The Creativity World Forum 2009 will be held in Germany in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, for the first time . It will have an interdisciplinary, international character that seeks to surpass traditionally defined spheres and encourage more lateral thinking. The event also plans to invigorate cooperation between creative industries in different countries. It will take place from 12/1/2009 – 12/3/2009 in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

Internationale Veranstaltung für kreative Talente und Entscheider
Das Creativity World Forum 2009 bietet in einem Kongress am 1. und 2. Dezember Redner/innen und Panels auf internationalem Top-Niveau, ein hochkarätiges künstlerisches und politisches Rahmenprogramm und zahlreiche Gelegenheiten zum Networking und knüpfen neuer Geschäftskontakte.
Die Ausstellung und Vorträge finden vom 1.12.2009 – 3.12.2009 in Ludwisburg, Deutschland statt.
Creativity World Forum

© Flavia Westerwelle

TransDomo,LLC
Klaus Westerwelle
33 Market Point Drive
Greenville, SC 29607
Phone: 864.908.0690
Email: info@transdomo.com
Transdomo
Westerwelle

I have never been a massive fan of the German language. At school the rolling consonants of Spanish and French were far more alluring to me than the ichts and the bichts of German and learning it was never really contemplated. Whereas I often fantasize about doing more in Spanish than vamosing al cine, discussing Apollinaire in French with my French superstar-DJ/ artist/ model boyfriend and conversing with the Cosa Nostra or Miuccia Prada in fluent Italian, yearnings relating to German chat have pretty much evaded me. Even during my wanting-to-be-a-spy phase I figured a way round the consolatory five languages without learning German; Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese and Dutch. (Was very into Amsterdam at the time.)

In fact only on two occasions have I ever really wished that I spoke German. The first was upon finding myself phoneless and lost on the first night of a German dance festival at around three in the morning. Had I have been able to speak German it may never have reached the point where  I decided that best course of action would be to find the first randomer willing to accept the 5 Euros that I had left one me so that I could call my parents….. who were on holiday in Italy at the time (and FAST asleep,) to cry about being lost. Although….. maybe  I would have done the same even with the power of the German tongue. Who knows.

The other was when I heard this song……

Wir Werden Sehen – Solomun Vox Remix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-ZlTZu2uFs

I want to sing in German…just like her.

The beautiful game is still reeling from the allegations (AFP photo)

BERLIN, Nov 22, 2009 (AFP) – A German paper said Sunday it had obtained details of some of the 200 matches under investigation in the match-fixing scandal that has rocked European football.

According to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s website, the matches involved were generally lower profile matches and the gambling crooks bribed players to lose by a certain amount.

The paper listed a sample of matches from Switzerland, Belgium, Croatia and Turkey.

For example, investigators are reportedly probing a match in the Swiss second division that took place between Yverdon Sport and FC Thun on April 26, 2009.

Players from the away team were reportedly bribed 15,000 euros (22,000 dollars) to make sure they lost by a four-goal margin. The match ended 5-1.

In another match in the Belgian second division, players from UR Namur allegedly received backhanders to lose by two goals. Namur duly lost 2-0.

The beautiful game is still reeling from the allegations on Thursday that a gang of around 200 people have been rigging games in Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Austria and Switzerland.

“Without doubt this is the biggest scam there has ever been in European football,” UEFA’s match-fixing specialist Peter Limacher said at a news conference on Friday in Germany, where the probe was organised.

By bribing players, coaches, referees and officials to influence matches, the gang is thought to have earned as much as 10 million euros in huge bets with bookmakers in Europe and Asia, primarily in China.

Around 300 police carried out around 50 raids on Thursday in Germany, Britain, Switzerland and Austria, arresting 15 people in Germany and two in Switzerland. More than a million euros in cash and property were seized.

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The Second Elegy

This elegy begins, “Every angel is terrifying” (1). Ok, so a theme is developing here. But the speaker continues, “And yet, alas, I sing to you, almost deadly birds of the soul, even knowing about you” (1-3). From the first elegy, we know all about these angels, and the speaker’s feeling towards them . . . but here we get an emotion from the speaker expressing the lure-call of the angels, despite their terror, the beauty they hold and the terror of beauty. This, again, reiterates the Ouroboros, the circularity of everything. And, again, back to Pynchon: many have argued that Gravity’s Rainbow’s structure is not linear, or anything close to linear, but a series of circles, everything working in circles rather than lines or vectors. . . .

The speaker truly emphasizes the amount of fear tangible in the present, comparing Tobias in his day to today: “But today of the archangel, the dangerous one, took even one step down towards us from behind the stars: our own high-beating heart would beat us to death. Who are you” (7-9). This reminds me of (Gravity’s Rainbow): “Rocket sites? The hand of Providence creeps among the stars, giving Slothrop the finger” (491).

At the end of the second stanza, there is another great line, “mirrors: scooping their own outstreamed beauty back into their faces again” (17-18). These lines set the tone for what is to come in much of the rest of the elegy: the effervescence of life, its constant evolution from one thing into another, one form into another, as one “might say to us, ‘Yes, you’re in my blood, this room, this springtime fills itself with you . . .’ ” But the speaker continues the thought, negating the possibility of this happening, the reality of its existence, “but it’s no use, he can’t hold us, we disappear in and around him. And the beautiful, could anyone hold them here?” (22-26). The angels? Probably not. They cannot hold the beautiful. nothing can hold the beautiful. The question here, then, is mainly one of constancy, of lastability, perseverance. Does anything we emit transfer to anyone else? Can it? Is it traceable? Tangible? Or does it just waft into the ether? (another Pynchonian idea—see Against the Day).

The speaker then proposes this: “Does the space we dissolve into taste of us? Do the angels take back only what’s theirs, what has streamed from them, or do they catch, as if by accident, traces of our being along with it? Are we mingled into their features even so slightly as that vagueness in the faces of pregnant women? They don’t notice it, in the whirl of their return to themselves. (How could they notice it?)” (32-40). I love the way the poem’s argument, or questioning, has progressed. It’s dialectical, in that it is moving from problem, to another problem, in a way, to some sort of agreement at the end (to come soon). In the above quote, the second problem presented concerning “what becomes of us,” I believe the speaker is really asking whether or not humans have a soul, and, if so, where is it, and where does it go? This eternal question, of course unanswerable, is somewhat answered by the speaker himself, in his own questioning of what would happen to our soul (assuming we had one). He wonders if the angels catch a little bit of each of us, if our matter (or soul) naturally mingles with the angels, ever so slightly like the vagueness in the faces of pregnant women (who are so vague because they’ve also lost a bit of themselves to another).

What I really love about this question the speaker asks, more than its progression of the elegy’s argument, is that is begins to answer why angels are so terrifying, why beauty is so terrifying, and thus starting to answer some of the earlier and difficult questions and statements proposed earlier in the elegies. Angels are terrifying, and so is beauty, because we see a little of ourselves in each of them, and that is terrifying, because we both love and fear ourselves, we think that we are both beautiful and frightening.

Maintaining circularity, the elegy’s focus turns to lovers, as it must, to maintain its circularity. The speaker ponders, “If lovers knew about this, how wondrously they could speak in the night air. But it seems everything keeps us in the dark” (41-43). Lovers, then, know nothing about communicating with one another through emission, through mingling from one person to the other. But if they could, oh how wondrously they could speak. If only . . .

Rilke, or at the least the speaker of these first two elegies, has a sort of scorn for lovers. He definitely acknowledges the positives of the lovers’ lives, but at the same time tries to negate the positives with, well, negatives, downsides, all the holes in the lovers’ supposedly perfect world. He acknowledges their tender touches, and that each touch gives warmth and meaning—”rapture”—or even, as he degrades it, “a slight sensation.” “But,” as the speaker says, “who would venture existing, just for that?” (53). Just for that?! Ah, what a wonderful question? And the answer is, of course, the lover, the blind lover who sees nothing else and wants to see nothing else but his love. Tell me this does not make you think.

The speaker continues:

So you promise each other eternity

almost, from your embrace. Once past the terror

of first glances, though, and the longing at the window

and the first walk, once, through the garden together:

lovers, are you still who you were? When you lift yourselves,

one to the other and touch lips—:drink upon drink:

oh, how strangely the drinker is missing from the act (64-70).

Maybe these are unanswerable questions—at least unanswerable to those that truly need to answer it, for their egos stand far too alert to let these sort of thoughts permeate their daily lives, infiltrate the meagerness of the day. But they know who they are, what they’ve become, silly little puppets of duress, the drinker missing from the act of taking the drink.

“Make a wish. If a ship blows its horn, your wish will come true.”  I watched a German movie named “Ein Freund von mir” or “A Friend of mine”.  In the movie the protagonist named Karl was a very straight-laced man who was shy and didn’t know what he wanted.  The company Karl worked for sent him to work for a rental car company. There he met a man named Hans who taught him to LIVE LIFE. He met a girl who was one of Hans’ many girlfriends. Karl fell in love with her. Karl and Hans went to the harbor and watched boats when Karl told him, “make a wish. If the ship blows its horn, your wish will come true.” Three seconds later a ship blew its horn.  He made his wish.  Karl went back to work and was accosted by his boss, “Wake up!…What do you want?” he kept asking. “If you don’t tell me, you’ll hear from me.” Karl decided he needed to know what he wanted. When the woman he loved decided to leave Germany to live in Barcelona for a while he knew he needed to do something. So with his new sense of life he asked Hans to leave Germany and go with him to Barcelona. But things didn’t happen that way and Karl travelled by himself to find the love of his life. Well found what he wanted and he went for it. He met her in Barcelona and the movie ends. What is the message of this movie? What really is the thesis? What do I want? Can all of life’s problems ever be answered?……..

Thesis—–

         Sometimes different people and different circumstances push us out of our comfort zones into a world of discovery so that we can find ourselves and find what we really want.

I need to find what I really want. But the question becomes What do I wish my life to be?  I wish that what I want today will be what I really want for the future.

Ich habe schon meine Erfahrung in Cebit 2008 geschrieben in meinem deutschen Blog und in diesem Blog. Es gibt noch mal andere Erfahrung. Und in April 2009, habe ich meine Gedanken nach 3 Jahre in Bremen geschrieben.

Viel Spaß mit meinem deutschen Blog!

Wilhelm Waiblinger

November 22 (21), 1804 – Heilbronn

January 17, 1830 – Roma

*

Roemische Freuden

Corso, Theater, und Akadamie, Oktober und Giostra,
Essen und Trinken, man lebt einzig, damit man’s geniest

Ich bette mich in Novembernebel
samtweiß, watteweich, grau

Haucht er mir frische Worte ins Ohr
mit der Weisheit eines goldenen Herbstes
atemrein klar und bleich

Sanft, so sanft umhüllt er
die grellen Lichter dieser Stadt
verschluckt Blitzlichtgewitter

deckt mich ein
mit Sanftmut

Der Welt erscheine ich, von meiner Seite absichtlich, bloß wie ein Dilettant und Dandy: es ist nicht schlau, der Welt das eigene Herz zu zeigen – und wie ernsthaftes Verhalten die Tarnung des Trottels ist, ist Narrheit in ihren exquisiten Arten von Belanglosigkeit und Gleichgültigkeit und Mangel an Sorge das Gewand des schlauen Mannes. In solch einem geschmacklosen Zeitalter wie diesem brauchen wir alle Masken. (Oscar Wilde)

Dieser David mit seinem Elvis-Tick:

Dieser „nervige“ David: Er kann von Glück sagen, dass ich Elvis Aaron Presley auch mag.

Aber hier: Dandy Attitude (wirklich gut!; wo er das immer her hat…)

Bernd Dahlenburg, Herausgeber des Blogs Castollux

A German movie review for starters – ‘Hori-sho’ about Japanese tattoos;

Another German one about something less traditional: ‘how people become cyborgs’ show future possible improvements of human abilities. In the same vein a little more about LED tattoos (and here a link to an article in Polish, too).

Local artists and industry in ‘artwork on a human canvas’ and ‘conformity tattooed to all to see’ about tattoo industry and tattooed people in Richmond, VA.

In case someone would like to get a more traditional design, here are ’10 tips for getting a tattoo in Tahiti.’

Books about tattoos: ‘books that get under your skin’ sadly don’t seem to bring up anything new although some good titles are included.

 Church and tattoos with a little twist: ‘church tattooed with hoax text.’

 Something to browse through at a slow pace to end this post: ‘best Philly tattoos.’

.. or nein or nee. Dearest daughter mentioned at lunch she would like to learn Dutch beside German and English. I said two languages might be more than enough for now, but she insisted I tell her the Dutch for table (tafel), fork (vork) and knife (mes), making the astute observation it all sounds a bit like either German or English, so it would be easy.  I thought she was getting a bit blasé already and tried to change the subject to Peppa Pig (link not safe for adult viewing), which prompted the polite query what pig was in Dutch (varken). That perked her up again, noting how different and funny varken sounded. She ensued to point at random objects in the room for their Dutch names (bank, stoel, muur, boek, bloem, etc.) until she got bored (two minutes later). Then she finished her Nudeln mit ketchup und cheese, drank up her applejuice and went to the bathroom to wash her Gesicht. Despite reading no arguments against raising a child trilingually, I think two are more than enough. I hope she agrees.

Katzenkindergartenerzieherin n., definition pending, as coined this morning by a Mutterkatze of my acquaintance. I guess you had to be there for this to make any sense. I’m merely curious if this will add any traffic from google searches.

“Pinkel”  is a traditional Northern German sausage eaten in parts of Lower Saxony and Bremen. It is made from bacon, and some other animal bits, but also has plant-based ingredients like onions and grains. It is eaten during winter and served with kale and potatoes. People adore this dish so much, they organize and join an event which is called a “Kohlfahrt” (kale tour). This tour includes two attractions: lots of meat and lots of alcohol. [I wrote a bit about how we Northern Germans can be crazy about our kale here.]

[Sorry for the crappy picture. It was dark and rainy.]

As an omni kid, I used to love “Pinkel”.  I was fascinated by the fact that the sausage contained grains. I guess that was the first sign for me to become a vegetarian one day.

I don’t really miss “Pinkel”. I don’t ever miss meat. But I have thought about a vegan “Pinkel” recipe for a while now. I thought that the idea of putting grains into a plant-based sausage was not too bad. And I wanted something special to serve with my kale. Last weekend I came up with a recipe for this traditional sausage, a seitan based log with fried onions and cooked cracked grains.

This probably doesn’t taste like “Pinkel” at all. It is more like “Mettwurst“. [I haven't eaten meat for 20 years, I probably have no idea what I'm talking about here.] A “Mettwurst” is a chewy, smoky sausage, reminiscent of salami. [If you leave out the grains, this recipe will probably make a delicious salami] It is served with kale, but often found in soups, too. It is also the sausage you will find next to sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. Okay, now. Enough of all this meaty talk. You can use this for any dish that calls for a smokey sausage, but it is great on its own too, between a slice of crusty bread. I used half a log for a spit pea soup, which came out with the most amazing smokey taste. Seriously, this is my favourite sausage.

I used smoked cracked smoked spelt berries and tofu bits fried in liquid smoke to achieve a smoky flavour. The dough is a bit crumbly, but the sausage will firm up nicely when baked.

Vegan “Pinkel” or “Mettwurst” (makes 2 logs)

For the grains:

50 g (1/4 cup) cracked “Grünkern” (smoked spelt, use other cracked grains like wheat, oats, or barley instead)
1 cup vegetable broth
Cook over medium heat until the grains are soft and most of the broth is absorbed. The consistency should be similar to oatmeal. Let cool.

For the “meaty” ingredients:

1 red onion, chopped into very fine dice (yield: 3/4 cup)
50 g finely crumbled tofu (1/3 cup)
2 t vegetable oil of choice
2 t liquid smoke

Over medium to high heat, fry the onions in 1 t of vegetable oil, for about five minutes. They should be slightly brown. Add the second t of oil and tofu. Stir in liquid smoke. Cook for 2 more minutes until all tofu bits are coated with liquid smoke. Set aside to cool.

Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F) and prepare the sausage:

Additional ingredients for the sausage:

144 g (1 cup) gluten powder (vital wheat gluten flour)
120 ml (1/2 cup) water
1/4 t freshly ground allspice
3/4 t freshly ground black pepper
1 t salt

10 g (1/8 cup, packed) freshly chopped parsley
2 t soy sauce

In a bowl combine gluten powder, allspice, black pepper, and salt. Add water, onion-tofu mixture, cooked grains, parsley, and soy sauce. Knead for 2-3 minutes. The dough will be elastic and firm with bits of grains or onion falling out here and there. Don’t worry about that.

Prepare two pieces of aluminium foil. Divide dough into two pieces and place on foil. Roll the dough up to get 2 logs which are approximately 17 cm (6 1/2 inch) long and  4 cm (1 3/4 inch) wide. Transfer to oven and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Let cool completely before unwrapping them. Use immediately or store in an airtight container. We fried the sausage, and served it with salt potatoes and kale cooked with margarine, red onions, and cracked smoked spelt.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) Sketch by Leonid Pasternak (Moscow c. 1900)

O trees of life, when is your winter?
Our nature’s not the same. We don’t have the instinct
of migrant birds. Late and out of season,
we suddenly throw ourselves to the wind
and fall into indifferent ponds. We
understand flowering and fading at once.
And somewhere lions still roam: so magnificent
they can’t understand weakness.

Even when fully intent on one thing,
we feel another’s costly tug. Hostility
is second nature to us. Having promised
one another distance, hunting, and home,
don’t lovers always cross each other’s boundaries?
Then for the sketchwork of an eye-wink,
a contrasting background’s painfully prepared
to make us see it. Because it’s very clear
we don’t know the contours of our feeling,
but only what shapes it from without.
Who hasn’t sat anxious in front of his heart’s
curtain? It would go up; another parting scene.
Easy to understand. The familiar garden
swaying slightly; then came the dancer.
Not him. Enough! However graceful he may be,
he’s disguised, turns into a suburbanite,
and walks into his house through the kitchen.
I don’t want these half-filled masks.
I’d rather have a doll. That’s whole.
I’ll put up with the empty body, the wire, and
the face that’s only surface. Here. I’m waiting.
Even if the lights go out; even if
I’m told, “That’s all”; even if emptiness
drifts toward me in gray drafts from the stage;
even if none of my silent ancestors
will sit next to me anymore, not a woman,
not even the boy with the squinting brown eyes —
I’ll stay here. One can always watch.

Aren’t I right? Father, you who found
life so bitter after tasting mine,
the first opaque infusion of my must,
as I kept growing, you kept on tasting
and, fascinated by the aftertaste
of such a strange future, tried my clouded gaze —
you, my father, who in my deepest hope
so often since your death have been afraid for me
and, serene, surrendered the kingdoms of serenity
the dead own, just for my bit of fate —
aren’t I right? And aren’t I right,
you who loved me for the first small impulse
of love for you I always turned from,
because the space in your faces, even while
I loved it, changed into outer space
where you no longer were . . . when I’m in the mood
to wait in front of the puppet stage — No,
to stare into it so intensely that finally
an angel must appear, an actor to counteract
my stare and pull up the empty skins.
Angel and doll: a real play at last.
Then what we continually divide
by our being here unites there.
Then the cycle of all change can finally
rise out of our seasons. Then the angel
plays over and above us. Look at the dying,
surely they suspect how everything we do
is full of sham, here where nothing
is really itself. O hours of childhood,
when more than the mere past was behind
each shape and the future wasn’t stretched out
before us. We were growing; sometimes we hurried
to grow up too soon, half for the sake of those
who had nothing more than being grown-up.
Yet when we were alone, we still amused
ourselves with the everlasting and stood there
in that gap between world and toy,
in a place which, from the very start,
had been established for a pure event.

Who will depict a child just as it stands? – place it
within its constellation, give it the measure of distance
into its hand? who make the death of children
out of grey bread, which hardens like a stone,
or place it in the cherry mouth as it were the core
of a shiny apple? Murderers are
easy to fathom. Only this: to take on death
completely, before even life begins,
contain it lightly and without complaining,
bereaves description.

Die vierte Elegie

O Bäume Lebens, o wann winterlich?
Wir sind nicht einig. Sind nicht wie die Zug-
vögel verständigt. Überholt und spät,
so drängen wir uns plötzlich Winden auf
und fallen ein auf teilnahmslosen Teich.
Blühn und verdorrn ist uns zugleich bewußt.
Und irgendwo gehn Löwen noch und wissen,
solang sie herrlich sind, von keiner Ohnmacht.

Uns aber, wo wir Eines meinen, ganz,
ist schon des andern Aufwand fühlbar. Feindschaft
ist uns das Nächste. Treten Liebende
nicht immerfort an Ränder, eins im andern,
die sich versprachen Weite, Jagd und Heimat.
Da wird für eines Augenblickes Zeichnung
ein Grund von Gegenteil bereitet, mühsam,
daß wir sie sähen; denn man ist sehr deutlich
mit uns. Wir kennen den Kontur
des Fühlens nicht: nur, was ihn formt von außen.
Wer saß nicht bang vor seines Herzens Vorhang?
Der schlug sich auf: die Szenerie war Abschied.
Leicht zu verstehen. Der bekannte Garten,
und schwankte leise: dann erst kam der Tänzer.
Nicht der. Genug! Und wenn er auch so leicht tut,
er ist verkleidet und er wird ein Bürger
und geht durch seine Küche in die Wohnung.
Ich will nicht diese halbgefüllten Masken,
lieber die Puppe. Die ist voll. Ich will
den Balg aushalten und den Draht und ihr
Gesicht aus Aussehn. Hier. Ich bin davor.
Wenn auch die Lampen ausgehn, wenn mir auch
gesagt wird: Nichts mehr – , wenn auch von der Bühne
das Leere herkommt mit dem grauen Luftzug,
wenn auch von meinen stillen Vorfahrn keiner
mehr mit mir dasitzt, keine Frau, sogar
der Knabe nicht mehr mit dem braunen Schielaug:
Ich hleibe dennoch. Es giebt immer Zuschaun.

Hab ich nicht recht? Du, der um mich so bitter
das Leben schmeckte, meines kostend, Vater,
den ersten trüben Aufguß meines Müssens,
da ich heranwuchs, immer wieder kostend
und, mit dem Nachgeschmack so fremder Zukunft
heschäftigt, prüftest mein beschlagnes Aufschaun, -
der du, mein Vater, seit du tot bist, oft
in meiner Hoffnung, innen in mir, Angst hast,
und Gleichmut, wie ihn Tote haben, Reiche
von Gleichmut, aufgiebst für mein bißchen Schicksal,
hab ich nicht recht? Und ihr, hab ich nicht recht,
die ihr mich liebtet für den kleinen Anfang
Liebe zu euch, von dem ich immer abkam,
weil mir der Raum in eurem Angesicht,
da ich ihn liebte, überging in Weltraum,
in dem ihr nicht mehr wart …..: wenn mir zumut ist,
zu warten vor der Puppenbühne, nein,
so völlig hinzuschaun, daß, um mein Schauen
am Ende aufzuwiegen, dort als Spieler
ein Engel hinmuß, der die Bälge hochreißt.
Engel und Puppe: dann ist endlich Schauspiel.
Dann kommt zusammen, was wir immerfort
entzwein, indem wir da sind. Dann entsteht
aus unsern Jahreszeiten erst der Umkreis
des ganzen Wandelns. Über uns hinüber
spielt dann der Engel. Sieh, die Sterbenden,
sollten sie nicht vermuten, wie voll Vorwand
das alles ist, was wir hier leisten. Alles
ist nicht es selbst. O Stunden in der Kindheit,
da hinter den Figuren mehr als nur
Vergangnes war und vor uns nicht die Zukunft.
Wir wuchsen freilich und wir drängten manchmal,
bald groß zu werden, denen halb zulieb,
die andres nicht mehr hatten, als das Großsein.
Und waren doch, in unserem Alleingehn,
mit Dauerndem vergnügt und standen da
im Zwischenraume zwischen Welt und Spielzeug,
an einer Stelle, die seit Anbeginn
gegründet war für einen reinen Vorgang.

Wer zeigt ein Kind, so wie es steht? Wer stellt
es ins Gestirn und giebt das Maß des Abstands
ihm in die Hand? Wer macht den Kindertod
aus grauem Brot, das hart wird, – oder läßt
ihn drin im runden Mund, so wie den Gröps
von einem schönen Apfel? …… Mörder sind
leicht einzusehen. Aber dies: den Tod,
den ganzen Tod, noch vor dem Leben so
sanft zu enthalten und nicht bös zu sein,
ist unbeschreiblich.
………………………
Translated by A. Poulin Jr.

ich, du, … εγώ, εσύ….

Οι αντινωμίες χρησιμοποιούται πάρα πολύ στη γερμανικη. H αγγλική, η γαλλική, η γερμανική και άλλες γλώσσες χρησιμοποιούν πάντοτε προσωπική αντωνυμία μαζί με το ρήμα. H ελληνική γενικά παραλείπει τις προσωπικές αντωνυμίες, εκτός α) όταν δίνεται έμφαση στο υποκείμενο (π. χ. στη φράση «εσύ δεν έχεις να φοβηθείς τίποτα») και β) όταν υπάρχει κίνδυνος συσκότισης του υποκειμένου, όπως στην περίπτωση που συζητάμε, οπότε χρησιμοποιείται η προσήκουσα αντωνυμία ή το όνομα του υποκειμένου.

Personalpronomen -Προσωπικές αντωνυμίες

Singular – στον ενικό

• ich  
                      (εγώ)    
• du  
                         (εσύ)          
• er  
                          (αυτός)         
• sie  
                         (αυτή)          
• es     
                       (αυτό)       

plural – στον πληθυντικό

• wir  
                       (εμείς) 
• ihr   
                       (εσείς)
• sie  
                        (αυτοί, αυτές, αυτά) 

Όπως βλέπετε, το τρίτο πρώσοπο του πληθυντικού  (sie)  δεν αλλάζει.  Για άνδρες, γυναίκες και παιδία χρησιμοποιούμε την ίδια λέξη. Sie έχει και άλλη σημαντική χρήση:  άμα θέλεις να μιλάς  σε άνθρωπο στον πληθυντικό ευγενείας, χρησιμοποιείς  Sie στα γερμανικά,  και όχι ihr (εσείς) όπως στην ελληνική.  

Για παράδειγμα, αμα ρωτάς για φωτιά  σε ενα φίλο, λες στα γερμανικα: ” Hast du Feuer?” 

Αλλά στον πληθυντικό θα’λεγες:  ” Haben Sie Feuer?”  

Καλά, δεν είναι δύσκολα, απλά φαίνεται λίγο περίεργο στην αρχή. Τι να κάνουμε, έτσι είναι, ..αλλά καλύτερα να αλλάξουμε λίγο θέμα.   Πάμε να κλίσουμε ρήματα!

I think it’s a tad ironic that the Roman numberals (sic) for to-day can be pronounced ex-live.  Like I’m trying to kill something with this blog post.  I’m not; it just seems that way though.

I’m a day behind on NaNoWriMo because I went to see my high school play yester-day.  I don’t remember the name of it offhand.  It was pretty good.  It wasn’t what I expected from reading the handout thing.  (I can’t think of what it’s called.  It’s like a church bulletin, but for a play.  Play bill maybe?)  Although one other year the same thing happened.  The play was still good.  I had the same thing for the trailer for UP.  When I saw the movie, it wasn’t what I had expected from the trailer, but it was good nonetheless.  I don’t know where I’m going with this…. 

It was a good play.  I also get extra credit in my English class if I write five sentences about what I liked or didn’t like.  That’s easy!  And extra credit!

So what else is new?  Classes.  I have new classes for a few months.  Until March.  I’m the kind of person who can’t do math in their head that relates to months.  … March = three.  Twelve minus  November… one.  Four months!?  Maybe?  I don’t know.  Sounds good.  Anyway.  I have:

APE.  Advanced Placement English.  Again. 

Psychology – from looking at the book, I think this will be a fun class.

German – well, one good thing – it’s the last trimester of German ever!

Physics – I’m going to get physics confused with psychology.  I mean look: Capital P, silent letter, Y.  They are too similar.  I’m kind of worrying the math will be too much.  I’m bad at math, as can be evidenced by the above.  This class has given me some funny stories already.  Two of which I remember and will relate.

Music History and Appreciation – for the first two weeks, well, full week and three days (due to Thanksgiving Break), we have a sub.  I’m not quite sure that she knows what she’s doing.  She’s better at teaching that some subs I’ve had.  Actually, she’s probably better than some full-fledged teachers I’ve had.  I don’t know if it’s fitting to the class though.  The irony is that we have a sub because the real teacher had rotator cuff surgery.  My dad had that in October, and ‘the rotator cuff’ was an answer for quiz bowl last week.  I totally forgot to talk about quiz bowl.

So, quiz bowl started last week.  I was late because I had to go to the doctor because I had stitches in June.  He had to check to see how I was healing.  I got back at the end of the third round, so I got to be in the whole fourth round.  I don’t have enough points to be considered varsity yet.  I will be angry if I don’t get enough.

OK, funny physics stories.  I might as well say phunny physics stories.  OK, never mind, that’s just dumb.

My physics teacher has two kids, and she was going to take them to get the Swine Flu vaccine (you can spell SWINe FLu with atomic element symbols!).  But they were both sick and ergo couldn’t get it.  Her daughter was “coughing like an old man who smoked”, and her son had pink-eye.  “What am I supposed to do?  Put an eyepatch on him?  ‘He’s a pirate.’  Pirates need vaccines too.”  That’s one of my favourite phrases now – Pirates Need Vaccines Too!

The second story was about my chemistry teacher (from last year), who is also the quiz bowl sponsor/coach/whatever-appropriate-term-of-leadership.  One day over the summer for a teacher work day, he came in wearing sandals, frayed shorts, and a t-shirt.  Most teachers at my school usually dress up, like, professionally for school, so this was unbefitting.  She was wondering if he had spent the summer on an island and if he’d built a radio out of bambo and coconuts. 

I think I will have fun in physics.  For the stories at least, if not learning physics. 

I also have a story relating beer and the pope.  And German.  So, I was in German class, and the other level (the one that actually learns German) was learning about occupations.  They learned that ‘pope’ in Papst.  Alexic people, like I, might get this confused with Pabst, which is a type of beer.  I just thought this interesting that if you flip one letter in ‘pope’ in German, you get a kind of beer. 

My film for to-day was Raiders of the Lost Ark.  I’d forgotten how long and suspenseful it is.  I’m kind of rediscovering some films by watching one every week.  My album is the fourth CD of my Swing Tanzen Verboten series that I got back in March.  This one has some French and Belgian music in it too. 

OK, so I think that’s all I have this week.  I’ve probably forgotten something, but chances are it’s not too interesting.

I have to go catch up on NaNoWriMo.

Ok I don’t know why but when ever I go on youtube I always run into Bill and thefunny stuff to.This one made me laugh so hard i started to cry.Well even more cause I got my bestie hear.So let me just show you why it did.

Yes, I make time for it in college. I have learned the complicated system of the library’s numerical code for each book – no idea what it means, and it takes entire minutes to find one book, but it’s worth it. For example, the code of this book is: PS 3554 E4425 W48 and the words inside are beautiful. However, the cover is not. My cover of this book is completely black.

Excerpt #43:
“Where are you living, Murray?”
“In a rooming house. I’m totally captivated and intrigued. It’s a gorgeous old crumbling house near the insane asylum. Seven or eight boarders, more or less permanent except for me. A woman who harbors a terrible secret. A man with a haunted look. A man who never comes out of his room. A woman who stands by the letter box for hours, waiting for something that never seems to arrive. A man with no past. A woman with a past. There is a smell about the place of unhappy lives in the movies that I really respond to.” (10)

I wish I had this cover...for purely superficial reasons.

Excerpt #45
He looked at me, still smiling in a half sneaky way.
“You have to learn how to look. You have to open yourself to the data. TV offers incredible amounts of psychic data. It opens ancient memories of world birth, it welcomes us into the grid, the network of little buzzing dots that make up the picture pattern. There is light, there is sound. I ask my students, ‘What more do you want?’ Look at the wealth of data concealed in the grid, in the bright packaging, the jingles, the slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling out of darkness, the coded messages and endless repetitions, like chants, like mantras. ‘Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it.’ The medium practically overflows with sacred formulas if we can remember how to respond innocently and get passed our irritation, weariness and disgust.”
“But your students don’t agree.”
“Worse than junk mail. Television is the death throes of human consciousness, according to them. They’re ashamed of their television past. They want to talk about movies.”
He got up and refilled our cups.
“How do you know so much?” Babette said.
“I’m from New York.” (51)

Excerpt #46:
“Either I’m taking something and I don’t remember or I’m not taking something and I don’t remember. M life is either/or. Either I chew regular gum or I chew sugarless gum. Either I chew gum or I smoke. Either I smoke or I gain weight. Either I gain weight or I run up the stadium steps.”
“Sounds like a boring life.”
“I hope it lasts forever,” she said.
Soon the streets were covered with leaves. Leaves came tumbling and scraping down the pitched roofs. There were periods in every day when a stiff wind blew, baring the trees further, and retired men appeared in the backyards, on the small lawns out front, carrying rakes with curved teeth. Black bags were arrayed at the curbstone in lopsided rows.
A series of frightened children appeared at our door for their Halloween treats. (53)

Excerpt #47:
I went to German lessons twice a week, in the late afternoon, darkness crowding in earlier with each succeeding visit. It was Howard Dunlop’s working rule that we sit facing each other during the full length of the lesson. He wanted me to study his tongue positions as he demonstrated the pronunciation of consonants, diphthongs, long and short vowels. He in turn would look closely into my mouth as I attempted to reproduce the unhappy sounds.
His was a mild and quiet face, an oval surface with no hint of distinctiveness until he started his vocal routines. Then the warping began. It was an eerie thing to see, shamefully fascinating, as a seizure might be if witnessed in a controlled environment. He tucked his head in his trunk, narrowed his eyes, made grimacing humanoid faces. When it was time for me to repeat the noises I did likewise, if only to please the teacher, twisting my mouth, shutting my eyes completely, conscious of an overarticulation so tortured it must have sounded like a sudden bending of the natural law, a stone or tree struggling to speak. When I opened my eyes he was only inches from my mouth, leaning in to peer. I used to wonder what he saw in there. (54)

I begin Saturday morning with a healthy dose of advertisements; today started with Episode 58 of the Best Ads on TV podcast.

It was then that I saw the “Crowd Rider” commercial for Subaru by Leo Burnett, Sydney. It goes like this:

Now, the commercial is not what you would call exceptionally brilliant (we’ve all seen so many of these ads where million of people come together to form something of some sorts or just to add that larger-than-life feel to it (remember, “It’s a Big Ad” or “Man-made Machine“?)), but that’s just the advertiser talking – the “Been There, Seen That” jaded nonsense that doesn’t mean squat to the regular guy. So it may not be exceptionally brilliant, but it is exceptional in its own little way. Because Subaru went out there to say that when you or you or you or you go out for drive, there’s a whole company at work for you, and the “All for the Driver” pay-off ties in well with this, without trying too hard.

By contrast, I’d like to mention what India witnessed for another automotive brand on the fateful day of November 11, 2oo9. This was the day when Volkswagen was launched commercially in India. And it was no secret.

For starters, the first thing you saw when you woke up that Wednesday morning was the front page of the TOI screaming at you about how innovation at Volkswagen always makes the headlines. Nice thought, I’d say, if what were to follow were actually backed up by the statement.

But what followed instead was a roadblock, that did everything to tell India that Volkswagen had launched (including telling them how to pronounce it in so many languages)…  did everything, that is, except make it something truly memorable. Notice I stress on “truly” because, although it got everyone to sit up and notice, it did nothing to be remembered past 10:00 a.m. that day. Not for the regular Joe who probably wasn’t thinking of buying a car that morning at least.  Because this is what all the ads looked like.

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

This goes on for another 10 pages. 13 ads in one newspaper on one day and not one that makes you even say “Ah”. If you missed them, let me know and I’ll mail across a folder of the ads to you. But I really don’t see the point in doing that either.

And that’s precisely the problem I have with these roadblocks. Because, as someone I know said to me at work the other day, “It’s a full page, front page ad in the Times of India. You could put anything there and people will notice it.” Yes, well… then why wouldn’t you put just anything over there?! There’ve been so many painful occasions when we’ve all had to hear “It’s too creative, no one will get it” or “We don’t have enough space to say what we want, so forget all the brilliance you had planned and just lay down the facts as is” or “We’re a small brand, no one know us… we don’t want to take these risks just yet” and here’s a brand that’s a force to reckon with, that’s laid out enough money on day one of its communication campaign to buy at least two of its cars and there wasn’t scope for one, tiny “Ah” moment? I’m not even asking for an “Ah-ha!” moment. I mean, you’ve got to give me something. Just not this.

Oh and the TVC, not very inspiring either. “German Engineering. Made for India.” they say. I’m sorry, but it said nothing about its either being German or being Indian.

Perhaps I’m asking for too much and perhaps the ads did what they had to. But I’m just not convinced.