Lesbos, more than a Greek island? Discuss.

Well Berlin certainly has a well established, pronounced gay community. This is the kind of statement to which many of you will simply reply with ‘Duh!’ But, to me, it is a bit of a surprise, as I have not thought of Berlin as being a gay Mecca. It just hasn’t occurred to me. Cologne is really known as the gay center of the German world here. But, as I have come to learn, Berlin is Germany’s intellectual and artistic center. I guess 1 + 1 does equal 2…with culture come gays. It’s just that simple.

Chris and I went to the Gay Museum last night to see an exhibit on lesbianism because an old friend of Chris’ had contributed to it. The whole experience is not exactly what I would rate as one of my most enjoyable times to date. I suppose there are always things to learn, even from imperfect situations. I would surmise that what is to be learned from this one is simple: I still have some very deep-seated prejudices dancing around in my head.

How can I say it without offending anyone? Hmmm, that seems like an utter impossibility. So, I’ll say it like this: I don’t tend to get along with lesbians. And being shoulder to shoulder with what seemed to be hundreds of them made me want to just run away screaming. You can call me a bigot if you like, but it seems to me that lesbians tend to be even more virulent man-haters than the most extreme femininazis. I find it interesting that gay men tend to love everyone: they love straight men (they want to sleep with them, after all), they love women (they serve as our best friends), they “love” other gay men (this is actually a stretch, because gay men can be so mean to each other, but, hey, every list must have at least three elements.) Lesbians, on the other hand, do not have men as their best friends as would make sense. No, their circles tend to be other women, all of whom share their same outlook and philosophies. The gay community tends to be open to everyone. The lesbian community, however, seems to exclude.

Now, before you go to the hardware store to buy some rope in order to properly lynch me, I will say that I have some very dear lesbian friends. They do not in any way resemble the aforementioned remarks. They do not hate men, and do not hate me because I am one of them. They’re cool, and nice, intelligent, and well bred.

So, what does this mean? I abhor people who do not realize that they have within them the same evil potential as others have. It helps me to sympathize with other people and their plight if I try to imagine that that same evil exists within myself. Any high-minded belief that Karma can be reached on earth, one where we are truly freed of our prejudices, is futile in and of itself. We should keep reaching for it, yes, but the moment you think you have attained it, you should take it as a warning sign that you are oppressing something within!

Being driftwood amongst the sea of lesbians last night, I imagined that, if I brushed past someone in the crowd, I could offend someone or, even worse, could elicit some sort of mean feminist response, verbal or otherwise. I imagined that all eyes were on me, as the womyn thought to themselves ‘what the hell is HE doing here?’ These were imagined effects of my own prejudices, bubbling up within me and taking hold, prejudices that I wrongly believed had been eliminated with the experience of time.

Really, these wonderful lesbian friends I spoke of before are great ambassadors, helping to eventually squelch the inner dialogue that may run through my head at events like this. Wondering if some butch lesbian has a higher testosterone count than me is really more a commentary on me and my self-doubt than on her and her mustache, after all. I will get better in this area, I’ll bet.

Maybe I’ll go to next year’s exhibit to test my progress. I can only hope that the gruesome photos of grotesquely disfigured clitorises branded into my frontal lobe will not be remembered when I go next year. Maybe they will have the decency not to show those images again. Perhaps I should turn the tables a bit and see how they would like it I show up next year with a self-styled T-shirt showing penises in the final stages of syphilis and gonorrhea. Then at least my prejudices will seem well founded as they throw my ass to the curb, yelling, “You cannot censor my artistic expression!”

No, he's not an "old white guy", but...

For all y'all who find it hard to believe that Obama will be the next president of the United States. It's kind of like the last weeks of Hillary campaign, when everone was urging: do the math. (You need 270 electoral votes to win.)

A Panda is a bear, too, right?

Imagine a portion of Mexico that has been, for some time, populated by an American minority. They speak American English; they consider themselves American. But, the border behind which they live is a Mexican one, recognized by both countries and the world. Then, one day, an overly zealous new Mexican president, decides to break the hold that America has culturally, politically, financially on this region. This new president is intent on taking back Mexico’s land in spite of the people living there. Really, he could care less whether the Americans living there were scared just enough to flee over the border and to find new homes in America, leaving behind their wealth and infrastructures for “real” Mexicans.

Do you honestly think that, when the Mexican tanks rolled into this fantsy, putting Americans in danger, maybe even killing a few, that an American force would not cross the border of Mexico to slap the hand of their weakling military apparatus, giving a message, an obvious message, that America would not stand by and allow Americans to be harmed or put in harm’s way? I think we all know that America, faced with the same circumstances, would have done the same thing. Just remember that, as we all start to point our fingers to indicate Russia’s culpability. Do not forget that Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, was basically thumbing his nose at Russia, daring her to react, expecting, wrongly as he now must realize, that the world would come to his aid if anything happened.

I strongly believe in the principle of ‘it takes two to tango’ when there is a fight. This situation did not begin when the Russian tanks rolled across the Georgian border. It is an incident that warranted international attention long before that. Yes, the situation is much more complex than most people understand, including myself. But, in the climate of the world today, one which seems to really want and need an enemy, Russia is being vilified beyond its own value, vilified almost as if the people running most of the stories in the media’s coverage have taken their moves straight from a 1960s-era playbook.


Chris and I had a very interesting discussion this morning about the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. I guess they must have been too perfect, so much so that it has brought into question almost their every aspect, allowing the western world to point its finger at China, lifting the curtain of its inner workings, and noting time and again that the impressive show that we witnessed represents, somehow, China’s real, evil self, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The popular stories here focus on the fact that the masses that performed the intricate dances at the ceremonies were mostly soldiers, enlisted to perform, practicing their choreography for years so that they would be flawless…that the perfect little girl pristinely singing at the beginning was just lip-syncing (because the actual girl who sang the song was not pretty enough to have made the cut)…that the fabulous firework feet that exploded before a helicopter shot leading to the Bird’s Nest just before the beginning of the ceremonies were actually computer-animations, only the last one of which, the one seen from the Nest’s interior, was real. Chris had an interesting thought: if this had been an Opening Ceremony in the US, a ceremony completely staged by Hollywood, and the same sorts of behind-the-scenes stories later surfaced, most people around the world would just have smiled and said “that’s Showbiz.” But, this is evil China, and it is our job to find fault, to point out the extreme human cost of this unexplainable beauty that we will likely not forget. The beauty. The wolf in sheep’s clothing.

I think that the mind automatically calculates the worth of things when we see them. If I were told that the planning stages for the Opening Ceremonies had started three years ago, that the costumes were begun two years ago, and that rehearsing had started a year ago, I would not have been surprised. It looked that polished. But, when you take these figures and they begun to be multiplied by two and three, it seems an injustice somehow, an injustice that some young soldier from the farm was brought to Beijing, his only purpose to repeat the same choreography day in and day out for three years. And these strange injustices are stacked upon the backs of the Chinese, only so that their coming out to the western world will have a blinding sheen. At some point, within the netheregions of the calculating mind, a figure that begins to be too high, and then, ultimately, to be far too high, indicates a kind of sick need for control. It is this sick need that properly illustrates the Party’s influence over the Peoples Republic of China. Same players, slightly different mask. It certainly makes me want to read “Manufacturing Consent” as the Chinese reform a current American propaganda technique, reshaping it and labeling it “Made in China”, this time in just the perfect light, complete with theatrical wind machines, smoke, and maybe even a mirror or two. I mean, isn’t copying the secret to China’s success after all?

There is something about the two themes—Russia and China--that intermingles. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. It’s a taste, though, lingering in my mouth. Something smacks of interrelation, and I can’t be the only one who discerns it.

Russia wants recognition, too; it wants the kind of respect that it had in the world during its communist heyday. I would be interested to know how the people of Russia see this Georgian incursion. I would think that they see it as just and even feel a tinge of pride that the world can do nothing to stop them in their old backyards. In its own way, this little war is a show for Mother Russia herself, a little propaganda boost to make your every day Russian feel virile again. Oil revenue has allowed Russia to pay down her debt, and she doesn’t want China, with whom she has always had rocky relations, even in the old days, to upstage her with some uninterrupted coming out.

The timing of it all is suspicious, is it not? Something smells fishy, though. Georgia’s place in the oil industry definitely raises an eyebrow.

There is a part of me that is beginning to play into the conspiracy theory that the governments of the world have seen the writing on the wall, and know that there is much less oil left in the world than has been previously thought. Now, they are jockeying to firm up their future supply as things begin to get bumpy. China seems to be the last in line to realize this; surely she does not think that her supply from the Sudan is sure enough? It looks like China, always the slow child amongst them all, will be the last one to invade a country in order to sure up future supply demands. Or, do they think they have enough money to continue to push up the price of oil on the world stage? Maybe they have learned from our lack of success in Iraq and have figured the benefit-cost ratio as poor, seeing invasion as an unsure gamble. Hmmmm. They might have something there.

Our Valiant Leader

To lighten things a bit, I share with you some of the dialogue heard on the German, state-run television station ARD during the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. In the long parade featuring every country imaginable, I can imagine that the commentary could seem thin, lots of dead air needed filled, a responsibility shared by a man and woman team of announcers. At times, the shots of the parade would cut away to a map outlining the whereabouts of whatever remote island chain with more than 5,000 citizens was currently walking past. The coverage showed everything from the several bands that played during the athletes’ march, to the portion of the stands where presidents and kings would stand as their team entered, waving and wishing them luck, to endless shots of the athletes walking through color and onto a large sheet becoming progressively more rainbow-colored.

When the team from Guam came through, though, this came over ARD:

Woman: “And here we see the team from the territory of Guam. You will never guess who the head of state of this small island is...”
Man: “I honestly have no idea.”

The screen splits to show an obviously uninterested G.W. Bush, his jacket off, slouching in his seat, talking idly with Laura, perhaps dreaming of drinking a Bud on the ranch in Crawford.

Woman: “Geroge W. Bush. The territory is a protectorate of the United States of America.”
Man: “Oh... Does he know that?”

I literally fell out of my seat laughing.

Concentric Circles

Two thumbs up seems not enough, but a modern thinker is always in some phase of self-correcting when it comes to lauding praise upon anything; the danger of sounding Pollyanna looms heavily upon the psyche, often preventing me from being what is currently taboo: sincere. That being said, I could not help but beam, and even shed a tear or two, watching the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympic Games in Beijing. Something about it hearkened back to the 90s, back to a time before 9/11, when Pax Americana was a reality and hope filled the hearts of many, including me. It was actually possible in that day and age to believe that perhaps war would be no more, that the prosperity of the 90s would go on forever and that the world would make a “great leap forward”, insisting on the potential of Man. I remember crying after 9/11, some time after, actually, is when I finally let go. But, it wasn’t for the thousands of victims that I cried, it was for the loss of Hope and the implications of what 9/11 would mean for our future of all of us. Not long after the attack, it became apparent that this next generation would be one fraught with worry and disillusionment, and that this dream of the fulfillment of human potential was a false one somehow, that the green side of the meadow on which we were standing was just a bubble in time and the ground beneath our feet would soon be scorched earth.

But yesterday afternoon, watching the Opening Ceremonies, a chord struck within me, a chord similar to the one that used to resonate there back in the 90s, and I couldn’t help but be moved. Something about it heralded a new beginning as a feeling welled within like those hopeful days before 9/11. Something about yesterday signaled that the last 8 years could have been just a bump in the road and that we soon would all be united again, back on the path of a real future for us all.


This question inspired from the 60s marches, ‘what would happen if we really did give peace a chance?’ has been on my mind for some time. The hard-lined commentators seem to have come out of the woodwork against Germany’s “weak” troop response in Afghanistan. Many say that Europe cannot commit because it lives in a bubble of peace and stability both economic and social. But, it is only here in Germany that I have ever seen such a strong conscious movement to question what the end result of societal choices made today would bring tomorrow. The question of “how will it affect others around me” seems to have been emblazoned upon the German spirit, as a result of its tragic past. Never could I imagine seeing in America posters such as I see here with lines like “What kind of society do you want to build?” upon them.

Europe is not perfect. There is still racism and anti-Semitism, anti-foreign sentiments, and conceit without measure. But, don’t the same critics who blame Germany for being so insular in its prosperity that it puts its head in the sand when something outside its borders goes terribly wrong, don’t these people have to admit that the peace and prosperity present here were earned, that the social architects of the 60s an 70s should be praised for the Germany of today? I mean, why would a society that is doing so well force itself headlong into situations which could jeopardize its own existence? It seems that Germany’s greatest critics would have it willingly make the same mistakes that GW has made for the States. We will never know what would have happened if America had refused to let its Commander-In-Chief persuade it into unjust war. Something tells me, though, that much of what is going wrong in America today can be charted back to this bad choice, all these negative aspects being a part of some strange ripple effect flowing from the concentric epicenter. I could imagine that the housing crash would be quite a reach to link to Iraq, but I doubt that its economic effect would have been so great if the national debt weren’t already at a critical level. Now, I’m just meandering.

Funny-ness

A few days ago, some friends of ours were asking e what I find funny. That was kind of difficult to describe as I don't actually laugh out loud at that many things... Well, hmmm, I thought. I find Flight of the Conchords funny. Do you know them?

It's all about you.

Chris does this thing where he rates my blog entries according to how many times he's mentioned in them. A three-star blog is only such because it mentions him thrice. Well, not to be too predictable, but...

Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris Chris

Laughter. Medicine. You know the rest.

I was sitting in a café, eating a fantastic piece of Torte, sipping a great cup of coffee after church on Sunday, chatting it up with a hilarious new friend, when I realized that, amidst the frolic of fast-paced banter between us, there was some resistance within me. More and more, Christoph and I are beginning to build a new life for us here. But, this new life resembles in no way the one that I had in Pforzheim, and, most pointedly, it resembles in no way the sedentary, often hopeless, and solitary existence that I led in the Fall and Winter of ought seven. Within in me exists, still, a sort of resistance to this new, fabulous life which is presented on a silver platter before me. It’s kind of weird. As I was sitting with my new friend Alex, I had to consciously let go of this resistance, and “go with the flow” of conversation—fast, witty conversation in my own language. It was a struggle to keep up with the tempo of the repartee; I felt myself an Eeyore in Tigger’s world. But, I let go little by little and all was well. Alex is a conductor who gigs all over the world. He wants me to come over this week and sing something. (Note to self: not be such a bad person to know professionally.) For sure, though, he will be a great person to now privately, but only when my sides want of some splitting per laughter.

Yesterday was a night out at a comedy club. A friend had given us the tickets as a house warming, and both Chris and I were skeptical (not of the friend, but of the club.) Skeptical of German comedy, you ask? So silly of us. We always say that one of the thinnest books in the world is called “Good English Cooking.” Well, there is only one book in the world thinner, entitled “German Humor.” It’s not really true of course (except for the prejudice that English food sucks, because that is SO true.) The club was a nice outing, and the comedians were all professional and quite funny. I was surprised, too, that I didn’t have “language issues”. I know it may sound silly to you guys in the Sates, but I can be proud of myself that a went to a stand-up comedy performance and understood about 90% of it all.