavily suggest only companies/TV people can see anything. So you end up on the Progress Films page and they prompt you to enter a company name as a requirement you cannot bypass. They need to manually approve your account by an administrator afterwards. Which means someone checks your entered form and company name by hand. Without it, you can only see 30 second samples of the start of the film.

Then on the FAQ page you see the dreaded words, as if a manual approval and company name requirement isn't enough to terrorize you: "Unsere umfangreiche Filmdatenbank, darunter Filme in voller Länge, ist exklusiv für gewerbliche Kunden verfügbar, die Recherchen durchführen und Filmmaterial lizenzieren möchten."

Roadblock #1: You need a company name to sign up.
Roadblock #2: You need administrator approval of your account manually.
Roadblock #3: exklusiv für gewerbliche Kunden ("exclusively for commercial customers").
= why everyone gives up instantly before trying or gets booted out

Yeah, well you saw screenshots I've been posting to lead a punchline. Babe, I'm in. I'm in the Wydoks archive touching all the footage like I'm in the pick-n-mix candy store.

I sent German emails to the Progress Films licensing executive and told her I'm interested in buying footage once I know what it looks like. (Because I am.) I explained I'm a researcher of Paul and need primary visual confirmation of equipment that cannot be done from text. I explained to her I am studying amps, guitars, and electronics from DDR musicians. Because, I am!! It's true. I take notes constantly and still have to go through many things slower and repeatedly. This is going to be my next three months. Did you know a 1993 Feeling B show used early fire related stunts? No, it didn't all start with R+ pouring gasoline on the floor. Total Paul game changers are here too. He did not jump Iris → Music Man EVH. He was fussing with a Rickenbacker 610 with hi-gain pickups in 1993 just edges from Rammstein. This Rickenbacker sits inside his house on the wall. That maple + white thing back there.

Excuse me I'm a gewerbliche Kunden!! I will buy full films at a price once I know the most important ones. Then eventually collect them all. Those films are considered private usage prices and un-shareable without consequences. I have to license still-images of Paul one by one. Depending on the cost, I may be able to obtain usage of a special clip. There is one really specific moment where I realized... oh man, I need the video clip to explain this music thing happening with his amp and sound.

And lord, there's footage I didn't need to see. That moment when I'm trying to watch 1992 medieval concert showcase (you gotta see Schneider in this lmao) and it jumpcuts to bare naked men showering mid-song unexpectedly... thanks. It's literally mid-song cut. You think you're safe in the mittelalter videos to watch campy D&D nonsense? Think again. The real Mann gegen mann Paul footage has been in Wydoks the whole time. There's home-movies-esque footage after a concert I was looking at of Paul with girlfriend in a very "I'm dating her" affectionate way (trust me) along with a barely walking child he puts shoes on and ties the laces of. The evidence of what I'm looking at was like a slow realization car crash of knowing you're hit by a truck but being unable to stop it fast enough. By the time you know to react, it's too late. I'm constantly having to tell myself: "this was essentially Aljoscha's home movies dumped into a database indiscriminately." Because a solid 35% feels like I'm inside someone's family tapes I found at a thrift store on a VHS level of discomfort. Some of this looks intended for montages or short segments in Feeling B tapes that never happened, and the rest not meant to be seen/used except privately.

🌷 - There's more I'm hiding in my sleeves! Here's a run down of the near future.

Click for rambles about future posts research observations. It's juicy NDH related gossip for those who know 90s Germany lore.

1. I'm working on Feeling B related articles!! Lots of them. (That's why Wydoks...) Including the 1993-1994 Feeling B / Rammstein transition period and early history of the formation of the band. I've also been reading DDR punk books by Galenza, some contemporary Feeling B articles instead of hindsight, and obtained a book about Hiddensee. By proxy, I might do a Die Firma piece. I'm uncertain and consider this lesser priority. Trötsch revealed why Paul left in a more clear phrase than he ever gave, which helped a lot contextually. Also, a guy (Rex) from Herbst in Peking gave a serious compliment to Paul's role in Die Firma that seemed so fascinating when put against the image of being "Trötsch and Tatjana's band" due to them being the faces.

I edited this into the biography page. I added additional Niki context that every fan is blind to. I discovered when I was looking through DDR materials, that she's not "some wife". She was a soprano singer and sang in bands, including her own. She even was on stage for a Magdalene Keibel Combo cover in Im Nin'alu's key being a part of the Shout, Amadeus, and Der blonde Hans joke.

In the 1991 Die Firma demo cassette, Paul is accredited as sägezahn gitarre (lit. "sawtooth guitar", tl. "serrated/sawing guitar") which is one of the self-referential things on this page for the band roles. It refers to his guitar's sonic qualities of high distortion. In English guitar world, the closest thing I can compare it with is the 'teeth' allegory used for high gain. Same jagged biting sharp image. This is describing his preferable sound as recognizable to his peers ears as sharply high gain distortion before touching metal music. I personally didn't know I took a more German language guitar descriptor most of my life. I've always said "serrated knife"... very close to a sawtooth.

2. Telling the "true" story about Neue Deutsche Härte's phrase history and origins. Including correcting misinformation and debunking Wikipedia (German and English are awful). I'll explain this better than Mühlmann ever bothered. If you'd like to read my precursor fanblog about this topic where I sort out my current thoughts, please go here for that discussion. Otherwise, the article about this is coming. I'm still uncertain if I'll break it up into multi-parts. I may have to because this subject is crazy.

I forgot to update the monthly housekeeping checklist post. Uhhh, hi. Here's my notes I wrote all July.

Cutely, I have to tell you I was able to receive the Sonne and Engel music boxes. Aren't they adorable? I was given another second guitar pick.

And? This really cool Russian guy traded magazine scans with me and sent a bunch of interviews and original German texts of ones I wanted. I sent him hundreds of scans too. He also had his own rare 90s photos I wanted to find or buy. This is close enough.

Look at thisssss!! Look. You're not looking. These are not tiny low quality versions anymore. They are all over 1000-3000px scans and the folder is like 60MB.

The late 1997 image in the desert is 2800x3200!!! I was able to learn the magazine years, months, and titles. Which greatly aids my chances of finding them. He also gave me totally unheard of rare 2002 Russia photos I cannot reshare. But they're good. One exists online but in low quality. If you ever see this in bigger quality, you'll finally learn Paul was munching on an apple. And it's very apparent in the original version lol.

In terms of posts on the way, I'm currently working on a hobby trivia post. It's 80% completed but I am stuck unable to finish it due to feeling burned out on the page's design aspects. I will push through this eventually. Other than that, I am also working on stuff like:

• 2018 Tech 21 interview annotated translation
• A PL1 dedicated page between Paul and Stefan, production specs/info, and interviews all in one place.
• My cute fantasy interview questions for him. (Let a girl dream.)
• Getting over my fear and presenting my first Feeling B article about studio production cycles
• A special essay about fansites and what they used to mean for the R+ fandom

💕 Content changes:

• Many posts received rewrites to strengthen their positions, wording, or ideas.
• Feeling B post was reworked and redesigned slightly.
• Missing Fractal Axe FX confirmation was inserted to the equipment post.
• Added a 1996 rack deconstruction too.
• 15+ LIFAD era interviews were recovered and added to the compilation.
• Guitar page received a cleanup, extra models added, and a mini FAQ over some models.
• Guitar page has a "which model per album" module created.
• Every in-house translation was updated.

I was able to get secondary checks and comb over on my German translation work. Two minds are greater than one. Every translation has been audited for tone and stylization. I have the English tone direction and analysis of patterns in speech done. She has the fluency to pick up on my mistakes. With that burden not as strong, I was able to create the Paul speech character bible using my guidelines of how this man talks. Many fans over the years say he's hard to translate for. And most official English publications make him sound strange. In the coming days, I will publish the character bible as a reference sheet anyone can use.

As promised, I said I'd pick at the aesthetics and decor at a later point. I started working on that immediately after and tested visual changes all July in batches of being pushed live.

🌹 Design changes:

• Index menus have borders.
• Per page jump navs have borders.
• Special borders are applied to select boxes on various pages.
• All CSS was tweaked for borders, shapes, lines, edges, margins, etc.
• Stronger font styling was put in place. I'm still learning typography principles as I go.
• Divider graphics were inserted where placeholders were.
• This small blog was redesigned. Again. But not majorly.
• Color palette of my three themes (pink, blue, tan) were edited.
• Pink was changed to a more pink mauve wine. The bg was edited to reflect it.
• Tables are customized to look pretty. Only two are used in posts so far.

Honestly, I was really shocked how many CSS generators and tools there are if you looked. It made working with grids easier when I found them scary before. And I started looking at YouTube takes on web design, then reusing basic ideas from it. My method was to build what the tech bros call "cards" on the index and writings. Once you end up in a hub page, you expand to a sort of chart list vertically instead. I haven't quite got those pages down in terms of design yet.

The harshest challenge is blockquotes. I use them too often that putting decorative borders on them is excessive. I tried simple solid edges, it's still not working out even if passable. On specific quotes, I filled in a solid color to simply break up that monotony. I started to put things on the page around text like it's floating. It has this pseudo-wiki vibe when I do it and makes looking at additional text 100% optional to the reader. My idea stemmed from textbooks. That is also why I became obsessed with figcaption, a lesser known and almost ignored HTML choice.

🎉 Gallery changes:

• Entire 1990s folder was reworked.
• Half of Mutter era was improved. (More to go.)
• The 'missing photos' page was redesigned.

✅ Technical changes:

• Cloudflare has been integrated.
• I allowed CF to cache my gallery's static paths and make some images/thumbnails extremely fast.
• My email server has unsolvable issues with certain European providers. I removed it for the time being until I can understand why. An alt email is there.

Okay, in April I was noticing that my gallery was being scraped. I put an Apache block in. Solved. The scraper then changed behaviors in May. Okay, updated my Apache. Solved. The scraper changed in June. Okay, updated the Apache... wait a minute holy shit these timestamps indicate 100+ requests per minute. So around June the gallery scraper turned into a Piwigo hydra nightmare and sent 18,700 requests in an hour to my server. The scraper had become a destruction level distributed flood that will have absolutely tanked Piwigo's PHP endpoints in one hour. Imagine what this would have been if I hadn't kept up with it.

Thankfully, Apache mitigated nearly all of it but I had to get rid of this thing forever with that kind of absurdity. Because if it changed tactics around my Apache code again, it would likely slam my server space while I'm asleep or away with that kind of data for real. I wrote further about it here and what I was doing to mitigate it on my own before realizing this isn't enough.

I had to move my DNS to Cloudflare and integrate a full WAF service for my gallery to cope with it. Most of the traffic was from Singapore and China. Usually Alibaba and Huawei Cloud. My dashboard reached 80% mitigated traffic from Asian ASN spam on the gallery. It was insane and reached 15k requests in 24 hours on July 2nd and over 190k requests all of June. What the hell.

As a result, if you see a Cloudflare prompt on the site, yes that's new and intentional. I can't take it off with the Asian scraper being this horrible. The scraper is still active every day but only for 300-500 requests. It seems designed to specifically attack Piwigo sites. There's a good tool for checking over CF expressions. Everything is mitigated at the edge and fights the orange cloud. It never reaches my server or logs. Unfortunately, if I ever expand my site or traffic beyond this - I'll need to switch WAFs to a paid one since five free rules is too restrictive for the gallery that takes up three dedicated rules to cope with the spam alone.

And? Juju dropped the album of the year like I knew she would. Stream 44 ME and be blessed. Every song hits. I think that's everything for a while. Bye for now.

I'm currently extremely busy with doing intense research/translations. I promise I'm working on new pages. Currently, I'm trying to balance my efforts between differing post types.

I'm about 1/2 through a write up on his guitar equipment, Tech 21, DDR era Vermona, etc.

Listen, I'm ready to explain why I went "Paul quiet" for a while and very sporadic. I've been in this phase since around December.

In-depth explanation of the site's future posts

As I said a few weeks ago, I am YEARNING to write about man.

I'm going to expand an entire Feeling B article push. I started biographical work in October, and by December I realized there's huge swaths of 80s information that is untouched properly or outright mistaken. I particularly noticed anecdotal fan ideas are nothing more than 'vague' claims, compared to the real thing. When I realized this, I slowly became overwhelmed. There's a lot to digest. Yet the book is not organization friendly. It lets people talk freely for maximum accuracy and the most niche DDR punk lore possible. However, it also captures people's meandering ideas and: "we were drunk in Poland and I lost my shoe, also here's a relevant fact about the creative process you're looking for three sentences later".

This changed my direction and goal entirely. After a redirection push, there will have to be baseline Feeling B reference pages where I can compile what I am doing in public. Then reference for my actual article goals and encourage people to check the long text version for further.

In the middle of the Feeling B ideas, I had an R+ related epiphany about the way Paul describes studio work. What I am doing is so intensive and needs so many translations, I genuinely think it will take me the rest of the year and slow everything else down. I will try my best to write other fandom fun things I like. (Such as my silly interview question idea!) However, I know this is my priority.

I am in the research / gathering materials phase to organize myself in full. I know my core references already. I will publicize what I am doing in chunks in-between. These compilation pages of topics will help me form the article's reference sheets so I do not end up with 250 citations and quotes. I can make people go reference the other pages and shorten my allusions down to internal links. This is good website structure anyway.

I have a bibliography accumulated. Here is a random link from my pile I've read/watched. Yeah. I am edges away from Rammstein scholarship. I know. I feel it in my bones. I would like to be promoted to write articles on the band. I have a voice and something to say.

By the way, about my rabbit: she's in treatment to delay her problems but her one eye is not in the best condition. Caring for her, and giving her attention is a lot for me too. She's more like a cat. If I sit her next to my working space with keyboard, she will be jealous of the keyboard and lay/climb on it...

Well, apparently there's finally news of the Mexico bluray on the horizon. All I can think about is the potential bonus features or booklets. You have thousands of Jens photos. Publish at least 50 for some silly "special edition" packed in book you can upsell +50 Eur for. Looking forward to how that ends up being announced.

In terms of the future path, the 'forbidden texts' (long Paul 'research' pages and my own Secret Special Post) will be published soon. Welcome to the fansite's 3.0 era. I've been rolling it out in phases. This time was a massive update on near ALL old pages. I'm almost done. If the index or pages are broken, please ctrl + f5 to clear the cache. My site is pretty.

I started this work in December with drafting and sketching. January with code and studying how feasible any of this was for me. February I was mostly offline. In March and April, I started implementing bits at a time slowly and rewriting. I took a break in early May to do other things. Then the rest was spent pushing the changes live. Correcting, nuance, code triage, finding all bugs or improvements in batches, and "get that page updated right now" frenzy pushing each one. The past week was the final huge batch and testing how it feels to browse and nitpick.

I implore you to go to old pages for a total shock makeover.

In terms of site updates:
✅ about page 100% revamped
✅ gallery about page too
✅ batch DL tutorial is pretty
✅ Feeling B guide entirely recoded from scratch (the page I'm most proud of tbh)
✅ all interviews posted by me are visually revamped (major upgrades)
✅ all oldweb series are revamped for both blockquotes and image code
✅ all old posts by 90% are reformatted of code
✅ some meta stuff
✅ totally new URL structures (all old pages will redirect)
✅ everything uses root relative linking internally
✅ all directories and asset folders were cleaned out and reorganized

I will be implementing cosmetic changes to the 3.0 push in time. I simply needed the baselines and structure before messing with tiny decorative things. Work before reward. I still have a hard time with caring for page decor. Can't handle website clutter. The about page is the best I can do. I had this cliques box too but couldn't figure out how to display. Maybe another time.

I also know exactly what I want to write next. My own "hypothetical Paul interview question list". Oh god, it's gonna be so good. My draft is already exciting and I only started outlining.

I wrote four simple copy/paste tutorials for web things. The Javascript footnote, CSS gallery-like code modifications, controlling tumblr embeds, and Piwigo centric Apache based banning for bad photo scrapers. That is a big part of my Apache code breaking things when I kept testing what I was doing for months. The scraper was infecting my main site too eventually. I feel like I'm going insane via Apache.

They don't tell you how you can spend entire afternoons troubleshooting dealing with a WHM server admin for a week. I'm tired of thinking about ModSecurity, Imunify360, whitelists, FTP, WAF, and Apache. I'm doing all of the heavy lifting while others twiddle their thumbs. I want to pretend these words do not exist.

One of the things keeping me away in May was being too busy and that my rabbit has cataracts in one eye and is going blind. I've been very upset and stressed. She goes to the vet soon to see what choices we have for further treatment. It's getting rapidly worse in a mere two weeks.

Both of my parcels arrived a day apart. I got lucky with them not being too mixed up in transit. They posted on the 11th and got here 8-9 days after. Not too bad 🙏

My god. I didn't realize I was receiving The Giant Rammstein Bravo Magazine Pack. But I really did. When I opened the parcel, I was greeted with this extremely taped up reused Rewe box and was hard to open. A lot of tape and scissors later...

WOW. Like?????? There were some duplicates of these pages I can resell or find a home for. I also got a Reise, Reise poster I never had before from Sonic Seducer. And a duplicate of the 1997 one. Now I can finally put it on my wall! Yay~

Hold up. Wait. WAIT. WAIT???!!? Is that... is that THE missing 1997 Bravo picture? 👁👁

My photo. My beloved. My endless searching.

"Bree, he's standing, not doing anything intere–"

SILENCE.

He has only existed in my imagination and 50 pixels before. I am 99% sure this photo doesn't exist on the Internet since the dawn of the planet.

THIS is all we have ever had. You do not understand.

"All right all right. Is it everything you imagined?"

Yessssssss 🥰 Exactly what my imagination filled the gaps in to be. I am not sure if that means I need to lay off the 1997 photos or slightly elevated hyperphantasia.

Listen. I may or may not have saw this as the second page in the pile when I lifted the poster away, yelled, got excited, flipped the stack over, and then looked at them all in reverse so I could savor the moment. I forced myself to go slowly and deal with this. Overall, I received 18 new pages and some mini clippings. All were Bravo sourced and stuff we desperately needed upgraded. You know the blurry Bravo images? Not anymore. I am taking care of it like we deserve.

This is what it's all about. It's like treasure hunting. The thrill. Being in a thrift store and finding the coolest thing ever. I can't explain it.

My third signed photo card was the bonus thing in the box lol. None of his three versions of these signatures are consistent stylization. I love him 💕💕

Just when you think he's sensical, he's not. Oh you thought he ALWAYS stylized his name as PAul with the A being Capital A in the 90s? Think again, bozo. Did you think he never uses his Landers surname in any 90s signatures? Think twice, bozo. What does his 90s signature look like? Whatever the hell he felt like that day. (Yes he intentionally did use PAul because it looked cool, and yes that is his Capital A.)

Okay my theory to explain it is simple... his signature is automatic instinct. His stylized PAul is something he has to pause and do with care. It's unnatural. During 1:1 autographs in slow situations, this is easy. When he's in a row line doing it over and over rapidly, his hand and mind will make the mistake of reverting back. And if he's unlucky, his forever habit of a full signature will kick in and cause the anomalous Landers based ones. When he's not supposed to because the photo card is too damn small. He has to constantly hloading="lazy" alt on his first name and always remember the special A. Both of these things are extremely unnatural.

It's a lot to do and he has 1 second to make this choice in his mind. After 30 minutes, his hand is tired by the way. Also the WOM store is blaring music and multiple people are trying to talk to him at the same time. Do you know how much multi-tasking this is? Good luck!! I appreciate his effort. He seems to have understood and gave up by 1999. This makes all PAul signatures very special. Not only for a brief time period; his own hand is working against these signatures to exist at all. Still no evidence of any other versions of these cards having gold marker except Köln... mine is a PAul one... bless my luck.

You know that fandom mystery about "Sonne 1995"? (Answer? It's Feuerrader's working title but the people are in denial at something so obvious.) Well the most important thing is, that set list was written by PAul. That's his Capital A and hand writing.

"Why the hell do you know?"

Flake. He published many hand writing examples in Grun & Blau book version. This man hoarded scraps of paper Paul wrote stuff on for whatever reason he doesn't throw anything away he comes into contact with like a magnet.

The magazine comes with two posters that are double sided and giant.

In the second pack, here's posters from 2004. They are gigantic! Over 90cm.

The Mutter one says "SP 2004/58 printed in Germany www.schucki-poster.com". Rosenrot has 2004/62, and Reise, Reise 2004/57. Suggesting release order was RR / Mutter -> later Rosenrot. Unfortunately, they have been hung before with four small pin holes and light edge wear. The Mutter one bears some yellowing. Perhaps sun? Because the Rosenrot one doesn't. For their 20+ year old age though, quite excellent overall.

This poster company appears defunct. It was online in 2008 but broken for the archive. I did a general page crawl and found product listings from 2010-11 era. From here I could see tons of music genre posters. Prices seemed to be 6 Eur. They do not sell an excessive inventory but looks very curated to preferences of the owner. The prints reflect using high quality original images and not blurry at all. Perhaps licensed? Or originated from a service to purchase stock photos in large sizes. The print quality is good and had nice ink, no smears and the paper is thick. It is in a matte form and not glossy. There are also three Emigrate posters out there to find.

Oh that's it. Yes. The Bree yearns to write about him again and be free. You can feel it, can't you? I became long texted again. Sometimes I get burned out too. This lasted way longer than usual since December. Or I'm high as hell off 1997.jpg moment. Either way, it worked to fix me so good. I'll get images scanned into the gallery soon and the merch page updated. (Already took the photos.)

I vanished again for a month. I put over 140 images into the gallery. I keep letting the pile build up and doing them in batches. Well, I got some more magazine pages and goodies coming soon.

I had no idea what era the magazine would be, but it was 1997-98. Based on photos, it's published around June 1998. So before the main summer shows started. I had a copy of the cover image but never knew anything about it or the contents. I recognize that all of these images exist online but in low quality. We're getting massive upgrades!

I know seidbereit.ru scanned a few. Their version was resized to about 600px for what I found. I had no idea all these years what the source was to explain their scanned quality.

I have never ever seen this image online before scanned or passed around. Not even with a seidbereit.ru logo. What do you mean I am receiving an unseen 1997 pic?? This can't be right.

He always knows what pics I want to see, so this is all I have for now. However, there's gotta be great images of the others in here too. He said this magazine last sold for 170 Eur, so when he saw it for 50 Eur he went for it for me. Found another listing the other day and it was 210 Eur. My god it's terrible.

The parcel ships out Monday and has some other unknown goodies. So it will be very exciting to see what comes of it. Hopefully I get it by early June.

In preparation for this, I finished a merch page organizing my magazine pages in-depth visually.

I'll be honest, I have no interest in writing anything new right now. I have felt this way for months. On the contrary, I have been spending excessive time cleaning up the formatting of old pages. I have been learning the cursed words "semantic HTML" and "semantic root links"; ughhhhhh. I hate this btw. When they tell you to run a fansite (or any site really), they do not warn you about the time spent dwelling on improving old pages. I'm still having a lot of issues with the footer of my index since I wanted to change the color for the themes.

99% of this was so Googlebot can parse my HTML. A human can figure out my pages visually. Bots love my pages for having good sentences that are rare and human origin, but find my code itself unclear in how to label my words without guessing context. It knows my pages are good and keeps them in circulation for their uniqueness and rare information on a dead Internet. Yet doesn't know how to use it to the fullest. I have gone wild with semantic HTML lessons. Every page is being redone with it in a slow roll out.

Major changes (many now have semantic HTML structures):
✅ entire site: stylization of links, conversion to PHP, blockquote and interview snippet citations use a new format
✅ videos: stylization of data, the intro
✅ compilation: the intro, linking, updates format
✅ guitar list: back end code, slight styling of info
✅ writings: restructured link labels, list styling
✅ old fansite archives series: restyled all data on them and cleaned up
✅ LIFAD vs MiG post upgraded to be perfection (chef's kiss)
✅ half implementation of root relative paths

Stuff coming: special secret new design and other old pages being revamped for semantic HTML hell. I also had fun setting up XAMPP so I can render my site better. I believe I fixed all my htaccess and redirect experiments and they're working properly as fully intended now.

It's really hard lately to get the time to do everything I want. I got busy IRL very heavily. Okay for now~ I'm not dead yet.

Housekeeping update~ hiii.

I vanished to do real people things again. I did that in much of February too. I have been doing a lot of behind the scene site things lately. It was needed steps I avoided for a long time.

Tech updates:
1. Miniblog is being redesigned still.
2. The entire site has lost .html extensions. Which are now hidden.
3. I have painstakingly written, rewritten, and inadvertently debugged my Apache htaccess page 15 times. I am pretty sure it's finally functional.

I finally think this (and some other hidden code) is functional and not broken. Haha... maybe.

Things that changed in the gallery:
- a Rosenrot interview is up.
- I will get some LIFAD pages up next...
- a Masonry grid system

Come view folders of eras/tours and feel like you're on bootleg Rammstein Pinterest 💕

Fandom page updates:
- an interview is coming soon
- the interviews page now as its own subfolder for organization
- I will start taking interviews out of archival purgatory and get those babies on a search engine with clean ups

Other updates:
- I played the tumblr snek game and my best was 183.
- I spent so much time reading books and articles lately. Anything from dinosaurs to Ruby Ridge. (Don't read about this unless you want to be enraged every three sentences.)

My parcel arrived! But the real thing that took me, is... Ahti put in one of Paul's Christmas cards by surprise. And there's the Mutter postcard. I was really taken aback from the card. It's nigh impossible to find someone who separates the sets. I don't even know how he got it 🙏😭 I have it already but now I have two.

Of course I immediately scanned the poster...

Full version here! And another 30 pics added to the gallery. I'm still working deeply on tagging again. Many have been tagged now that it's near complete.

This is the patchwork solutions I came up with today for the new additions. I need a picture frame solution for the postcards. The reason I've ignored was because I did not have the full collection. I realized after checking with the boss, that I have them all except Ausländer, and the extremely rare LAB and Mutter two. Oh no. It's time to frame them soon. I will likely never find the two rare ones any time soon. Getting my LAB blue and Amerika/Mein Teil ones were already years of hell. The LIFAD and Rosenrot ones are also annoying.

I realized I'm struggling with displaying my collection. That thing it sits on is actually my closet. There's shelving and a bar rack inside what this giant brown box is. I wanted to try a cube box shelving unit before. Yet none I found felt reasonable. I really hope I can find a solution soon... but I am unsure if I should do it. It's very likely I will move countries in the next two years or less. I want as little furniture to go with me so the investment isn't worth it.

I do not actually ever use direct lighting. When I'm in my own room, I use a lamp and two fairy lights: white and the purple-blue ones on the left. Most the time when I look at my own collection across from me, it's aesthetic like this instead. The stack under the 1997 photo are all my magazines and pages. And some posters still folded.

Complete format renovation done to the interviews page. It finally looks more like what my imagination wanted. More pages and stuff coming soon. I added some minor stuff to the videos page too.

New index and CSS is up. If anything is broken, clear out the cache and hard refresh. It's not huge, but it's a lot of nuanced code that changed. If you saw the before/after of my CSS file; you'd know lol. I gained a whole 2kb. Also, the mobile version got a substantial upgrade with spacing and margins. This miniblog is next for the revamp. I will try to learn to use more decor, but I have a hard time with website "clutter". I don't want to think about sidebar, divs, li/ul, margin, padding, centering, and em for a solid three weeks after this.

I officially have my own red collection box!!! 😇

It's in rather good shape for the age. I'm happy. The poster needs to be flattened again a little from shifting inside the box over the years. Otherwise, a small dent to the right corner. That's it. I'm beyond pleased! I always wanted to wait until the right moment 💕💕

I have been reading fandom essays again from the past on Fanlore. The most important essay is this one about BNFs and women with power in a fandom. And this about transformative, curatorial, and affirmational fans remains forever relevant. Though, this essay conflates curatory and affirmation as one. I fall under curatory. Modern fandom analysis, tends to separate into three or four categories now. Not these two alone.

Mini rant about tumblr (not about the new post update)

Oh and I decided tumblr is basically worthless for this fandom. Don't bother with that place. I have never seen a more hostile and angry social media for this fandom in a while. It's like walking into hell with 1000 unspoken rules and incomprehensible petty drama that a detective can't solve. It's a bunch of insecure elitist women who use tumblr as a replacement for therapy via blue attention numbers. Paul fans are close to oppressed there. If you don't ship, there's barely anything worth your time anyway. I suggest my friend Ewa's gifs if you like him. She makes gifs that you cannot find elsewhere. Very unique stuff and the best. Her tagging system is fun too. I recommend this quirky tag.

So bizarre really. I've never had anyone react so negatively to my fansite before lol. I was treated like trash within 13 days of being there. Lied about to others and subjected to fake anon hysteria. It was all so manipulative and insane to watch. Why, you ask? Jealousy of an insecure woman who can't control her rage at other Paul fans existing, who is propped up by a group of sycophants in their own fandom delusions. They come across so spiteful and miserable, really. Hardly anyone on that website has a heloading="lazy" althy relationship with R+ fanfiction. Most involved have no heloading="lazy" althy relationship with Richard either. It's crazy to learn about the politics of R+ fandom warfare on tumblr.com. Literally 2012 era teenage shit from middle aged women, some who have kids. I sincerely believe most fans there aren't worth associating with or bothering to put in any effort to post there. Waste of time better spent somewhere else.

I'm not shocked the tumblr R+ fandom is on life support and hardly anyone goes there anymore. The people I encountered were vile for their malice to the most inoffensive things, and outright hostile to strangers they know nothing about. Incapable of any adult concepts. Lies to your face in DMs and uses them to manipulate others. Immediate anger and shunning based on drama I knew nothing about until February. My only prior explanation was vague and I decided it was none of my business to care further. So much so, to this day I am still confused about usernames or why. I ended up blocking usernames based on guessing, but some circumvent blocks and visit me everyday anyway. Literally, obsessed with my tumblr everyday since I got there. I was largely offline in February and they still kept track of me. Seemingly not understanding my blog was ran via the queue. They were super creepy about my IG page too. They also checked every like/reblog I got and from whom. If they spotted anyone they didn't approve of, they'd message or contact them to cease engagement with me via lies/gossip. Everything about these users there is uncomfortable to be around yet they don't know how they come across to an utter stranger.

It's very unpleasant to post there and you can feel the social tension and fear to post/speak between everyone through a screen. There's users who want to say something or hate all this, but are too afraid of the clique weirdos. They play along socially to appease them. Very few people actually seem to like these weirdos that aren't themselves. It's nothing but appeasing them to avoid conflict. Nobody wants to be their new target. Not even me. It's why I just gave up. I have better things to be doing. Unlike them, my website is relevant to who wants Paul information via search engines. I get lots of traffic that way. I was shocked by how much due to the loss of fansites in general and forums in Google's priority. My old archives series and the interviews page gets crazy results.

You go on popular IG accounts for him, and it's the nicest place on the Internet with the sweetest comment sections. People on tumblr are scared to type about Paul or make posts, or end up hated on like me. I know some of his fans deliberately left over people like this being there. I've never truly seen anything like it. They push people away like me and have me discouraging users to join. Then they wonder why the fandom shrinks there every month. Then they wonder why half the notes to their posts are just their friends and a few others. They literally get mad at you there for citing interviews from his own words. They hate new gif makers taking their "attention" because they're too lazy to find their own concert videos to make gifs from. And don't want others translating stuff that isn't themselves. They hated me for my trivia posts. The Paul ""fan"" on that site crashed out over my guitar list and Feeling B post making her jealous over me; I shit you not. Or saying something as simple as, "I respect that view and our spectrum of fan differences, here's mine to consider" has them having a Whatsapp therapy session.

Truly, just avoid the place. I heard there were issues on Twitter in 2024 but I didn't realize it was like this. Sheesh.

I had fun while it lasted (aka 1.5 months). I made it approximately to 1.6k notes on my whole blog before I gave up.

People liked me, sure. But they also don't want social wrath from a bunch of weirdos on themselves or be targeted next. So they have to pretend to not see/enjoy my posts. The stuff I saw in my activity feed of posts where I'm not the OP, analytics, and follows of myself/others paints another story though. Silence / non-interact doesn't equate to agreeance. It merely means these clique people scare others into hiding. They don't seem to understand this part and think silence/compliance, means they "win". No, it means they're so unbearably insufferable people do what they can to avoid wrath in order to keep social peace. Nobody wants their hate and grief on them. They have seen how they swarm and mob others on the dash, passive aggressive reblog posts in a pack, and write whiny hate posts where they namedrop or vague at you. Most of us are 30-50 years old, and we don't want to deal with it. Thus, silence and politely pretending.

Anyways, back to your regularly scheduled mundane Paul posts from me. Currently begging myself to edit the page about his wardrobe.

Please view my lil nugget of joyous wonder, thank you.

I am liberated!! I have a desktop again. My tablet is freaking amazing but there's really certain tasks and workflow best for desktops only. I updated the gallery with 155 photos. Some are upgrades of existing ones. There's a tad more on the way when I'm not sleepy. Gallery sorting always makes me tired after an hour. It feels so good to be back at that.

A new photo as well which finally put me at rest from my weekly, "someone please find him" whining.

Also, I'm very behind right now with all online tasks. Still adding into the gallery this weekend. I started going back to the neglected tagging system. I worked out the most efficient way which is using a touch screen device for me. It's still boring. I dread the tagging system like a chore. I tagged maybe 200 and gave up again.

He was found with Uwe Hagar in an article. It was lovely to see this. The last time I know a public interaction was late 2019 with the lovely Burberry check sweater shirt. He's wearing his Omega Seamaster watch...

I've been busy. My bad. Sorry for the neglect here!! My poster and Christmas card arrived. He also sent me the 2025 metal plate card unexpected as a gift 🥰

Please look at his smiley face on the back! Thank you.

Additionally, Ahti found me another five posters. Coming in good with a unique Amerika one and we got that sweet Popcorn 1997. Awwww yeah.

Ewa came in contributing her compilation of my "will you please gif this man peacocking around, hello" request you can find in my last essay. Bless her on this lawless website. You know when weird men like to watch women's figure skating and gymnastics for totally real and ethical reasons? THIS is my equivalent. You will never pry this from me. The hell is he doing? The fuck if I know. Just sit back and watch.

I wear this as a badge of honor, by the way.

My laptop charger is dead. No clue why. The actual power supply part suddenly failed. So I have been locked to my tablet + Bluetooth keyboard for a week now. I can do a lot of things still but I cannot get a new cable until March. It messed up my workflow though and limits my capacity to edit images. Or update my gallery. (Cannot scramble filenames.) I cannot scan stuff either. So yeah, a bit bored! It sucks too because I was in the middle of design revamping this website lol.

Magazines and pages are hereeeeeee yesterday!!! 😊

I don't know how to even parse all of this. It'll take me weeks. It's the most insane packet of stuff yet. It appears to be several different owners. One woman who was very organized and wrote magazines + dates on edges for magazines that did not date their pages properly. Plus like at least two other people's private stashes tossed in. A lot of LIFAD-MiG era for once. Some of these interviews look familiar, others look totally unknown to me. I see words from Richard, Till, Flake, and Paul.

There's an interview of Paul from LIFAD in Piranha I've never seen omg. The rare 1997 image is from 1998.02 Metal Hammer. The "blue Pauls" are from 1997.03 Rock Hard. Some of the booklets are special reprints Zillo did of past R+ interviews until 2009 and booklet they did promoting MiG. And the other being a huge Metal Hammer spread about RR. This has a special Emu and Hellner interview too which is cool. I also have another Hellner interview from 2017 but it's in French if anyone wants to contact me for it. Idk French. I have a whole collection of various French Rock Hard interviews from the band.

There is SO MUCH here it's actually insane to sort through. It will seriously take me a week or more to deal with 😩

I have scanned the most supreme stuff immediately though. He is not a model. He is 100% casual and not trying to be a sexy fucker. Nope. He just does that. Naturally in that position. Do you not read like this every day?

I made this a custom edit (color fixes) and crop. But the real version is here.

In 2001, Paul personally has apologized for doing shitty Bravo pic ideas. He is thinking of this, I swear to you that's it. And how he'll never do something that shit again. I just knew instinctively what he was apologizing for. I'm a woman and I know what sin he needs to repent for. That one. The onlz other candidate is this mess.

I barely made a dent into scanning other pages but the 1997 image is in high resolution non-blurry now 💕

Please go to the magazines folder for the full sizes. I also have interviews cropping up this week to match it. So far, I added three of his~

Ewa has been the sweetest ever and now I have a custom blue Paul folder 💙

I told her how much I like him in Halleluja, Engel, etc and even the b-stage Ohne dich was like that. But in recent years, there isn't really much blue. So she took care of it with custom ones. Only Du hast has a white-blue hue it seems anymore.

I also got Ahti to find the MHB Christmas card and a 2001 monk cut poster.

An update about the pick, I couldn't get it!! But, we were able to get more information on it to explain why it's impossible and in low circulation. It was a very limited amount of picks made for Paul by Alex Becker as a gift in 2001. That is why the sellers and availability is like this. And why hardly anyone knows much about it when you ask... let it be known now through me. Knowledge!

I think about Paul comforting the sweet Romanian woman during Rosenrot filming lately whenever I was hurt.

Humming something cheerful, he signs on the cover of my DVD, and draws me a smiling face, very funny. As thanks, I throw myself at his neck, kiss him on the cheeks and hold each other tightly. I'm happy...

C: Thank you, Paul. For EVERYTHING. You're...
Paul, approve, help me through gestures and mimicry: "I know... and I will... everything is ok. Only good."

Everything is going to be okay. Only good 🐇💕

Happy new year's~ 🎉

My parcel of magazines was mailed. Estonian post is always so fast but the US is slow. He used the premium shipping which is faster at least. Last time that took ~8 days. So let me hope for the same. Right now, it made it to the Estonian airport. I check my email to confirm my payment for him and he tells me; "hey I can't promise this 100% yet but I'm trying really hard to get this Paul pick for you from 2001."

Me, barely awake: whAT ?? ? huH?

I click the photo and then he found it!?!?

I turned into the Shiny Ponyta Kid again. He knows, and I know, all the collectors are after this one. I'm not even competing with fangirls. No. No. It's guys with their 50 pick collections who are fighting tooth and nail for this as we speak. If there's anything I know is, finding Paul picks is like diving to the bottom of the ocean to get one. Especially stage used. Sometimes you have to make the right connections with the right guy. He really knows his R+ sellers and collectors. And how to haggle with them. It's incredible.

I put my faith in this man he'll get this thing! Hoping. Good thoughts only! Prayers we manifest 2010 Gibson card from Frankfurt Musikmesse next 🙏

I've been playing a Pokemon Emerald romhack and I like it a lot. I made it to Lilycove and derailed myself with contests. I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos lately to pass time in the background. My fave lately is "art at midnight". She makes really good videos about films and music. I've also aided my study by watching films with DE subs turned on if I can find it.

There is also us having late night (afternoon to me) discussions of Paul with Ewa. It's very fun when we get the time. Or lots of jokes. 😅 And lots of thirstposting.

I wanted to learn how to make a custom tumblr theme. I could do it in the past with some basic tutorials. So I looked at the modern practices and structure of the CSS used today compared to 2012. My response was this. Shhh tumblr, no don't do this to me.

I'm doing really well on tumblr. Which surprised me. I wasn't sure the activity of the community or what goes on specifically. I only ever browsed casually every some weeks. Thank you very much 💝 I'll continue to curate posts I personally enjoy.

Stuff I did this year:
- anxiety med so far works after adjustment
- the program I was put into is very similar to this
- improved my living space a lot with decor and downsizing
- made a contact in Europe to get merch easier (blessing)
- started the planning of my European trip
- overhauled my website design and contents
- learned more about domains and how to use some features
- made a sweet friend who has been wonderful
- joined tumblr (again) to post gifs (my calling)
- tried to learn mobile design (very difficult to me)
- studying DE a lot harder every day (1 hour)
- I started dating someone intermittently so far (every other week)

I hope others accomplished things this year for themselves. It's never too late to start improving.