A moving case of nostalgia

“It must be a typewriter!” – “Case closed!”

Aaand where’s the screen?

ready to type away

after a nice 30 minutes’ worth of typing

Of Fairytales, Blindness, and Battle Fields

Love is pretending. Having to pretend, just for the other to not be repulsed by you. That is what I genuinely used to think. Whenever you get asked a question, for example, you have to deliberate on what the correct answer is. And when you give the wrong answer, as eventually you will when you go down that road in the first place, a little bit of you will crumble up and die, leaving you ever so slightly more bitter than you were. After all, you only said what you thought they wanted to hear. How can the other one be mad at you for something that you did not really mean, anyway?

How Can an Arse be Smart, Anyway?

“Well, actually, that is a blimp, not a zeppelin, because it has no rigid frame, you see.” Yes, I know. Insufferable. I have said that. I am a terrible smart-arse. Always have been, always will be. When somebody makes a tiny, inconsequential mistake like that, I just want to correct them. Nobody wants to be wrong, right?

The Land of Honey and Milk

Imagine drinking a nice glass of milk when suddenly, you are trampled by a stampeding herd of angry cows. In a way, that is exactly what happened to me. Just on a smaller scale, of course. Well, and you would have to switch out the milk with cow barf. On second thought, that picture does not even begin to hold up…

Finally Feeling Franz

I think I finally understand Kafka. I first encountered him, like so many others, in school, something that does not really make any sense when you stop to think about it. Show me a 14 year old who can appreciate the trials of Josef K in The Trial and I show you a 14 year old who has worse problems than getting their literary canon in order. It is old, it is stuffy, and teenagers, as a rule, cannot identify with Josef K. They do not get how much they should be able to, with their pubertary experiences and the fact that they cannot really talk to any figure of authority to help them with their predicaments. They usually are way too pragmatic and dismissive about it. “That’s, like, sooo stupid. Why doesn’t he just, like, go see the judge or something.” They do not get why K cannot just, like, go to a judge or something. The social behaviours expected of a person and how difficult, if not downright impossible it is for people to break them. Who is to say whether it is the less rigid social norms and structures, the fact that culture nowadays usually focuses more on the individual that the group, Kafka’s story dealing with a big, faceless, inhuman bureaucracy instead of everyday life, or simply that teenagers are incredibly self-absorbed and always have been.

Weather springs to mind

A nice little table on a nice, quiet street just outside a bistro/bar that is a tiny bit less trendy than it fancies itself; a chilled glass of white wine; a nice, strong pipe and a great person sitting opposite. Watching people. Chatting. Laughing. The picture practically paints itself.

Winds of (loose) Change

I have found myself watching an old TV series again. Not that 10 years is particularly old for television in my view, but anyway. This time on the itinerary it’s 2006’s Life on Mars, the story of DCI Sam Tyler, who wakes up as DI Tyler in 1973 Manchester and freaks out about all the funny differences like the fish out of water he is. Or so it was sold by the ads when I first watched it. It is a buddy cop show taking place in the mind of a comatose copper whose coma visions take place in 1973 and include one of the greatest and most underrated characters on British TV in the last decade, DCI Gene Hunt.

Our Father who art in heaven…

They are ever-ascending, reaching towards the skies without ever stopping. Going up and up and up and never coming back down, again. Except that they are, of course. Right there, on the other side, not two meters to your left. Or your right of course, depending on the model. And also on whether you are inside or out. Mustn’t forget the point of view. I am talking, of course, about paternoster elevators.

The Old Man and the Beer

or:
How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Rhetorical Question

An old man sitting at a table of a café in a mall. He looks like he is well in his seventies and reminds me a lot of my grandpa, who never got to be in his own mid-70s. He is one of those old-fashioned old people, old people how they used to be, back in the day when old folks still were old folks. His clothes are a mish-mash of browns and dark greens and his trousers are made from corduroy. He sits at his table, all alone, drinking his beer. This is Germany and well in the afternoon, so nothing out of ordinary there. And yet, this frail, smallish old man, sitting alone among all the young and hip people in the food court of this young and hip mall of a small town with delusions of grandeur throws me completely off my track.

Are Space-Aliens White?

[This is something I wrote over a year ago. I just wanted to finally throw it out there]

I am white. Where I live, people with another skin colour are a rarity. There are ethnic minorities (which I am not a member of) but those are not really defined by their skin colour. And yet I had to think of that very topic recently. Make of that what you will. I am just adding this as a disclaimer of sorts before I write an entry about skin colour. It seems like the prudent thing to do.

I watched “District 9” the other day.