I crawl out from my hiding place to note that Digable Planets are touring, widely this time, and will be in Austin in June. I feel younger already.
A while back I registered surprise that someone would consider Prenzlauer Berg to be dangerous. The discussion became chiefly about how race can effect our perception of the relative safety of a locale, and it made me reevaluate my impressions of what I'd previously thought of as a very safe place. Yesterday in P-berg a friend, who is white, and male, and athletic, was beaten up in the morning right in front of his local bakery; this (a very literal coda to that earlier discussion) has effectively cured me of any romantic or misguided notions I once had of the Bezirk.
Ah. The search results are getting a little less raunchy around here, after what was, I hope, a temporary spike. No less weird, though. Darth and Bruce Nauman both made the top ten. Good for them.
What I like in these results is how the "hems" become increasingly urgent: hem? Hem? HEM?
I guess I'd be able to make some use of storing all my google searches, but at the moment I can't imagine what. And should I be worried that it might have some kind of sinister application? Too lazy to read the fine print at the moment, but are they allowed to look at what I've searched and stored? I suppose they're able to do that already anyway, given that I always work from the same place...
I know I'm a few days late with this, and probably everyone's already given away their free FlickrPros...but if you have one left over I would put it to good use!
Just thought it was worth a try.
Got a little overzealous in despamming just now, so I *might* have deleted some valid comments. If you find yours missing (sorry!), maybe you can recreate it? Right...
A bit smaller than in real life.
Vasili reminds me why some newsblogs aren't really worth keeping up with.
In conjunction with the RAF show [see Michelle's commentary and this nice compendium of responses to the show], the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin) is having a film series at Arsenal, including Stammheim, One Day in September, and several others. Schedule here.
ta-ta-TUM: FlipFlopFlying, the blog:
I dunno if I'm cut out for the day-to-day tittle tattle that I see on other blogs, but I work alone, I get happy and angry, so OF COURSE I SHOULD DO A BLOG!
Hear, hear.
Clearly the cat doesn't care what voice one uses to address her (as long as the tone is kind); why, then, am I compelled to talk to her cutesy-style, like I just swallowed a balloon's worth of helium? Yikes. It's becoming alarming.
The expat in Germany always complains about certain things German: apparent obsessions with order, neatness, bureaucracy. Well here's hilarious proof, in the form of a little film from 1996 starring our favorite punk rocker star blogger, that the humor, or irony or whatever, of these things are not lost on the (some? don't want to generalize) Germans themselves.
You can read the background at Johnny's post here. The clip is funny even if you don't speak German: all you need to know is that trash pickup has become drastically complex in this neighborhood. We see Johnny's character on the phone with an automated voice describing a schedule in which the yellow bins are dumped the 27th week after the brown ones, but only if there was no holiday in between and the blue ones were dumped the preceding week...etc. That kind of thing.
[the note you see at the begining, "die gelbe - einer der es gut mit dir meint" means "the yellow (bin) - from someone who's looking out for you"]
Hurrah, Craig has finally got an RSS feed. Now I won't miss any pixely goodness.
Feeling bad? Have a look. It's old, very weird, and strangely endearing. And it bears repeating. (But you gotta watch til the very end!)
Every spring I face the same conflict: weed the "yard" (the patch of dirt with weeds on it) or let the weeds go crazy? And every year it basically resolves itself, as it did this morning, in the same manner. If you let them grow densely enough and then mow them fairly short, the weeds look remarkably tidy. It's too shady in that spot for grass to grow well anyway, so once again, I'm learning to love my weed patch...
Das achtung zur relaxern du oompaloomp buerger spritz, mitz blitz. Hast biergarten poken heiden, strudel, pretzel morgen. Stein poopsie sie das die achtung...Buerger weiner lookinpeepers frankfurter unter wunderbar. Zur gewerkin, undervear der poopsie heiden, sauerkraut haben dorkin.
Why use lorem ipsum when you can use pseudo German?
[via boingboing.]
Craig's got a new project up, in which he gives us "notably literal visual representations of popular songs." My favorite so far is #15, just because I *so* did love that song in my youth.
[update: maybe not.]
Apparently the recent troubles of the Berliner Symphoniker haven't been resolved by an appeal to private financial backers; the orchestra gave its last concert this weekend. (This is the smallest of Berlin's orchestras, not to be confused with the Philharmoniker.)
The story at the Berliner Zeitung. Not much else out in English yet.
...so now the category shows up live under the entry. I did away with the author name because it was getting crowded under there and I figured, well, I'm the only author, so why bother with it? If you click through to either the category archive or the archived entry, it still says "posted by Heather," so it's not anonymous or anything. (Why am I defending this rewrite? Do I feel like I'm doing something wrong by removing my name? I swear it was only an aesthetic decision.)
Anyone know their MT well enough to help me get categories linked below my entries? I made them show up, but I want the category to be linked to its archive so they can be clicked through. I know this is probably pretty simple and just involves an a=href of some kind, but I don't know what the rest of that would look like. So many parentheses and number signs.
As I type, the latest Futura Bold is happening somewhere in deepest Kreuzberg. Sadly, the webcam doesn't do it justice, because, well, it's a reading (Don v. Don!) and there's no sound. So, Johnny, when do you expect to install the live streaming video? Huh?
First in a series of German things I miss: my A-number-one cure for coughy chest colds is these little capsules. They're full of homeopathic herbal goodness and they work like the dickens to clear out your breathing. And they have the wonderful byproduct of a very very faint but pleasant pineyminty flavor that seems to come right from your breath. Not superficial like a breathmint, but something deeper. I love it. Wish I could get them here; I have to horde them.
[This isn't meant to be an ad or anything, but if you want, here's the manufacturer's page.]
Inspired by a conversation with Michelle, I am introducing two new categories today: nostalgia and envy. Ta-daa! I expect these to be basically self-indulgent, uncritical catch-alls, but we'll see.