Absolute Groupie

Dear Roisin,

I love how you manage to graciously balance that UFO-like hat of yours while doing all those gorgeous dance moves.
Let me know when you're lonley or giving a dance class.

Yours fondly.

Bah-hu

I love this song.

Sorting out stuff also means finding good and forgotten stuff again

Das Letzte

Tipps zum Einschlafen gibt es viele, vom warmen Vollbad bis zum Schafezählen. Aber was ist mit dem, der wach bleiben will? Hier hat der Markt der guten Ratschläge bisher versagt. Wir haben allerdings ein Mittelchen gefunden, das wir an dieser Stelle zum Patent anmelden wollen.

Der Schlafscheue möge sich ein beliebiges Supermarktregal denken und aus den vorgefundenen Marken (Danone, Nivea, Sunlich, Hengstenberg) plausible Kombinationen von Vor- und Nachnamen bilden (zum Beispiel Danone Sunlicht, Nivea Hengstenberg). Das allein ist schon nicht einfach, aber erst der Anfang! Denn nun müssen wir versuchen, die junge Danone Sunlicht, brünett, üppig, hochgewachsen, mit dem passenden Mann zusammenzubringen. Das wird ja wohl kaum der kleinwüchsige Tchibo Snickers sein, auch wenn er als Profigolfer manch Mädchenherz gebrochen hat. Der Rallye-Fahrer Aldi Pampers wiederum ist schon mit Melitta Nuts liiert, und Ariel Warsteiner soll das Familienvermögen durch eine Ehe mit Campari Domestos, Erbin eines griechischen Großreeders, vermehren. Bleibt fürs Erste nur der fesche Twix Henkel, doch wird von ihm gemunkelt, eine Affäre mit der mondänen Ikea Hakle, geborene Feucht, zu unterhalten. Was Mars Hakle, ihr Mann, darüber denkt, müssen wir nun, mit wachsender Unruhe uns hin und her wälzend, erst überlegen. Wahrscheinlich, spekulieren wir, hat er selbst ein außereheliches Verhältnis, und zwar mit der aparten Camelia Sprüngli. Oder etwa nicht? Haben wir den Bericht in der Bunten vergessen, in dem von einer gewissen Vampyrette Holsten die Rede war?

An dieser Stelle dürfte selbst der Müdeste zugeben, dass an Schlaf nicht mehr zu denken ist. Vielmehr wird er seine feuchte Stirn mit dem Plumeau abtupfen, weil ihm soeben siedendheiß eingefallen ist, dass die Galeristin Camelia Sprüngli doch bekanntermaßen eine Beziehung mit dem japanischen Videokünstler Tempo Omo hat. Oder dient diese in der Presse absichtsvoll lancierte Beziehung nur zur Ablenkung von der sexuellen Orientierung Tempo Omos? Und dessen Liebhaber heißt in Wahrheit Eduscho Bahlsen? Dann aber kann Eduscho ("der General") Bahlsen kaum, wie Bild behauptet hatte, der Zukünftige von Vileda Sprite sein, was wiederum heißt, dass es eng wird auf dem Heiratsmarkt der Markenfamilien, wo sich schließlich noch Granola Landliebe, Juvena Frosch und die streng katholisch erzogene Zewa-Melitta Klosterfrau drängeln. Das heißt: Jetzt muss die Nachttischlampe an und eine ordentliche Liste geschrieben werden. Mit Schlaf ist jedenfalls endgültig FINIS.

Erschienen, in Die Zeit Nr.11

This is why the US housing crisis does not bother me

I guess one of the advantages of having lived in expensive cities ever since I moved out of my parent's home is that I am not completely freaked out by rents in Munich. Like why shouldn't I spend half my salary on a decent place?

News ticker

So apparently Sarah Palin got herself blessed against witchcraft by a pastor. For real.

I'm afraid not even witchcraft is of any help here.

Poem slice of the day

William Carlos Williams
The Ivy Crown

Romance has no part in it.
The business of love is
cruelty which,
by our wills,
we transform
to live together.

OMG

Sometimes, only vowels help:

aaaaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiauuuuhuhauhauhauhauahahahahahahhaahahahaahahahaiuiiihihihihhuiuiiiiiiiiiioooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooiiiiiiiiiiijeeieieieieieieieieieieieiieieieieieieiieie-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!

This MY fucking year, MY fucking life, MY fucking job!!!

Note to my self: I told you I was gonna get you out of this!

Update upon popuar request

Do not worry, dear reader, I'm still alive and kicking (which, needless to say, is next to miraculous). Though the doctor I called up after a night spent in utter desperation said I should really have my kidneys and my blood sugar tested once I'm back from my mini-vacation and job interview. Yes, you've read right: that's job interview as in JOB INTERVIEW. The stars are on my side again; 28 is MY year, life is beautiful, tralalala, la vie en rose and all the rest. You get the picture. In short: The world doesn't seem big enough for me today to not want to hug it.

This is what happens.

Hypochondriasis (or hypochondria, sometimes referred to as health phobia) refers to an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness. Often, hypochondria persists even after a physician has evaluated a person and reassured him/her that his/her concerns about symptoms do not have an underlying medical basis or, if there is a medical illness, the concerns are far in excess of what is appropriate for the level of disease. Many people suffering from this disorder focus on a particular symptom as the catalyst of their worrying, such as gastro-intestinal problems, palpitations, or muscle fatigue.

Cyberchondria is a colloquial term for hypochondria in individuals who have researched medical conditions on the Internet.

I am probably going to die within the next 24 hours because

1) my kidneys have a malfunction; or

2) I will fall into a diabetic coma; or

3) (most likely): both.

But at least I won't have to worry anymore about the appearance of black holes caused by particle accelerators (geez, and people ask me what my research is any good for?), the future of the German Socialist Party, what to wear for my prospective interview and whether or not my new hairstyle might interfere with looking serious at the interview.

Too bad though, I really would've liked to see the new Cohen Brother's movie.

The decline of Western civilisation...

The US gave the world music highlights such as the Pussycat Dolls. Germany answered back with Tokio Hotel. Let's call it a draw!
PS: Manga kid, you're not the only one who doesn't have any words to describe 'this'.

Poem of the day

Marina Zwetajewa: Gedicht

Bist fort: ich schneide
Das Brot mir nicht mehr.
Alles ist Kreide,
Was ich berührt.

... Warst, duftend heiß,
Mein Brot. Warst mein Schnee.
Und der Schnee ist nicht weiß,
Und das Brot tut weh.

Seventh lesson of academic logic

1. "If you want to enjoy something, do NOT organise it, just go!" (Domx, 2008)

2. You know what Team stands for? Toll Ein Anderer Macht's! (Great, someone else does it!)

3. If professors say: "I think we should do this and that..." What they really mean is: "I think you should do this and that...".

Conclusion: It's not about how much alcohol you drink, it's how fast you drink it that matters.

Haircut is a haircut is a haircut is a haircut

There are, obviously, a couple of (good) reasons to go to the hairdresser: utilitarian ones (you need a cut), aesthetic ones (you need a cut), or, sometimes, deeply psychological ones (you need a cut). Which just goes to say: a haircut is a haircut is a haircut, but sometimes it is also a so called break-up-haircut (so called by fashion-glam-women-magazines). That's the kind I got, and I actually got it twice - first, more moderate, then, more radical, and I have been wondering why ever since (and obviously this is not only about myself, since the phenomenon seems so widespread and culturally acknowledged that the fashion industry considers it to be a specific enough field to make money out of it by dedicating a magazine section to the topic).

Put very generally, getting a new haircut (as in: a different one from the one you had) more or less clearly, depending on its radicality, signals that something about you changed; thus it is a way of bringing your outer appearance in accordance with your inner feeling. The notion - or maybe need - of concordance of inner and outer appearance is not a very new idea: one of its most fierce spokesmen was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and his claim, though by no means a novelity in the 18th century, was remarkable mainly because he drastically applied it to himself.

The notion of inner and outer appearance having to concur in one way or another is then, in the 19th century, adapted, for example, into a difference of social and biological gender. (If you think the feminist sex-gender-divison of the 1970ies is something new, think again. You can find it all over the place in sexual pathology and sexual science starting from the 1850ies onwards. Though the originality of the feminist claim was - and to some extend still is - to dissociate the causal nexus between the two terms.) In the 19th century, a lot of scientific attention and effort was devoted to proving that there is a natural - and, more importantly: a normal - accordance between anatomical parts and social character (thereby digging its own grave, because if this accordance was as natural as scientists wanted to make everyone believe, then why all this brouhaha to prove something that is apparently simply 'there' anyway?).

One can find - but I am making this up as I go, so I might be wrong on this -, the idea of inner and outer appearance again in Lacan's concept of the mirror stage, this time turned into the division between the je and the moi: When the child recognizes itself in the mirror, it becomes aware of its own, separate existence. Thus, it is only when recognizing your outer appearance as your self (or yourself), you have become a subject according to Lacanian psychoanalysis. The joke being of course that you become a (as in: one) subject the instant you become a sort of split personality (je and moi) and can see yourself as an object, as an other. (Which is why Lacan's mirror stage is a very good illustriation of Rimbaud's sentence Je est un autre. And if I am not mistaken, some scientists do not accord self consciousness to primates precisely because they do not recognize their own reflection. The primates, that is, not the scientists.)

While all of this inner/outer appearance stuff somehow holds true for me (and probably a lot more deep unconscious shit I don't even have the slightest idea of), there is also, as I found out today, another dimension here: Cutting your hair is, of course, symbolically about cutting away your 'old' self, as in: 'the-in-the-relationship-from-which-you've-just-split-up-self'. But cutting your hair is also a way of turning a symbolic or emotional loss into a very concrete loss, i.e. the loss of hair. I was reminded of the very telling German idiomatic phrase 'Haare lassen', which means that when you go through a rough situation, you will (literally) 'loose hair'. So this haircut might be like an emotional chemotherapy.

And the morale of this little story is: There are different ways of dealing with a break-up. Some people go and get their hair cut. Others go and get fucking engaged to the first person they stumble across in the street.

Sixth lesson of academic logic

Rereading oneself with an eye on the criticisms incurred is a low-risk activity in which one is constantly at liberty to choose among a triumphant riposte ("I was entirely right"), a not less gratifying apology ("Yes, I was wrong, and I have the grace to admit it"), and a quite self-congratulatory spontaneous self-criticism ("I was wrong, no one else noticed, I am truly the best").

Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited

Conclusion: I can't wait until that fucking PhD is done so I can finally move on to the next level, i.e. narcisstic self-criticism (as opposed to the destructive self-criticism one faces during the PhD).

Heureka!

You know the proverb "Talk is cheap. Silence is golden."?
Psychoanalysis is its complete opposite.

Life's wisdom can be hidden just around the corner of a book

Ernest Rutherford, you said it man.
There is physics, then there is chemistry, which is a kind of physics, then there is stamp collecting.
Needless to say that Rutherford himself was a physicist, and a British subject.

Teenage Angst?

Session with my therapist today. Scares the shit out of me.
Recours à Foucault, comme d'habitude:
Il faut être soi-même bien piégé par cette ruse interne de l'aveu, pour prêter à la censure, à l'interdiction de dire et de penser, un rôle fondamental; il faut se faire une représentation bien inversée du pouvoir pour croire que nous parlent de liberté toutes ces voix qui, depuis tant de temps, dans notre civilisation, ressassent la formidable injonction d'avoir à dire ce qu'on est, ce qu'on a fait, ce dont on se souvient et ce qu'on a oublié, ce qu'on cache et ce qui se cache, ce à quoi on ne pense pas et ce qu'on ne pense ne pas penser.

Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité I

Sick in bed - The Soundtrack

Colleen - Sun against my eyes


KCO meets CocoRosie - Turn me on

Alleinherrschaft des Guten

Sometimes, only watching Maschek helps.