Here comes another embarassing admission.
If you asked me, I'd tell you that I am a great admirer of Eno. A fan in a that's-awesome-and-beautiful-but-I'll-never-understand-all-of-it kind of way. He is one of those people who is sort of, um, meta and uncontested.
So when I read that Andrew used the Oblique Strategies as a way to get Design Engaged thought out, well, yes. I had never heard of them. Evidence that I am not cool and have only ever PASSED as cool. Somehow this obviously momentous chunk of music/art/creative history just went right on by me; perhaps it sensed that I wasn't ready for it or something.
Nevertheless.
If you don't know about them either, you should have a look. I venture to describe them as pragmatic koans, meant to propel you through a creative project that seems determined to hang itself. They were designed by Eno and Peter Schmidt, apparently sort of synchronously in the '70s and now there are about a billion implementations of them online, some just text sources, some animated and randomized. This is the one I'm using. Because Stoney doesn't say which edition they're from, I'm assuming it's the first.
However. If anyone has 30 pounds to spare I would SO like to have a material version. They're for sale at enoshop. Santa? I guess we could make our own, but after that last project involving cards, I think I'd rather spend the money...
New: Okazo has a nice flash version of the 4th edition. Best to open it from the link on the page so that the new window is the proper size - you get a better feeling of actually taking a card (there's also a description here of how the 4th edition differs from the earlier ones).
LEO-Adventskalender 2004. No peeking early, people.
Two weeks after the fact, I've finally read Andrew's write-up of Design Engaged. Although I was well-apprised of the whole process, including the cutting and pasting of those little cards, it is a different feeling to read his overall impressions. It makes me wish I'd been; or more, that I would have something salient to contribute to such a thing. Maybe next time.
I've been reading Maidan (this link is to an uplifting post) and FOE to try to get a handle on what's going on in Ukraine. This is the first time I've ever watched something unfold this way online and, in particular, on blogs. I tend not to read political blogs much, but this is really compelling coverage.
This is an excellent write-up of the Leitkultur debate.
At raskal trippin I read that there's a craigslist for Berlin. Wish I were looking for something there...
Threadless is having a $10 sale. Nikolaus was stocking up last night.
It’s still raining. The thunderstorm that rumbled on and on last night dumped about three inches, adding to the several inches we collected last week. We closed the windows at one point because the incessant noise of the rain was just too much, there was nothing musical or soothing about it. Just noise.
But at least the rain let up long enough for me to get out of the house and go walking; now I can face another day of cabin fever with something of a level head. Shoal Creek is really high. You know it’s been an especially bad flood when there are fish all over the sidewalk…yuck. With the current up like this, it reminded me of walking along the Dreisam every morning when I was in Freiburg (although I never saw fish on the sidewalk there. And actually the water is much cleaner because it’s not flood water). Almost exactly at the halfway point of my walk it started raining again, but by that point I was already soggy from the grass and the trees.
Rainy rainy rain. Here's one view of campus in the rain, but here is a more impressionistic, and somehow more authentic, record of what it's like here right now.
One more note on the personal statement. I've learned you have to stifle the fear that you sound too much like Bart:
Bart has entered the terrible two's. He bangs a spoon on a pan while wearing a pot on his head.
Bart: I am so great! I am so great! Everybody loves me, I am so great!
Who ever would have thought that the "personal statement" might actually help me define myself? I just caught myself thinking, "I've said I do X, what if they don't want someone who does X? Maybe if they don't want that kind of person it's not the best place for me." Huh.
Why do we get so attached to certain phrases? In my most recent personal statement I see things that I wrote in 1999 resurfacing, and it's like pulling teeth to convince myself that they might not be the best way of expressing things anymore.
Strategy: a "remnant" document. Just paste in everything you've removed and there it is, for posterity, in case you find that the finished product actually DOES need that one particular word choice or expression you brutally removed. (That's never happened, tellingly. This just goes to show it's ok to Let Go.)
Kunst und Gemüse, A. Hipler opened Wednesday. Here's a bunch of reviews...no one seems to know quite what to do with it.
FR
taz
die Süddeutsche
Die Welt
Perlentaucher notes that the FR didn't review the production. Chickens.
Tonight's special event looks like more fun:
GOODBYE, ADOLF HITLER! DIE ULTIMATIVE SHOW... Südafrika hat Diamanten, Kuwait ist auf Öl gebaut und Deutschland? Deutschland hat seine Vergangenheit. Die stinkt zwar, aber dessen ungeachtet lässt sie sich auch prima vermarkten. Hitler sells! Braune Geschichte verkauft sich. Ob Spiegel oder Stern, BILD oder FAZ, in immer kürzeren Intervallen und immer schöneren Farben glotzt uns der Führer an.
I'm seriously sorry to miss this one.
Eszter has opened up a nice discussion on blogging and academia at CT.
I changed the text in the 'about' box from 'writing' to 'finishing' the diss. How about that for a little self-reassurance?
...I'd have known about this by now. All the images can be sent as cards; v. cool. And there's a collection by Craig!
Spreeblick linked to this, I'm sure everyone else will very soon (or has and I just haven't seen it because I am just THAT out of touch): it's the response to sorryeverybody, apologies accepted. It's weirdly reassuring. Love that interthingy.
So I've been reading Raskal Trippin for about a month; impressions of Berlin from someone rapidly adapting to it. Via her I ended up at Berlin Blog, which you'd think I would have seen before. Also worth a read. Try today's entry on the Ordnungsamt.
I always thought that Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies were a really great idea--can't go wrong with pumpkin, right? Ditto for chocolate, obviously. But I have reservations about the recipe we've been using, which uses oil and produces a fluffy cookie which becomes too moist for me after a few days. But this recipe solves all my problems. Pretty obvious, really; it's just a regular choc chip recipe with less egg and more dry ingredients. Oats provide texture and soak up the extra liquid of the pumpkin. Used Ghirardelli double choc chips, which are bittersweet (healthier, right?) and made half the batch with walnuts (Omega 3s. Hmm. With the beta carotene from the pumpkin, these are, like, Health Cookies! But for the butter and sugars...)
I used more like 1/2 cup of white sugar and also skimped on the brown sugar a wee bit, so they're not super sweet. And I added extra cinnamon, as well as a little allspice. And yes, I'm going back to editing my chapter now.
: )
[After further consideration I think I'd increase the pumpkin to, say, the whole can, and reduce the butter. Would that work? The pumpkin flavor seems just a little weak to me.]
For the last three days it's been raining nearly non-stop. Before that, the temperature had dropped into the low 50s and 40s at night (though now we're back in the smarmy 60s). Looking out my window this past week you might have thought you were in any number of northern European places (though not as cold, I know, but WHV does get the odd, warm, humid winter day). It made me remember how important a tea warmer is in the cold/dark part of the year: it keeps the tea warm and it makes a pleasant glow, two things that help keep the cold and damp from creeeeping into your bones and your soul.
[But I don't use my Stövchen as much as I once did because I just can't handle all the tea. When I think of what my tea tolerance once was...a litre at a time was pretty normal.]
Vasili linked to this excellent series of Nutella label designs at Frankfurt's Museum für angewandte Kunst. I like this one best.
I have finally made the last cup of Caro from the container I bought last summer. Yes, it was a little old and dried out, but it still dissolved and it tastes fine. Those of you who know Caro may be thinking, it NEVER tastes fine; but I love it and depend on it during the winter. It keeps me from drinking coffee, and really you can only drink so much herbal tea, so Caro it is. The problem is that it's awfully pricey to buy it here in the States, so I bring back a big ol' jar each time I'm in Germany. I asked Andrew to look for it while he was in Amsterdam, but I'm betting he wasn't able to find any ("That's really more of a German thing," meinte der Gastbruder Jan). Anyway, I'm not getting my hopes up and am preparing to go to Central Market and slap down a fiver for a teeny little glass jar of the stuff.
*seufz*
At the Times, Frank Rich comments on the US "culture war:"
It's in the G.O.P.'s interest to pander to this far-right constituency - votes are votes - but you can be certain that a party joined at the hip to much of corporate America, Mr. Murdoch included, will take no action to curtail the blue culture these voters deplore.
Corporate greed might just save us all.
Just in case you haven't tried the full release of Firefox, which I just now upgraded to, you should. Neat. I see there are bugs, but I suppose they'll get on them quickly, or the community will. I like this "live bookmark" business, though I won't be switching from using bloglines for it...and anyway I use Safari most of the time. But if you have a Winders machine and aren't using Firefox, please try it. So much better than ie.
Just back from being out of town, without internet access, for a few days and I have finally gotten to see sorryeverybody.com with more than 10 pictures on it. It's become an impressive collection. Mostly it's the entries from people who aren't US citizens that make me feel good, or at least better. We don't all suck. Lately I've been reminded of the way I felt in Europe as a teenager--I spent a lot of time hoping people realized that being from the US didn't make me a jerk. Not a feeling I had ever hoped to experience again.
Last night we finally watched the best Billy Wilder movie ever, One, Two, Three. I've seen it on German t.v., which was a sort of weird experience; but for sheer laughs it's best in English. The characters are so perfectly caricatured and there are so many wonderful dialogues. Here's the one I'm working into my dissertation:
Schlemmer (Mac's assistant) klicks his heels.
MacNamara: That old Gestapo training, huh?
Schlemmer: Please, Mr. MacNamara, you must not say that. It is not true.
M: Just between us, Schlemmer, what did you do during the war?
S: I was in the Untergrund. The underground.
M: Resistance fighter?
S: No, motorman. In the underground, you know, the subway.
M: Of course you were anti-Nazi and you never liked Adolf.
S: Adolf who? You see, down where I was I didn’t know what was going on up there. Nobody ever told me anything.
This against the backdrop of West Berlin as the Wall is being built. Really excellent.
Somehow yesterday I was able to get things done. I don't know if it hadn't hit me yet, or what, but today I'm so drained that I can't work at all. A few pages of translation (Paul Zanker on the building programs of the Roman emperors--yowza) and that's it so far. How about you? Does your brain still work, or have you caved in to despair? I'm waiting for my second wind of Just Outrage and Grim Resolve to come in. I'll let you know when it does.
I'm sure you all are, too. If you need me I'll be under this rock here.