In the middle of some unsettling events in my life, I’ve come to appreciate the notion of temporal awareness that comes close to what Freud understood as Nachträglichkeit, or deferred action;[1] events that have never been given as fully present are experienced only after the fact. It implies [more]
Pirmasens, Germany. In a landscape of dark forests and narrow valleys, a landscape that could not be a more picturebook scene of a German “Wald” lays the smalltown of Primasens. Here in the back of beyond, my great-grandfather practiced as an architect and was head of the municipal [more]
You can position yourself and build a reputation in basically three different ways: 1) you go mainstream and espouse average opinions, the safest and most popular choice but a recipe for mediocrity. 2) You follow your own instincts and convictions, regardless of what others say. That can be [more]
Der deutsche Schriftsteller Wolfgang Herrndorf schrieb oft über den Tod, seit er 2010 an einem Gehirntumor erkrankte, feinfühlig und wortgewaltig. Unter anderem diese sehr lustige Passage: «Wenn ich es mir aussuchen könnte, würde ich am liebsten bei einem Flugzeugabsturz sterben. Aber auf gar keinen Fall im Bett. Vielleicht [more]
Dass ich in den letzten Jahren mit meinen Immobilienschiebereien mehr Geld gemacht habe, als sie alle drei zusammen, stört sie nicht weiter. Dass ich geheiratet habe, finden sie schon ziemlich bescheuert, aber das Kind ist nun mal in den Brunnen gefallen, bzw. Rejsale ist geschlüpft, was soll man [more]
Hong Kong, China. With a bit of wit and luck we managed to invite ourselves to participate in a culture festival between the cities of Berlin and Hong Kong. While the pavilion that we built on Tamar Square celebrated the void spaces of Berlin, we invited students to go [more]
Sometimes or let’s say most of the time someone has put in words, form or action something you have been carrying with you forever. You stumble over it and go like: Yes that’s exactly what I meant. But before that you fight with finding the perfect example to [more]
Wenn ich richtig gezählt habe, und das weiß ich nicht, weil Zählen nicht zu meinen großen Stärken gehört, dann ist das heute mein letzter Post für 60pages. Deswegen möchte ich ihn einem Thema widmen, das mich in den letzten Jahren sehr beschäftigt hat. Vier Jahre war ich in [more]
Der heilige Urban war von 222 bis 230 Papst und Bischof von Rom. Heute ist er als Patron von Maastricht, Toledo, Troyes, Valencia Grünberg, als Schutzheiliger der Weinberge, des Weines, der Weinhauer und Küfer beschäftigt. Trotzdem oder vielleicht deswegen soll er seine Fürbitter auch vor Trunkenkeit beschützen. Die [more]
http://theleoafricanus.com football as never before (May 21, 2009 by Sean Jacobs) Earlier this month, ESPN screened Kobe Doin’ Work, by American director, Spike Lee. In the film, Lee focused 30 cameras on Kobe Bryant, the star point guard for the Los Angeles Lakers, during a regular season game against [more]
“The goalie watched as the ball rolled across the line . . .” (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke)
Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Bashing Dubai for its vulgarity is an all too easy target. Of course, it is ridiculous to see copies of buildings from other cities. There is a copy of Big Ben, but this time its really big! There is a copy of the elegant [more]
Johannesburg, South Africa. Having a tennis court in the garden of our company sponsored villa was rather an embarrassment for my parents (or at least they pretended it was). It was too obviously the sign of a privileged lifestyle among a society that was utterly unjust. It underlined [more]
I am definitely not an expert in educational questions and looking back at my own childhood it seems it would fulfill most criteria of what children today should be kept away from. A few weeks ago I bought a book for my Godchild. I didn’t read it myself [more]
Are Jews a race or a religion? Today, this is a question that is less about solving this age-old question than one that seeks to position the person being questioned politically. What do I mean when I say it is all politics? It is politics not religion that [more]
We live in the age of specialization and highly trained experts. It’s the end result of a lasting trend that began with the division of labor in the industrialization period, which spawned all sorts of management practices in manufacturing (think Toyota’s car plants and conveyor belts) and ultimately [more]
In the spirit of starting a new year, the conversation at dinner last night revolved around small utopias: little changes that really wouldn’t be that hard to achieve and yet would never actually be implemented, mostly thanks to the idiocy inherent in power. I, for example, would like [more]
Unité d’Habitation designed by Le Corbusier in 1957.
MoL spent the morning new-year cleaning its corridors of uncertainty, using the new Dyson Ball DC47 Multi Floor vacuum cleaner (£329.95). The DC47 features Dyson’s 2 Tier Radial cyclones. 32 cyclones work in parallel across two tiers to increase airflow and capture more microscopic dust. And with the [more]
Today I was going through a list of all the sex “injuries” Mike was going to endure: rug burn on knees, back clawed until bleeding, intense muscle cramps, ruptured testicles, testicular hickies, broken blood vessels, bruises due to excessive suction, a penile fracture (“There was a loud pop, [more]
Sweepers versus cleaners. Mesut Özil is paid £180,000 a week by Arsenal, while its ground staff get £6.31 for an hour’s work, so an Arsenal cleaner (of the corridor of uncertainty) will take until 2026 to earn what Özil takes home in a week; and the cleaner does [more]
MoL endorses the following slogan: be stupid. “Is it dumb enough?” Phil Spector asked Sonny Bono as they listened to a playback of Da Doo Ron Ron one day in March 1963.
MoL does not endorse the following slogans: it could be you (MoL would rather not) think small (don’t think) I am what I am (MoL is never what it is) just do it (don’t) impossible is nothing (wrong) success it’s a mind game (failure more interesting) make believe [more]
Well, lottery balls of course. MoL predicts the following numbers for the UK Euro Millions: 1 2 3 4 5 (Lucky Star numbers: 6 and 7). You know it makes sense. MoL predicts Arsenal 0 Bayern minus 1; Bayern 33 Arsenal 31 after penalty shootouts. Call Ladbrokes now!
On New Years Eve in Hamburg, fireworks are omnipresent. You can buy them everywhere and in huge stocks. Arsenals of rockets on sticks, packs of small paper balls filled with black powder, «Chinaböller» by the dozens, whole blocks of assorted, orchestrated mini-rockets that look like some modern air [more]
Jean Pierre Léaud the face and actor of the Nouvelle Vague had a childhood close to the one he portrays in Les 400 coup. Rebellious and always up for some “connerie” he once stated that if he hadn’t met Truffaut he can’t imagine what would have become of [more]
Great Golf Ball Gospel Golf Balls use tour-proven technology to produce a golf ball with the perfect combination of awesome distance and soft feel. The golf balls deliver complete performance off the tee and around the green for players of all swing speeds and skill levels. Conforms to [more]
She had heard about small balls that were used as an aphrodisiac in the East Indies . . . When they were introduced into the sex they moulded themselves to the form of it and then they moved as the woman moved, sensitively shaping themselves to every motion [more]
The bastards push me around, they’re stronger . . .They’re pretty brutal . . . They drag me down the stairs . . . they won’t even listen to my mother . . . They push me into the room downstairs . . . I take the blows [more]
I wasn’t going to be a perverse, self-centred screwball anymore . . . (Death on Credit, L-F Céline)
Those kids didn’t know which way is up . . . They didn’t know a damn thing . . . All they knew about was football . . . that isn’t enough . . . and looking at their cocks. (Death on Credit, L-F Céline)
It looks staged but it is not. It’s a shot of people who are waiting to go on stage. The showplace is a small town parade in southeastern Texas called Fiestas Patrias Mexicanas in the dusty remnants of a train station outpost town called Bryan. About 25,000 people [more]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFwUXUMq_zs
The corridor of uncertainty. The channel where a well-pitched cricket ball can cause most doubt in a batsman’s mind, in the split-second of decision whether to play, go forward or back, or leave alone, in which case the ball can still turn and bowl him or trap him [more]
Theodor Herzl went to Jerusalem in 1898 and worried that he might be arrested by the Turkish authorities. Just like Shabbatai Zvi. He got sick while he was there and he was frustrated by his efforts to get meetings with the Sultan. His trip to Jerusalem also took [more]
OH! THE PLACES YOU’LL GO! by Dr. Seuss Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away! You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know [more]
It doesn’t really matter at this point how it all started, English in German. Of course it’s related somehow to the occupation. But even that seems like old history now. English doesn’t exactly have prestige. It’s more like a functionality in advertising that makes it a privileged language [more]
People told me, my posts here tend to be quite personal and revealing: not always in a good way. Yet I feel I should write this: 2013 wasn’t a good year. Losing a friend (plus, finding out about it via Facebook) was one of most sad and formative [more]
For 50 Euros no sticky floors, no smell of piss, no search for food in trash, no cheap perfumes. No running noses, no growling stomachs, no coughing, no body smells, no empty staring. 50€ and non of this misery. Just a cab, skipping the poor, directly to the [more]
As my hot spunk poured from my burning spear I felt as if I was emptying out and losing all sense of identity and definition. I imagined myself to be a blow-up doll that had been deflated. I thought I might turn inside out. My body no longer [more]
“Magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all.” (Zinédine Zidane) Tintin (in The Castafiore Emerald) looking out of a bedroom window at the unfathomable black outside: “There’s nothing here, signora. Absolutely nothing.”
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St. Agnes Kirche designed by Werner Düttmann completed in 1967.
The biggest buzzword in 2013 was «Big Data». It was everywhere, especially in the speeches of all the bullshitters. And as with everything buzzy, a counter-movement has emerged, claiming «Big Data» is harmful. In the light of the NSA-scandal: an obvious point to be made. As for me, [more]
Chadigarh, India. When India and Pakistan became independent the state of Punjab was divided between the two countries. Since its main city, Lahore, remained on the Pakistani side, there was need for a new capital city on the Indian side. Nehru, the first prime minister of India, seized the [more]
What’s cosmopolitanism? Today, cosmopolitanism denotes a supranational existence. In the modern period, however, prior to the development of nation states, cosmopolitanism meant being connected to more than one place, perhaps to several places at once. Cosmopolitans had allegiances that extended beyond political boundaries. And yet they didn’t just [more]
“Kinder, Kinder”, wie wir Deutschen zu sagen pflegen. Ja genau, unsere Kinder und deren brutalisiertes Kino- und Fernseh-Gemüt. Der Schlag mit der geballten Faust in die Visage des Gegners, das aufreizend bedrohliche Hantieren mit der lebensgefährlichen Handfeuerwaffe, die ängstlich hoch gehaltenen Hände des Opfers, der Schuss, der gekrümmte, [more]
Maerklin, Germany. For Christmas we built up the toy train set, meaning The Train Set, made by Maerklin, made in Germany. We bought it second hand this year and for our bi-lingual third-culture-kids this is a bit of a bizarre exercise, because Maerklin is the embodiment of a [more]
Fake blood, rotating circus screams, cake-sex-Nazi-fetish – more Nazi-fetish – a fortiori Nazi-fetish: I finally made it to the Kunstwerke-exhibition today, a three-floor-wide video-panorama of Schlingensiefs visual legacy. Since I was caught on some sort of seemingly unavoidable December-flu this week, I was quite weary while walking through [more]
If there’s a new “grammar of migration” in Germany and the “Turkish turn” is the Anlass (according to Leslie Adelson[1]), then surely there is a place for some apocryphal literature to that new rulebook. And by that I don’t mean spurious writing but rather non-canonical, constitutional stories. Like [more]
Birmingham Central Library, Designed by John Madin and completed in 1974.
Fin de Siècle XI v Third Reich XI Baudelaire, Desbordes-Valmore, Husymans, Mallarmé, de Nerval, Péladan, Verlaine, Laforgue, Moréas, Rimbaud, Valéry. Coach: Shopenhauer Goering, Pohl, Darré, Speer, Kammler, Müller, Kaltenbrunner, Donitz, Funk, Glücks, Lammers. Coach: Heidegger 0-0; 5-3 on penalties, after extra time.
When I posted that picture of the tiny plane the other day, there was one thing I didn’t tell you about: I’m scared of flying. It’s a little embarrassing, and most of the time I manage to ignore it, clinging to a newspaper with sweaty hands, pretending to be [more]
As I tried to look up the viewing rate of the latest installment of “The Bachelor”, the massively popular reality show about a highly eligible single man choosing his dream girl by way of an elaborate scheme of natural selection, I was directed to an unlikely website thus [more]