caroville:blog

permanently on hiatus.

2007-04-20T11:15:00.000+02:00

please go here instead.

hellfire.

2005-04-20T06:18:00.000+02:00

talking with alex about hellfire and popes, on the eve of a day on which a german radical has been chosen as the new pope.

"hellfire will be fun.
seriously, i deserve hellfire (if i hadn't already) for the swearing i've been up to these past few hours, since finding out who's been elected. ratzinger. he was my worst papal nightmare.
and hey, hell will be fun. all the cool people will be there!"

"it's true, you have been a very naughty girl lately."

"oh thanks, love. just what i needed.
you know, if the new pope didn't already hate me for that pre-marital sex and those birth control pills, i'm sure he'd really hate me for that adultery and marriage ruining i've been up to.
ratzinger. love, i can't tell you how terrible his rep is in this country.
noticed his bavarian accent yet?"

"actually I did!"

"oh, it will be so much fun to watch urbi at orbi from now on. babe, there will be people dressed as bavarians at the vatican. at all times. spreading the news that germans wear lederhosen. i'm scared."

a time to die.

2005-04-01T14:24:00.001+02:00

johnny cochran. harald juhnke. terri schiavo. now the pope.

seems to be a time to die.
strange thought, i know.

baby, baby, baby, baby.

2005-03-25T17:26:00.000+01:00

[title should be sung as in o-towns love should be a crime]

i realised these past days that yes, i will keep the english blog around.
it wasn't something i consciously decided, it wasn't as if i'd been pondering about quitting this really, either. however, i realised i still need this. because some things, i just won't write about in german, no.

i've dropped my panties at the german blog, so to speak, and in quite a dramatic fashion as well. the german blogosphere is scarily small, which is funny in itself, but there are some things i just can't write about with the kinda pun and language and whatever that i want there.
so yeah.

call me miss jekyll and miss hyde, please.

tuesday night, i watched er. as i always do. how much do i love thee, er?
it was the last but one episode of season 10. the episode in which kem's and carter's child is stillborn.

i cried. quite a bit, actually.

sometime last year, i went to an ob-gyn in freiburg, not my regular doctor, for a minor if acute reason, and she seemed keen to get me as a patient, when i told her that i didn't have an ob-gyn in town.
she asked what kind of contraception i used, and we talked about it, and about my pcos, and then she asked "so when will you have children?"

it caught me off guard, that question.

i laughed it off at first. and when she kept asking, i told her that i didn't have the right man in my life to procreate with, was still at uni and that yes, i want kids, some time down the road.
just not now.

"don't wait for too long." she told me. "many young women of your background don't think about having kids until it's almost too late."

i wondered for a moment whether she'd been paid to do this by the german government to increase the number of pregnancies in young, well educated women.
you never know.

then, however, she started talking about pcos in detail, warning me about what kind of struggle it migth turn out to be, how long it might take to get pregnant. sure, i'd heard it all before, read it all before, but no doctor had ever really discussed it with me.

it scared me to no end.

yes, i'm very well off, when it comes to this disorder. i'm pretty much healthy, my blood sugar rocks, my weight is ok, i have pretty much none of the nasty symptoms that many other women have.
it was so weird when lauren was here in january, to find out that she had pcos as well, and that hers was so much more dramatic, so much more severe than mine.
chances are that i won't have a whole lot of trouble getting pregnant.

but still.
i very much want to have kids at some point, and the thought that it might not work, that it might turn into a big deal, is scary.

you know how it sometimes works, on the net, a little while after that chat with the ob-gyn, i stumbled across a dozen or so very well written infertility blogs. i have been reading those ever since, with fascination and dread and concern and compassion and happiness for the women involved.

so what am i trying to say here?

i cried during er, so what.
i want to have children some day, which i've mentioned more than once as well.
i am not hearing my biological clock really loudly right now.
i'm not about to go off the pill to see whether i can get pregnant.

so what am i trying to say here?

nothing really.
just that it's weird, getting older, getting closer to wanting to procreate, what have you.

monday morning, the man said something about the happenings of the previous hours having been quite babymaking worthy, which they'd been, and it's odd, because he's done just that.
maybe that's part of what's been irking me. he's done this thing that i worry about. he's made these decisions before. it's a giant advantage that he has there, a pretty big knowledge gap between us.

i've got no clue, really.

so yeah. this post doesn't come with a decent sum-up sentence.
that baby thing, that crying during er, that reading the infertility blogs, him having been through this all, it puzzles me.
that's all.

a day in the life of.

2005-03-22T14:17:00.000+01:00

a weekend full of weekendy things.

2005-03-19T13:25:00.000+01:00

the week passed super quickly, and now it's saturday already. today being saturday means tomorrow will be sunday, and i'll get on a train in the morning and trip to hamburg and will stay there for about 24 hours, doubtlessly having an exquisitly good time.
what a dilo photo opportunity this will be! :)

oh. yes.

time is on our side.
for once.

i'm amazed already how much one starts treasuring little things in this situation i never wanted to be in in the first place, this situation i really don't care much about at all, truth be told. the latter surprises me to no end.

in any way, it will be good. oh yes. this week sucked. i'm tired (but almost healthy again, yeah!). the parents are annoying me. there's work. there's everything. i need to get away from it all. and i will do just that this weekend.

off to enjoy myself.
yeah.

it's not ok.

2005-03-17T15:38:00.000+01:00

news like these make me even more worried for damien echols than i already am anyway.

i saw a report on jimmy ray slaughter and that "brain fingerprint" method a few months ago. while i can't attest to its overall validity, the report i saw made sense. mr.slaughter seemed hopeful.
when i read about his execution, early yesterday morning, i felt like throwing up.
strapped down to a guerney, he told his three daughters "it's OK, it's OK, i love you."

it's not ok, when a state kills a citizen. it's not ok when this citizen is killed for a crime he did not commit. it's just not ok.
nothing is ok when it comes to the us and the death penalty.

i'm not sure what my view is on life after death. but i hope mr.slaughter is in a good spot now. i'm sure it's better place than within the us prison system.

i think and worry about damien, jessie and jason, every single day.

closer.

2005-03-14T10:30:00.000+01:00

i spent a good chunck of my sunday arvo chatting with stu. we hadn't done this in way too long, which means months, 6 months, at least, and my emailing had been rather unreliable these months as well, and catching up was much needed and enjoyable and cool and fun.

i suck so much at staying in touch.
that's one thing i really want to change about myself this year.

i realised, thinking about what has been going on these past months, that stu was the only person i ever really openly talked to about that relationship i used to be in, and i did so months and months and months ago (it might have been a year, actually). i think he potentially understood recent things i've done much better than anyone else. he is the only person who had the backstory. he had to listen to all the shit months ago, and he kept telling me i should do what i think was best, what felt best, and i didn't listen.

i wish we lived closer, and so does he, because hanging out and watching movies and doing things friends do would rock, and rock muchly, because with stu, you know, you've got someone who listens well and carefully and asks the right questions and who will definitely be able to tell you the end of that movie you fell asleep to the previous night.

thanks, stu.

we've come a long way. :)

next time in the uk, a visit is due. yes.
i'll do a big old tour of the uk then. the brother in london. stu in liverpool. and the cool folks of odiham, hampshire. i'll bring beer!

internet, how much do i love thee?

brand new toy.

2005-03-12T17:54:00.000+01:00

after all these years.
en allemand. auf deutsch. in german.

not much there yet. but you asked to be informed. so there. :)

beaming. as in star trek.

2005-03-09T17:55:00.000+01:00

tonight i wish there was beaming. you know, as in star trek.

i'd beam you here, j., and bury my face in your armpit and ask you to stroke my hair (not that i'd have to ask, i know you'd do be doing it already anyway) just so that i could relax a little, and feel loved.

and cry.

instead, i'll open a bottle of cheapo red, turn on some evil loud music with guitars and scrub the bathtub.

crying.

daddy's with you wherever you are.

2005-03-09T16:40:00.000+01:00

today's been fucked up.
like seriously fucked up.

i realised this morning that my mother's 19-year old apprentice has been accessing a german abuse and incest support ubb from the computer i'm using.

i quickly realised which poster she was and read what she'd written. my scarleteen.com trained online lying sensor did not go off.
i realised that the gut feeling i've had for weeks now has been spot on. she's being raped by someone in her family. namely the man her mother (who's the worst woman you can imagine, who very openly hates her daughter, who treats her like a slave. and i am not saying this to make it sound dramatic. her mother sucks.) will marry in less than 2 weeks. the man she lives under one roof with, because she thinks her apprentice salary is not sufficient so that she can live on her own. she describes herself as suicidal.

so a few hours later, after her lunch break, after some chatting about nothing much (me trying to gather strength to talk to her) i tell her that i saw in the explorer history what websites she's been looking at, and told her that if anything was wrong, she could always tell me and i would listen. i told her that everyone would support her if something was wrong. and that bad stuff you don't tell anyone gets much easier to handle once you've asked for support.

she blushed, terribly, and was obviously very ashamed and smiled and grinned and told me that all was fine and dandy and well and yes, she'd come to me if something was wrong.

and i didn't believe a single word she said. and i very obviously didn't succeed in reaching out to her.

what now?

"you're a precious stone, you're out on your own
you know everyone in the world, but you feel alone
daddy won't let you weep
daddy won't let you ache
daddy gives you as much as you can take
a-ha, sha-la, a-ha, sha-la
daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car

a little uptight, you're a baby's fist
butterfly kisses up and down your wrist
when you see him coming, you're licking your lip
nails bitten down to the quick
a-ha, sha-la, a-ha, sha-la
daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car
daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car

you've got a head full of traffic
you're a siren's song
you cry for mama, and daddy's right along
he gives you the keys to a flamin' car
daddy's with you wherever you are
daddy's a comfort
daddy's your best friend
daddy'll hold your hand right up to the end
a-ha, sha-la, a-ha, sha-la
daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car
daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car

sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday's alright"
u2. daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car.
[how many years did it take until i understood these lyrics?]

big bang.

2005-03-08T18:54:00.000+01:00

i read through the rest of j.'s weblog today, 120something pages or so, back to front.
i fell in love a little more (who would have thought that was possible in the first place) with every click on 'newer stories'.

there was laughing at his brilliance and still recognising 95% of all musical references, getting all warm and fuzzy reading his writing about the kid, reading between the lines when his affairs started, strangely enough not being able to tell when they ended, and even more strangely not being one bit jealous or weirded out but quite pleasantly thinking "cool, at least he got some".

so i keep falling and falling and falling some more with every word i read and every sms and every email (and there were more than a hundred again today) and every phone call and it's wonderful because there's not a hint of doubt or anything i feel the need to hide. mindblowing.

i'm fortunate. i'm thankful.
i think i received the biggest bestest present i could have ever received.

big bang, this.

ecstasy?

2005-03-08T18:03:00.000+01:00

i took my pussy to her bi-annual check up at the ob/gyn this afternoon.
it's something i don't dread, but something i actually enjoy. because my ob/gyn rocks. he's adorable. he's seriously the best doc i've ever seen, funny, communicative and smart and have i mentioned funny?
i can very much live out my wannabe-medical-professional-hypochondriac side, and he'll play along and feed me as much info as i want, as detailed as i want. and he's funny, have i mentioned that?

the pussy check-up was done and over with quickly and we chatted along nicely and afterwards, i put on my undies and pants and took off my top and bra and got out of from behind the curtain and positioned myself in front of my doc, arms raised and hands at my head, ready for the breast exam, all the while chatting, as he starts doing the exam.

and then he notices the -ahem- ~~love bites~~ bruises on the inside of my upper right arm.

"what happened to you there?", he asks me, as he keeps checking my boobs for lumps.

for one second, two seconds, three seconds, i try to make up a good reason in my head, something along the lines of "i bump into things at all time yadayadayada", until he interrupts my line of thought.

"ecstasy?" he asks.

"YES!", i laugh out, and he laughs, too, and then we're both laughing and the exam is done and we're still laughing and he writes stuff on my file as we both laugh and i tell him about that new lover i got myself and that he should have seen my chin a few days ago, and he tells me he's glad i'm happy and we laugh and say "see you in 6 months", and good lord, doesn't my ob/gyn rock?

i'm out of his office and still laughing and calling j, who laughs, too, and then i drive back to the store, with the music way too loud singing along to something for kate and wilco in an awful cockney type accent and all the while laughing.

ecstasy. bloody hell, yes. ecstasy!

caro's addiction.

2005-03-08T11:29:00.000+01:00

i wish i had a camera on hand to take a photo of the books i got myself today.
of the stack, the tower, the giant tower of books i got myself today.

it's a smart contemporary collection, that one. roar.
3/4 of helmut krausser complete works (another 1/8th will arrive tomorrow), a wonderfully funny green book with j.'s name in it, one half of m.houellebecq's complete works (the one half i don't own yet), some thomas kapielski and one book by moritz von uslar.

how good i don't have to pay for them.
i can not support my habit. how am i supposed to one day pay for all the books i ~~want~~ need?

i should find myself a sugardaddy.
oh, wait. done. kinda.

fucking hell, i'm in a brilliant mood today.

a trip down memory lane collins street.

2005-03-08T10:51:00.000+01:00

scootie, fellow flickrite, took some photos of a former melbourne workplace for me.
he got me all melbournesick. and happy, too. and he tagged them "carobldg". how cool is that?

i loved the short while i worked there, in a law firm full of brilliant and bizarre people, the place that shaped my love for ip.
so cool to have these wonderful photos.
wow. how much do i love the internet? how much do i love flickr?
*swoon*

traffic jams made bearable.

2005-03-08T09:07:00.000+01:00

all it takes is "back to you" by something for kate. any version will do.
this morning it was the piano one, and even that worked.

and then i do that old rewind-replay-rewind-replay routine on the last bit. and that singing along thing, too.

ooh ooh
one of these days
i find myself talking to ghosts
there's no such thing as a stupid question
but i watch her making so much noise
that she thinks that she can win them over
win them over

i watch her making so much noise
that she thinks that she can win them over
win them over

but i have a compass
i watch the sundial
and i defy gravity just to get myself
back to you

thank you, paul dempsey.

the worst kind of fanmail i have ever written.

2005-03-07T19:32:00.000+01:00

i forwarded j. the thankyouforbeingonthattalkshowtalkingaboutmeetingyoursoulmate-email that i sent to pierre franckh this morning. doubtlessly the worst kind of fanmail, the uncoolest kind of email i have written in my entire life.

i'm obviously totally beyond being embarrassed by anything in front of him.
that's good, isn't it?

life map.

2005-03-07T12:48:00.000+01:00

getting to know someone new, leaving someone you used to be with, is like travelling to a new country, is like leaving another.
you change and you let others change your life map, your geographical orientation. or at least that's what i do.

you take different paths then before, you catch different planes and trains and go to different pubs where different music is playing and you create memories at these places and sometimes they become yours, too.

i'm happy and excited about the new additions to my life map, whatever they will be, whereever they will be, but underneath the happiness and excitement is a tinytinytinytiny little bit of sadness about loosing the spaces and places i've recently lost, because they were never really mine anyway.

it's good to know that i already know the music that'll be in all those new place on my life map.

and it's good to know i've got such a great companion by my side.

material girl.

2005-03-07T12:32:00.000+01:00

material things i could but would not want to live without.
[a random list.]

high quality shoes [ideally: pointy]. touche éclat by yves saint laurent. flickr.com (the first website i ever paid money for). a mobile phone made by siemens. gmail. vegemite. lush products. digital photography. diet coke (poison, i know.). high quality red wine. cheap and trashy red wine. red wine in general. astroglide. mac lipsticks. unlimited access and ownership of books. mobile music. membership to a gym with spinning and bodypump. a computer. wolford.

[and i realised this is it, really. i thought about it for a few more hours, and i realised that all the rest is highly irrelevant. i could live in an almost empty flat as long as i got to keep the books and the computer and the other tech stuff and the music and my vegemite and my wolford stockings.]

the industry of art.

2005-03-07T10:32:00.000+01:00

beuys and i, we agree. i believe in art. i believe that everyone is an artist.

i am, however, more than a little amused that hubertus von hohenlohe gets exhibitions of photography that yes, is interesting on some level, yes, but oh-so-boring on so many other levels, and just not outstanding at all, if one knows flickr.
strange that pseudoaristorcracy and celebrities will still get you somewhere in europe, in the year 2005.

i do not believe in the industry of art.

irgendwoher.

2005-03-06T16:36:00.000+01:00

du gehst mir
nicht mehr aus dem sinn
als ob
wir uns irgendwoher kennen

thank you.

2005-03-06T16:23:00.000+01:00

frankfurter allgemeine sonntagszeitung, thom yorke, evan (for musical education), absolut vodka (for calming me down), dieter (for free internet access), deutsche bahn (for ice trains), andrea (for listening), the notwist (for "consequence"), pierre franckh (for polishing my sensors with his story on a crappy tv show), google.com (for finding things), flickr.com (for pictures), jeremy (for the blue room), blogging, the internet, chance, life.

thank you. thank you. thank you.

thursday, march 3rd, 2005, 11am.

2005-03-06T16:10:00.000+01:00

walking through the brandenburg gate, the battery of my camera is already running a little low, there are masses of tourists posing for pictures and i am shutting them all out with the music in my ears. snow is falling, gently, even though the sun is out a tiny tiny little bit as well, and i look down the strasse des 17.juni, siegessäule almost invisible in soft greyness and jim kerr sings into my ear "oh come this way/will you look down this way/i go down on the street/where the wild wind's blowing/here comes a hurricane and that hurricane has happened, and is happening, still, and my chin is scratched and my gluteus maximus sore and other body parts are too, and good lord, i am happy and missing him already, in the nicest, bestest way possible. ever.

on what it was like.

2005-03-06T15:30:00.000+01:00

[written into the moleskine while sitting alone at bar tolluci, in eisenacher str., march 2nd 2005, just past 7pm]

i hate sitting in restaurants by myself. usually i do, at least. but today, i don't care. at all. i care about nothing today.
how often have i been at restaurants by myself anyway? a handful of times. the most memorable being my expensive dinner at doyle's in sydney, after deciding that jumping off the gap was not an option anymore. but whatever. this isn't what i am really thinking about right now.

how am i supposed to put this day into words?

j. is totally different from what i had expected him to be like. and he is just what i had expected him to be like. he is everything. we are the same. we laugh the same way. we smile equally much.
the strangest of it all, however, the scariest, maybe, is that we taste the same way. his kiss tastes like kissing did at 15; like smokes and wrigley's spearmint gum and comfort. he himself, however, tastes like me. just like me. sweet. subtle. delicious.
wow.

we didn't hesitate at all. kissing at the door, off with the clothes, naked and in bed for the following 5 hours.
it was simultaneously brandnew and wellknown and intimate and personal and all that is a true shocker because it's never been that way before, ever. there was not a moment of performance worries, not a moment of worries about physical attraction, not a moment of *thought* in that room the colour of a swimmingpool.
it was just perfect and familiar and wonderful.

we talked and listened to music and snuggled and started all over again and it was simply relaxed and wonderful and as if we'd been up to this for years.
it's as if he has always been there. always.
at some point i even uttered the words "i want to keep you". and that's what i do. seriously.
past 5pm, past listening to a multitude of versions of "karma police" and a shower and hectic getting dressed, we left the flat and caught a cab and it was bizarre, because there was some sun out there, and that snow, and people, and berlin, and cars and the world hadn't stopped, even though it had felt like it had.
it was a little much, that world, underslept and underfed and overstimulated and totally high on endorphines and totally out of it, out of everything. herbert grönemeyer was on the cabbies radio and "ich fühl mich leer und verbraucht/alles tut mir weh" got a totally new meaning, and we laughed. lots.
suitable song, that one. for ever connected to that cab ride.

and then we were already at the hotel and he walked home and good lord, was i totally not jealous. i wonder how he managed. he's not the type of person for this kind of thing, i keep thinking. not at all.

after all that intensity, being alone was surprisingly needed, which i just hadn't expected at all. gulped down some powerade and quickly snacked through my leftover train ride food to counter severely low blood sugar levels. i felt like fainting. shower. then rest. then facial restoration. then getting dressed. then walking the few metres here.
the pizza is okay, and cheap too, and we'll go to bright eyyes in a little while.
wonderful.

i hope the location is small and pretty and cozy. i want a bar and drinks and dark corners for making out.
i'm looking forward to hh, to staying in bed all day. yeah.
so. time to pay. time to walk to the hotel. time to wait for j.

wow.
was today life-changing?
fucking hell, yes.

yet i'm still calm, and unfazed, somehow, someway.
wow.

a room, the colour of a swimming pool.

2005-03-06T15:28:00.000+01:00

bright eyes.

2005-03-06T14:44:00.000+01:00

snotty. brilliant. musically perfect. energetic. first class.

everything about the concert was perfect.
the location wasn't too big, the crowd was relaxed, my company superb. rilo kiley were openers you had to fall in love with immediately. the sound was breathtakingly awesome. clear but not clinically clean. and just...wonderful.
conor oberst spat out the words as he did on the album (nothing quite like how he says "pes-ti-cides") and sang well and was cool. not as withdrawn as in the lua video. not as withdrawn as you'd expect, anyway, from a wunderkind like him. he and the band made erection jokes no one in the audience got, and asked for pot and made easy jokes about george bush and everything was just wonderful.
the final song "i'm wide awake it's morning" was an auditory orgasm. dense, full, intense, allencompassing. i melted away.

j. and i stood in the back of the place, drinking beers and swaying our hips and making out and having a good time. it was wonderful. i've never felt as good in someone's company at a conert as i did wednesday night.
you know, i get squeaky at concerts. i get excited. i scream and shout (and mr.oberst did actually pick up my screaming that we loved the miserable failure for the cowboy boots). i start to dance. i spill my beer. i take too many photos.

j. said he loved every minute of it, every minute of my erratic behaviour. and was quite the same, anyway.
as usual.
the differences are so few, we should lock them up in a keepsake box.
he explained all the mixing tech to me, and that was wonderful. tech talk turns me on, seriously, and he talked the mixing guy into letting me take a photo of the setlist, too, by complimenting him to no end, which was glorious, because that guy hadn't reacted at all to me and the blonde hair and the tight t-shirt when *i* had asked him about it.

it was the first concert we shared.
doubtlessly the first of many to come.

[and geez. i am already dreading how needy and cheap all my raving about berlin will sound. somehow, happiness just doesn't sell that well on blogs. not on mine, anyway. and it always comes across as fake. but this, this is anything but.]

ice train scenes. part the second.

2005-03-06T14:01:00.000+01:00

[scribbled into the moleskine, while travelling.]

sunday, february 27th, 2005
ice train 104 international
the ruhrgebiet boards the train in freiburg. it sport a haircut from 1992, shaved in the back and curly on top, blondified. it's nose is a bit too large and pierced, too, and its upper lip curls upwards with eternal demands, its mouth always open. its stretch pants are too tight, its top too see-through. orsay.
it uses two mobiles. and does nothing else.
for 3 hours, 54 minutes.
the ruhrgebiet gets off the train with me. in duisburg.

wednesday, march 2nd 2003.
ice 543.
7:15am
checkers. every men on this train thinks he's a checker. lots of testosterone on the loose. all this pseudo-checking of things.
at least it's quiet.

man, not yet 50 and looking much older, lower to middle management poistion. wearing a combination outfit in at least 6 different shades of grey and clubby shoes, a checkered suitcase above him in the luggage rack.
he's reading "stahl & eisen". we're still in the ruhrgebiet. obviously.
outside the windows: dortmund.

awful, awful, awful, pseudo-checker, 24 at the most. he's got a ba in wood engineering because a regular course of study would have been too boring and he got through school in record time. his face has not finished puberty yet, and the suit mama bought for him is too large and too grey and his tie is too stripey and too small anyway, and his shoes are too fucking huge and giving him away as someone who has no clue of life yet.
he's gangly and insecure as he fidgets around his seat, playing the routined business traveller that he simply isn't.
then he eats a milchschnitte. unbelievable. he gets off at bielefeld.
forestry. i told you so.
why do young professionals in the us look so much better, so much more capable? maybe it's all the working out they do. who knows.

8:12am vodka or no vodka?
i'm feeling calm and almost relaxed and happy in my skin, shaved, soft, cared for, ready to be touched.
i'll be having sex later. it's something you rarely know as well in advance as i do today. it's a great feeling, this one. a really great feeling.
relaxed tension and bright eyes in my ears. today is a life changing moment, day, whatever. he is me and i am him and what it means or what it might mean will become obvious today, at least a tiny little bit.
and that's wonderful. absolutely wonderful.
my skin is longing for touch, my lips want to kiss and be kissed. my whole self is excited about this upcoming intesity.
intensity. yeah.

the only guy who actually has a clue is sitting 5 rows away, on the row-seat, facing me. very good clean suit. slightly spikey hair, but not too spikey. his tie is decent sized. he looks at me.
and at my pointy shoes. ha. they might be peter kaiser, but they're looking good, yes. thanks dad.
music in my ear, and i sing along, as usual, and i put on a little show and we smile at each other. he sleeps for a while, and is even prettier then. he gets off at hanover, with good looking luggage, and we say goodbye, smiling.

10:30am
two groups of deer in the snow.

10:56
spandau. did "spandau ballet" chose their name knowing spandau. "through the barricades" was my favourite song on kuschelrock #4.

thursday, march 3rd 2005
ice 548
just after spandau, 3 groups of deer in the snow. are they always there? are they real? or are thex simply more easily noticable because of the snow?

just after hannover, 2 more groups of deer.

also: immovable, quiet wind power plants, in fog, in snow. they are standing in a circle, looking at each other, as if they've got something to discuss, a plan to make, talks to have.

just after bielefeld: rabbits. hundreds of rabbits.

flirting through itunes.

2005-03-06T13:42:00.000+01:00

flirting through itunes (via kottke).
wonderfully written.

i have to say that taste *does* matter though.
how good that he assure me that those katie melua songs happend to be on his ipod by accident.

he.

footballtypeofflinegooglebomb.

2005-03-04T18:26:00.000+01:00

i don't like football much. never have, never will.
and i like myself this way.

the only time i actually watch football is during the world cup or european championship. usually drunk.
today my brother forwarded me a little bit of football related spam that i found quite charming though.

at the new wembely stadium, they are building a footbride to link the arena to the city. it's still nameless. so they are searching for a worthy name.some german football fans think it would be cool to name it after the last person to score a goal there: dietmar hamann.

brilliant idea, i reckon. as little as i care about football. as little as i care about that bridge in wembley.

so cast your vote for didi hamann. think of it as a footballtypeofflinegooglebomb.

dear alex,

2005-03-03T17:46:00.000+01:00

thanks muchly for the wonderful phone call and your advice tuesday night. unfortunately, i did not manage to follow it, though.

do you still love me?

kisses,
caro

well....

2005-03-03T12:30:00.000+01:00

"bright eyes" played a concert in berlin last night that was one of the best concerts i have ever had the pleasure of attending.

and the rest?
the rest was fucking awesome. yes.

now i have to get out of the dunkin donuts internet cafe on hardenberg platz and catch an ice train home.

created.

2005-03-03T12:26:00.000+01:00

new memories.

radiohead: karma police. in a swimming pool coloured room in berlin. 4 different versions, in a row, as some serious magic is happening.

herbert grönemeyer: flugzeuge im bauch. a cab ride, wasted and dizzy and underfed and overfelt. "ich fühl mich leer und verbraucht/alles tut mir weh". laughing.

i wish i had a parachute 'caus i'm falling fast for you.

2005-03-01T18:31:00.000+01:00

i'm off very early tomorrow morning to berlin to see bright eyes and -and that's a lot more important, actually- to meet a man. a man who's my mirror. me with a y chromosome.

i'm out of my mind excited and completely calm at the same time. - it's unlike anything i've ever experienced, and those are big words and i mean them in that kind of big way, too, and it's scary and grande and fucking wonderful, and in many ways knew this was going to happen when i first wrote about him and thought about him 3 weeks ago.
life takes some weird turns. and good lord, am i enjoying the ride.

this is big. whatever it turns out to be eventually.
eeep!

i wish i had a parachute 'caus i'm falling fast for you.....

back on thursday. with stories to tell.

t minus 27.

2005-03-01T09:02:00.000+01:00

i'm excited. yes.
and calm, too.
and it's just all way to fucking *good* right now.

now hurry up tuesday, pass quickly.

i'm about to lose control and i think i like it.

2005-02-28T16:42:00.000+01:00

tonight's the night we're gonna make it happen
tonight we'll put all other things aside
give in this time and show me some affection
we're going for those pleasures in the night

i want to love you, feel you
wrap myself around you
i want to squeeze you, please you
i just can't get enough
and if you move real slow i'll let it go

i'm so excited, and i just can't hide it
i'm about to lose control and i think i like it
i'm so excited, and i just can't hide it
and i know, i know, i know, i know
i know i want you, want you

we shouldn't even think about tomorrow
sweet memories will last a long, long time
we'll have a good time baby, don't you worry
and if we're still playing 'round, boy that's just fine

let's get excited, we just can't hide it
i'm about to lose control and i think i like it
i'm so excited, and i just can't hide it
and i know, i know, i know, i know
i know i want you, want you

ice train scenes.

2005-02-27T20:18:00.000+01:00

ice 104 international.

17:32.
minutes before getting to mannheim main station. out of the greyness, through a tunnel and -wham!- as usual, the weather is different that side of it, no more snowstorm, no more greyness, there'ssunshine and clean skies and clouds and mountains in the distance and sunlight in my face and erkennst mich nicht wieder" in my ears and his sms in my mobile and he doesn't like football.

18:00
"true love waits" as at least 7 planes are approaching frankfurt airport for a sunset touchdown, their headlights shining pearls of light in the early evening sky.

could life be any more perfect this sunday night?
nope.

football.

2005-02-27T16:51:00.000+01:00

du erkennst mich nicht wieder.

2005-02-26T15:41:00.000+01:00

du erkennst mich nicht wieder
allein
mein gesicht sei noch gleich
und du weißt nicht ob das reicht
um nicht alleine zu sein

du erkennst mich nicht wieder
unerkannt
bin ich die halbe nacht
noch um die häuser gerannt

ich erkenn hier nichts wieder
alles müde und alt
und ich male uns beide
als umriss aus kreide
auf den asphalt

du erkennst mich nicht wieder
unerkannt
hab ich dann drüben im park
meine kleider verbrannt

ich erkenn mich nicht wieder
nur mein herz das noch schlägt
und ich hebe die arme
um zu sehen ob die warme
nachtluft mich trägt

du erkennst mich nicht wieder
unerkannt
flieg ich ans ende der stadt
ans ende der welt
und über den rand

"du erkennst mich nicht wieder"
wir sind helden

thirtyfour.

2005-02-26T00:00:00.000+01:00

wie schön dass du geboren bist.
ich hätte dich sonst sehr vermisst.

loveletter.

2005-02-25T20:15:00.000+01:00

i received a loveletter today, the most emotional and strangest love letter i have ever received.
and it got me down. down. down.

i'll need to figure out how to reply.

realisations.

2005-02-25T12:31:00.000+01:00

i feel the strong urge to write about robbie williams's power of uniting people.
i need to start writing in that old mothertongue of mine. who would have thought.
it's time for a german language blog. weird, me.

we step into a room of opaque air.

2005-02-25T11:50:00.000+01:00

not a word to compensate.
not a sentence to describe this
desperate state.
not a picture to compare.
we step into a room of opaque air.

could be enough
if only we are pilots once a day.

a cover blown.

2005-02-25T11:08:00.000+01:00

i just ordered a tape. of music. of someone.
that's what you get when you know how to google.

it's freaking me out that *i* ordered it. i should have let someone else do it.
fucking hell.
i've blown my cover. or something.

fragments of the past.

2005-02-25T09:29:00.000+01:00

"here and there in the brain
keepsake boxes that preserve
fragments of the past"

the cure: boys don't cry. 1991/1992. my best friend jane and i are sitting next to her record player on the floor of her smelling like oranges room, drinking yogi tea, wearing embroidered indian shirts and listening to her aunt's old records.

soul asylum: runaway train. 1993. a night at the then still bearable "turbinenhalle" with my brother and his ultra-hot luke perry lookalike friend oliver. while dancing, i flirt with a guy. for hours. casually touching, moving closer and closer and closer. with "can you help me remember how to smile" we finally crash into each other, in the middle of the dancefloor. without having spoken a single word
we smoke up in his car later. i am 15. and careless. and stupid.

metallica: nothing else matter. 1993. making out with alexander on a table in the middle of a p-dorf party. same procedure as last weekend? same procedure as every weekend.

fury in the slaugherhouse: time to wonder (live). 1994.05. a party at a youth club in hometown. jane, in full swing since her recent nose job, is making out with some guy on a random patch of grass. i'm jealous. kinda.

r.h.p.: keine ist. 1994.07. the last night in b. i'm on my first ever vodka buzz, courtesy of you. you put this song on in a room in which we never had music before. i want to stop hiding what we have, and you push me away and i freak out and go into drama queen mode and scream at you and run out of the room and you follow me and i put my head under a shower and you give me your t-shirt as a towel subsitute and carry me up all those fligths of stairs to bed. so you care after all, don't you? barbara sends you away when we get to my room.
i wonder what might have been if she hadn't.

the b52s: we're the flintstone's. 1994.08. driving along the a42 with tim, andrea and andreas. i'm bummed because totte didn't come along, but excited about the weekend in b. nonetheless. stefan is dead. we just don't know about it yet.

nationalgalerie: die waffe. 1994.08. ich weiss das tor ist verschlossen/aber lass eine tür für mich offen/ein schild auf dem steht/„achtung vorsicht gut behandeln inhalt zerbrechlich“. it's a fin-de-siécle night. we're alive, and he isn't, and he will never be again. and we will all die, anyway. shitty oettinger beer and no one's dancing, but you and me and volker. i love you as fiercely as someone can love someone else at 16. i want more of you than what you are willing to give. or able to. or whatever.

lisa loeb: stay (i missed you). 1994.10. waking up to this song on the radio in andrea's first flat in münster the morning after my first ever wine booze-up, the morning after meeting frank. having a terrible hangover. but still remembering what it was like to open the door, to see him and know him and want him, instantly.

soundgarden: black hole sun. 1994.10. a party at the münster art school. "i'd just like to kiss you once more. i want a memory of kissing you." i want to take you home, so badly so i pretend that i don't care and flirt and lie and play the center of attention and succeed, almost too well. in the end, you take me home because your best mate tells you to as he takes off with a woman you used to have a crush on. we don't get far. at the corner of sentmaringer strasse and weseler strasse, you stop, and tell me that you've never met someone like me before. a few hours later, a guy riding past the two of us sitting in the bus stop in front of andrea's house shouts a wish at us "good sex!"
that night, you told me that one day, i'd be a beautiful woman. it was a wonderful compliment, even if it meant i wasn't a woman then. i wasn't, really. i wonder whether we'd like each other today. i wonder whether you think i succeeded in becoming a beautiful woman. whatever that is, anyway.

sting: why should i cry for you. 1994.11. waking up to that song on a mattress in andrea's hallway. did i sleep at all? i'm hungover and in pain, physical and mental pain as you walk through the flat waking everyone up, that song on repeat. i remember exactly what happened last night. i remember sneaking out with you on your demand, and then telling you i didn't care anymore, that i knew what you'd wanted to tell me and that i was fine with it. i lied to you. i remember you telling me that you'd loved me. i remember us falling back into our old patterns, into our old familiar fucked up ways. i remember the aggressiveness and the pain and the tenderness gone. and yes, why should i cry for you? and what would it mean to say that i loved you in my fashion? you cheated, man, not me.
we fucked each other the previous night. not physically, even though you believe to this day that we did. we fucked each others' heads, and our bodies played along, aggressively. i think we tried to kill each others emotions. it felt as if we tried to rob each other of something. i think we succeeded. in some way.
that morning is the end. and i hate it. no, actually, that morning, i don't care.

new model army: green & grey. 1995.05. getting on a train at münster main station, putting on my headphones to block the outside world. i've got some thinking to do, with new model army in my ears, this is my day. i don't want stupid conversation in an interregio compartment to ruin it. it's a strangely warm early summer day. i'm wearing weird clothes, a white t-shirt and strange jeans that are too tight. i bunked a few hours of school this morning and caught a train instead and then you and i, we circled each other through your wonderful room for a while until you asked me whether i had made the trip because i wanted to sleep with you. and i said yes, and we moved to your bed and were soon naked and afterwards we talked about mark rothko. it was all fine and dandy. once we were dressed again, however, and i had to rush to get to the station on time, i'm supposed to leave kinda quietly to not alert your roommates who might tell that other woman. well, thanks for that.
i'm happy, still. this afternoon will stay with me. and i spent it with you. that other woman, or not.

the smashing pumpkins: tonight, tonight. 1996.07. lying in the living room of the house on main south road with lisa, drinking baileys, talking about men, about melancholy.

omd: how bizarre 1996.08. in a pub in a strange little motel near franz-josef, new zwaland, in the middle of the rainforest. it had been a wonderful glowworm walk to get there. drinking mantheits (?). feeling smarter than those kiwi experience pseudo backpacking people. making out in the hostel's living room with a strange american.

cinematic: see you round. 1996.08. a night of drunken fun at the dux de lux in christchurch, new zealand. wearing clothes that aren't mine (anna's marlene style jeans, lisa's black velvet blazer). admiring tom. being mistaken for lisa.

the whitlams: no aphrodisiac. 1998.05. writing the zine with timm at his parents' place on the first day of summer. laughing at our own jokes. writing all night. being jealous of his girlfriend. being happy, too. extremely happy.

echt: wir haben's getan. 1999.05. this is what ending a 2 year relationship is like. it's stoned making out in a youth hostel room with a virgin, as if you're half a decade younger than you really are. and putting on shitty music as you get back to the partyroom. i can't pretend not to have wanted this.

dave matthews band: say goodbye. 1999.08 standing on my balcony on a balmy night a few hours before the moon will darken the sun (and before i'll crash two cars in 48 hours). and in your eyes i see what's on my mind,you've got me wild, turned around inside.and then desire, see, is creeping up heavy inside here and i know you feel the same way i do now.
i know that you know that i know that the only reason you travelled those 800km on that motorcycle of yours is so that we can finally, finally, finally screw, 3 years into our friendship, 3 years into casual making out every single time we meet. and so we do it. it's strange and good and stranger, still. we don't sleep at all, and pick up anna at the train station at an ungodly hour, barely able to hide what we've been up to and some 100km of reckless driving later, we will lie on a picknick table, looking at the sun and the moon and feel the light fade.
these days, i miss you terribly, in some weird way or other, and have no idea where you are. i should to google you.

depeche mode: it's no good. 1999.10. i dislike your parties. i dislike your style. i dislike the things you do. i dislike your morals. i dislike your dishonesty. i dislike your attitude. i dislike your consumerism of sexual favours. i dislike those shitty three-piece suits you wear. but by god, christian, how much do i *still* want to fuck you? no, it's no good.

something for kate: big screen television. 1999.12. we're driving through the greyness of the niederrhein on the last day of a millenium. and i totally don't get the lyrics. and you tell me that i don't.

keith caputo: home. 2000.03. i'm sick in the head in a number of ways. and don't have anyone to come home to.

rhcp: parallel universe. 2000.05. at the final night party in nottuln (of all places!), longing, longing, longing for timm, for whom i shouldn't be longing for in the first place, pangs of jealousy towards ellen for having that closeness with him (it's beyond fucking obvious, that). feeling out of it, out of everything, leaving the partyroom through the window, walking through wet grass, downhill, through darkness, drunk, wanting to be held. one week away from trycyclics.

gomez: machismo. 2000.08. driving down king street in evan's triumph ("heidi") at night. driving across the bridge over the yarra, the flames of southbank lighting up the very instant we drive past.

radiohead: bulletproof...i wish i was. 2000.09. sydney. sitting opposite the opera house, almost under the bridge, listening to this song, writing. the sky's full of australian clouds, all fluffy, perfect, white. i'm getting sick and am freezing, despite the sunshine. a little earlier, i stood at the gap, thinking that this would be a great place to commit suicide, should the need ever arise again. i wish i could be who he wanted. all the time.
rewind. replay. rewind. replay. rewind. replay.rewind. replay.

richard ashcroft: a song for the lovers. 2000.09.don’t wanna wait, lord i’ve been waiting all my life but i’m too late again, i know but i was scared.standing in the middle of his room. paralysed. crying.
i'm overflowing with love and desire and wanting and melancholy. i want to preserve this moment forever, because i know we're falling apart.

rem: everybody hurts. 2002.07. it's my first morning back in melbourne, catching the train into town from essendon by myself, walking into the city from flinders street station. it's cold, there's a blue sky, a typical melbourne winter morning, a tram makes a bunch of pidgeons fly up, suspends them in the air and i take a mental photograph. a few steps further down elizabeth street, "everybody hurts" is on the street loudspeaker system of the cheapo downstairs strip joint.

the whitlams: cries to hard. 2002.09. all saturday mornings without him at his parents place blurred into one. being up early, having breakfast and endless cups of tea at the table, reading the paper back to front. showering late. getting dressed in dunc's sunfilled room, bright blue skies outside. i smell like sympathy for the skin and sui love and am putting on my red v-neck sweater and i'll freeze all day because it's too short in the back.

björk: joga. 2002.11. trying to convince myself, post-australia, that i like running. running away from the parental home on a grey autumny sunday morning. wearing a grey fleece beanie, courtesy of swatch. running along königstrasse, turning into kaiserstrasse, heading towards the new development, depressingly asleep this sunday morning, depressingly small houses, depressingly lovingly, tastelessly decorated, window colour drawings on the windows.
thinking: i am smarter than this. i will get away from this. my life will happen in essendon, vic. or maybe hawthorn. but not here. even if it means i'll have to like running.

archive: rest my head on you. 2002.12. driving out of lakes entrace. jim sleeping in the back of the car in the midday heat, just barely held at bay by the aircon. the sun über-instense, air reflected over the road. a giant wombat dead at the side of the road, its four tiny feet in the air.

blue rodeo: five days in may. 2003.05. montreal.

2raumwohnung: nimm mich mit. 2003.06. in michi's car, driving back to the city after a night of sleeping outside and skinny dipping, dirk and i on the backseat. it's just after noon, and hot already, all windows are down. my hair is still wet, i'm going commando, and i own the world.

eskobar: violence. 2004.06. leaving the "substage" in karlsruhe early as the eskobar concert is in full swing. i need to catch the last train back home. i'm alone. and strong. and happy. i just talked to paul dempsey and my camera broke as someone took a photo of the two of us. i'm happy.

u2: sometimes you can't make it on your own 2004.11, i'm kneeling in the middle of the parental living room on a wednesday morning, as my father's breastbone is being sawed open 20km away. i sing along. then cry. then wail. sing along. so that i can be strong later on. it works.

radiohead: there there. 2005.02.08. my life is different than it was a few hours earlier. i feel as if i am under a spell. there's electricity running throughout my body. and i come. and come. and come. and come some more.

a homerecorded wurlitzer tune. 2005.02. scary shit. this is it.

i love my gym.

2005-02-24T11:54:00.000+01:00

i'm sure it's the only gym where your spinning instructor asks you what kind of song you want to sweat to on sunday morning, and your recommendation of u2's "elevation" is greeted with hearfelt enthusiams and spontaneous falling into song.

i'm also dead sure it's the only gym in this city on whose video system you might end up seeing the following videos back to back:
u2 - one (bar version). robbie williams - feel (live). gomez - catch me up. coldplay - in my place.

yeah.

it makes burning 650kcal in 45minutes on a crosstrainer while the batteries of your cd player have just run out much more bearable.

classy.

2005-02-24T09:17:00.000+01:00

i would have expected more from you.
real classy, man, real classy.

that was how it started. this is how it ends.

2005-02-23T11:40:00.000+01:00

if i knew then what i know now
i guess i would have still have loved you
(did you love me, did you know how?)
it’s funny but i love you now
just like i loved you then, i can’t pretend
but that was how it started, this is how it ends

and i’ve been on a steady downward slide
but now i’m sick and tired of sick and tired
it’s time to make things right
it’s fine, i’m thinking of myself and mine
and me, not you or them or anybody else

ashamed to say i feel this way
i was a fool to think that i could fool you
(did you get healed, how does it feel?)
shower me in autumn rain
the gift you send my soul to mend
that was how it started, this is how it ends
that was how it started, baby, this is how it ends.
(it’s ending here)

"that was how it started, this is how it ends"
cinematic

the birds.

2005-02-23T08:45:00.000+01:00

over snow covered haslach this morning, a huge group of birds seemed to be rehearsing for the filming of a new version of "the birds".
it must have been several hundred at least, circling the church tower, flying group maneuvers, descending rapidly, for no apparents reason at all.
i wonder whether it's fun, that flying in groups thing. it sure looked like it.

i stood in the falling snow, wishing i had a camera.

referer logs.

2005-02-22T19:08:00.000+01:00

someone has been googling "dirk caro jens blog".

welcome.
care to let me know who you are? vielen dank.

bipolar, almost.

2005-02-22T18:45:00.000+01:00

it's strange to be me at the moment.

i know that a short busride away, dirk is terribly unhappy. when i went over to his place for the sequel of the breakup (and picking up the books and records and things) and saw him, my heart broke again and again and again.
i can not remember ever seen someone that hurt. someone that hurt because of something i've done to them.

he sat huddled on that bench in the corner of his flat, and he looked like a wounded animal. i felt helpless because there was and is nothing i could or can do to make him feel better, when i've always made an effort to do so over the past 20 months.
the last time i was at his place he'd drawn a smiley face above his table, because he'd splattered paint on the wall by accident. on saturday, that smiley had been changed into a grimace.

i wonder how he is. but he doesn't want any contact with me, and that's okay, of course. i won't ask anyone else how he is, either: i had to promise him i wouldn't. it seemed to be important to him. maybe he is trying to punish me in some tiny way.
i'd do the same if i was him.
he kept telling me on saturday that he wasn't believing anything i was telling him, and that's okay, too. if i were him, i wouldn't either.
i think i resisted the urge to plead my case reasonably well. what good would it have had? none at all.
he's terribly hurt. he'd be even more hurt if he knew details. not that i've been lying to him. i haven't.
but i've been avoiding that "he could possibly be the soulmate" stuff.
it wouldn't be any good.

i'd written earlier that i was hoping he was destroying my stuff if this was making him feel better.
turns out he's been doing just that. it actually hurt me tremendously when i found a painting i'd giving him for his birthday in the bin and heard he'd destroyed a sheep i'd given him for christmas and had broken the cd through which we'd met. he said he won't keep a single photo, a single letter, nothing.
and as weird as it is: it's hurting me.

it's just things. he hasn't realised yet, i think, that their end won't make the pain go away. at all.

so i'm feeling like shit about dirk feeling like shit because of me.
i worry whether this is a serious flaw of my personality, how i deal with people at the end of relationships, even though i think this has been as "fair" as it could have been. i wonder whether chris knew more than i did when he gave me the lyrics to "caroline says" all those years ago.
and at the same time i'm excited and deeply happy and -gasp!- in love. it's a week to go. how could i not be excited?

me, i'm bipolar, almost.

the devil's in the details.

2005-02-22T18:22:00.000+01:00

n-tv pet peeve: the ever returning shot of an expert sitting at his or her desk leafing through books to give space and time for voice-overs.

the lawyers always leaf through commentaries of areas of law that aren't even closely connected to the question at hand.
the worst i've ever seen, however, was a psychologist being interviewed on pedophilia this week, leafing through - how i wish i was kidding - the first edition hardcover of rainald goetz's outrageously good novel "irre".

the devil is in the details, people. the devil is in the details.

elegantly wasted.

2005-02-21T15:16:00.000+01:00

with alex' return to that country ruled by that miserable failure just 24 hours away from the time he and chris would be in freiburg, we had decided days in advance that the only way to spend the 6 or 7 hours we would have in each other's company would be getting absolutely out-of-our-minds-shattered.

and that's what we did.
and it was wonderful.

i don't know what's wrong with me and my booze consumption these past weeks, but it has skyrocketed, and i'm not even feeling bad about it.
days as weird as these need some alcoholic lubrication.

i picked alex and chris up at the train station where alex smashed his head on some random sign the second he saw me. he bled. and he'll have a scar on his forehead now.
i asked him whether i should sign it, and in return, he got out that package of astroglide , waved it around and threw it at me, and hilarity resulted.
i bought a kuschel-zeitung (which i wouldn't get a chance of reading, really, which didn't matter because i just needed to see one name in print, really) and after a brief stop at my place to access and quickly empty two bottles of tannenzäpfle , we headed to totally uncool oscar's for breakfast.
it's a sucky place, yes yes, but their breakfast *is* good, and instead of coffees we had beers and that worked well with that rather non-vegan mozzarella omelette breakfast that i had.
i needed a base for the booze, that's my excuse. i hadn't eaten in 20 hours.

we talked about alex's girlfriend, chris's happiness and my rollercoaster ride and about the prospects of all of it. the boys thought i was crazy and lucky and i got the impression that they were a bit shocked because while they'd seen me giddy and hyped before ("I TOUCHED ERIK ZABEL'S HAND!") they'd never seen me as giddy as i currently am.

alex needed some reassurance that i'd step off that rollercoaster if real life chemistry was missing and so i gave him that reassurance, even though, truth be told, with chemistry being 80% mental in the first place, i truly have no worries about that at all.

it was wonderful. okay food. decent beer. excellent conversation, laughter, company.
anything else you need?

once we were done with brekkie (chris cheated, and had turkey schnitzel. how's that for breakfast?) we moved the 200m across kajo to wiener where a window table happened to be vacant that very moment, and the serious drinking started with a mixture i hadn't previously heard off: jägermeister and red bull.
you know, i like neither. seriously.
mixed however, consumed in one gulp with a straw, it is quite an intoxicating effective little mix only americans who have fallen prey to all that jägermeister marketing of the 1990's could come up with.

our laughter got louder, the little waitress chick totally didn't get what we were up to, the stories got wilder ("ever been caught with a pound and a half of pot and a concealed weapon in georgia?"), the talk got raunchier ("of course i thought about screwing you!"), more beer was ordered and more jägermeister and red bull, too, and time passed and the tab got bigger and someone near us was smoking pot and chris and i kept going to the loo together making blowjob jokes and i kept whining to alex that he had to stay in europe and he kept replying that i should shut up because he'd otherwise cry and we seemed to be the only people having fun in the place that sunday afternoon, and from a certain point on i kept laughing loudly and putting my head down on the table because life was perfect and i was happy and in wonderful company and ever so perfectly drunk.
and then it was suddenly past 5pm, and time to pay and head to the station and we staggered out of the bar and into the direction of my flat and chris decided to buy whoppers for him and alex at burger king in memory of that night we ate there at 3am after dancing at el.pi, and alex and i picked up his bag at my flat and the beers i owed him, too, and we extended the rules of our friendship for just about a minute and a half and then headed downstairs to meet chris and headed to the train station and i bought a strange little publication for €1 because it's got more than the name, it's got a picture, too, and we had the beers and waited for the train and i was ever so slightly moving from perfectly drunk to out of my mind drunk and then the ice train arrived and we said goodbye and hugged and kissed and promised each other another try if things won't work out and i clanked the beer bottle at the ice train window in a last "cheers" and staggered home and into andrea's flat and collapsed and laughed and told her what happened and we read horoscopes and got pizzas and i finally found the way to my flat after lying around andreas floor for a while and came down from the booze and the caffeine and the fun while listening to nada surf.

good stuff, this being perfectly drunk.
good stuff this being elegantly wasted.

drive-in movies in gelsenkirchen.

2005-02-21T14:58:00.000+01:00

i'm at wiener with a bunch of people, drinking crappy overpriced merlot.
ben becker is there, and in his wonderfully deep and scratchy voice asks me on a date to watch movies in a drive-in theatre in gelsenkirchen.

definitely the most unrealistic and oddest of the short film type dreams i had saturday night. the others were all sexually supercharged and starring people i'll actually meet in real life.
hello, subconscious?

been thinking and drinking all over the town.

2005-02-21T13:49:00.000+01:00

sit on a train, reading a book
same damn planet every time i look
try to relax and slow my heartbeat
only works when i’m dead asleep
been thinking and drinking all over the town
must be gearing up for some kind of melt-down

nada surf. paper boats.
fucking awesome.

translucent.

2005-02-21T13:10:00.000+01:00

i took a little walk this morning, across cathedral square, across my favourite bridge, through the little park, through the tree-lined roads of herdern, to the strange concrete building that houses the city's health department to have my blood drawn and checked for hi-virus antibodies.

i had nada surf in my ears, and there was something very special about the light and the snow. it was a little cloudy this morning, and the sun was still behind schlossberg, but somehow everything had a translucent quality to it. not translucent as in blurred: translucent as in sharpened, cleared, straightened, made visible.
the barren, snow covered trees on schlossberg. all the usually hidden paths visible. all the strange little buildings up there, including that little temple dirk had once called his "living room". the shapes of the trees, of every single branch visible, enhanced.
the pretty buildings of herdern with their little towers and strange roofs and gardens and trees and nice interiors and wrough iron gates.
it was like looking at an über-sharp 8mp digital photograph.

everything looked polished, despite the grey sky, as if a thin veil of greyness had been lifted.

jägermeister/redbull.

2005-02-21T11:02:00.000+01:00

chain reaction.

2005-02-18T14:47:00.000+01:00

i need a chain reaction
like a slow wave crashing
to come and change everything
and wash me away

i cannot give it up.

2005-02-18T14:11:00.000+01:00

i just want to feel real love
fill the home that i live in
'cause i got too much life
running through my veins
going to waste
and i need to feel real love
and a life ever after
i cannot give it up

not quite myself.

2005-02-18T11:59:00.000+01:00

this morning, i managed to smash the glass jug of my wonderful princess power blender type 2046.
smash it while filled with 1c vanilla soy, 1 3/4 cup frozen strawberries, 1 banana and 1 kiwifruit. ooops.

my entire kitchen was covered in fruit, glass and vanilla soy. and my feet were bleeding in more than one spot as a result.

the scary thing is this: i was calm. completely calm.
no swearing. no shouting. no crying. hell, i was happy, even.
i cleaned up the mess, i put some band-aids on my feet, i had something else for brekkie, and i ordered a new jug.

good lord, something is seriously wrong with me these days.
i'm not quite myself.

coffee with felix.

2005-02-18T11:43:00.000+01:00

i finally emailed felix this morning. - i'd been wanting to do it all week, but just didn't get around doing it with everything that's been up.

he emailed back instantly, and we will be having coffee next week.
and that's fucking awesome.

i can not describe how much this means to me. i can not describe how much felix meant to me the first few semesters at uni, how well we got along, how much we shared. i can not describe why exactly we lost touch over australia and my depression and self-isolation.

and i really can not describe how much i hope we can pick up the pieces of what we had.

fucking hell.

2005-02-17T18:35:00.000+01:00

you know, the only horoscopes i ever read are the ones rob breszy at freewillastrology does.

somehow i hadn't done so these past weeks.
i did just a minute ago. my response was a hearfelt "woah".

week of february 3rd
what do you say we liberate you from conventions that drag you down? and wean you from customs that steal your joy? it's a perfect moment to break with all the useless, burdensome, energy-sapping aspects of the past.[...]

week of february 10th
happy valentine daze, cancerian! as i meditated on what advice might purify and supercharge your love life, i got to thinking about a statement attributed to french poet paul valery. "love is being stupid together," he said. there's an element of truth to this notion, but it's too corny and degenerate for my tastes. i prefer to focus on a more interesting and complete truth, which is this: real love is being smart together. if you weave your destiny together with another's, he or she should catalyze your sleeping potentials, sharpen your perceptions, and boost your iq. your relationship should be a crucible in which you deepen your understanding of the way the world works. if you can't share your love with such a person this week, don't share your love with anyone.

week of february 17th
i was meditating on your horoscope as i rode my bike up the hill in a misty rain. "give me a sign," i prayed to the grey-yellow sky. "what do cancerians need to know?" as i pedaled over the last hump and reached the top, a spectacular response materialized--a five-alarm fire of a rainbow. to my further amazement, i saw where one end of it landed: on the rusty metal roof of a shack in a horse pasture not too far away. i threw down my bike and dashed to it. there were slats missing in the shack's walls, so i could peer inside. i saw a black metal safe in the middle of the room, surrounded by wisps of straw and chained to a u-shaped pipe that disappeared into the floor. i knew i had obtained the oracle you needed--a rough metaphor for the uncanny fate awaiting you. my intuition told me there'll be one difference between my experience and yours: whereas i had no legal right to whatever was in the safe, you can and should gain access to the storehouse you find.

for further freakiness, continue on and read the ones for pisces.
rob breszy, i don't know how you do it, but you do it perfectly. and you rock.

pleading my case.

2005-02-17T16:12:00.000+01:00

i'm tempted to continue to plead my case to dirk, to jens, to make him understand, but i really should resist that urge. the details are making things worse, not better.

how would i feel being told that i was loved, but that it wasn't enough, because the person had just met someone else who could turn out to be a true soulmate?
i really don't know.

i'm not feeling good. of course not.
i hurt dirk more than i have hurt anyone else in my life. i hurt him more than i ever wanted to hurt him. i love him, in some way, in many ways, and for the past 20 months, i always wanted his best and always looked out for him and always tried to make things right, to make things better.
now, however, i've hurt him terribly, dissapointed him terribly, and there is no way to make things better, no way to make things right, no way to make it look nicer, no nice tagline i can file this under.

i'm the evil one here, no doubt about that.

however, there is one tiny little thing about this, that is making this a bit less awful for me. if only slightly so:
i was honest.

it was the first time that i was honest at the end of a relationship.
in the past, i always cheated. always lied. always caused bad things to happen, so that a fall out would occur.
i think i treated dirk the way i would have wanted to be treated in this worst case scenario of a relationship:
honestly, directly, and after making sure that that other emotion was not just a one day thing.
but then, this kind of thing always sucks, and terribly so.

taking into consideration how much i hurt, me being the evil one, the perpetrator, the one with the jackpot in her other hand, his pain must be nightmarish.

i hope he is cursing me. i hope he is tearing photos apart. i hope he is finding relief in that kind of thing. above all, however, i hope jens is coming down to keep him company.

i very obviously didn't stop caring for dirk at 4pm yesterday afternoon. i care about him, i worry about him, i love him, and not being the person who can help now is weird and saddening and new. obviously.

but it was the right thing to do. as strange as that term is, when that "right thing" hurt someone else so much.
but dirk deserves more than being a second choice. he deserves honesty.

i've tried and failed to explain to him what has changed. and i think it is good that i have failed, because this is a painful truth.

what has changed these past days is not what i feel for dirk. not at all. it has nothing to do with what he perceives as his faults.
what has changed is *me*, and what *i* expect from myself.
what has changed is the level of emotion, of connection, of intensity that i expect from love in my life.

i've always said that i was striving for the big thing, the true thing. but truth be told, i wasn't.
i'd settled with comfortable, and on good days, "comfortable" was fantastic and enjoyable and hiking and climbing and fun and pleasure and snowbaording and making love and on bad days, i'd get frustrated by my love for the mediocre and stevie ray vaughn and argueing about the reason for fire regulations in hotels.
[oh how i wish i was making this up.]

it's hard, letting go of this. very hard.
i already miss the good we had, the unity we had, the fun we had, the rituals, and the few plans that we had. i will miss his family. i will miss his friend jens. but above all, i will miss dirk and his companionship.

ending dirks and my relationship was and is a selfish act
i am doing this for myself, and only for myself. i am doing this to be happier. i am doing this because i think i've found something i didn't even think existed: a male version of myself, my soulmate.
i want to explore this openly, fearlessly and without betraying anyone else.
i want to live up to my own expectations, i want to take risks, i want to be myself.

right now, the new thing feels larger than me, larger than life.
i have never felt anything of this magnitude, never thought it was possible to feel this in the first place. it's more than that the-grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side-stuff. it's more than newrelationshipenergy™. our similarities are mundane and grande and their extend is scaring me shitless.
our 1300 emails could be reduced to the tagline "me, too!!".
it's mindblowing. truly mindblowing.

right now, i am feeling a strange amalgam of emotions.
sadness and happiness and worry and lust and excitement and melancholy and longing.

and i'm deeply sorry for the pain i am causing.
but i have to take my chance.
i absolutely have to.

allez, allez, allez.

2005-02-17T15:10:00.000+01:00

lance, i am very much looking forward to seeing you this summer.

fucking awesome, this.

[a lesson learned.]

2005-02-16T17:56:00.000+01:00

nothing sucks more than breaking the heart of someone you love.

the slow demise of civil society.

2005-02-16T08:44:00.000+01:00

last weekend, listening to professor l. talking about evil lawyers and the hate for them over the millenia, i realised that the history of rome does show that the end of civil society is near when lawyers become ruthless, when the sytem of law, the lawmaking and the rule of law are corrupted.

i had to think about that when hearing that christopher pittman, a boy who was 12 year old when he killed his grandparents while being medicated with zoloft, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

a society that considers 12 year olds as legal adults is very obviously seriously fucked. it gets even more mind-boggling if this happens in a society that otherwise does not give teenagers (hell, at 12, you're not even a teen!) responsibilites and keeps them dependent well into their twenties.
if you've ever been around 12 year olds for any prolonged period of tim, you very well know that they are *not* adults.
from what i've read, studies have shown that teenage brains are not capable of the same reasoning that adults are because they are going through a massive change. i don't even want to get into the issue of psychoactive medication for teenagers and about what that does to the growing brain.

whatthehell.

i am so glad that i live in a country with a working juvenile legal system. and i very much wonder how the district attorney, who apparently pulled some horrid stunts in the courtroom, can look at himself in the mirror in the morning.

sick, this.
hell, why am i surprised in the first place?
oh, no, wait, i am not.
it's the same society in which damien echols, jessie misskelley and jason baldwin have been imprisoned for 13 years. right.

how do i love thee, old europe?

valentine's day.

2005-02-15T15:20:00.000+01:00

wiener--, downtown freiburg. 9:30pm on valentine's day.

on a table by the window, a gay couple, obviously on a valentine's day date.
they're drinking champagne, then chardonnay, not talking much.

at one point, they are both facing away from each other, both holding their respective mobiles to their respective ears, facing away from each other, smiling into the mobiles a lot more than they smiled the previous 2 hours.
they are mirroring each other perfectly.

i wish i could take a photo.

ouch.

2005-02-15T09:27:00.000+01:00

on viva plus this morning, on that scrollbar for sms-ed in messages:

"eminem and jeanette biedermann are the best"

that's a great combo, really. and a whole lot like that schnappi kid saying that her musical inspirations are juli, vanilla ninja and rammstein.

this is the right time.

2005-02-15T09:22:00.000+01:00

"this is the right time to again re-read connie palmen's "i.m."", i realised after reading the first 30 pages on the tram this morning.
it makes my re-visited views seem a little less outrageous.

priceless.

2005-02-14T17:14:00.000+01:00

the mobile does the happy sms arrival dance as i get out of the shower at 10:20am.
then it breaks into song.

"i will never know
cause you will never show
come on and love me now
come on and love me now"

if life was a visa ad today's tagline would be:
receiving dejayed-voicemail-wake-up-calls: priceless.

morgenstraich.

2005-02-14T16:22:00.000+01:00

at 4am, the bells toll, and the lights go out and the crowd cheers, once, and it will be the only time the crowd is loud, all night.
the morgenstraich in basel, it's magical.

till and i drove out to basel in heavy snow, leaving at 2:30am, thinking we'd have to turn around before we get to the a5, because the view sucks: looking at the windshield is like looking into a washing machine of snow. driving 80 is the max.
but strangely the snowfall lessens the further we get south, the view gets better, and soon enough we're cruising south.
till jokes it's because the swiss got better connection to the weather gods. i joke that they simply got a deal with them to not waste that snow somewhere where you can't ski.
we talk, as we always do, till and i, and it's all fine.

just before 3am, we turn on the radio, joe cocker sings "you can leave your hat on", and in that instant i hope a woman is stripping for her lover in heitersheim or any other boring little breisgau town for that matter, just because of it.
the road info tells us that all is fine on the a5 and up in schleswig-holstein, too (does germany shrink at night?), and the lone moderator on swr1 announces that bill clinton won a grammy for the audiobook of his memoir, and the way he says the word "memoir", you know he thinks about cigars and blowjobs and stains on dresses.

we drive through weil, and yes, we take yet another route than last time, end up at yet another border crossing, this is the end of the eurpean union, and weirdly enough, it's just right, that one, the guards on patrol are superkind this time, no evil questions, a quick look into the papers and a goodbye-have-fun and we're past them, and at the badischer bahnhof, in a parking lot, in the crowds, in the tram and in the crowds, heading downtown.

i've never seen anything like it.
the city is packed, people are heading there from all directions, young, old, dresed up or not, but the mood is quietly excited. celebratory. magical. it's not like any other large crowd i've been in.

carnival groups, "cliques" as they say in basel, are meeting up, hidden in costumes and masks, holding lanterns yet to be lit.

the crowd is calm. there is no pushing. no shoving. no screaming. no evil drunks. not a moment of discomfort. a little bit of a pot smell every once in a while, but we're in switzerland, so what. we're past the cathedral, down the pedestrian mall and on the market square by 8minutes to 4. what i'm supposed to expect, i don't know.

at 4am, all the bells in the city toll. all(!) lights go out. the crowd cheers.

and then the drummers and pipers start and the lanterns are being lit, and the cliques start moving through the packed streets, holding up their lanterns, displaying beautiful, funny, satirical, ugly, critical, political, artistic giant themed-lanterns.

it's beautiful. all of it is beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful.
i usually hate these kinds of things, large crowds, rituals, costumes, but this is different. the mood is different. the feel is, too.

i stand in the large and strangely quiet crowd on market square, paralysed by the beauty of it all, by the ritual, by the snow that's still falling lightly, by the happiness i feel, by the longing i feel.
i feel like a beacon of calm and happiness and sweet pain in this night of strange drums and pipes music and lights and and masks and costumes.
i could cry.

we stand in one spot for a good long while, till and i, before we realise that what you do is follow cliques here and there, going to different spots in the inner city, so that you don't miss out on any. we're always admiring the lights and the mood and the costume, cliques of kids, of teenagers of adults, and the behaviour of the crowd.
we end up in the middle of barfüsser square, being surrounded by moving cliques on all sides, moving from gerbergasse to freie strasse or up the square. from where we stand, a bit higher up, you can see in all directions, and it's wonderful, all those lanterns and lights and strange music and costume.
till and i, we don't talk much beyond "wow, this is awesome. fucking awesome."
i wish i had a camera, but i don't. i borrow till's for three or four shots before he thinks i'm overdoing it (typical flickr-ite, me).
i take mental pictures.
i can not describe them.

by 6am, we're both cold and exhausted, even though i'm sure i could stay till the end of the night, but we sit in front of the kunstmuseum sharing tea and cake and then head to the tram and the parking lot and the car ("caro, you're the only woman i know who's got a sense of getting around places.") and then through riehen and weil to the a5, and it has stopped snowing and there's classical music on the radio and a french chanson station, too, and i get sleepy and fall asleep and then we're in freiburg, it's 7am, and i walk through the awaking city, close the shutters, get out of my clothes and only realise then that i'm freezing, really freezing, and tired, and that it was good to head home even though i didn't want to. and then i go to bed. at 7am.

basler morgenstraich 2005.
it was the first, not the last time.

perfect.

2005-02-14T16:15:00.000+01:00

it's snowing heavily as i leave the house at 2:20am, the empty streets covered with a centimter of snow.

walking across the little square in front of my house, i see that the uc people are closing shop, and in front of art cafe 3 of their folks are huddling under an umbrella. the idiots at the fraternity house across the street are loudly celebrating the end of term, their shouting and singing and glass-throwing toned down by the snow.

i am the only person on the street. i am leaving the first track marks in the snow.
i walk past uni. i cross rotteckring, no one else in sight. i walk through milchstrasse and pass the cohibar, where people are still drinking as i start the new day. sedanstrasse is empty, and just because i can, i walk in the middle of the road. in the snow. previously untouched.

life, that very moment, it's perfect.

in bono's company.

2005-02-14T16:05:00.000+01:00

as i sleepily turn on the tv for company at 1:35am, having just been woken up by my alarm after not even two hours of dream-loaden sleep, i end up at viva (the v's in their logo re-constructed into two hearts for the day) the very instant that u2's "one" video starts. and it's the bar version, too.

*swoon*

it's snowing outside. happy valentine's day.

new york, new york.

2005-02-14T12:57:00.000+01:00

i wish i was in new york right now.

i realised today that the gates are almost the exact same colour as jeanne claude's hair (which i've had a chance to observe up close years ago). who knows, maybe this is a hommage to her, too.

i love christo & jeanne-claude' art. i love it so much. art for art's sake. art because you can do art. art because it's fun.
perfect.

i wish i was in new york right now.

148grams of fun.

2005-02-13T19:21:00.000+01:00

i owe alex two beers.

actually, dearest alex, i'll get you three. you rock, man.

kung fu.

2005-02-13T19:11:00.000+01:00

du machst meine träume kung fu.

the drugs don' t work.

2005-02-13T18:44:00.000+01:00

the other day, searching for aspirine, more aspirine, i went through the drugs box i keep in my bathroom cabinet.
i hadn't done that in a while, or at least not properly, i realised, being unable to locate additional aspirine stocks and realising that quite a few contents of the drug box had very recently passed their ~~best before~~ use by date. oops.
the next day, i dropped this off at the next door pharmacy for destroyage:

paracetamol. [a whole box of.]
vanilla coated paracetamol in a green and yellow "handy pack". [australian made and proud of it, too. 1/2 box.]
more paracetamol. [another whole box of.]
panadeine. [smuggled into the country without a prescription. 4 doses left.]
codral day & night tablets. [smuggled into the country before pseudoephedrines went prescription free round here. only 2 doses left, which i had had been saving intentionally for a special worthy moment.]
pentoxyphillin. [3 doses left.]
amitryptilin. [about 125mg total left.]
estrogen. [about half a blister left.]

yes, even i found that collection a little disturbing.
it's very obviously the drug collection of an emotionally unstable estrogen-deprived non drug-control-law-abiding being with circulation issues and a massive painkiller habit.

sounds like me, actually. *cough*

einwegfeuerzeugstichflamme.

2005-02-12T18:02:00.000+01:00

du bist meine große liebe
wann können wir uns treffen?

it's getting better all the time. better. better. better.

2005-02-12T13:06:00.000+01:00

[the gomez version, people, i'm singing the gomez version.]

seriously, nothing can get me down right now. nothing.
not the lack of sleep. not the lack of appetite. not the fact i have shitloads of work to do. not the fact that i'm as broke as ever. not the shitty weather and the rain.

seriously, good things attract good things.

i spend two hours at uni this morning, at the goodbye lecture of my law history professor titled "the hate for lawyers", and it was just what i had hoped it would be:
inspiringly intellectual musings about lawyers and their being hated over the past milleniums. i absolutely loved it, loved it, loved it. professsor l. was always at his most brilliant when he could do as he pleased in front of a friendly crowd. he always rocked in advanced roman law with 20 roman law freaks. he always sucked in advanced civil law with 200 brainless 2nd years.
you only need one law history credit. i got myself three. two of them with professor l. at the end of term, if you'd turned out to be one of those freaks who came to class even in january, you'd get one of his books as a pressie.

so today he rocked, and was brilliant and funny and was thrilled by the applause and the feedback and the crowd, and it was all very sweet and lovely.
a perfect unviersity life ritual, that final lecture.

afterwards, till and i went to the reception at his institute, got some champagne, enjoyed the view over the city, and it got even better, because felix, my long lost former best friend felix, who works at professor l.'s institute and whom i've been missing for years years years years but just have not dared to get back in touch with worrying that he'd never ever want to talk to me ever again, came up to me and we talked and it was cool and now contact is re-established, and we'll have coffee next week and i might just be on the road to getting him back into my life, the funniest, most reliable, bestest, most diligent guy friend i ever had, and by god, how much would that rock?

[wow. that's one sentence!]

i'm keeping my fingers crossed about felix. wowie.

now it's on to my usual saturday routine of grocery shopping (haven't done that in a week. i swear. no exaggeration. who needs food? i don't.) followed by exorcising some demons in the gym for three hours. and then on to a partay at hendrik's place, which will be cool because i haven't seen him since his return to freiburg, haven't seen him since he lost 30something kg, haven't seen him with a girlfriend, ever (not in the 16 years that we know each other), and i'm sure there'll be good wine and interesting conversation, and i hope to end up comfortably drunk at the end of the night. i have little doubt it will work.

man. it's getting better all the time.

i'm not even projecting, not even not-living-in-the-moment, not talking about next week (alex! basel!), or the week after that, or the week after that.
i swear, once we get to those weeks, this blogthing will totally degenerate under the influence of happiness. like: totally.

personally, however, i'm very much looking forward to that degeneration.
i've given up that trying to be cool thing long ago, anyway. he.

a few brief thoughts on why mix cds rock.

2005-02-12T11:00:00.000+01:00

15 songs, like clean and empty slates, to be loaded with memories yet to be created.

an insight into someone's brain. and heart. like a private login code.

and a way into someone's pants, too.

pavlovian.

2005-02-12T10:49:00.000+01:00

i'm in the shower, it's 9:37am, and my siemens a6o does it's bep-bep-bep-beeep sms announcement dance, a whole room away.
i realise that very moment that my reaction to that sound has reached pavlovian dimensions.

insanity, here i come.
and man, does it feel good.

your song in my ear.

2005-02-12T10:45:00.000+01:00

still a little bit of your song in my ear
still a little bit of your words i long to hear
you step a little closer to me
so close that i can't see what's going on

i love life.

2005-02-11T19:38:00.000+01:00

if life can really be full of sex, a shared love of certain fonts, rides on ice trains, red wine, music, strong opinions, patents (yum. yum.), a healthy dose of hypochondria, swearing when driving recklessly, games of strip memory (or backgammon or trivial pursuit or fang den spitz), reading medical journals and shared words, then by god, do i love life.

why didn't anyone tell me before?

fucking hell: I LOVE LIFE.

and all i want to do is type in all caps. like never before.

listen to me, world:

I LOVE LIFE.

i look at the moon but i see only you.

2005-02-11T13:22:00.000+01:00

broad horizon as i walk from your embrace
what i feel is nothing but the taste of you
i get buried in your mouth
i don't care if i can't climb out

sorry, gelbison.

2005-02-10T16:50:00.000+01:00

yesterday afternoon, listening to a mix-tape on headphones & typing.
a fantastic song comes on, perfecting the moment.
i sing along, loving the grandeness the music adds to what i'm doing.

however, for the life of me remember what the band is called. or what the song is called. and that never ever happens to me, ever.
excessive levels of endorphins must affect memory.

sorry, gelbison. i [heart] you.

[speechless.]

2005-02-10T13:36:00.000+01:00

me, i'm speechless. kinda. at least round here.

channeling all my words somewhere else, one might say.
fivehundredandsixtyfive things down fibreoptic wires. that's a lot of words.

and hell, do words rock.
i'd forgotten about it.
or ignored it.
or something.

but one realisation of this week is definitely this one:
words rock.
and words can rock my world.

wonderful.

[speechless.]

nothing at all.

2005-02-10T13:16:00.000+01:00

you can run from love
and if it's really love it will find you
catch you by the heel
but you can't be numb for love
the only pain is to feel nothing at all

fundamental truths.

2005-02-09T18:39:00.000+01:00

i never thought anyone else could be as opinionated/perfectionist/sloppy/loud/grey/argumentative/word-loving/etc./etc./etc./etc. as me.

i never thought anyone else talked in lyrics like i do.

i never thought this kind of electricity existed. [here she comes again.]

it's a whole long list of fundamental truths i'm currently revising. and these are the easy ones, from the top of my head.

the other ones, i'll have to sort out in my head first. avoiding the grand words. trying not to jinx it.

after the flood.

2005-02-09T18:03:00.000+01:00

after the flood all the colours came out
it was a beautiful day

still.

2005-02-09T11:03:00.000+01:00

60 minutes of pretending to be lance armstrong, 60 minutes of push-ups, crunches, squats, me looking like shit afterwards (clothes drenched and hanging off me like they're someone else's, hair stringy, and my face is just eyes, eyes, eyes), muscles hurting, but inside, i'm imploding. imploding. imploding. still.

first day.

2005-02-09T08:47:00.000+01:00

this is the first day of my life
i swear i was born right in the door way

onehundretandten.

2005-02-08T18:10:00.000+01:00

onehundretandten things down fibreopticwires.
afterwards: quietness. and rest. and restlessness. and relief. and more hyped-ness. of a strangely calm kind.

scary shit, this.

whatever the lesson will be, i'll learn it. happily, too.

i think i'll have to review some truths that i thought were fundamental to life.

synchronicity

2005-02-08T16:15:00.000+01:00

"a sleep trance, a dream dance,
a shared romance
synchronicity

a connecting principle
linked to the invisible
almost imperceptible
something inexpressible
science insusceptible
logic so inflexible
causally connectible
yet nothing is invincible

[..]

we know you, they know me
extrasensory
synchronicity
a star fall, a phone call
it joins all
synchronicity

it's so deep, it's so wide
you're inside
synchronicity
effect without a cause
sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
synchronicity....."
the police

crush.

2005-02-08T15:18:00.000+01:00

it's crazy, i'm thinking.

not that i'm *thinking*.

smitten.

2005-02-08T10:26:00.000+01:00

[sneaking in two minutes at the macs at the gym, between burning 650kcal on the crosstrainer and a 30min abs-only class.]

safari loads quickly.

and i'm instantly smitten.

[it turns out to be a 30min abs-only-smiling-constantly class.]

immune to embarrassment.

2005-02-07T21:48:00.000+01:00

in the seconds before before class starts, as professor l. is already ogling the clock above the door, the half-empty room quiet with scared anticipation

[above everyone's heads, beamed unto the wall, are stats proclaiming that of 135 people who took the exam 3 weeks ago, 35.56% have failed, and 36.30% have the minimum passing grade]

a grossly overweight guy with an expressionless face, which is strangely pig-like and red with the alcohol consumption of years in a fraternity, dressed head to toe in ralph lauren garments stretched to the max, an 0.5l bottle of rothaus in front of him, very loudly, and without warning, screams into his mobile:

"narri! narro!"

once.

"narri! narro!"

twice.

"narri! narro!"

a third time.

collectively, heads turn away in an embarrassment and disgust he seems to be immune to.

the bell rings.

45 minutes of trying to rediscover in professor l.'s elaborate discussion of the case what i banned on paper during three hours of frantic writing three weeks ago follow.

then: "miss b.?"
i get my exam back, the front page typed, in a nice small sans-serif font, too, the lined pages of the actual exam scribbled in a handwriting i barely recognise as mine. i need to practise writing by hand.

i've passed. and not just barely.

more proof that you get through law school on way too little these days.

now bring on the vodka.

this isn't happening.

2005-02-07T14:18:00.000+01:00

i'm reading someone else's words as i let itunes feed me radiohead songs.

it's outrageously good stuff, (t)his.
reading his observations is a constant déjà vu of scenes i've never managed to put into words. at least not that well. and not in that language, anyway.
i get 95% of musical references, too.

it's sending electric currents down my spine and legs and arms into my fingertips, eventually hanging around in that hollow spot in my stomach. imploding. imploding. imploding some more.

fuck these implosions and the hyped-ness, too:
it's freaking me out.

this is a classic case of over-identification. or something.

there are two options now:

a) going into full on fan-mode; or
b) developing a serious crush (it's crazy, i'm thinking) including the strong desire to get into that persons' pants.

the first is a non-option, really, totally ridiculous and oh-so-passé. the latter not exactly realistic, pratical and/or "grown-up". if acted out, however, it could be "adult", though. he.
i'm on a mission to find a third option.

scary shit.
me, i'm so beyond cool, my non-coolness, it's getting absurd.

i'm not here. this isn't happening.

[in my appartment, the fasnet parade sounds like the orc's battledrums in the halls of moria. with some extra rattles and bells.]

hyped.

2005-02-06T23:31:00.000+01:00

it's sunday night, and me, i'm hyped.
like: totally.

i'm drinking cabernet sauvignon merlot from south africa in an effort to calm me down.
it's nice, this cheapo 5€ a bottle wine. it's most definitely been chipped, but who cares. i want to feel that barrique between my teeth, no matter how, and i do, with this one. if i still smoked, i'd be very much longing for some moods cigarillos now, and for some deep kissing, too.

but i don't smoke anymore. and there's no one around for any deep-kissing. unless i'd want to be next in line with thomas, the med-school freshman, and i'm not feeling like that today. at all.

to complete the scene: i'm listening to the playlist of a cd i burned last week, a cd now playing in paris, france, and i'm humming along to sepia playing "tuvalu". you can hear thomas's lisp, and it's cute.

it was a strange weekend, this one.
my mind-set right now is stranger, still.

saturday night turned out to be rather disastrous.
it was supposed to be a couply-hanging-out-at-home-kinda-saturday-night with that bottle of cabernet sauvignon merlot that i'm drinking right now and enjoying the company of pierre cosso on the telly, followed by things couples do on weekend.
yes, i know "la boum". so uncool. but i love it. shoot me, then. i never claimed that i was cool.

the first few hours were fine.
we went grocery shopping (great photo op, that), walked through the city, had dinner. halfway into the wine and the first movie, however, dirk got extremely restless, whined for an hour, and then went home.

so much for spending saturday night in company.
it was alright, this, really. if he's restless he should rather hang out at his place than mine, do something that makes him feel better, and not ruin my mood. which he unfortunately did though, by whining and being undecided for almost an hour before heading off.
it was frustrating, this. no fun, no. even pierre cosso couldn't lift me up after this.

i slept poorly, and dreamt strangely, about thorsten and meeting him, and it was pleasurably strange, that dream. it involved emails, and cameras and the pope, too.
meeting thorsten in my dream was wonderful, he looked great, didn't do his usual be-my-audience-routine, and as i realised that i was waking up, i very much wanted to dream on. dreamer.
i should get in touch with petro again: lucid dreaming would come in so handy in a dream like last nights'.

today passed by quickly.
slept late, got the kuschel-sonntagszeitung, had breakfast, got narcisstic with the camera, wrote.
a little later, dirk came over, wanting to make up, and we did, somewhat, somehow.

we ventured the 200m to the main street where the idiots were out and about, celebrating fasnet, rattling their rattles and ringing their bells and pretending to be having fun.
appalling, this, but fun in its weirdness, too.

i like the pagan element in fasnet: scaring winter away.
the rest of it sucks though, especially down here. if you need 5 days in february to let out the inner you while drinking beer and wearing a wooden mask (so that you can grab butts decades younger than yours whenever you feel like it), you're doing something wrong the other 360 days of the year.

after about an hour watching the crowds and having beer, we headed over to the cathedral, and spend hours taking photos, sitting in the sun (up on that floor right under the spire) and drinking tea.

manogamo at flickr had asked whether i could take some shots of the gargoyles at the cathedral one day, and this was the excursion to get that done. - now i just need to find a way to crop the photos and put them together so that they'll be presentable. - not easy to make things hanging from walls look exciting.
but it was great, this:
i could finally channel all that nervous artistic energy i'd had for the past days. the results were satisfying, yes, and the process was oh. so. very. enjoyable.
am quite pleased with the results, too.

it's also good to be using someone else's camera.
i've come to so many realisations today as to what i expect from a digital camera, mainly by realising what the shortcomings of dieter's were. yes, i keep whining about wanting a d70, but truth be told, i just won't be able to afford one (or any other slr) for at least another year, so i need an interim camera, one that's extremely portable and does things the way i want them done. one step closer to being able to define just what i want exactly.

anyway.

so if today was so relaxing, full of channeling artistic energy and listening to music and drinking wine, why am i still so hyped?

it's all this communication.

really, it's making the hairs on my arms stand up, this.
sharing ideas. communicating. as simple as that.
i'd almost lost interest in the internet and in writing completely, and now it's back, and i'm just now starting to grasp how much this is me. this writing. this photo-narcissm. this everything.
i've missed interacting with people via this medium so much, and now it's coming to me from every direction, just like that, toppling me over with its intensity and sincerity and fun.
and it's mind-blowing. and funny. and just wonderful. and making me oh-so-totally-non-cool.

i wonder where this will lead, eventually.

i've got this odd feeling in my stomach because of it all.
now just what exactly are you trying to tell me, subconscious?

i don't get you, yet.
for now, i'll write another email. and finish that wine.

seriously wowed.

2005-02-05T14:56:00.000+01:00

what's better than a good friend?
nothing, i'd say.

today, i'm all nervous artistic energy.

i woke up, looked at the clear blue skies spanning the city, and made plans to trek out to dirk's (30min), sneak his camera away (10min),trek back into the city (30min) to use this day to the max and take some photos with his eos.
i'm in such photo-taking mode right now, it's unbelievable. i wrote a lenghty email to a pal last night, writing about art, and as i was doing that, i was itching, itching, itching from the desire to take photos.
blame flickr .

i looked at my contacts photos for the first time in a few days yesterday, and admiring their art, i felt paralysed by being unabel to express myself that way right now. you know, i'm cameraless, after all.

unfortunately however, dirk is working on his application for graphics design/arts school at the moment, and hence on a photo-trip himself today. so the eos was out of reach.
who would have guessed he was taking photos on a day like today?

so instead i cleaned the flat, i tidied up, i wrote.
but it didn't really help. i was itching with artistic energy. then i went of to the internet cafe, typing some more, making the mistake to look at flickr again, answering some emails...and whining to my dear friend dieter, who owns the internet cafe/laundromat.

whining about the need to take photos. about my nervous energy. about feeling paralysed, artistically. about needing a camera, but not being able to afford the kind i want. about needing a creative outlet. about wanting to bite into the computer table because of not having an outlet.

and then he says "so should i borrow you mine?"

ha! that's what friends are for, right? dieter wowed me with this. seriuiosly.
i've got a camera till monday morning 9am, and fucking hell, will i use this baby to the max.

excuse me, i'm off to be artistic.
results here, monday.

i'm the happiest woman in freiburg today, no doubts about that.

i'm yours, omaha, nebraska.

2005-02-04T11:03:00.000+01:00

these people from omaha, nebraska, they got me under their spell.
it's that saddle creek clan to be exact.
maybe they have hidden messages that speak to my subconsciousness. whatever. they got me. like totally.

it started with "son, ambulance" on that free rolling stones new noises cd.
i never buy rolling stone, ever. i just bought the december edition because i was at the newsagents buying a lottery ticket (for the first time) and happened to see u2 on the cover and read that there was that 16 page special on god (bono for the rest of you). i couldn't resist bono. never have. never will.

i put that cd into my cd-carrier and took it home over christmas. i didn't listen to it though until i was creating that "privatkopie" cd for christopher, trying to find something worthy within the limited cd choice i had access to.
and there it was.

the perfect song.

"paper snow flakes/they don't melt in the sunshine/plastic roses won't wilt/they'll be alright/paper snowflakes don't melt in the sunshine/glass tears don't dry"

that piano intro went straight from the ears into my heart and my stomach and made something melt in there. the melody carried me away.
yay. wonderful.
it happens rarely, that.

under usual circumstances. when the saddle creek people are not involved, that is.

i listened to that song for the rest of my stay whenever i had control over the cd-player. i even made a tape of the "privatkopie"-cd so that i could listen to it in the car and on the train ride home.

simultaneously, there was all that talk about "bright eyes", everywhere.
conor oberst looking at me from every single alternative music mag cover. every. single. one.
every single music journalist wetting their pants in expectation of his two new cds. everyone mentioning his hybris in bringing out two full length cds at once, everyone saying that that was fine though, if one was as talented as conor oberst.
apparently, he once shared a flat with one of those knapp brothers from "son, ambulance". hell, all these saddle creek people seem to be related. and to have at least 3 bands each. and to collaborate at all times, too.

back in freiburg a few weeks ago, the first thing i did was head off to aktiv! (the cheapest and bestest cd shop in freiburg) to buy "son, ambulance's" "key".

*swoon*

in that little saddle creek catalogue, the album is described as "a lyrically vivid, musically rich, structurally mature, and sexually frustrated album of youthfully euphoric pop songs and triumphant eight minute blasts."

i can't say it any better.
if i tried to, i'd get lost in the middle of references with and comparisons to radiohead, late 1970's pop concept albums and coldplay.
i love those grande (and grandiose) musical gestures. wowie.

so this week, the "bright eyes" albums comes out.
i manage to restrain myself for a day before dragging my sick ass to aktiv! to ask to please listen to them.

"i only got one each left", the always-in-a-slightly-grumpy-mood-guy at aktiv! tells me "right now they sell as if they were better then sliced bread".

the first cd he puts into the player for me is "i'm wide awake it's morning" and after that long intro talking, conor oberst sings into my ear.

"we must take all of the medecines too expensive now to sell/set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell/into the ear of every anarchist that sleeps but doesn't dream/we must sing/we must sing/we must sing/and it will go like this: while my mother waters plants/my father loads his gun/he says death will give us back to god,/just like the setting sun is returned to the lonesome ocean"

it's instant, my love for this music.
i laugh and i smile and it's that feeling of coming home underneath all that spanking-brand-new-ness that you have with every cd you know that will become a favourite.

i immediately know that i will buy this and so i just skim through the songs.
when i get to "lua", i can't help but be amazed at someone who writes a songs this lyrically smart.
"the mask i polish in the evening by the morning looks like shit" and "i know you have a heavy heart/i can feel it when we kiss/so many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it/but me i'm not a gamble so you can count on me to split/ the love i sell you in the evening by the morning will be gone".

wonderful.
i keep grinning because it's so familiar yet new, this stuff.
it's so smart and and cool and wonderful. this will be my music! yes! i will take this home and it will be mine and years from now i will listen to this and will remember something that is still in the future right now. this song, all these songs will soon carry memories for me. yay!

i tell the guy to switch to "digital ash in a digital urn" and not put the first cd anywhere, i'll definitely buy it.

the intro "time code" comes on. and it is radiohead.
just a hundred times better. a thousand times better.

it's got those weird sub-tones that make my diaphragm vibrate, that stimulate the nerves running down the side of my spine and it's got fascinating structure and noises and beats that are like diving headfirst into a wonderfully crafted auditory motion picture.

it's music i want to listen while lying on a linen-clad bed in a huge empty room at dusk on a summer evening, naked, with a man i want to screw and be screwed by.
call that caro's ideal listening experience for "digital ash in a digital urn".

[i'd program the cd player though so that "the arc of time" and "take it easy" would be skipped. - i'd be too tempted to sing along. not good.]

it's something about the drums that sparks this, i think. give me some drums, a little bit of electro mechanics, make me wild.
i'm easy like that.

30 seconds into the 2nd song "gold mine gutted", the second cd is a sell, too. those beats. that percussion. that wurlitzer.
kill my free will.
i listen to the entire cd nonetheless, standing at aktiv, lost and found, simultaneously.

when i'm finished, i tell the guy that i'm still pondering which one to buy (even though i'm not, really), and he tells me i should buy both of them, "as they belong together, after all."
he, i'd say that, too, if i were him.
i grab both, pat them, hold them, walk through the shop for about 10 seconds pretending to look at other cds, and next thing i know is that i spend 27€ i don't really have to spare on sex for my ears.

tuesday night, all my sick-self does is listen to "bright eyes", letting my ears get some hot action.
the first thing (and only thing) i do on wednesday is drag my sick-self off to the internet cafe to download each and every song available off the saddle-creek website.

i let itunes toggle all those 90 saddle-creek published songs.
"wow. "the good life" rock, too," i say to myself every time i'm served one of their songs. "not quite as scarily effective as "bright eyes", but moody. and cinematic. and with great lyrics."
i let itunes be my guide all day.

last night then, i turn on the telly, zap around, end up at a band playing at sarah kuttner's show on viva.
i never really watch that show, but she always has great musical guests: far more guitarry/alternative then the usual viva fodder.

it's weird looking guys with guitars, and they play a wonderful, wonderful song i've never heard before, and their singer is the kind of unwashed boy with a guitar that i like best. his voice is kinda familiar. lovely.
"they sound like they're from omaha, nebraska," i think to myself as they finish their song. "but there's no way viva would play them then, right? and i've got a saddle creek overdose by now, anyway."

the band finishes their song, sarah kuttner claps and squeaks
"thanks guys, thanks! so amazing to have you! kids, that were "the good life". their new album is called "album of the year", out on saddle creek, and it's mindblowing. buy it. thanks again, "the good life", awesome that you were here, can't believe it."

me neither.
what the hell are you doing here, saddle creek people? are you on an invasion-type misssion of old europe?
if so, let me wave that white flag.

yes, folks, i will buy that album from "the good life", too. just let me wait another week or so, yes? you don't seriously want me to not be able to afford food because i keep buying your cds, no?

in other news, "bright eyes" will play in zürich next month.
"the good life" will play in fucking basel next week!

i'm giving up, saddle creek clan.
i'm yours.

now can you please also supply that man and room and summer i want for that ideal "digital ash in a digital urn" experience mentioned above?
it's all your fucking fault, after all. you're responsible for the products you market.

thanks.

the state of our union is fucked.

2005-02-03T23:02:00.000+01:00

so he was screening again from one teleprompter to the other, scanning the crowd looking a little anxious, always glad when finding that punchline when he could pause, because the crowd would applause and cheer and stand up. when they would validate him.
like a primary school kid being tested by his teacher, well knowing he was underprepared for the test.

it was much of the usual, wasn't it?

right at the beginning, there was a brief shot of john mccain, and he looked sleepy and in a bad mood and in pain, and those were my feelings, exactly.

i had the full intend to live-blog, actually, sat up at my computer, the telly with cnn next to me, but i totally failed, because i got so enraged and also worried i would miss dick cheney having a heart attack on public television.
good grace, what was wrong with him? (besides being dick cheney, obviously.) he sure seemed to be reaching for the nitro-bonbon in the middle of it all. blessed be those wonders of modern medicine. thanks for all that ambitious, aggressive, first class research.

the only thing that amazed me this time was that dubya was quite swift at steering his ship around the cliffs of his mother tongue.
i think i heard him say "discretionary" and "substainable" without stumbling. wow.
there was one "nucular" though, and right in the middle of a sentence on "safe, clean, nucluar energy", which made me wonder for a moment whether this wasn't all an elaborate satirical skit directed by jon stewart.

to me, hearing the miserable failure talking about what he's done for the environment in his first term reminds me of mr.burns saying that the three-eyed fish is an evolutionary success.

it's that smirking. that grinning. the mousey eyes shining every time he gets to say the word "terrorist". or "terror" for that matter. he must love those terrorists and the terror they provide.

but then he got to my fave part: the one about values.
oh, how do i love them values.

so you were a boozer, dubya, and then you cleaned up your act, decided not to leave your wife, found god and daddy's friends helped you get you a job. fab.
and that's a reason why everyday people, consenting adults, who love each other should be banned through a constitutional ammendment from marrying one another? just because they are not like you? weird.

and yes, all those evil activist judges wanting to redefine your marriage! evil gay activist judges, most likely, trying to de-value your wonderful heterosexual marriage!
it's so sacred, that heterosexual marriage that we can not let it be de-valued, no? it's so sacred with j.lo, britney spears and donald trump holding up the beacon of good heterosexual marriage. oh yes, that heterosexual marriage is so sacred and special.
because heterosexuals are different, you know. different as in better. freerer. and with more liberties, too. right?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

oh, and then there's laura's new job. good idea, that, actually.
i wonder whether those inner city youth won't be smart enough to realise that an initative to "show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence" coming from a president whose first act in office caused and is still causing the death of women all across the world and who starts wars based on lies isn't exactly credile.
sorry dubya, like it reads in your fave book: you'll be judged by your actions.
concerning that initiave, i hope they'll find a tagline as wonderful as "just say no".

and then he talked about equal jsutice for all, and all i could think about was damien echols being on death row for crimes he didn't commit. and about jessie misskelly and jason baldwin being in prison for crimes they didn't commit. it's been 12 years of injustice in arkansas.
i wonder how he wants to fund the training for those lawyers who don't get paid enough when covering capital cases. and i wonder which labs should do the dna tests. i wonder whether he thinks it works as it does on csi, 45 minutes, and the tests are done and the right person prosecuted. i wonder whether he knows about the waits in state labs.

brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

and then came the "oh-how-do-i-love-multi-lateralism" part of the speech. i wonder whether he thinks condis being in europe today is enough to costitute "working" with us annoying europeans. too bad he never mentioned poland or called silvio berlusconi "sergio". i like that.
it wasn't quite as striking as the "axis of evil" thing, but syria, you're bad! really bad! don't you have some of that oil we like so much, too? what? you think saudia arabia and pakistan are worse than you? shame on you!

"the united states has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else."
unless you have oil, that is, of course.

"our men and women in uniform are fighting terrorists in Iraq, so we do not have to face them here at home." exactly. those people planting road side bombs in baghdad are the same that flew planes into the world trade center, right? what? they weren't? then...could it be, that they weren't a danger until you started that war because of a lie? hm?

in any way, i was quite shocked i had to agree with the miserable failure on one thing: democracy is cool.

it rocks. and it rocks that many iraqis voted last weekend, and that only a few were killed when doing so. yes, it's good saddam is gone. but it would have been better to have a plan for what to do afterwards.
it rocks that safia taleb al-suhail could do something her father couldn't do and voted in an election. so yeah. smart move, spinpeople. you got me with this.

that last spin thing, however, talking about marine corps sergeant byron norwood sobered me up quite quickly though.
it breaks my heart to think this brave marine, loved by his mom and dad, died in a war thinking he was protecting his mother when he died because his commander in chief lied.
he died for connections between iraq and al-quaida that never existed until the us started their war, he died for weapons of mass destruction that never existed.
it deeply saddens me. the us military deserves better.
every time i hear about dead marines these days, i keep thinking that this could have been alex. i keep worrying that he might join up again because he feels so much duty towards the marine corps.
sad, this.

i hope marine corps sergeant norwoods family felt better at the end of this state of the union address and found some solace in their son's death being recognised by the world.

wonkette very eloquently put something into words i wouldn't have dared to write myself:
"10:02 Mother of dead soldier and Iraqi voter got tangled up.... sort of perfect metaphor for the war, except that it wasn't fatal."

if only the war in iraq could be untangled as easily as a pearl necklace stuck on a blazer sleeve.

so that was that. now let's wait and see which wars the miserable failure will start next week.

i actually managed to find and upside to it all though:

it's only three more state of the unions to go, right?

right.