Great expectations are not always great expectations but might turn out to be great expectations in the end

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

So it has been a year since I went to NOISE in Bologna. For those of you who know me or who've been there as well or who've ever been to NOISE any time beforehand, you know how much those two weeks can change your life, and certainly my life has changed, or, at least, NOISE set off a couple of "chain reactions" (or maybe not chain reactions, because causality, as Siegfried J. Schmidt once put it, is a category of the human mind much more than a category of things or "reality". Anyway, I won't go there now...). So, of course, "anniversaries" like that are also moments where you look back; think back; 'feel' back; in the attempt to sort of judge or make sense of what happened to you or with you or through you in a particular period of your life.

Again, for those of you who know me (and for those of you who don't know me but read my blog; which I think are not a hell lotta people, but in my little head I often imagine some unknown, anonymous reader...), you know that this has been quite a rough year for me, to say the least; both on a private and a professional level. I wrote in one of my previous postings (Sketch of numbers) that 2008 is my purgatory, and to some extend, I still think it is/was.

But when talking to a friend of mine today, I realised one thing: I am so deeply, deeply grateful for this year too. Not only because I had this fancy jet-set scholarship that allowed me to travel around Europe and work on my PhD 24 hours per day, seven days a week (if I had wanted to). But mainly, obviously, because of the people I met and who've become my friends; people giving me the opportunity to sort of see myself again with new eyes; people who've - to make a very strong claim - allowed me to reinvent myself. Looking back, I realise how - despite all the shit that happened - privileged I am. I mean, after all, isn't it the most amazing thing to be able to change your life; considering there are so many people out there who - for whatever reasons, and even though they would like to - cannot change their lives? And isn't it amazing to actually change your life; considering there are so many people out there who - for whatever reasons, and even though they could - do not change their lives?

So, to sum things up, 2008 might be my purgatory. But what I forgot at the time I wrote that posting is: There are two ways out of purgatory. One is to hell. The other one is to heaven.

Mia mein Mia

One of the best things about Berlin.

Christmas in August

Dear Santa-EU,
here's my wish list for the book Christmas you so generously accorded to me:
- Michel Foucault: Dits et Ecrits, vol. I-IV. (which means that now I basically own everything he ever said or wrote [as far as it has been published. Still waiting for the fourth volume of The history of sexuality to appear]. I'm on my way to heaven - my bible is finally complete: gospels (History of sexuality I-III [both in French and in German], Discipline and Punish, Madness and civilization, The Order of Things); the new and the old testament (Archeology of knowledge [dito: in French and in German], The Order of discourse) and the psalms (all the posthumously published lectures, and now, finally!, Dits et Ecrits I-IV. Boy, I really am a Foucault-geek.)
- Gilles Deleuze: Foucault.
- Paul Ricoeur: Temps et Récit, vol. I-III.
- Judith Butler: Undoing Gender.
- John Searle: On Speech Acts.
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty: La Prose du Monde.
- Ian Hacking: Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory.
- Ian Hacking: The social construction of what?
- George Canguilhem: Essays in epistemology and history of science.

I'd be yours truly forever and a day (if you'd only let me),
Marie Curie

PS: In case you haven't noticed - books are my Manolo Blahniks.

Who the freak are you?

It took me about six and a half years to figure out the following thing: I am not made for a 'conventional' life, neither on a professional, nor on a private level; and, what's more: I might not even be interested in it.

Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that I am particularly proud of, and maybe not even particularly happy about this, and I am certainly not saying that I am the most unconventional, exceptional, different, or whatever person. I think that deep down in myself, I had (and to some extent still have) a longing for a somewhat conventional, settled, clear-cut life, and this more or less unconscious wish might be connected to the fact that I never really experienced such a thing (but in the end: who really has? Always remember Judy Butler: the norm is an ideal; a virtual, unattainable structure.). I am not trying to praise myself about this; honestly, there are a lot of moments where I wish(ed) I had a conventional life; you know, a regular, decently paid job, a reasonable amount of free time, being able to sleep at night, marriage, kids - you know, the whole programm.

Moreover, I am not convinced at all of the 'virtue' of unconventionality. I think a lot of people consider unconventionality as a form of moral superiority (what Norbert Bolz calls die Konformisten des Andersseins): If you're unconventional, you're special, which equals that you're 'better' than the so-called 'conventionals'. You're making a difference, you're being an individual (or individualistic); you're standing out of the crowd. (I won't go into all the details about the concept of individualism as truly modern and - as some thinkers say [guess who? yes! Foucault for example] - fundamentally ideological. Individualism is the oil that keeps you working like a proper little wheel in the wheelwork while in the meantime you think you're the most special person to have ever blessed this planet with its existence [remember The Matrix? Well, I believe individualism is more or less like the matrix but without the whole cyber stuff. Which is always why I think we needn't be so worried about genetic engeneering. Remember, after all, that the Nazis - next to their eugenic and racial concepts - inforced a totalitarian regime, you know, the whole symbolism of the 'leader' and his 'people', the organisations, the behavioural codes, the conventions with torch relays. Which is just to say: Genes are not everything. You have to tame life and coincidence as well.]).

Again: Don't get me wrong, I am certainly not trying to argue that we should all be nice and behave properly and not cause any troubles by crossing a red light; of course, social change might never happen without unconventionality. But I think there is a difference between being unconventional and being abnormal, and the difference for me is that you're unconventional by choice, and abnormal by necessity. Unconventionality is a luxury; abnormality is a curse. Unconventionality is a target group with profit potential; abnormality causes the state to spend a lot of tax money on hospitals, mental asylums and jails.

Welcome to the jungle

Welcome to the jungle
We've got fun'n'games
We got everything you want
Honey, we know the names
We are the people that can find
Whatever you may need
If you got the money, honey
We got your disease

In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it
bring you to your knees, knees
I wanna watch you bleed

Welcome to the jungle
We take it day by day
If you want it you're gonna bleed
But it's the price you pay
And you're a very sexy girl
That's very hard to please
You can taste the bright lights
But you won't get them for free
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Feel my, my, my serpentine
I, I wanna hear you scream

Welcome to the jungle
It gets worse here everyday
Ya learn ta live like an animal
In the jungle where we play
If you got a hunger for what you see
You'll take it eventually
You can have anything you want
But you better not take it from me

In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it
bring you to your knees, knees
I wanna watch you bleed

And when you're high you never
Ever want to come down, YEAH!

You know where you are
You're in the jungle baby
You're gonna die

In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your knees, knees
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Feel my, my, my serpentine
In the jungleWelcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your knees, knees
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your
It's gonna bring you down-HA!




The outfits! The hairstyles! Vive les 90ies!

I'll try to

Okay, so appart from the fact that this song really touches me right down to the bone these days, I really love how it manages to strech out a more or less 30 second conversation to 3 min 21 secs. Very accurately noticing every gesture, even the tiniest one; registering the gazillion thoughts that go through your head within a few seconds, all the past and the future lost overwhelming you in the fraction of an instant; the ironic, yet somewhat slightly comforting use of proverbs ("there's plenty more fish in the sea").
Plus: I love the music video. The song is very closely depicting an encounter of two lovers parting; yet in the music video, you only see one person; the loneliness emphasized and exaggerated by the sheer emptiness of all the abandonned public places.
(I've always wanted to dedicate a song, so here it goes): This song goes out to all the broken hearts. Hang on in there; dry your eyes. I'll try to do the same.

The Dark Knight/Night

So I saw the highly commercialised and highly appraised new Batman movie. It's kinda hard to like a movie that has been so much in the celebrity headlines, surrounded by an armada of gossip, tragic stories/scandals (Heath Ledger's death and the rumours that he'll posthumously be awarded an Oscar; Christian Bale apparently beating up his mother and sis'; Morgan Freeman getting caught in a car accident with his long-time mistress - boy, I guess you could make another movie out of all these stories). But, fact is, I did really like it. And I think if anyone deserves a posthumous Oscar, Heath Ledger is the man (and I won't go into the pros and cons of the presumed quality or non-quality of Oscars at this point).

What I find most interesting about this movie and its "message", is how it debates the whole concept of "freaks". If you've read your Foucault (and those who know me know I haven't merely read Foucault, but consider it as my bible), one of the first associations that comes to your mind is that a society of "normals", the "everyday people", fundamentally need the abnormal and deviant, the freaks. The abnormal is the negative pattern in relation to which we define our "normalness". You know, the whole concept of the oppositions being constituted by each other, A is only A because it's not B, etc. (Saussure, Derrida, Butler, blablabla - you get the picture).

I think Foucault also said that in the modern western world, the abnormal are somewhat integrated in the society of normals; like a "fold" (I love when he writes about folds; one day I'll write a paper about the concept of fold with Foucault) - what he calls, if I remember correctly, heterotopies: If you're sick, you're going to the hospital; if you're a lunatic, you're going to the looney bin; if you're a criminal, you're going to jail. You're locked up, but you're locked up in institutions of the society. We wouldn't like to have people like the Joker (or Batman, for that matter), running around loose (and, obvioulsy, that's what the whole movie is about: capturing the Joker - and Batman to some extend as well -, in order to lock him up. Though why they want to put him in jail is sort of debatable. You could also send him to the looney bin.). But hospitals, mental asylums, and jails are sort of non-places: You're in the grip of society (at the utmost point of its control, actually), but also outside of "the normal life", outside of society. Those places are sign posts to the world of the "normals": if you don't behave like the others, you'll end up in a cell, and get dinner served at 5 pm. (Suzanna Kaysen has a lot to say about this in Girl, Interrupted. The following quote, for example, is very Foucauldian, I think: "It is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.")

Let me also dilettantishly divage into the theory of psychoanalysis: One of the main concepts of psychonalysis is about creating a heterotopia within yourself, to speak in Foucauldian terms. The major developmental/cultural assignement is to create a space within yourself where you relegate all the agressive, psychotic, narcisstic, etc. impulses (what is considered "abnormal" and therefore not accepted by culture) into a mental space, the unconscious. A place that, even though it is within your mental landscape and rules a lot of your conscious life without you even noticing, is not accessible anymore, lost forever; a non-place. And should you have the unfavourable idea of regressing towards it, you'll end up in a mental asylum under heavy medication.

In ancient, mythical/religious times or cultures - to give one more example - , communities would select a person, a scaptegoat, that would symbolize all the evil and "abnormal", and kill him or her - sacrifice, as they say. (And maybe this is why the western world - and Christianity - is considered so 'civilized': We don't kill people anymore, we just look them up. Which is a form of social death anyway, to speak with Butler).

Coming back to the movie, here are a couple of things I found noticeable in regard to what I've just said: First of all, I think it becomes pretty clear that we need the freaks in order to feel our own "normalness"; and that works for both the fictional world of characters in the movie, as for the "real" audience watching it. Looking at the Joker, we (or I) tend to have the impulse "Thank god, I'm not like him". Not only in terms of "woa, he's just a psycho, and I'm normal, and I know how normal I am when I look at him", but also because you tend to feel sorry for him (at least, that's what I did). You know, deprived childhood, very literally "marked by life", all that sort of stuff. Secondly, it makes a statement (very banal, if you like, but still) that the line between being a "good" (read: normal) person, and being an outcast is actually pretty thin, if you think about it. (See the quote from Girl, Interrupted above: It is easy to slip into a parallel universe.) Thirdly, what I think is most striking, because we think about it so little: If you're a hero, you're abnormal as well. Batman does not live a "normal" life either (no girl, no friends, money galore). Batman is a freak just like the Joker is. And ultimately, he becomes a scapegoat - he becomes all that society wants him to be; the ultimate abject, the freak. The very last voice-over says something about him being the "dark knight"; him chosing not to be a hero, but a scapegoat, because a scapegoat is what Gotham needs, and its people need it more than a hero (which is a very interesting turn, I think. Maybe the superhero-function of our times is the freak, who, by his abject status can break all the rules, all the boundaries, thus paradoxically becoming a scapegoat. Think about the fascination and the fear we have of terrorists.)

And finally, I think there was (but I'm not sure since I saw the German version and not the original version), a very nice play of homophony about the title: At one point, the star attorney (who is the "white knight" through big parts of the movie) makes this speech defending Batman, comparing the fact that through Batman's actions things might have become worse to some extend (the Joker showing up, criminality getting worse and more fierce, etc.), with the night being at darkest before dawn. So, you know, Batman aka the dark knight symbolizes the absolute downfall, the darkest point of the night before things get better. You have to sacrifice a person in order to make things better; but that moment, when you sacrifice one life to save thousands of others, is the darkest moment.

Oh, and last reason why I loved that movie: Maggie Gyllenhaal. She's a hottie.

Das Ende

Wenn ich dieses Scheiß-Wochenende überstanden habe, dann schlage ich drei Kreuze.

Instead of drunk dialing or drunk messaging...

I never meant things to happen this way. I wanted to be serious about life; proper, clear-cut, sober, measured - reasonable, if you like.
I talked to a very dear friend of mine recently, and she said that she was curious about life, always asking for more, always asking why. I don't ask for more anymore (woa, what a line...); in the face of things happening to me, I've been asking myself for quite a few years now: Why? but in the sense of: why me? I never asked for anything other than a little slice of happiness; not a very big one, you know, just the bearable kind. Just the "oh, I'll have just a tiny, little serving more"-kinda type. Over time, and in the face of the things that happened to me, all I ask for now is to be left alone; not to be bothered anymore. I feel like I've enough to cope for as it is; so thanks - I don't need anymore of anything, really. Other maybe than the utmost piece of happiness; this time the boundary-less, unjustifiably big happiness-portion, all for myself and without conditions; without the ifs and buts, without back-doors.

And spare me with all the bullshit about self-pity and narcistic self-centeredness. Right now, I think I am entitled to a lot of self-pity. I'm sitting here with my Ipod on, and it doesn't even have a repeat function that allows me to hear my favourite song without having to press a button all the time; so I think I'm entitled to a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge amount of self-pity.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Mantra

People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.

Fifth lesson of academic logic

Question: You know how you can tell that your life isn't really that exciting, tragic, or special?

Answer: When your analyst almost falls asleep during a session.

Conclusion 1: Learn to relativize. Your life is never that exciting, tragic or special as you think it is.

Conclusion 2: Learn story-telling. One aspect of creating suspense is whether or not you have an interesting story to tell in the first place, another (equally important, if not more important) aspect is the way you tell your story.

Oh-o say can you see...?

A lot of people, when they first travel to the United States, say that they're simply overwhelmed by the sheer greatness of the things there: Shopping malls the size of a village; fast food portions that are at least twice the size of portions in Europe; skyscrapers; and people, quantities of people everywhere. Obviously this experience of sheer extensivness is an experience of comparison - compared to what you're used to in Europe, the US seem to do everything on a bigger scale.
Now, compared to Austria, Germany sure does seem like the United States in some respect, especially when it comes to food. Maybe this is linked to history and the close connection (at least Western) Germany used to have with the United States (you know, the Marshall plan, the hole idea of Wesern Germany being a bastion against the Sowjet union, etc.). Being - to use Sting's words - an Austrian woman in Frankfurt, this difference in size sometimes seems particularly striking to me. Let me give you some examples.

- Sausages. We have sausages in Austria too, but compared to the sausages you get in Germany, they seem like doll size sausages. First of all, because of the size: Take a regular Austrian sausage, and add at least 1/3 of lenght, double the circumference and the proportional amount of grease. On top, the sausages you can get here ready-made are mostly grilled (as compared to boiled in Austria), stuffed in a bun (which accentuates the size of the sausage even more, because it's sticking out at either end of the bread; the lenght of the bun making only about a third of the lenght of the sausage; see illustration #1), and sometimes they are served with the most horrible, and possibly most unhealthy kind of sauce (the famous Currywurst is an example of that; see illustration #2). We have a saying in Austria: Everything has an end, only the sausage has two (Ois hot a End nur die Wuascht hot zwa.). That may be right for German sausages as well, but the problem is that you can't see the other end of the sausage once you've started eating it.
- Cakes. Austria is fairly well know for its pastries; a lot of Austrians even eat pastries as a main dish (this is not a joke. They do. When I was in boarding school, we would get Palatschinken with jam, a thicker kind of crêpes, for lunch. I'm traumatized, as you can imagine.). But the cakes in Germany are just insane. Not only are the portions about a 1/3 bigger than the Austrian ones, but they have an extra of everything: fruit cakes with 2cm layers of jello, cakes with whipped cream and chocolate and nougat, crumble-like cakes with fruits squashed and hopelessly lost between enormous layers of dough on the bottom and crumbles on top. If you eat a German cake, you already had your main dish for the day.

- Cars. I think it was Marcello Mastroianni who said that if you ever drive on German highways, you understand why Germany started two world wars (which, historically speaking, is not quite correct, I think. Germany merely started WWII, the Austrians are responsible for starting WWI. But okay, we get your point Marcello.). Germany is not only known for its highways without speed limits, but also for its big cars. Even Frankfurt, which is a city with no mountains around (at least not what Austrians consider as mountains), has an incredibly high rate of SUV and Jeeps. If you drive around in a Porsche in Hamburg, people won't even notice you. I heard that BMW has produced (or is producing?) a car with 300 PS. Which reminds me of a very witty pun I once read in a German newspaper article about the Germans and their cars: Usually, the size and model of your car symbolically says "I could drive very fast, if I wanted to". Nowadays - considering the level of traffic on most German highways -, that saying should be changed to "I could drive very fast, if I only could."

PS. Have you noticed how I'm into using illustrations these days?

PPS. For those who didn't know (or didn't guess from my posting): Austrians have a long lasting, carefully cultivated aversion against Germans.

Illustration #1. Or: The phallic sausage (notice the add in the background).


Illustration #2. This just doesn't look right, if you ask me. It just doesn't look natural at all.

Bonus track: the famous white sausage from Munich (which is actually pretty good, I have to admit).

Saturday night; partial eclipse of the moon: getting misty with Erroll Garner

The Celibate Life

Increasing divorce rates, the presumable demographic development, and a greater valorisation of individualism in the so-called Western world has lead to the discovery of a new consumer group: singles.

Whereas in earlier times one was condescendingly considered a spinster, an eccentric bachelor, or simply as a pot that hasn't found its lid yet, nowadays, you can find products tailored to a life "alone": Vacations organized especially for singles (which, of course, have only one aim: that you're not single anymore after the vacation), single-packages of toast or ready-made meals (which are - though smaller - almost twice as expensive as family-size packages, suggesting of course that as a single you have enough money to spend even on small packages of food), single parties, etc. (I guess it's very interesting though how most of the activities that are aimed at the single-consumer-group do in fact ultimately want to help you find a partner; which means of course that the attitude towards living alone hasn't really changed. If you live alone, you do so out of necessity, not choice; you're in fact always trying to change your single-status and finally! find someone to be together with so that you can buy family-size packages of chips.)

In any case, today I saw what I think is the sadest product ever made for singles: a telescope back scratcher, which basically looked like a slightly bent fork on a metal tube. It wasn't openly advertised as being for singles, but I think by its function it was pretty clear that it was for those sad and lonesome people who don't even have someone who'd scratch their backs when they need to (hence: the telescope back scratcher). Tempting as it was, I didn't buy it. If I feel an itch on my back, I prefer to do what bears in the wildlife do: rub against a tree.

Oh, I don't know. Call it whatever you want.

You know how you sometimes want life so much it hurts?

Layperson's treatise on the relationship between plastic and capitalism. Or: I hate those shoes, but I'm gonna pretend to be objective anyway.

I've been wondering lately about the new fashion - common among friends, family members, stars and everyday people alike - of wearing plastic shoes (see illustration #1 and #2 for examples). I'm not only wondering, I'm actually a bit intrigued by it: How come people spend money on that kind of shoes, and sometimes even (if they buy the "originals") a lot of money? The margin between the value of raw materials and the actual price they cost seems ridiculous to me. Why would I spend so much money on a product that is basically made out of the same material as the shopping bags I get for free in the supermarket?

Granted, capitalism as a system is based (among other things) on enlarging the margin between production value and market value; and basically this margin is very, very expandable - as can be seen in our current example. This reaches a point where the market value has virtually nothing to do with the price of production of certain goods; market value is in fact not measurable through the real costs of production, it is about symbolic value - about the image you communicate through the aquisition of certain products (this is what - very tellingly - marketing is all about).

So what does one communicate with wearing those kinda shoes, besides - of course - the very basic message that you're trendy and fashionable and hip (to speak in the parlance of our times).

I've noticed that people wearing plastic shoes of the kind you can see in illustration #2 very often emphasize their commodity and convenience: They're sort of the pig of shoe fashion, insofar as they are all-purpose shoes (just like pigs eat everything). You can wear them for camping, inside and outside the house, they're really light and easy to clean, fairly undestroyable I would presume, etc. You're a brisk, efficient, active person who can't really spend much time on worrying about wearing the right shoes for all the different things you do during the day; you just want something on your feet that will fit for whatever activity your about to engage in, even if it's just going down to the mail box to collect the newspaper. Those kind of shoes are a very illustrative example of the very wise sentence my handicraft teacher used to tell us: form follows function (high heels, for example, do not follow this maxime at all. I read a quote by some IT-girl in the fashion-glam magazine I bought recently, and what she said was: "Once you've accepted the idea that you're not supposed to walk in high heel shoes, it actually works pretty well").

The plastic shoes also come in all sort of colours, signaling that you're basically a happy and fairly self-confident person, a person that doesn't mind wearing, say, bright yellow shoes and thus run around looking like a duck. So the paradox here is: they're fashionable shoes that pretend not to be fashionable at all, but merely useful. They're sort of shoe-ish understatement. More understatement, and you'd have to wear rubber boots or no shoes at all.

But, judging from my point of view, there's also a second dimension in the market value of plastic shoes, very tellingly incarnated by the shoes like you can see in illustration #1. If I look at them, I am reminded of my childhood: we would wear similar shoes (though without the very trendy pointy end) at the seaside. This, of course, also follows the first, understatement-component: Children don't worry about the design of their outfit or the looks of their appearance (and shoes), but merely want something to comfortably run around with in the dirt. By wearing these shoes you're thus also signaling that you're (still) in touch with your inner child; a topic that is also recurrent in CEO seminars. You want to be in touch with your inner child, because it symbolizes creativity, spontaneity, a certain simplicity, a fresh and unconsumed look at the world and its inhabitants. (I think the inner child is the Rousseauian homme naturel of our times; a regulative idea symbolizing the unconsumed and uncorrupted origin.) If you're in touch with your inner child, you obviously need shoes that will signal this inner attitude to the outside world - hence the shoes. They're the symbol of a sort of a second, but immensely more cool childhood, because now of course you're an adult, and you can actually do all the things you've always wanted to do (like for example wearing bright pink plastic shoes), without anybody telling you off.

Two wise men once said two wise sentences, namely The medium is the message, and You cannot not communicate.

PS: Speaking of hip - did you know that Chardonnay is the new Bourdeaux?

Illustration #1


Illustration #2

Homesick

I miss this:

Insomnia

Allright, so I thought I was over it, but apparently I'm not. You know, sleep is a capricious friend sometimes. If you want to, you can't, and if you can, you don't want to (which applies to a lot of things, I know, but that would take us too far now, wouldn't it).

Generally speaking though, I love to sleep. I love being in bed, especially since my present appartment doesn't have any other comfortable place to slouch about. I also have very particular (you might call it neurotic, I don't care) sleeping rituals:

First - pyjamas. The greatest garment invention of humankind, I think, well, since the loin cloth anyway. Take away my underwear, my fancy outfits and beloved print T-shirts, but don't leave me without my pyjamas. It's a no go.

Second - reading. Reading before going to sleep, or after I wake up, that's me in a nutshell. Sometimes I even manage to read when I get home from going out and I am totally wasted, and of course I can't even really decipher the letters - let alone the meaning - of a text anymore. But I don't know, reading just soothes me, it calmes me down, it sort of sings me into sleep. (Granted, it doesn't always work -> see tonight.)

Third - water beside my bed. A habit I've started only fairly recently, but for some reason I am super thirsty even at night/during the night these days. (Spare me with any psychoanalytical interpretation of what I might be really thirsty for.) Interestingly enough though, there's a strange thing with me and water: when I get up in the morning, I can't drink water (unless there's really nothing else available and I am dying and I need to take like a package full of aspirin to feel at least halfway human again), I have to drink juice or tea or coffee or something "tasty" first. Water just tastes gross in the morning, I think.

Fourth - a pillow. I need a pillow. I just need it. I remember horrible, horrifying, gruesome camping vacations where I had to sleep without a pillow for a week or so; it was hell. I can deal with the hardness of the ground, the claustrophic feeling your legs experience in a sleeping bag, the noises, the insects - no problem. But without a pillow, I become an unhappy camper.

So here we are: 4 basic conditions of my sleepy happiness. And it doesn't work tonight. I'm not anyway near tired, I'm not even rubbing my eyes. I feel like I could go out and run or something like that. I wish I had tranquillizers or sleeping pills, you know, the heavy-duty stuff. All I have are these homeopathic drops that taste like the alcohol we used to make in chemistry class as an experiment, and which of course won't help even if you swallow half a bottle (you don't even get drunk). Life is just down right cruel, sometimes.

Fourth lesson of academic logic

Richtiges Auffassen einer Sache und Missverstehen der gleichen Sache schließen einander nicht vollständig aus.
Franz Kafka, Der Prozess

Oh, inverted world

I might have made a complete fool of myself. Something along the lines of publicly confessing you like Tokio Hotel, or the likes, but a bit worse. But then again: no risk, no fun.

Whatever.

You know there are those moments when I don't trust my own feelings.

How many of us live our adventures as future narrations of the past, even if they are recorded only in our private archives, our photo albums, or the narrative form of our memories?

Mark Currie, Postmodern Narrative Theory

That's just fucking amazing

Creative idea. Great choreography. One-shot. Shiny white shoes. Fantastic.
I'm saving my money to buy a treadmill.

Is this the real life/ is this just fantasy

So I picked up this glam-fashion magazine the other day for a train ride. Flipping through the pages, I got stuck at a section dedicated to the upcoming fashion, including not only pictures of the runway, but also the sketches of various designers. Looking at this, it suddently dawned on me: Fashion designers do not design their clothes for women, but for anorectic giraffes. Here is a selection of my fav's.

Goth girl gone anorectic.


Power suit my arse. You look like Bugs Bunny with a beret.


I call that look "Roaring Twenties meets Alien".


Okay. I do not think that it's physiologically possible for a human being to have such a neck. Or: Look for the 10 little differences.

First I thought: Allright, at least the woman has boobs, big ones even. Until I realized that it's not boobs, it's just the fabric of the back of the dress.


Yes, that looks more like me on a cold day. Except for the legs that look like matches. And except for the weird angle at which the torso is bent. Seriously, it looks as though her knees are her hips.

At least this designer is into abstraction.

PS: Special thanks to my only neighbour who doesn't code his/her wireless lan. I now have internet access at home again.

Moral masturbation

"Further, while one might narrate anything within a great range of possible moral values and possible transgressions, the most basic moral proposition, which is contained in some form by all first-person narratives, is I am a good person."

Charlotte Linde, Life Stories. The Creation of Coherence.

The problem of course is that, no matter what we do, we want to reach out to the often-cited other, while at the same time it seems that trespassing the nombrilical cosmos of narcistic self-satisfaction is quite impossible. You want to, in one way or another, make a difference, make a contribution, leave something behind. You want to matter in some way, not only to yourself and the people to whom you - for reasons of consanguity, or because they're your friends, or because you have good sex with them, or because they love you, or because you work with them - matter, but to anyone or anything out there. So you plant a tree, you buy fair trade products, you pursue a teaching career, you try not to walk around and kill people just because you don't like their face, you go out and adopt 25 children from third-world countries (n'est pas, Brangelina?). Throughout time, people have tried to live good lives - and thus behave like moral beings - because of various reasons: because they thought it was aesthetic in the old Greek sense (the old trinity of the good, the beautiful and the true), for example, or because they hoped for a redemption in a life to come (and hence to make a difference in the eyes of God).

But in the end, isn't all of this about yourself, about the satisfactory feeling of doing "the right thing", that is somewhat indecent because it proclaims doing something good only for the benefit of others, or for the benefit of the good in itself? Isn't a moral life, a good life, always some sort of self-rewarding enterprise? Is it ever about the (human or non-human) other?

Kool and the gang

My new fancy


My new haircut


My new music


In the words of Emma Goldman: If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution!

The Music of the Self

Further, the past should be not only related but relevant to the present; that is, the self should be continuous – legato rather than staccato.

Charlotte Linde, Life Stories. The Creation of Coherence.

Capitalism + bureaucracy = mess

Okay, so they invented this miraculously tiny car called SMART, and one of its advantages is that being so small, you can park it both parallel and in a 90 degrees angle to the curb, increasing the chances of finding a parking spot in the city to, say, at least 95%. (Although I am not sure whether it actually makes a difference regarding the space you use whether you park it one way or the other. Further investigation is definitely needed here.)
But in Germany, you get a fine for wrong parking if you park your car at a 90 degrees angle to the curb.

So much for the inconsistencies of capitalist and bureaucratic systems.

This sucks big time

Dear Kate Perry,

appart from the fact that your music video&song pretend to be about a female lesbo fantasy while really depicting the crudest male, heterosexual porn-fantasy gaze, you are oh so fucking politically correct that I want to throw up. It's like: On top of being sexually liberated (at least in your dreams), you even have an African American boyfriend. Is this pathetic shit your interpretation of what '68 did for us, or what?

To sum things up: You suck!

Yours annoyed.

Inventory

Things I did today:
- I transferred money back and forth between my three (!) bank accounts.
- I paid two bills and one debt.
- I spent like an hour trying to find out about the things I need for upcoming applications and stressed about it for another hour.
- I made a new Facebook friend.
- I wrote yet another begging email for a letter of reference.
- I read half a chapter of the book Literary and linguistic approaches to feminist narratology.
- I warded off a phone call that promised me I had just won some weird card which would allow me incredible reductions to all sorts of shops if only I would give my bank account number so that the insane amounts of money I'd safe (by spending money) would be transferred back to me.
- I wrote three entries on my blog.
- I unsuccessfully tried to get through to my phone company because my internet/phone at home are not working (yet again!).
- I spent like an hour trying to find a decent cell phone rate but gave up in the end.

Plans for the upcoming evening:
- I need to buy food.
- I want to go running.
- I want to finish the book I'm reading.

Third lesson of academic logic

As an academic, you are sort of trained (some might call it: forced) to read (and ultimately even understand) texts such as Jacques Derrida's Différance, or Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, Luce Irigaray's Speculum, or Michel Foucault's The order of things, and thus decipher complex train of thoughts (I once saw Foucault's and Derrida's work classified as "mytho-crypticism"), which are burdened with references to all sorts of other complex concepts you might not have even heard about, let alone read.
This does not, however, enable you to understand and choose between an almost utterly ridiculous variety of cell phone rates. As easy as such an enterprise might seem, there are all sorts of complications arising, caused mainly by the minute degree of differenciation between the different providers (for reasons of simplicity, I list them in the binary order of things that is so typical for occidental logocentrism and tends to emphasize the difference between entities rather than the differenciation within entities themselves and to themselves):
prepaid rate vs. contract,
online registration vs. local shops,
mailbox deactivation vs. mailbox activation,
keeping your old cell phone vs. getting a new one*
flat rate vs. basic package
...

Conclusion 1: If you need a new cell phone rate, you enter a kafkaesque universe that you won't - no matter how much Kafka you've read - ever be able to understand.

Conclusion 2: I think Derrida was right about the movement of différance.

* Note: If you choose to get a contract that includes a new cell phone, you decide to stay with the same provider for more or less half of your life; you're sort of getting married, and in case you do separate, you have to go through a ridiculous amount of papers justifying why you want to leave (which might include an excerpt from a foreign country's registration office that prooves you've really moved abroad) and despite all that still pay a monthly rate for the rest of your life.

Marco cannot stop; he must go on to another city where another part of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

I think I kissed a girl who had a beard
her hair was yellow
like autumn straw
and her hand like a red velvet glove
around my sweating body

I think I kissed a girl who had a beard
her eyes were white
like foaming waves
and the browness of her skin
around my sweating body

I think I kissed a girl who had a beard
her mouth was beige
like peaches
and the greenness of her breath
around my sweating body

I think I kissed a girl who had a beard
like a dream
found and forgotten
around my sweating body