Category: Uncategorized
-
How bad is it? Give me a sign…
If there’s one thing about the collapse in the U.S. media’s credibility and sustainability that disturbs me most (aside from its effects on my own potential income), it’s that I can’t tell how deep the crazy in today’s politics really runs. Like in this NYT Tea Party article here. Excellent feature, but it doesn’t really…
-
We, the machine, can write like the wind
Another reminder that the market is sometimes bad for humans. Or writers (and probably readers), in this case. According to the NYT, Tina Brown is hot on creating a new publishing imprint that will rush books to market just a few months — one to three for writing, another one or two for editing and…
-
Stalin in Iran
Stunning how completely the Iranian trials replicate their Soviet models. From Juan Cole, quoting a translation of official Iran news radio: Asked if his current position was under the effect of his imprisonment, (former vice president Mohammad Ali) Abtahi said the situation in the prison helped him to reach a conclusion about the recent incidents.…
-
Eight things, a meme-tag
I have been meme-tagged by the beautiful and eloquent Ms. Balderama, of Intoxifictian, Nonsense Versian, Naxian, and NYT-ian fame. The idea is to expose eight things about yourself. I’m borrowing in part from her borrowed template, since this is a meme, after all. So here goes: 1. I took great pride when young in being…
-
The beer really is better. But you have to hike for it.
Belatedly, our last week: We visited T. and K. last weekend in München, where they moved two months or so ago despite our extreme and desperate protests. Their new apartment is lovely, in a quiet neighborhood northeast of the old town, within a (long) walk to the University where T. is beginning his PhD program…
-
Passing of a gentle soul
Today was Frida’s last day. Just a month after we left for Berlin, the poor purring kitty turned out to have kidney failure. Corii stabilized her for a few months, but she took a turn for the worse a few days ago. Today a needle slipped into her veins, and she shivered with a final…
-
Oh yeah, the love parade
On Saturday, the Love Parade. Half a million people or so in the Tiergarten, dancing to 39 heavily adverstising-laden floats circling the main boulevard and blasting various stripes of rave music. It was fun, not as annoying as it could have been, nor as entrancing as a small rave can be. Aimee described it best:…
-
Papergirl delivers. Don’t ask for a subscription.
Yesterday afternoon, a group of artists and writers rode up and down Prenzlauer Berg with boxes on their bikes, tossing unsolicited wrapped “newspapers” into doorways, American paperboy style. We met one of them, a woman who just graduated from LSE, but is living temporarily here, at a party on the Spree last night. Inside the…
-
Red wine fights deafness? Wie bitte?
Next in the list of red wine’s superpowers: it may help fight deafness. Free radicals are in part responsible for degeneration of the tiny hairs of the inner ear that are responsible for hearing. Wine’s antioxidants may help slow that process, some scientists think. And because it’s the magic powers of antioxidants we’re talking about…
-
Tranny magic at the Osteria
It’s 4 am and the sky is lightening, a little too soon for my tastes. We’ve just come home from an evening with Kenji and Till in their Kreuzberg neighborhood. Wine at their apartment and then dinner at an Italian cafe, where near midnight a tranny magician wandered in, and spotting us alone in a…
-
Scenic, but my teeth hurt
So, cobblestones. They’re a lovely way to pave a street, much nicer than the ribbons of concrete we have in the United States. But on a bike? Really, really bumpy. Thank god they let you ride on the sidewalks here.
-
Filling the echoing void, with a side trip for meatballs
The problem: A vast, empty apartment. Which incidently smelled like sheetrock. We clearly needed Ikea. Ok, and a car. Or a van, technically. We find a shop that will rent to us. Many won’t, because we don’t have the International Drivers Permit that is really only a translation of our US drivers license, or an…
-
Would a riot be too much to ask?
So, Mayday. I’m chatting with Corii online, and she says there’s a huge parade on Market street in San Francisco, part of the immigrant protest movement in the states. Here in Berlin, the first of May is supposed to get ugly. For the last 24 hours, we’ve seen literally dozens, even scores of police vans…
-
A mattress, freezing rain, and pho on the way
Sitting in a smokey Internet cafe around the corner from the Landwehrkanal, and our little temporary studio apartment. It’s cold outside, and supposed to reach freezing point tonight. This just a few days after the entire city spent an afternoon sunbathing — some of them nude– in the Tiergarten. We’re on the way to find…
-
Technology = making the treadmill move faster
A study supported by Acco Brands — the Day Timer organizers company — says that Americans feel much less productive than they did years ago. It’s not that they’re objectively getting less done. According to the U.S. Conference Board, labor productivity overall grew at an annual rate of about 2.9 percent between 2000 and 2004.…