Heroes and Villains

Thoughts on Three Texts

Thu, 02 Jun 2005 18:19:32 GMT

Theory-wise, I can cite three written works that have recently had a major impact on my thinking: Slavoj Zizek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology (of which I’ve only read about 70 pages); John Leland’s Hip: The History; and David Foster Wallace’s essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction." These are somewhat disparate works, but especially after reading Wallace’s essay, I’ve really started to pay attention to the way concepts of cynicism, irony, and “hipness” all work together in our culture.

Zizek is of course the most difficult of any of these authors, since he’s writing for an academic crowd, but his ideas are important and kind of fundamental for my current critique of cultural resistance. In a paper I wrote a few years ago about William Burroughs, I tried to examine the way in which Burroughs resisted certain literary functions, such as the postmodern “death of the author.” I got to the point where I was able to demonstrate how Burrough’s work was subversive ( in that it resists certain literary conventions which could be seen as symptomatic of larger negative social structures), but I found myself unsatisfied that this was actually somehow productive.

We activist-types tend to get all excited when, say, a movie has some kind of seemingly subversive theme running through it; or when we think an artist (an author or a musician) seeks to challenge or illuminate the status quo through their art. But when I take a step back from these (pleasurable) “discoveries” of resistance, I find myself deeply unsatisfied. The fact is that understanding how things are fucked up is vastly removed from taking steps towards making them less fucked up. This is why Zizek is so important to me right now. Cynicism, for Zizek, is simply a function of our consciousness, which in many ways allows us to distance ourselves from trauma by allowing us the pleasure of understanding it.

This is why the Matrix (along with its other many, many flaws) is such an unsatisfying model for our social constructions. Ideology isn’t something hidden from us, as Marx said (they do not know it, but they are doing it, etc.). The fact is, a lot of us are well aware of what we’re doing, and how absurd and injust the social and cultural systems we take part in are. But (and correct me if I’m wrong) we also get pleasure from this knowledge, pleasure that in many ways forestalls any real change ever taking place. Think about it: how many times have you sat down to watch the Simpsons, thinking, I wonder why Fox lets them get away with this? Well, it’s not hard to figure out. First of all, you’re still watching, aren’t you? Fox makes its money regardless.

But it goes deeper than that. As David Foster Wallace points out in "E Unibus Pluram," television in America has basically absorbed all of the postmodern cynicism or the 60’s and 70’s. Poststructuralism is basically all about the collapse of unified meaning in language. In popular culture, this concept often manifests as irony, a lack of cohesion between what is said and what is meant. And television, as Wallace argues, is perfectly suited to show irony because of its combination of (and often the clash between) the heard and the seen. Television, especially comedy on television, is the embodiment of irony and cynicism.

The sitcom used to be based around an affirmation of the status quo in the form of patriarchal authority—but these early sitcoms were already a longing for something that the counterculture was starting to question and unravel. There was no way for them to hold on against the influx of the hip, the cynical, and the ironic, and television was quick to incorporate these instead of continuing to resist them. Think about it—sitcoms, like MTV, mock paternal authority instead of celebrating it.

This is old news, of course, but what’s important to note is that this use of irony is vital to maintaining a certain status quo in late-late capitalism. And of particular importance, to me at least, is to pay attention to how such cynical detachment has crept into the “field” of cultural studies—for instance, the pleasure that academics get from deconstructing and figuring out what’s going on “behind the curtain” of mass culture.

This is a lot of the reason that I’m staying away from grad school, probably forever. I’m not opposed to education (though we could discuss at length what the real function of “eductation” is our society), but I am opposed to getting caught up in the rather self-indulgent theoretical rambling that seems to constantly defer activism and real work for social change. I don’t want to just understand what’s wrong with our current system. I want to work to dismantle it and build something better in its place.

Does your soul need a firmware update?

Sat, 19 Feb 2005 05:52:54 GMT

So, I was browsing a computer repair website to find instructions for installing a new hard drive in my trusty 5-year old powerbook, when I happened to stumble upon this section of their site.

um, what the fuck?

aww

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:43:09 GMT

I first saw this photo on wednesday in my "Postmodern Bodies" class, as one in a series of war-related images we were discussing that day. The reaction of my classmates (many of whom had already seen the picture) caught me more than a little off guard. But I think this has a lot to do with the context in which we first viewed the image. More specifically, I saw the image for the first time before I had any context for it. There was no caption, no explanation--at least until my professor explained her first context for viewing the image. But thinking back, the way in which the students had first viewed the image perhaps gives a good explanation for the uniformity of their thoughts regarding it.

My professor and the other students had seen the image as an attachment on a forwarded email. The very fact that an email subject must be read before the attached image can be downloaded or viewed means that the image will always carry the context intended by the author before any other associations. So the subject of this email, apparently something like "images you won't see in the news," carried a whole range of both latent and manifest meanings--most of which were very intentional.

So what would these intended meanings be? According to my classmates, the email explained that pictures such as this one show a different side of the war in Iraq than the one portrayed by the media--one in which there were positive, peaceful moments as well as moments of horrible violence and chaos. Discussion seemed to indicate that this was a popular sentiment (despite what seems to be an anti-war majority) in the class. And in a strange, un-critical way, I found myself agreeing with it somewhat. I certainly will not argue the fact that the media shows us violence in an almost pornographic way, and that the editorial framework "if it bleeds, it leads," is doing nothing to encourage a critical and perhaps constructive news media. So there was a lot of truth in the words of students who criticized the news for not showing us more images like these.

Since I didn't see the other pictures in the email, I can only base my judgment of this message on the picture of the kitten and the soldier. Now, I have to say that my initial reaction to this picture was simply to laugh out loud (though I stifled it at the time). I was thinking, what a ridiculous, sentimental piece of bullshit propaganda! And precisely the sort of thing that I am very used to seeing in the mainstream press (specifically the reactionary, ultra-corporate press like Fox News). And, for the most part, I still feel that way. But like I said, a lot of my classmates already had a framework for understanding this image, and that was the context of this forwarded email: a (in appearance, at least) semi-personal form of mass communication that most certainly carried a very distinct, intentional message along with it.

One student in my class pointed out that he had talked to a few soldiers in Iraq that were talking about all the good things that were happening, such as rebuilding a school or water system alongside Iraqi citizens. And he had a valid point--we don't hear (a lot) about these projects currently, because the news is usually dominated by reports of violence (and occasionally by stories of abuse by soldiers). But on the other hand, we have had it drummed into our heads repeatedly that despite continuing violence, the effort in Iraq is making things better--take the election, for example. Our boys are over there are making Iraq a safer place for democracy, or so the narrative goes.

And, despite the obligatory coverage of bloody attacks, we still don't hear the half of it. The report last year that estimated civilian casualties from the conflict at over 100,000 barely got a nod from the American press, but we do hear the CNN or Fox News reporters practically cheering when the troops they are embedded with shoot at insurgents in Falujah. The media does more than its share of cheerleading in this conflict, and I don't know how people get the impression that there is some sort of "untold story" of positive things happening in Iraq.

When I looked at that picture, I wanted to laugh because it was absurd. But war is absurd, and the picture actually does a good job of showing that. As much as I would like to make fun of people who look at the picture and see something heroic or cute, I too find the picture touching, albeit in a different way. To look at the picture as some sort of example of "success" in Iraq is quite simply idiotic. Such an wanders into the realm of satire:

Washington- The Pentagon today released a report detailing the success of a recent campaign by Marines in Fallujah to ensure the health and security of the city's large kitten population. "Under Saddam's Ba'athist regime, the kittens of Iraq were violently oppressed, not to mention rarely petted," said secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. "Now, despite continuing attacks by terrorists and former regime elements, we can safely say that these kittens are finally free to be petted, nuzzled, and are even receiving daily rations of catnip.

But despite the picture's capacity for sentimental jingoism, there is another side to this image, that I found myself identifying with. I associate it with a certain old-school pacifist image (strangely enough, I'm watching MASH right now on my parent's tv), that of the peaceful moment in the middle of absurdity, chaos, and death. A high school teacher I had once told a story about how in Vietnam, he used to feed monkeys beer out of a helmet to get them drunk. But he didn't talk about this as if it was some way of showing that they had triumphed and were now free to engage in lighthearted activities. It was just an escape from the incredible heaviness of the violence around them. The picture doesn't show me anything except that war is fucked up, dreadful, and--in odd, fleeting moments--kind of funny and strange.

In one way this all just goes to show that we don't really think anything upon seeing an image like this that we weren't already prepared to think--that the image just takes on the meaning that we already have ready for it. And that's pretty true of both my reaction and the reaction of my classmates. But at the same time, those who received the email were not given it free of context. They were told what to think of it, and I find this interesting. What it made me think about it is various articles I've read about the new phenomenon of viral marketing. If you haven't heard of viral marketing, I guarantee that you've already participated in it.

This site gives a pretty good explanation of the basic idea, which is just what it sounds like: plant an advertisement, idea or ideology, and watch it spread by itself. As the author puts it, "Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions." We already know about the pentagon's admitted staging for the cameras of at least one famous scene from early in the war (the toppling of the Saddam Statue). What if emails like this were just another weapon in the great battle of narratives being waged by this administration? What better weapon than these heartwarming, seemingly personal emails?

Fri, 04 Feb 2005 15:16:09 GMT

"United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam."

- Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled, 'U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote,' September 4, 1967.

Dahr Jamail's Iraq Journalism

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:48:20 GMT

If you haven't yet had a chance to hear or read some of Dahr Jamail's independent coverage of the events in Iraq at the moment, I suggest you start reading his blog.

We’d already pushed our luck, so after talking to a few folks we grab lunch and head back towards home. “Let’s play a game and see how many photos we can take before we get pulled over or shot at again,” I joke to them both.

They laugh, appreciating my acquired Iraqi humor-if you don’t laugh at this situation, you lose your mind promptly. “Yeah, why not,” replies Abu Talat as we speed down another mostly empty street.

Ahmed, 15 years old, tells me one of his friends was shot in the back by an Iraqi soldier because he drove by an unmarked checkpoint. “He’s in the hospital now, but he’s in too much pain to talk to me,” he says.

-from "high anxiety"

hey

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:37:14 GMT

does janine ever read this? if so, you should email me.

house party

Sat, 29 Jan 2005 20:41:18 GMT

Last night my house held a "rent" party. We got two kegs of Yuengling , told everyone we've ever met to come and bring their friends, and charged 5 bucks a cup. The result is about $200 of profit for the house, and an ungodly mess. If such a party had been held at the last house I lived in, I would have been stressed or even upset. But my current house is little more than a waystation on the way to a rented room in my brother's new house. Thanks to my access to free and unlimited storage facitities (my parents' basement), I moved into this current house with only a carload of clothes and my bike. So while my overriding impulse--as drunk punk kids trip over each other and muddy up the carpet--is to freak out and lay down the law with my maglite, I very quickly chilled out and just went along for the ride. After all, I have little invested in this house (none of furniture or appliances are mine), so I don't really care what happens as long as no one comes upstairs and starts messin with my stuff. Though the party was, as I would expect, dominated by white punks and other assorted new bohemians, our neighbor James stopped by. He peeled his $5 keg fee off a fat roll, in contrast to grimy hands pulling crumpled singles and quarters out of black carharts. Another young black man was in the kitchen with me, when we got going in a pretty funny series of cuts on the most common fashion choices in the room. It started when he asked me where he could stash his coat, a perry ellis parka he said he paid 80 dollars for. He commented that he was afraid someone that didn't know him would just walk off with it. I pointed out how silly this was, looking at the crowd. That jacket might be black, I said, but it isn't an extra small, so no one at this party would want anything to do with it. He agreed. He went on to tell me about how much he loved to party with the punk kids ("I love my Caucasian persuasion"): how they turned him on to grain alcohol (he was skeptical at first that a little bottle of something clear would get 9 people fucked up), and how he passed out on the grass with them one night. He drew the line, however, at "eating out of a trash can," and said that he preferred to pay for his trash at the Burger King.

test

Sat, 29 Jan 2005 20:03:21 GMT

just testing out my new bloggin client, ijournal.

Some sort of music "challenge"

Mon, 24 Jan 2005 18:06:48 GMT

1. Total amount of music files on your computer:

This question has an interesting, or actually fairly uninteresting, answer. My brother, who foisted this “challenge” on me, claims to have no downloaded music files on his computer. Which would be true, except that his computer, as befits our wacky family, is actually “my” computer (my dad’s computer is now my brother’s computer as well). This means that if you were to log into “his” computer as “me,” you would be able to browse through what “I” estimate are about 500 mp3s which are currently serving no purpose other than to slow down the charming red imac that I dumped on my “brother” for this only slightly less obsolete powerbook pismo, which I still like quite a bit.

2. The CD you last bought is:

The “Lost Singles” cd from Arab on Radar. I don’t think I could really say anything that this picture can’t:

3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?

The last song I remember hearing is the Rare Essence version of “Pieces of Me.” If you don’t know anything about Rare Essence, or DC’s own unique genre of Go-Go music, I don’t really either (this website doesn't answer the question really, but is kind of amusing nonetheless). I do know that I’ve heard enough Go-Go to recognize and enjoy it when I hear it on WPGC 95.5FM, and I know enough about Ashley Simpson to say that this version of her first single only cements her position as pop’s #1 silver spoon-fed laughing stock. The DJ’s few words after the song were something along the lines of “There you go, Rare Essence with a MUCH better version of that song than the original, Ashley Simpson recording. I repeat, Ashley Simpson is a horrible singer and Rare Essence does that song way better than that little whiney brat.” Which is pretty much what I was thinking while listening to it.

4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you:

no. I don’t have time to finish this. I can’t think of anything. I’m lazy.

5. Who are you going to pass this stick to? (3 persons) and why?

If any of my Livejournal “friends” or regular readers want to do this, be my guest.

Snow on 18th Street

Sat, 22 Jan 2005 20:28:20 GMT

The last few days have been interesting, with a strange dual perspective on the whole inauguration thing…
First I worked around 20 hours with only a five hour break in the middle, busting my ass to light up a banquet hall for a General Motors-sponsored inaugural event. The money is right for this work, and its one of a few of my, um, “marketable” skills. So I managed to earn a little change from the groups and events I spent the next day denouncing in the street. Highlights of the actual inauguration:
-Protesters with signs denouncing the breakup of Brad and Jen
-Snowball fight with Republicans in line
-Narrowly avoiding pepper spray to the face
And so begins another four years of the same… I could try and take up the call of other blogs and comment on the abysmal media coverage of anti-bush protesters at the inauguration, insightful deconstructions of Bush’s speech and consequent reactions to it, etc., but I frankly think I can’t compete with the folks already doing that sort of thing.
I would like to devote a little more time to actually writing and posting here, but I think at this time the best thing I do is tell stories, and I don’t see any reason to stray too far from that format. Stay tuned for more of, well, the same.

Asshole Convention - this week

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:21:16 GMT

I made my way to DC today to work doing some lighting for what I assume is some sort of inaugural event at a hotel in DC. I saw a couple of box vans pulled over by troopers and unmarked SUVs on 95 as I drove down. I have a horrible feeling being in this fortress town at times like this. I will just have to keep my mouth shut at this job and wait until Thursday to mouth off at the criminals and tyrants that are infecting the city for a few days. If you can get the day off, please come join me then.

Wed, 15 Dec 2004 19:56:22 GMT

so I'm powering down the computer, packing the last of my things, and leaving this city for I don't know how long. I'll be back, eventually...

Sun, 12 Dec 2004 15:42:31 GMT

leaving berlin on wednesday night.

can someone please explain what "Hogmanay" is?

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 19:02:57 GMT

"Lance Corporal Thomas Rennie said: 'I can't wait to get back to Scotland for Christmas and New Year and Hogmanay. It's going to be brilliant. I'm going to drink as much beer as possible and get the kilt on and get out on the town.'"
-bbc article about the Black Watch unit's return to Scotland for Christmas.

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 13:32:06 GMT

So I went up to Hamburg for a couple of nights. I did a lot of thinking up there, mostly at night, as there wasn’t really much else to do. I didn’t have the option of sleeping, because one other person occupied the three-bed hostel room both nights I was there. This person, whose face I did not gaze upon until the second evening of my stay, snored loudly enough to raise the dead. I wasn’t even aware that a human could make such a noise. It seemed more like the enhanced sound effect of some digital movie-creature, the dragon that shakes the ground with its noisy slumber as a hero creeps by. This man came in after I was asleep, though I did wake when he entered the room. He was so quiet and respectful in his entrance, simply taking off his pants and jacket and hanging them up before slipping into bed. I think I fell asleep again, but I was soon awakened by a noise like a small nasal explosion, followed by something that sounded like a horse being strangled. I tried a few vain attempts to stir him enough that he might roll off of his back. I banged some nearby object against the radiator. I went out in the hall to the bathroom, making sure to slam the door and step heavily. It never worked. I thought that there was no way he could be healthy. Perhaps he had to sleep attached to some sort of mechanical breathing apparatus, which was powered by a diesel engine concealed in his suitcase. I have no idea what could cause such a sound to come out of a human being, but I did know that I was in a hellish situation. I lay on my back, startled by the occasional change in the snoring. Occasionally the regular chainsaw rhythm was interrupted by a noise like his lungs were expelling a small animal with explosive force. I silenty concocted a fantasy that he would die in his sleep, but the body would be removed quietly before I awoke. The only way I managed to get to sleep, around 3, was by wrapping my head in a pillow from the unoccupied bed and then covering myself entirely with the duvet. He was up before me, clearly having had the best night's sleep of his life.

The Unicef Truck

Thu, 18 Nov 2004 00:10:19 GMT

This white landrover is often parked on the street near our flat. One night, while walking by it, we noticed something interesting taped up in the back window. Who owns this truck? Do they really work for unicef? Is this a violation of official Unicef policy? I guess we won't ever know.

the truck...

a closer look...

Thu, 11 Nov 2004 09:58:49 GMT

I recently made friends with a very nice German woman, Ines, who shares with me a love of bikes and good eating. We ate dinner at her flat the other night and her hilarious friend told us stories about hitchhiking in America. He got a ride once from a state trooper in West Virginia, who asked what part of Germany was he from... "the east part, or the west part." He tried his best to explain that it really is a fairly unified country and there is not really a clean division between people who like freedom and people who like communism. Apparently then the dispatcher, upon learning the trooper was giving him a ride, asked over the radio, "is he from the east part, or the west part?"
He also told us a story about a friend who was for some reason staying with a rural American family. They were very nice people, incredibly welcoming, and thought it would be really great to bake him a cake with the german flag on it. Unfortunately, they did not know that the german flag has changed periodically in the last century, and he was a little weirded out, obviously, to be welcomed by a cake with a swastika on it. They weren't neo-nazis or even racists, they just legitimately believed that it was still the symbol of Germany.

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 13:24:25 GMT

It’s finally cold in Berlin, and in my typical stubbornness towards the weather, I’ve been spending a lot of time outside. I actually don’t mind the cold all that much, provided that I’ve sufficiently armed myself against it with long underwear, a warm hat, woolen socks, etc. When I’m not prepared for it, I actually hate cold weather. But when I don’t have to worry that halfway into a walk I will find certain parts of my body numb or perhaps blackened with frostbite, I can really dig a brisk walk in the cold air.

The one thing that’s throwing me a bit, though, is the darkness. With sunset at around 4pm, and a constant cover of dark clouds blocking out the few hours of daylight, it’s dark basically all the time now in Berlin.

Well actually at this exact moment it’s bright and sunny out, but due to certain circumstances, I am not really able to go outside (or open the drapes). So I can see a little patch of sunlight coming in from underneath the heavy curtain, but I do not dare risk leaving this darkened sanctuary.

No, I have not deluded myself into thinking I’ve been recently bitten by a vampire, but Jenn has a migraine, and my sense of duty to her wellbeing mandates that I stay here and look after her. Which is mainly consisting of me writing emails and trying not to make a noise much louder than an ant farting.

The thing is, I want very much to take care of Jenn, I worry about her and I wish I could do something to make her pain subside. But the problem of this one-room apartment is that I can’t really be there for her without my presence becoming a liability to her comfort.

Perhaps I could turn the TV around and sit a few feet from it, watching the BBC with headphones on. Perhaps I could teach myself to mime, or take up tai chi. Or maybe I’ll just continue to sit here on the computer, reassuring myself that I am helping Jenn, even though it feels at the moment like I am completely powerless to do anything of the sort.

Satan

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 15:38:58 GMT

Just a moment ago I watched a U.S. marine commander, explain to the BBC why an assault on Falujah has the marines giddy at the opportunity to fight face to face with the as-of-yet unseen enemy.

“Now the enemy has a face, he’s called Satan, and he’s in Falujah.”

Ok, I can sort of imagine what I think it’s like to be a soldier in such a shitty, pointless war, waiting to be picked off by a roadside bomb or sniper so you can join your buddies in a well-deserved rest. And I can see how someone that believed in the devil would certainly have no trouble seeing him in the shadows of bombed-out Falujah, quietly encouraging that 16-year old with the RPG up on the rooftop.

But it’s still disturbing that soldiers think things like this, that there is either a literal or a figurative devil somewhere in this little town and that it is he that’s been causing all this trouble.

I guess it’s different for religious folks, but for me I can’t picture Satan as something other than a cartoon, and this soldier on TV just sounded like a superstitious lunatic with heavy artillery at his command.

And that sounds like bad news for the civilians and even the resistance fighters holed up in this soon-to-be shitstorm.

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 23:35:28 GMT

A recent post on this blog discussed some interesting points about German state regulation on the handling of the deceased. Interesting to me, at least, because I’ve been to Germany twice for the explicit purpose of, well, handling the deceased.

Both my grandparents--Germans that left the country only to return in retirement almost 40 years later--died in the last decade. They were both cremated and “buried” at sea, which according to the above-mentioned site is one of few options for Germans.

When my Opa died, we had a service in a nondescript funeral parlor, followed by an afternoon feast in a dim private dining room. We later received a document in the mail with a sea chart detailing his final resting place. Oma, who died only a few months after my mother and I had returned from a trip to Germany, was the center of what I found to be a much more uplifting ritual.

We went along on the boat this time, a small charter craft that was specially equipped for the purpose. A short cruise out of Kiel harbor into the fringes of the Baltic Sea was accompanied by the obligatory German coffee and cake. The captain spoke a few words and then lowered the (according to the brochure, water soluble) urn into the water.

I took a lot of pictures that day, some of the best photographs I think I’ve ever taken. I was really into using slide film at the time, and the crisp, ultra-saturated images they produced ended up being both dramatic and touching (at least to me and a few family members).

But there was one thing I regrettably did not manage to capture. As our entourage filed into a restaurant across from the marina, my brother and I spotted the first mate from the funeral boat. He was getting into his car, and had already changed from his crisp, respectful uniform into his civilian clothes, baggy jeans and the t-shirt from some outdated metal group.

This was a nicely symbolic end to what I consider my first relationship with this country. This was the relationship of awkward formality, sometimes stressful or crushing familial obligation (less so for me than for my mother and others), and relief found mostly in the absurd (or the occasional trip to a site more typically vacation-oriented than a musty apartment).

I loved my grandparents but never really knew them. I see in faded family photograph near strangers that lived lives I could never understand, and now can’t even ask about. The strongest association I have to my grandparents was the ritual importance of afternoon coffee and cake.

When it came to eating, my brother was the star, the “good eater.” My appetite always disappointed my grandparents a little. He’s also the one that got to have something approaching normal conversations with them. As their memories and general faculties faded, so did their English and my opportunities to talk to them.

So my strongest memories of the trips we made are of funny, strange things, things that you would expect a bored kid or teenager to notice if placed in a room with strangers literally speaking another language. These memories, perhaps trite or perhaps disrespectful, are far more important to me than I think some people might be able to fathom.

That's why I wish I had a picture of the heavy-metal first mate. It isn't something that anyone else would find touching, but it still means something to me, though I'm not totally sure what.

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 18:09:26 GMT

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 18:30:34 GMT

I am sick with a cold and Jenn is making me dinner. Although it is totally normal for someone to do things for you when you are sick, I still find the need to act as if I disapprove of it. So I sit here at the computer, every few minutes offering to help or do something, even though I know she will insist that it isn’t necessary.

The past few days have been a bit different for me.

My class ended last week and I’m not exactly sure what I am supposed to do with myself right now. The next week is Jenn’s break, and already the past few days we have been spending most of our time together, seeing and doing many things together for the first time in this city. But soon she will be back to her enforced routine, while I am left to enforce one on myself.

In the Talented Mr. Ripley, the wealthy heir Dickie Greenleaf received $500 a month from his trust fund as he baked in the sun of Southern Italy. And so I sit (minus the sun) in Berlin, aware that the modest amount my mom has deposited in my account the last few months is nothing like such a privilege, yet still I feel a weight.

This is the weight of idleness in my life. I find myself saying things like, “what if I lived in Berlin?” Technically, I am living in Berlin. But this isn’t my life. It’s an interruption, a hiatus, a sabbatical.

When I was attending class every day, I could conjure up the spirit of routine. The morning coffee, the lunch with friends in the afternoon—this ordering of time is what we are ‘supposed’ to do, and therefore it feels more like real life to engage in it.

Unlike Dickie Greenleaf, I am not a trust-fund baby entertaining a notion of tortured alienation. I’m still in school, I work when I am able to (or permitted to by my country of residence) and I feel totally out of place when given an opportunity to define my own boundaries.

On a somewhat related note, I have been thinking more and more about living here, well, for real. I’m starting to like the idea.

to my adoring audience

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:27:28 GMT

In an interesting development, this journal’s contents are now being reproduced on the website “Berlin Blogs.” (www.berlinblogs.com). Since I mostly started writing this to update friends about what I was up to in Berlin, its interesting to know that I now have an “audience” of strangers. One request I’d like to make is that if you respond to a post, sign your name or something. I don’t really mind the anonymous posts, but it’s interesting to know who’s reading.

The Market of Love

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 20:48:33 GMT

Last week in class, we were discussing dating. Or rather, we were discussing the intricacies of German personal ads. It’s a bit confusing to me why we cover certain topics in class. Of course, reading a series of these ads and then listening to a dramatization of the subsequent phone conversations--always played by the same, apparently manic-depressive actors—is an excellent way to bolster our vocabulary and hone our listening skills. But sometimes it seems like the themes we discuss in class are supposed to have some personal relevance to us, like how to rent an apartment or shop for clothing. Then the textbook throws us a curveball, like this simulated page of personals that looks--from the pictures at least--like it was taken from a newspaper produced in a refugee camp. The whole class quickly transitions from a exercise in matching people’s desires to an improvised lesson in basic cruelty. The old woman for whom it is “never too late for a new beginning,” gets the worst of it. I feel sorry for this fictional senior citizen, whose ad implies will take anything she can get. There is one word we need clarified in her ad, the word for widow, and my teacher has a little bit of trouble making this clear to one group of students. Somehow while listening to her, pronouns must have melted together and while they nodded their heads with certainty, I don’t think they totally understood exactly what happened to whom in her example. A few minutes later we had to write out fake personal adds of our own, and the teacher asked us to give some examples to fill in for “Familienstand(family status?).” Of course it's a bit funny when Christian, the class's requisite sleezy-but-harmless Italian suggests that one possibility is "verheiratet.(married)" And then one of the students who had trouble earlier with the concept of a widow blurted out “Tot!” It took me only a few seconds to picture the ads: “34 year old white dead engineer looking for that special someone…”

Tommorow I will have some more time to write, so stay tuned.

The grapevine has been whispering to me

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 13:10:49 GMT

Ok, I am certainly trying to keep up both the intellectual and entertainment values of this sometimes floundering journal. But recently I have been confronted by far too many funny things on the internet to concentrate on putting into writing my more stimulating experiences. Today I bought my first ever jar of nutella, which I'm sure a few of you have had your share (or fill) of. After a quick test spoonful I found it rather tasty. Wanting to know a little more about what I was eating, and being unable to totally decipher the nutrional info on the jar, I sought out the wisdom of the internet. I didn't exactly find wisdom, but I did find this site (http://www.virtualitalia.com/recipes/nutella.shtml), which contains numerous bizarre boasts about nutella’s popularity.

For example:

“Nutella Promotes World Peace
Nutella is our destiny!! Not just our destiny, but everybody's destiny!! It promotes world peace, keeps your engine runnning smooth, and saves little boys from drowning. Even the leader of the free world will attest to it's almighty powers. ‘Mmmm..it tastes good....’”

Um… yeah. Also there was this:

"Nutella in the Work Place: Real Men Eat Nutella
Here is a correspondance between two burly manual labarors that was passed onto our food editor:

" Hi, Joe
It was nice to see you again. Hope all is going great for you at the shop! The grapevine has been whispering to me : ) Tonight we're serving KitKat chocolate on the fingers -- for variety! Do you share the Nutella at the shop... or do you just let them watch?
Walt"

" Walt, I have to thank you for introducing me to nutella. I have enjoyed it for about 8 months now. I remember the day you had it all over your fingers-- I could have sworn it was melted KitKat! I have found Nutella to be much cheaper at Costco than in the super markets. Nutella was the first food item I brought into the shop.
Joe""