squirm

the three instinctual drives

eros, thanatos and tasty biscuits

too much junkie business

last night the bundestag voted to reclassify diamorphine as a medicine and legalize its use as a maintenance treatment, replacing that nasty ole methadone. to qualify, users must be over 23, been on the nod for at least five years, and failed treatment twice - that shouldn't be too difficult!

also, last week i happened across the fixpunkt automat on the corner of bernauer strasse and gesundbrunnen. get everything you need for a good time for only €1.50! well, not exactly. that only covers the rubbers and works. you'll still have to figure out how to pay for the sex and the dope. hmm, if only one could be used to pay for the other...hey, wait a gosh darn minute... what if... eureka!

writing is the opposite of work

i wish it felt that way, George!

cyclemaniacs assaulting and killing for thrills!

 

in celebration of the biker movie blowout currently on offer at the otto mannix report, the united provinces of ivanlandia, toestubber, and american national standard. gentlemen, start your engines!

empires rise and empires fall

 

but the Urn abides...

walpurgisnacht

while those sexy witches perform their ancient rites observing the arrival of spring on brocken mountain, and berlin's streets are filled with hot tempered enthusiasts lighting the city's traditional bonfires, we are celebrating the return of the solar eye by the usual method - the burning of a candle in memory of the great god pan followed by the ritual eating of some devilishly delicious vanilla pudding.

 

but the little girls understand

in a procedure which may seem outlandish to most but will be familiar to those of you who suffer the same despicable book fetishism as myself, each trip to visit my mother occasions a descent into her cellar to rummage through the cartons containing the remains of my library. the expense of moving to berlin necessitated selling off a large portion of my collection and putting the rest in storage, thus every time i fly back from a visit i find myself retrieving a few of my little darlings. add the books i purchase while traveling and others that my friends find fit to burden me with and soon i've stuffed full the suitcase which i bring empty each time expressly for this purpose. last week, as i made my way down the narrow stairs to the cellar door, my quarry was a copy of siegfried krakauer's from caligari to hitler. i was sure it was somewhere in the dozen or so cartons and was determined to pry it loose and bring it back to a more comfortable resting place here in babylon by the spree. unfortunately, after going through hundreds of volumes the seminal survey of weimar era film still eluded me, meanwhile the time left before my flight was growing short. (sadly, united airlines doesn't warn its customers in advance when planning a five hour delay). however my labors were not in vain and i was able to lug back a heavy bag filled with the following tasty delights:

edmond & jules de goncourt - pages from the goncourt journals
e.m. cioran - anathemas and admirations
georges canguilhem - the normal and the pathological
laura frost - sex drives
georges bataille - the accursed share
alan clark - barbarossa
bernadette kester - film front weimar
georges bataille - encyclopedia acephalica
henkel & merz ed. - der potsdamer platz
stephanie baron ed. - exiles + emigres
serge nazarieff - jeux de dames cruelles
henry lafarge ed. - lost treasures of europe
georges bataille - on nietzsche
alexander nehamas - nietzsche life as literature
rebecca solnit - wanderlust
pierre klossowski - sade my neighbor
julia kristeva - powers of horror
friedrich nietzsche - on the advantage and disadvantage of history for life
georges bataille - the tears of eros
georges bataille - the absence of myth
jean baudrillard - the transparency of evil
friedrich nietzsche - my sister and i
pierre klossowski - the baphomet
valerie steele - fetish: fashion, sex & power
bruno & ferber ed. - german experimental film of the 1990s
fritz arnold - simplicissimus and the weimar republic
robert kaplan - balkan ghosts
willliam ewing - love and desire: photoworks  

meet the new doom

superbugs created by uncontrolled pharmaceutical pollution:

"When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater taken from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000.

And it wasn't just ciprofloxacin being detected. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating medicine cabinet — a soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say."

- Margie Mason, AP
and don't forget the impending pig borne ebola apocalypse either

The Cold Weekend

seems just a bit more sufferable now that I've discovered European Film Treasures, a partnership between a few dozen film archives around the continent dedicated to preserving the early history of European cinema. Browse their listings, watch the films online and read about their creation. Thus far I've thrilled to the exploits of Danish stuntwoman Emilie Sannom, witnessed Kaiser Wilhelm II pop by the neighbors, and dreamed of summer afternoons frolicking at the Wannsee. And that's just in the first ten minutes!

history's long shadow

the city's decades years of cold war division continue to impact Berliners down to this very day, as shown by recent newsworthy events casting city residents onto the sharp horns of a dilemma - whether to venture west to see our new baby hippo at the Zoo, or to turn eastward and head out to the Tierpark to see another thick skinned toddler, our newest elephant offspring. decisions, decisions, .... damn you stalin!