When I met you

When I met you
instantly
the curve from your shoulder to your neck
attachted to all the rest
your delicate frame
which I pretend only I can see
(with a peculiar radiograph gaze)
as I met you
time blossoming between us

Soundtrack - Daphne Par la fenêtre

Alice in wonderland

I don't have any problems with spending free time after all. Actually, I could get used to vacations.
I want to retire after my PhD and just spend the rest of my days reading, travelling, meeting people and writing.

Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen

Heute ist ein guter Tag zum Schreiben. Ich habe Langeweile, soll heißen: das Leben ist dröge. Womit wir beim Thema wären, denn ich habe Bekanntschaft mit zwei neuen Wörtern gemacht: dröge und Puschen; und sie sogleich in meinen Lieblingswörterschatz aufgenommen. [Kombination der beiden = der Name einer Firma (Dröge und Puschen) oder aber auch der Name einer Band (Die drögen Puschen).]
Je länger ich in Deutschland lebe, desto mehr sehe ich die Schönheit dieses Landes und habe einen Sinn für die eigentümliche (wollen wir sagen herbe?) Schönheit des Piefketums. Mein neues deutsches Lieblingsbundesland, dessen Name so lang ist, dass es gemeinhin nur mit drei Buchstaben erscheint (NRW). Meine neue Lieblingsregion; ein Landstrich, derart desolat, dass er eine Krankheit im Namen trägt (der Ruhr-Pott oder auch liebevoll schlicht Pott genannt). Darin: die Stadt Essen (wie wundervoll; sollen wir in Essen essen?).
Das alles mal eben zusammengereimt zu dem wunderbar abstrusen Satz: In Essen, im nordrheinwestfälischen Ruhrpott, sitzen dröge Kumpels Puschen tragend auf dem Sofa und gucken (gucken, was für ein deutsches Wort!) Frauentausch.

Wir sind Bad Bank!

Financial crisis was yesterday; bad bank is today. As far as I understand the whole concept, it's about outsourcing rubbish stocks and derivatives to a state-owned enterprise to free the banks' balance sheets from their debts and thus give them new possibilities to invest. It's like a collective financial garbage dump, backed up by us, the tax payers.
I wonder who the fuck came up with that ridiculous idea. Seriously, if I were to go to my bank and say: "I'd like to open a bank account where I can place all my debts", they'd probably think I've got some serious problems with reality. Life just doesn't work that way; neither on a strictly financial, nor on a somewhat more social level. It's like: Hey, why not start a bad bank account for all the fuck-ups you did during your life; all the bad things that happened to you; people and feelings that annoy you. "Your honour, I'm not going to jail, I'll just place whatever I did on my bad bank account and let somebody else handle the damages." (Granted, to some extent, the unconscious is some sort of a psychic bad bank, if you think about it.)

Sorry to state the obvious, but last time I checked, responsibility wasn't only about assuming responsibility for your good deeds, but also (and maybe most importantly) for the bad ones. And how boringly good and pathetically uninteresting people would we be if only the good stuff counts in our lives.
Come to think of it, maybe Catholics were the first ones with a bad bank concept. After all, what is Jesus other than a collective bad bank of sins? He died martyrdom so that we could go on fuckin' up our lives and the lives of others; and at the end of the day, you repent and go straight to heaven. Hallelujah!

I wonder...

... why do I let completely unimportant things and stupid people bother me?
Ataraxia, where are you when I need you?!?!

Hypochondria is my middle name

I like going to doctors. Not only that, I like actually having something I can be treated for. (Some might also say that I have a constant desire for or lack of attention.)
In terms of these particular likeness of mine, today was a good day. I went to the dermatologist last week, and she considered one of my birthmarks as conspicuous and thus worth cutting out. Jackpot, baby. So today was ER day. I got to wear funny little blue rubber things around my shoes. I got a local anesthesia. The doctor cut, sewed, and conquered.
But it gets even better: Since I have a lot of birthmarks, I have to monitor them and and go to check-ups regularly, and it's very likely I will have to sacrifice some more flesh.

Contrary the denomination of that particular body area, I still get a lot of birthmarks. The funniest ones are: one on the sole of my foot; in my ear; in my eyelid. I also have a very big one in the middle of my right under arm, without which I probably would have never been able to tell the difference between left and right.

PS: I also realised when taking this picture that I have some sort of floccus on my neck (can you see the tiny hairs? looks like a monkey's.) Maybe I should go see a dottore about it.

R/evolution

Dear Super-ego,

I'm taking the day off, and I don't feel bad about it. So ha! why don't you go fuck yourself.

Yours sincerely,
Ego

Happy-go-lucky

This song makes me wanna move my dancing feet...

Amen

The appointed bishop of upper Austria stated that homosexuality is an illness, and as such remediable.

I wonder who is ever going to find a cure against the Catholic Church's ignorance, back-wardness and intolerance.

The only good news is: the guy resigned from office because there were so heavy protests both within and outside the Church.

Halleluja!

So miracles do happen.

Status: update.

I miss dancing.

Dear Slavoj,

you are absolutely h-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s!
Of course you have a higher IQ than all of European politicians together; so do I, though I never had to go into politics to prove it to myself.
But don't worry: I still lave youuuuuu!

Yours Judy B.



PS: My ashtray is frozen to the balkony railing. So now it's official: Winter is back. I want to cuddle up in a warm bubble bath until I turn into a prune with webs between my fingers and toes.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

Niemand weiß, wer er selber ist, geschweige denn, wer die andern sind.

Und geht's uns schlecht?!

Franz Schuh - Schwere Vorwürfe, schmutzige Wäsche

In the beginning, a lot of people were excited about the possibilites of the internet. A virtual, potentially democratic medium that allowed the blurring of all sorts of boundaries, i.e. between public and private or mind and body. Particuarly Web 2.0 seemd to open up the potentiality of flexible, fluid identities beyond our "real", fixed gender, ethnic background and class; it seemed open to new ways of writing that move beyond self and other, creating new synergies and an infinite number of connections and encounters.

The day after the big party, people realized of course the difference between virtual and real selves wasn't all that discrepant. Most avatars in Second Life do, in fact, resemble their real counterparts, except maybe that more often than not people would create an improved or idealized version of themselves (which, I believe, would be interesting to analyze in relation to Lacan's mirror stage). Most prolifes on Facebook or other social networks are boringly accurate about age, background, sex, job, etc. Which is to say: usually we lie about ourselves on the internet as much or as little as we do in real life. Moreover (or consequently?), people expect you to tell the truth about yourself on the internet (and I'm not talking about my credit card number and adress when I purchase something on amazon or ebay; I'm talking about changing my FB status to married and people asking me when I got married; reactions ranging from disappointment to relief and shock).

The point I'm getting at, as you might have guessed, is this very hobby of mine, called blogging. It's about writing. It's writing yourself, which, at least for me, doesn't mean the same as writing about yourself. I am much more courageous, funny, smart, cordial, pathetic, lonesome, drunk, cheerful, depressed, stupid, chaotic, disciplined in real life. And yet I write much more courageous, funny, smart, cordial, pathetic, lonesome, drunk, cheerful, depressed, stupid, chaotic, disciplined here than in real life. So beware, dear reader, don't believe you know anything about me because you read this. Don't believe you could run across me in the street and be my friend, because you've had some experience with me in the virtual world.

Above everything else: don't believe I am telling the truth; because, to use a good old logical paradox, I am always lying, except for now.

And to finish, a little hilarious piece of Derrida on signatures; the condensed epitome of written authenticity.

New year's resolutions and why they never last

So tonight is the kick off of yet another round Germany's Next Topmodel, and although I promised not to watch any casting shows anymore, I'm going over to a friend's house to enjoy a public viewing of it. So much for will power and resoluteness; didn't really last that long, did it? (To speak in Topmodel-talk: I lost the challenge, that's for sure.)

Jesus, I'm glad I didn't mean to give up smoking.

But I'm still going strong on the stay healthy/doing sports bit. Maybe I can trade. Maybe if I do twice as much sports and have three times as much sex as I intended to have, I can get away with watching casting shows. I think what I'm gonna do is sort of start a stock exchange of new year's resolutions with myself. Hey-ho financial crisis, I'm learning my lesson here. Like I know you always have to have some stable stocks to balance the risky ones.

When you think about it, it all comes down to a selling of indulgences, like the good ol' Catholics did (I wonder why that ever went out of fashion). I'm gonna redeem myself from watching casting shows with sports and sex. Wicked.

Oh, so you had a bad day? Or: 10 things I hate about you - the sequel

You know what really annoys me? When people take their personal problems as an excuse to behave like antisocial, irresponsible assholes. Oh, so you had a deprived childhood, a miserable love life, a boss that bosses you around, get too little money for too much work, and don't feel very healthy today on top of it all? So what? Who fucking cares? We all have problems, believe me, and the best thing you can do for humankind in general and people around you in particular is to not get on everybody's nerves with your pathetic lamento of a biography and just do what you're fucking supposed to do and behave like a halfway decent human being while you're at it. I mean Congratulations! so you have a private life. Guess what - so do I, plus I got a whole bunch of problems of my own, so thanks, I really can't be bothered to be appreciative, understanding and all that shit.

New year's resolutions - the end. Or: Eleventh lesson of academic logic.

There are times when you should work on your Phd, and you wish you had something else to do.

There are times when you do something else, and you have a bad conscience because you should work on your Phd.

Conclusion: The dissertation is utopian as well as uchronian. It is yet another paraphrase of Lacan's paraphrase of Descartes - J'ecris où je ne suis pas, donc je suis où je n'ecris pas.

New year's resolutions - part II

# 7 Stop complaining about my thesis in particular and my work in general. I should be fucking grateful I'm able do what I love doing and even get paid for it.

# 8 Stop watching casting shows on TV. They're a total waste of my time; they're stupid and highly questionable in terms of ethics. (It's like with smoking cigarettes: you know they're bad for you, yet you still do it.)

Celibate life dilemmas

I might be having a date tonight. I don't really know. I mean I'm meeting someone for drinks, but it's not officially been declared as a date. It's more like a "hey-you-new-in-town-I-gotta-show-you-this-bar"-kinda thing. Lord, it's been too long since I've done this.

In any case, I took a bath and shaved. Just to be on the safe side; because the worst thing in the world is ending up in bed with someone smelly and hairy. I will also brush my teeth before I leave the house because spending an evening with someone while you've got something stuck between your teeth is probably the most embarrassing thing in the world. I will also try to not get completely drunk because the most uncomfortable thing in the world is waking up next to a stranger with a total shame-over.

Remind me again why I am doing this?

Quote of the day

Das Leben ist eine einzige Ablenkung, man weiß nicht einmal, wovon.
Franz Kafka

2009 - you okay, honey.

Allright, 2009, allright. I guess I was being selfish when I started complaining. It's all right with me if you bring a lot of (professional) goodies to the people dear to me; I don't mind if happiness isn't endowed to me directly.

Stay cool that way, dahlin'. You rock.

Tenth lessen of academic logic

When you spend a considerable amount of time in a Gender Studies environment, you sort of loose touch to the real academic world. You forget, for instance, that there are academics out there who don't know what drag is, let alone what it looks like. Such people might then put forward the highly academic statement that such practices and people are "sick", and walk straight (indeed!) out of your presentation about a Judith Butler text.

Welcome to the real world, baby.

Conclusion 1: The level of education does not correlate with the level of tolerance. One can be a PhD student or even a professor and still be homophobic; though those people would never consider themselves as such, but make claims to whatever "scientific" arguments as to why women are really women, and men really men, and both naturally heterosexual. Or, alternatively, they might tell you that they can't possibly be homophobic, because, after all, they are still talking to you.
Conculsion 2: Fuck heteronormativity in every possible way.

Starmaniac

Cutie-pie,
I don't know whether I want to drag you into my bed or into to kitchen to make some hot chocolate for you.

Yours groupie.