I simply started to cut the bullshit. No more longing for the non-existent femme-fatale-like the Polish-Jewish lady, the kind of “like-this-would-have-been-my-mother-creature-Had-Hitler-not-fucked-the-world”-phantasy, that was so completely counterproductive for my development e.g. my capability to gain some – happiness? I acknowledged my Mom as she was and ignored the miserable [more]
the hague, guantanamo, the gulag… definitely babo will not go to sochi, sends billie jean king instead… billie jean king. [by dbking cc-by-2.0] the bee gees. [wiki commons via discogs.com] barack obama. [by white house (pete souza) cc-by-2.0] vladimir putin. [kremlin.ru cc-by-3.0]
Sendai, Japan. In my first weeks in Japan I spent hours sitting on the floor of an old temple in my neighbourhood. Literally, spaced out. Never before had I experienced such a limitless space within a small compound. It is surrounded by a solid wall, but the architecture of [more]
I saw young students on stage today and it sounded like this: Deutsche Bank is an asshole, capitalism as well, Hessel has no answers, Zizek has some but mostly a speech impediment, fair trade is a guilt relieve, we blackface but are ironical, we talk financial speculation and [more]
Diehard pessimists, critics of civilization and fear-mongers like to claim that reality is crueler and more depraved than the darkest corners of human imagination. I always thought that was unnecessarily apocalyptic. First of all, the statement is based on flawed logic. By definition, any outcome of human action is rooted [more]
I must have listened to “Ignition (Remix)” by R. Kelly many hundreds of times. It’s a great song: goofy, fun, a killer bass line. Just a stone-cold jam, of which Kelly has quite a few: “Sex in the Kitchen”, “I Wish”, “Shut Up”. If I ever threw any [more]
Der Posten des Gesundheitsministers ist besetzt. Diesen Sommer sah es eine Weile aus, als würde Jens Spahn, das geschliffene Jungeisen der CDU, es werden: Er hatte die nötige Portion Chuzpe, die SZ nannte ihn einen „Mann wie eine Walze“. Geworden ist es Hermann Gröhe, einer der, Pardon, aussieht [more]
This morning I sat down with a coffee thinking over the day and went through the list of things to be done. There were insurance policies to be understood, a beef with the landlord to be settled and one with the health insurance company, the tax declaration to [more]
Last year’s ruling on circumcision in Köln and the subsequent absurd debate on the matter ended with a parliamentary protection for religious communities in Germany against prosecution for the practice. During that debate, there was one argument that stuck in my mind. This was the idea that, in [more]
Julian Schmidli objected to me using the term “bingeing” when it comes to pop culture and I agree with him. After all, I watched all seven seasons of The West Wing in what must have been two months and when I started watching Battlestar Galactica, I didn’t fare [more]
Balance strikes me as the key to most problems. The (my) priest is rather quick to point this out. Specifically, he is answering my own guilt as a gentrifier with his utopian vision of greater balance. Implicitly the current balance can be better. As such, in large balancing [more]
As one of my best friends said wisely, he was one of the most beautiful voices in movie history. Irish bred, London schooled, Shakespearian trained. He was the man with delicate features and mesmeric blue eyes that turned Lean’s T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, shooting him into [more]
Speaking of universal truth and the pop culture binge reminds me of a particular achievement of creative ingenuity that miraculously manages to combine both in a compelling fashion. It is firmly ensconced in the mainstream, yet unrelenting in its scathing critique of the same. It is crass and [more]
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/16/asylum-seekers-living-in-australia-forced-to-sign-code-of-conduct
As I was driving through the cold, dark streets, I thought it’d actually be nice to be someplace else, someplace warm, and then I thought, but I would miss my city and its dire winter and its short gray days, and then it occurred to me that I [more]
Michael Haneke says: «I’m interested in seeing films that confront me with new things, with films that make me question myself, with films that help me to reflect on subjects that I hadn’t thought about before, films that help me progress and advance. Those are the kinds of [more]
Maybe that’s a really obvious truth. But there are some people so influential, who’ve left a mark so indelible you can’t even see it. Some people would add: and those that came first, so super-influential, also feel a bit pat now. Or trite. I don’t think so. I [more]
A Zionist movement that transplanted Jews to a new land, according to Theodor Herzl, would instigate physical and psychological transformations in Jews once they adapted to their new environment. Herzl’s faith in Darwin’s description of the effects of the environment on organisms was a central feature of his [more]
How did a non-territorial Germanic language like Yiddish “migrate” into German letters at the start of the 20th century? The status of Yiddish, known somewhat derisively as “Jargon” for most of the 19th century, was seen as a second-class language both within the learned Jewish community and among [more]
This smart pick by Theresia Enzensberger made me think of how I consume pop culture. Theresia concludes with the observation, that people apparently like to binge on pop culture, referencing House of Cards and the new Beyoncé album. I think, in that sense I might be a binger. [more]
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou is a nun currently living in Jerusalem. She grew up as the daughter of a prominent Ethiopian intellectual, but spent much of her young life in exile, first for schooling, and then again during Mussolini’s occupation of Ethiopia’s capitol city, Addis Ababa, in 1936. Her [more]
When we’re both at home, we usually have a cup of hot tea before going to bed. In recent years, I’ve taken to lemon verbena. I buy the elegantly pointed leaves sun-dried and whole, and the light-green infusion, almost translucent, tastes immaculate and innocent, and there’s only a [more]
“Classic” has become a ubiquitous adjective. While it’s supposed to identify something as having enduring value and merit beyond its time, it is now routinely accorded to anything that’s not quite new. At least not old enough for it to have proved its worth over a significant period [more]
“Never ask what you did. It’s better not to know,” said O’Toole. Lawrence ends in the opening of Lean’s Arabia.
Irgendwann Anfang der Nuller Jahre mutmaßte ich erstmals, „der Kapitalismus“ sei etwas Schlechtes. Die Mutmaßung pulverisierte im Bauchgefühlsartig-Verbunden-Sein mit Betroffenen, mit Musik, mit Freuden, mit mir selbst. Im Grunde war „der Kapitalismus“, mit mehr oder weniger Distanz betrachtet, mit mehr oder weniger komplizierten Sätzen beschrieben, doch negativer Geburtshelfer [more]