Some days ago someone was tested positive. Unluckily for me, she’s a good friend. More than that, I was first to get the message. After half a bottle of whine and me sending out some pathetic Video-Messages to another place in the world, I started researching things I [more]
This, right here, is one of the most wonderful movies. One of the most wondrous. It seems to come out of nowhere, it shines brightly and then flickers away, only to re-appear again and again. It’s the lost highway and the light in the darkness. Sedmikrásky. Two young [more]
Auf dem Ötztal-Bahnhof in Oetz steht ein älterer Herr und blickt traurig in die Ferne. Es ist Professor Doktor Hans Haid – und das „Professor“ und das „Doktor“ muss man unbedingt dazu sagen, denn es gibt im Tal noch einen anderen Hans Haid, der ist Direktor des Heimatmuseums [more]
I learned to drive when I was 27. That means 12 intervening years of embarrassment, in which silly, vaguely slapstick scenes ensued as a result of being vehicle-impaired. I nearly ran over a cop at the London airport, who insisted I move the car when my mother was [more]
On November 15, 1898, the Viennese Jewish writer, Richard Beer-Hofmann published a poem, Schlaflied für Mirjam (“Lullaby for Mirjam”), dedicated to the birth of his daughter in 1897. The poem first appeared in the German periodical Pan, and it was reprinted over the next few years in several [more]
Beloved reader. Please indulge me. About six months ago I quit my Facebook account. After kicking that habit, I now hungrily grasp this opportunity to immerse in an unapologetic display of whatever enters my brain and share things with you I think are so worthy of checking out! Even [more]
Ich habe einen Freund, der kann Geschichten erzählen wie kaum einer. Er erzählt sie nicht von Anfang bis Ende, nicht von hinten nach vorne, sondern gleitet am Rande des Unerzählbaren entlang, wie ein Fischer auf dem Hades, mal hüben, mal drüben, durchhangen von Nebelschwaden der Melancholie, erzählt in [more]
When Preston Sturges made “The Sin of Harold Diddlebrook” in 1947 it was at the tail-end of what may be the most amazing stretch of comedies in film history. It had started with “The Great McGinty” seven years earlier, the first film he directed. By then the Sturges [more]
A veteran holiday resort host says: German tourists very much act like their own cliché. They really reserve their sun lounger early in the morning and they like to live ecologically aware even on vacation in Egypt. That’s why there is waste separation in so many Egyptian hotels. [more]
Last Saturday around noon my old friend LA called me out of the blue. He was in town for the weekend and wanted to catch up. As is often the case with LA, there was a certain urgency to his proposition. Indeed, when I picked him up in [more]
Brian May noticed that the scrollkeeper cronjob tries to fetch a DTD for processing its configuration file via HTTP. However, this fails if the host is not connected to the Internet or has to use a proxy. Jochen Dross explained that this is caused by the docbook XML package which doesn’t [more]
“Do you know how to get to the beach?” I ask Diana as she buckles her helmet snugly around her chin. I don’t know her name is Diana yet but she answers in a thick Italian accent and points me towards the grouping of hotel and residential towers [more]
last weekend matthias lehrberger raised the question of “strategies to transform postmodern stupidity to higher forms”. something i lost concentration on after all that followed and that i tried to recover from the entire sunday whilst 2002’s “equilibrium” crossed my way. this somehow 1984/matrix-mash-up is not something that [more]
Rollerball ist eine fiktive Sportart, die zudem nur in einer fiktiven Zukunft ausgeübt wird, nämlich im gleichnamigen Science-Fiction-Film von 1975. Rollerball ist so brutal, dass die Karrieren der Spieler höchst kurzlebig sind – wer Glück hat, scheidet aus dem Spiel, wer Pech hat, aus dem Leben. Das ist [more]
http://deborahschamoni.com
One of my favorite rap artist’s name – correction, my absolute favorite rap artist’s name – is an anagram of that American-Intelligence-Token, which recently attained quite an amount of media reputation over here. Guess who. Right, it’s NaS, born Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones. His voice accompanies me [more]
What if democracy existed only as an opening to the dimension of its negation? What if democracy had to open itself to a negativity (or positivity), to a danger and a threat, to an absolute alienness and incommensurability in order to constitute and assert itself as democracy, as [more]
Mein drittes Auto war mein schönstes Auto. Ein schwarzer Alfa 164 3.0 V6, Baujahr 1989. Fuhr ich allein, lag auf dem Beifahrersitz ein CD Player, mit dem Radio verbunden durch einen Cassettenadapter. Manchmal habe ich im Auto geraucht und die CD im Player auf dem Beifahrersitz gewechselt, [more]
I feel I’ve been remiss in not sounding more shocked about how beautiful everything is here in Virginia. Not because I was expecting it to be unbeautiful, but because the beauty, even if you have an intimation of it, shakes you anyways. So here, in no particular order, [more]
“My name is Ismail Yozgat, my son has died in my arms. From 2000 until 2011 documents have been destroyed, hidden and burned. And if this was not enough the documents of Andreas T. will not be released because of irrelevance.” Andreas T., who works for the intelligence [more]
I wandered lonely as a Cloud That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills, When all at once I saw a crowd A host of dancing Daffodils; Along the Lake, beneath the trees, Ten thousand dancing in the breeze. The waves beside them danced, but they Outdid the [more]
It just so happens I was obliged to take a few cabs today. The rides were quite unspectacular. Just an unknown guy driving his Mercedes Benz while listening to some silly station’s speedy shit. But one ride was different. The taxi driver was listening to some silly station’s [more]
This is a truth, so sad and beautiful, that some days it almost kills me: You and me and all of us will miss almost everything in this world. When I was a child, I felt like time was endless. Days were these undiscovered spaces. I was an [more]
I was in Charlottenburg today and everything was very clean. People were wearing expensive winter coats and buying books in small books shops. I bought a book and walked the street aimlessly up and down and sought for someone to carry me home. But no one did and [more]
Section 42 of Being and Time cites the 220th fable of a certain Hyginus, as Martin Heidegger says, “by way of pre-ontological evidence for the existential-ontological interpretation of Dasein as care”: ”Once upon a time, when ‘Care’ was crossing a river, she came upon some clay-loam. Reflectively she took up [more]
Carole Lombard makes me curious, Fredric Marc makes me excited, Music by Oscar Levant seals the deal and Written by Ben Hecht makes me giddy: “Nothing Sacred” is one of those movies that builds up almost impossible expectations during the credits. It’s a newspaper picture, a genre that [more]
Is it time already to look back at the year? Is it time already to remember all those precious moments that made it what it was, it still is, it soon might be? Is it time already to deeply recall how lucky one actually is and how grateful [more]
Heute ist Cyber Monday. Der schönste Tag des Jahres für Leute, die gern online shoppen. Onlinestores hauen heute ihre Waren zu Preisen raus, bei denen man nicht mehr von Sonderangeboten sprechen sollte, sondern von Sonderbarangeboten: Irgendwo muss die Sache einen Haken haben, wenn ein Fernseher, der vorher 1000 [more]
Hatsudai, Japan. In Japan, all dimensions are extreme: what is big is huge and what is small is tiny. Tokyo, the world’s biggest city, is based on a very small-scale urban fabric. Most the 27 million people live in houses, which are smaller than 100m². Except for the [more]
Es gibt kaum etwas Anstrengenderes, als mit einem Gegner der Frauenquote zu diskutieren. Obwohl sie ja nun im Koalitionsvertrag steht, wird diese Diskussion wohl noch einige Male auf uns zukommen, wenn es dann um konkrete Gesetzesentwürfe geht. Letztes Jahr veröffentlichten Kenneth Ahern und Amy Dittmar von der University [more]
The fourth term of Sylvester’s Sequence, one more than the product of the previous terms (2 × 3 × 7).
K. mag Zürich nicht. Bereits die Ankunft am dortigen Flughafen sei ihm ein Gräuel; Grüezi in riesigen Lettern über einer Fototapete; Kühe, Berge, Milchkannen. Trotziges Beharren auf Andersartigkeit, Lokal- kolorit bei gleichzeitig übermässigem Dazugehörigkeits- wunsch zur weiten Welt. Ich kenne K.s eigentliches Leiden an Zürich; nämlich seine [more]