Tourist Soup for the Petulant Soul

Æsthetic note: I am switching to Georgia because I understand it to be the easiest font to read on the Internets, and if your eyes fall out of your heads from struggling through Courier, there will be no one left to read my blog! Horrors! (This does not mean I don't still hate the South).

Today I was mad. I was really mad. I was Comical Rural Comparative (CRC) mad: I was madder than a wet hornet! I'm not entirely sure why. Probably something existential, definitely not something important. Anyway, after my weekly appearance at the primary school*, since today was fucking gorgeous (given the weather of the past few weeks, I feel justified in my profanity), I decided the best way to blow off this steam was a walk around Berlin. So that's what I did, I got off at Zoologischer Garten and decided I would walk up to Ernst-Reuter-Platz and from there back West towards things like Schloß Charlottenburg, the Battlestar Galactica Convention Center and the Funkturm (West Germany's Fernsehturm analogue).

So that's what I did, and I had a very nice walk down Hardenburgstraße to Ernst-Reuter-Platz, which were both much more alive than I'd ever seen them, and past the Deutsche Oper, which is my 2nd favorite shoebox in the world, behind the now-defunct Palast der Republik. I also detoured over to Richard-Wagner-Platz to see the subway station everyone has been telling me I just have to experience before I die, and it was indeed great, even if it didn't quite live up to the hype (people have seriously been talking this place up to me). Eventually, I found myself at Schloß Charlottenburg , and its accompanying cluster of museums. I took full advantage of the fact that Thursday is Free Day for Berlin museums and checked out the amazing one-two punch of the Berggrün and the Bröhan.

The former is a collection dedicated to "Picasso and His Time", and thus, devotes two floors to a great many Picasso paintings, sketches, sculptures, etc. as well Matisse and, naturally, the odd Braque along with some lesser lights and good, old Paul Klee gets the third floor almost all to himself. I picked up Goethe's "Die Tafeln zur Farbenlehre und deren Erklärungen" in the gift shop, having always been interested in Goethe's research into optics and color theory. And besides, the volume is published by the Insel-Bücherei (No. 1140, if you're interested), famous for their hardbound, enticingly-covered "Taschenbücher" (pocket-size books). I first fell in love with them when I picked up a collection of Rilke poems, "Der ausgewählten Gedichte erster Teil" (No. 400) for $5.00 at the very famous Strand book store in New York. The covers are a true rainbow of joy, and I love the glued-on title cards. So that made me happy. But Lord and butter! The Bröhan! The place describes itself as the "State Museum for Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Functionalism (1889-1939)" (aside: if your state has a museum dedicated solely to one 50 year period of Industrial Design, you live in a pretty bitchin' state!). Pretty much everything in there looks like it was stolen from the inhabitants of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I about died. Also, Art Nouveau always reminds me of my grandma's living room. I even found a new favorite artist! Jean Lambert-Rucki, a Polish transplant in Paris, and the man responsible for this, among a great many other paintings, sculptures and furniture pieces. I'm going to have to get rich just so I can furnish my home with this stuff. Now, having been overwhelmed by the early 20th Century, I went outside, where I realized... I was still mad! I had forgotten about it, but here it was again!

I decided to walk from Charlottenburg to the Tiergarten and see if that made me feel any better. My anger made the walk something more akin to a trudge, but I had a good wander in the Tiergarten and a very nice sit on the base of the Siegessäule, where I watched a police escort whisk some black sedans (from which, I swear some dude waved at me!) with funny French flags waving from the hood down the Straße des 17. Juni. From there I seethed on down the road, and realizing it was getting late, took a hard left at the Reichstag, where, in addition to the always-hilarious line of tourists waiting to get in, and a bunch of shirtless sunbathers and hackey-sackers, a guy was flying the BIGGEST DAMN KITE YOU'VE EVER SEEN! Thing looked like he stole it from a parasailor, and indeed, Ben Franklin there looked like it was about all he could do to keep his heels dug desperately into terra firma, while he dipped and whirled this thing around. I passed all that by on my way to the Hauptbahnhof, though where my fire-engine red chariot awaited to transport me in 2nd class comfort back to Michendorf where my faithful Drahtesel (literally: wire donkey; figuratively: bike) carried me back home through the cool evening breeze.

Still mad, though. Damn. I went in to check my e-mail (there had been threats of a get-together on Thursday, and having heard nothing, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't because people had been frantically e-mailing me all day), and as soon as I told Paul Krause how mad I had been all day, he bit and asked me to tell him all about it. Suddenly, the reason for my rage felt exceedingly stupid, and my anger disappeared.

*Where I was given a copy of an album by Germany's latest musical sensation, the a capella group, Wise Guys. They have such lovely ditties as: a gospel song lamenting the rise of "Denglish" (the German equivalent of "Spanglish"); a fake news report with the awesome quatrain: "Der Börsengang der deutschen Bahn/ Das ist stark zu vermuten/ Verzögert sich voraussichtlich/ um fünf bis zehn Minuten." (explanation/ translation upon request); and "Buddy Biber" — a (long awaited, I have to say) German analogue to the Coasters classic, "Along Came Jones" — about a cartoon beaver who's always one step ahead of that nasty Forester Fritz.

Productivity Never Rests

Stayed in the house today. Recorded some songs. Check 'em out.

Left the house, took some pics. You know, whatevs.

Check 'em out.

Scare tactics, or: Mallard Fillmore phones it in

People with post-graduate degrees telling the population of the United States that they are, collectively, "about as sharp as a sack of wet mice" is as American as mom, baseball and Foghorn Leghorn. One of my favorite ways they do this is by publishing the results of the "Civic Literacy Quiz" by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's National Civic Literacy Board (ISINCLB) under the catchy title: "Failing our Students, Failing America". The study reports that college freshmen nationwide averaged 50.4% on the quiz and seniors 54.2%. You can take the quiz yourself here. My best effort netted me a 55/60 or 91.67%, because I am a dweeb. I would venture that if you put any set of 60 multiple choice questions in front of your average college student, their immediate reaction would be to balk at the amount of time they are expected to waste with it that could be much better spent writing term papers or earning the pittance that keeps their nostrils just above the rising tide of loan debt and simply guess on at least half the questions, especially since it doesn't affect their grade anyway. In the end, stuff like this serves primarily to give conservative drunkard, Bruce Tinsley a few days off, and old people in general something to bitch about over prunes.

Paging Dr. Freud

Last night I dreamed that I went home to Cincinnati, crawled into bed and fell asleep. I did not get up. I kept sleeping and no matter what anyone tried to get me out of bed, I would just roll over towards the wall (my favorite sleeping position) and zonk back out. My parents even brought in a house-call doctor like they have in the movies or in children's books (with the coat and the handbag), but to no avail. Then it was 6:30 and I had to get ready for school.

More Stalin Quotes than the Pan Can Handle

Nothing like cool architecture, Axel Springer and a little Communist bombast to brighten your day!

What it would be like if you could record a movie of my brain.

To dissipate the vitriol I couldn't work out in that last post. I watched my favorite thing on the Internet ever. It keeps getting funnier every time I see it, with the added bonus of corresponding very closely to my actual feelings on the subject.

Love Song for the Internal Revenue Service

Doing your taxes 5 days before their due, overseas and with no clear indication about how much, if any of the money you made there in 2007 is taxable is not a good way to spend three hours. As if the stress and lost time weren't enough, the little computer doohickey tells me I owe Uncle Sam 18 smackers for taking the time and trouble to come all the way over here and demonstrate that his constituents are not all a bunch of lazy, overweight, fast-food sucking, reality-TV-addled assholes to these kind folks and then teach them all God's English besides so none of the aforementioned fuckheads has to bother to learn a second language so they can order at McDonald's during the 5 minutes they have off the tour bus to see "Europe" or whatever the fuck on top of it.
Probably the worst of it is that the amount I have to pay depends pretty much on the exchange rate I use to convert my sweet, sweet Eurocoin into Jesusbucks, and that rate would be much more conducive to me not paying taxes if the Neocon Inbred Dickweed Brigade (NIDB) weren't so busy wet-dreaming about blowing up brown skinned people or telling the aforementioned fuckheads that things like oh, I dunno, "government regulation of financial markets", say, means the terrorists win and you have to give up The Hills (They can have Heidi Montag when they pry her from my cold, dead hands!). The fact that I will be able to buy and sell the whole damn country when the Chinese call in the trillions in debts they've racked up to play "Cowboys and People armed with rocks" in the desert for 7 years is but slight consolation. Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket, is that country fucked up.

In Dreams I Talk to You

Two nights ago, I had a dream of the nightmarish variety, I don't recall anything more specific than that, but a charging ghoul or somesuch typical nightmarish jolt startled me awake, and as I lay there, not totally sure where I was, I developed a creeping feeling that someone was in my apartment with me and that that someone was a major league pitcher.

A couple weeks ago, I dreamed that I was hanging out with the Beatles and I had a big emotional crisis, because I wanted to tell John Lennon not to go home on December 8th, 1980, but I knew that doing so could wreak havoc on the space-time continuum and destroy the universe as we know it! I was crying! It was ok though, cause then John made a bunch of prank calls to Paul McCartney's ex-girlfriends, and we had a good laugh. Then he sang me a song! Luckily, I woke up and wrote it down. I'll play it for you sometime, if you like.

All the News That's Fit to Print

Three posts in one day! Lucky you! In case you haven't been paying attention (for shame!), it's baseball season, as of Monday. Now, as I'm a couple thousand miles away from the nearest Major League team, I decided maybe I should look for my fix a little closer to home here. Well, the search for something contemporary continues apace, but I just had to share this gem from the July 20th, 1884 issue of the New York Times. This link will take you to the original pdf on the NYT website.

P.S. Ian, this reminds me, when I get back, we are most decidedly going to as many vintage games as we can! Other interested parties are welcome to join.

Decompression

Sigh, Spring Break has come and gone, and, as is apparently my wont (see last year's "Diminishing Returns"), the ambitious week-and-a-half gauntlet of self-improvement and discovery I had dutifully worked out for myself in the days prior has been reduced, during its attempted realization, to so meager a skeleton of the original, that it almost shames me too much to even disclose my initial grand aspirations. But, this being the blog-o-sphere (Wham-O! must really be kicking themselves for not having nabbed that one), I can pretty much write what ever I want, secure in the knowledge that no one will ever read any of this, ever (in fact: RACIST INTERLUDE!). So, anyway, here, in no particular order, are the things I wanted to accomplish:

• Read Faust (Parts I & II) in German
• Write songs
• Work on the latest installment of the Solidering Valiant/ Cosmic Cricket saga.
• Meet up with visiting high school teacher
• Meet language tandem partners
• Meet girl whose Masters thesis I'm proofreading
• Cross things of list of things to do in Berlin
• Watch movies
  
• Travel someplace interesting
• Plan end of year trip

As for how I actually did:

• I breezed through Faust I (it's pretty short and easy), but I am only just now through with act 2 of Faust II. In retrospect, thinking I could power through 218 pages of 200 year old lyric German (accompanied by nearly as many pages of annotations) in the span of a week, was, if not downright hubristic, then at the very least, shortsighted.
• Tim and I recorded a few demos, but as for actually writing songs, it's actually never been something I could schedule, and I really never got motivated to dive in.
• HA! The problem with this, in addition to it being a stupid, desultory, diatribey piece, is that I have to actually make myself angry to be able to work on it, which, despite all outward appearances, is something I don't really like to do, so this one is definitely (maybe) on indefinite hiatus.
• Meeting the illustrious Herr Hausfeld was a resounding success. I went out with him and his partner for Thai, and then we went for a couple more beers. I probably drank more than I should have though, since I lost track of time and missed the last train home, so I ended up crashing on the couch in their hotel in Wittenbergplatz. This provided me the added perk of pulling a St. Xavier High School Faculty partner two-fer when I met my freshman English teacher's husband (an English-man, oddly enough) at breakfast in the morning. Woo. Hoo.
• They all cancelled! Ha!
• Another splashing success. We chatted and walked through Sansoucci and ate ice cream and talked about grammar and usage!
• Maybe if I had a physical list, I would accomplish this more.
• ibid.
• I really could barely be bothered to leave the house most days, honestly, especially since long periods of unstructured time pretty much destroy my sleep schedule, so starting your day (much less your day trip) at 4pm is not exactly conducive to accomplishing this goal.
• Meh, sort of.

All right. Well. I'm lookin' at that and I see that I'm 2.5/10 (the half being Faust). Means I'm batting about .250, so above the Mendoza line, and if we count those two "successes" as home runs, I'm lookin' at about a .900 SLG, so, not too too bad. The most important thing, I think is that it was relaxing, just what I needed to sort of take the edge off. Not that I feel particularly refreshed now, back in the swing of things, but still, it was nice to pull myself out of the quotidian stream. Final analysis: As my old German prof. Kai Hammermeister used to say, breaks are important to be able to do your own thinking. I couldn't agree more.

CHRISTMAS ON MARS IS DONE!

You know it's going to be worth the wait!
















Also: George, Washington? That's almost enough to get me to move there!

End transmission.