Rise and Fall/Rise or Fall

2008-09-07T00:54:00.000-07:00

Searching CraigsList for apartments just gets more and more exciting. Here's a bit from the latest gem:

"I'm looking for a Straight male or a female she can go anyway I really don't care,with no kids or pets thank you."

Right. Yeah. And then there's this sicko:

"HI ! I HAVE A LARGE ROOM TO SHARE . FEMALE ONLY . TILL YOU GET ON YOUR FEET . PLEASE NO BOYFRIEND DRAMA NEEDED ! LOL . I'M A GUY . PLACE IS SAFE AND CLEAN . NO PETS , NO SMOKING , DRUG FREE . FREE CABLE , FREE LITE AND GAS . JUST BE OPEN MINDED . IF YOU COOK AND DO SOME LITE CLEANIN . LETS MAKE A DEAL . SEND PICTURE AND ### . PLEASE NO CRAZY LADYS . BUSINESS !!! LOL."

Drug free? No crazy ladys [sic]? Well, that kinda rules out the only possible target audience for this ad. Better luck next time, Pimp Daddy. (Also, I'm not really buying the "place is safe" claim. Sounds pretty unsafe to me. Unless you're actually on your feet... and holding a can of mace.

It would be ok to banish these people from the Republic, right? Or from any human society?

2008-09-06T23:39:00.001-07:00

Philosophy Student Discovers Platonic Form in Artichoke Heart!

Roman Altshuler was just about to make his usual omelet when he stopped short at slicing open the last of the artichoke hearts slated for its filling. Taking a closer look, he could clearly discern the Platonic Form of the Good in the heart.

"I never thought something like this could happen to me," Altshuler told the New York Times. "I mean, sure, I like Plato and all, but I'm really a Kantian at heart."

While the appearance of a Platonic Form is obviously a momentous ontological discovery, skeptics have been quick to question its a priori authenticity. One anonymous expert noted that Aristotle had decisively ruled out the possibility of a single Platonic Form of the Good. "Surely the artichoke heart is a good," he noted, "but delicious or not, it is hardly a refutation of Nicomachean Ethics bk. i.6."

Others have been quick to accuse the alleged discoverer of committing the naturalistic fallacy in his observations. "It is obviously an error of the worst sort to claim that whatever yumminess could be discerned in this artichoke heart just is the Good," wrote common sense philosopher G. E. Moore by posthumous post. "No doubt we find all sorts of delectable vegetables good, but to think that some feature of a particular vegetable actually is the Good, is as elementary a mistake as the thought that Deep Purple is purple." (Professor Moore was, apparently, referencing Russian President Dmitri Medevedev's recent surprise upon discovering that all members of the iconic band were, in fact, very pink.)

Altshuler remained unfazed. "I think this just goes to show that Reality has a sense of humor. Who would've expected the eternal Form of the Good to pop up in something so ephemeral?" He briefly considered selling the Ideal artichoke heart on E-Bay, but quickly came to the conclusion that consuming the Good is probably Gooder than selling it.

"I know what I saw," he pointed out. "Why should anyone be surprised that Aristotle was wrong? It wouldn't be the first time; he had problems with all sorts of things, like counting teeth. And maybe he just didn't eat enough artichokes over in Macedonia." He noted, further, that if wackos all over the country keep finding imaginary biblical figures in their food, it shouldn't be all that surprising that something as real as the Good would pop up sooner or later.

In any case, he notes stroking his belly, "the proof is in the omelet."

2008-04-10T19:01:00.000-07:00

Journalistic Bias and Torture

A few days ago I had an interview for a position that involves teaching journalism, in the course of which my interviewers asked me whether I believe that the media is biased. I, of course, replied that although I respect the media's [overall] attempts to be objective, human beings cannot escape the bias of their respective cultures. Naturally I had failed to consider the fact that I was being interviewed by journalists, who do believe that the media can be unbiased (they are, after all, trained to be unbiased!), and they pointed out that this is a position shared by most of their undergrads. What I should have mentioned, of course, is that my view is not the "anything goes" type of relativism we find in so many undergrads, but more like the hermeneutic view, namely: that we cannot even understand the world without certain prejudices, so that "objective" reporting is only an ideal.

Here is something along the lines of an example, found in an AP article:

the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.

It is specifically that last part I want to point to. On the one hand, it seeks to be unbiased: since there is controversy over whether or not waterboarding (one of the interrogation tacts in question, as the article mentions), the unbiased reporter, one might think, should mention only that critics call such tactics torture, not that they really are torture. But this is obviously not unbiased, because one could say the exact opposite, and have it look equally unbiased, namely:

the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation techniques that constitute torture, though administration officials deny this.

We would get the same appearance of objectivity, but what would be different would be the framing effect: in this second case, the reader is naturally drawn to think of waterboarding as torture, and to make a prima facie supposition that the administration is doing something shady by denying that fact. One might say: But that's exactly what would make such wording biased! Well, sure, but it also brings out exactly why the wording in the first version is biased: The wording naturally leads the reader to think that waterboarding is just an "interrogation tactic," and there are certain naysayers who, because they are critics, insist on calling it "torture."

If the wording leads one naturally to that reading, then, it is biased by virtue of its framing of the issue. After all, it isn't like there are these critics out there who, because they are critics, insist on slandering the perfectly acceptable practice of waterboarding. Rather, they are critics precisely because waterboarding is torture. Obviously one could rephrase this and say, instead, that "they are critics because they believe that waterboarding is torture." But if you phrase it in this way, you've taken a stance, because you are now suggesting once again that whether or not waterboarding is torture is a completely subjective claim, one about which different people have different beliefs, so that there can be nothing prima facie objectionable about defending it.

My point is not that one of these phrasings is more objective than the other. My point, rather, is obviously that there is no objective way of making this point. The journalist is forced to take a stand here, and either way she goes will look biased. The journalist who wrote the AP piece has already framed the issue in precisely the terms in which the administration has framed them. So what is the journalist who wants to be unbiased to do? I would think that the less biased way of framing the issue would be the one I have suggested, even though--really because--it goes exactly contrary to the admin's position. Why is this less biased? Because almost nobody with any experience or knowledge of torture, aside from Bush's yes-men, seems to have any doubts about whether waterboarding is torture. So one is less likely to show bias if one takes the view shared by a majority of experts, particularly experts who do not seem to be pushing their own agendas.

There is no real argument about whether or not waterboarding is torture; or, at least, it is no more an argument than the one over whether or not ID is a legitimate scientific theory. The argument, rather, is about whether or not the US should sanction torture. And here there is a fairly unbiased way of putting it:

The administration believes that the interests of national security require that we condone torture carried out in our name. Critics disagree.

2008-04-05T22:10:00.000-07:00

Home Schooling

Thanks to the California ruling, the home schooling debate is in full swing... well, sort of. So far, I haven't seen much of a debate, because I haven't seen anyone opposing home schooling. I'll try my hand at that when I have some time. For now, though, I'm curious about the frequently cited claims that home schooled kids are better educated. For example, this bit of self-promotion insists that home schooled kids routinely perform slightly (they don't say "slightly") better than the national average. Their conclusion: Homeschooling works!

Well, uhm, ok. I'm not going to debate the statistics. Home schooled kids do a little better than the national average on standardized tests. What does this tell us about the benefits of home schooling? Nothing whatsoever. Duh.

I'll have to look into the statistics later, but it's fairly obvious that families that home school their kids are not a random sample of the population. And it's well known by now that home environment is a major factor in academic performance. So it should not be overly surprising if families capable of home schooling should end up providing a better academic environment for children than the average family. Does this show that home schooling is likely to lead to more educated kids? No. It shows what we already know: that having parents who care about education (and have it) is likely to lead to more educated kids.

How that's a defense of home schooling is anybody's guess.

2008-03-30T19:41:00.001-07:00

David Mamet comes out of the closet about liberalism:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,374064,374064,1.html/full

I couldn't get past the first page. But I'd say this about that first page:

1. Sure, Kennedy is guilty of many of the same things that Bush is guilty of (though I'd question taking this too far: violations of principles can be distinguished according to the ends those violations aim to achieve). But isn't this just further evidence that the only reason JFK was so revered is that he was charismatic, young, and hot? I mean, seriously, I'm pretty sure I would not have been a JFK supporter back in the day.

2. "Waiting for Godot" is "the greatest play of the 20th century"? Even though this does seem to be the default view among academics, I just think it just shows that academics have no taste. "Waiting for Godot" is juvenile crap. I mean, mixing theology with fart jokes doesn't elevate fart jokes; it degrades theology. I miss Clement Greenberg.

3. As far as I can tell, Mamet's point is something like this: brain-dead liberalism (what I call knee-jerk liberalism) is stupid. Well, uh, yeah. So?

2008-02-24T19:34:00.000-08:00

RALPH NADER: CAN'T THE "LEFT" MAKE THIS GUY DISAPPEAR?

Announcing his presidential candidacy once again, the most evil (supposed) leftist in the US--when questioned about whether he's worried that his candidacy might help the Republicans--had the following, now widely-cited answer:

If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form. You think the American people are going to vote for a pro-war John McCain who almost gives an indication that he's the candidate of perpetual war, perpetual intervention overseas?

Context matters. So it's worth noting that the context here--overlooked by a lot of commenters--seems to involve Nader expressing his absolute faith in the Democrats' ability to win this election. On the other hand, it also seems that Nader is saying more than that--something about what the democrats deserve.

1. Nader seems to be assuming that, if the Democrats are too incompetent to win this election even with small competition from him, then they don't deserve to be in power anyway. Here's the problem: Nader seems to be assuming that, if the Democrats lose, this will just be bad for the Democrats. In other words, if they lose, that will be fair punishment for them. One problem: as we (not Nader, but many others) might have learned by now, in the current political climate, having Republicans in the White House isn't just bad for Democrats. It's bad for the country and it's bad for the world. The "lesser of two evils" refrain is perfectly legitimate here. Whatever anyone on the left may think of the Democrats, undermining them within the current political situation is more evil than supporting them.

2. Why the hell does this guy need to run? As far as I can tell, he seems to think that running is the best way to get a leftist voice into the political system. Now hell, I'm all for more left thinking in American politics. And I'm all for having more than two parties. But the above considerations might give one pause. It is also worth nothing two points. First, one can run within either of the existing parties without pushing the party line (Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul). Second, one can have a rather loud leftist voice without running for President. Howard Zinn is one example. A more obvious one, and one who is probably louder than Nader in any case, is Noam Chomsky.

So, seriously, can't Nader just apologize to the left, to the country, and to the world, and go work for Chomsky clipping bits about our foreign policy from newspapers?

2008-02-24T19:18:00.000-08:00

WHY PUTIN REALLY IS THE RATIONAL CHOICE

A friend referred me to an article on the Russian elections in NYT, noting that the comments were more interesting than the article itself.

It's great that they translated many of the Russian comments, but too bad that they didn't translate the numerous responses from other readers to each comment--they're somewhat interesting in their own right (i.e., the strongly pro-Kremlin comment writers DO get people disagreeing with them, but usually not on the issues that Americans disagree on). None of this is strange, though, or new. Today I heard the following, for example, on NPR: Putin has decided that Russians need to stop being ashamed of their history. The new manuals for teachers, then, instruct them to teach their students that Stalin was an incredibly efficient leader, and while sure, he committed some atrocities, much worse atrocities were committed by other nations (e.g., the US in Hiroshima/Nagasaki). Stalin revival: scary. Interesting point: the counter-example is not the Germans (who were of course for decades the feared and horrible enemy), but the US.

My favorite--because most absurd of the ones I've read--comment on the article:
"For the whole history of Russia (and then the USSR) weve lacked freedoms, and nothing bad has come of it."

Well, the "nothing bad" part must come from the new history lessons. But I think overall the comments are interesting, and I wish the NYT were the sort of newspaper that could write intelligent articles about this sort of thing. The major point I'd note:

Many of the Russian commenters, to Americans, look like sheep blindly buying into propaganda. Of course this article--like the American reception of such things--looks to the Russians like sheep buying in to American propaganda. Of course, as usual, both sides are partly right. The Russian side is, I think, perfectly rational. Here's why: Especially under the current US administration, "democracy" and "freedom" really have become propaganda words. This is what happens to any concept--however noble--the moment it is used to justify aggression. Whatever one might think of Bush, it is simply an undeniable fact that, to the rest of the world, the American claim to championing democracy is nothing but empty ideology.

But there is more: what, exactly, is so great about democracy? Now there are, in theory, many wonderful things. But let's assume that most people are not theoreticians. Let's assume that most people judge the value of a concept on pragmatic grounds. Well, as one commenter notes, the reason that the West has gained ground in places like Ukraine and Georgia is that Americans are good at making business proposals: that is, they "sell" democracy to other countries the way one sells a business deal. And it is perfectly rational for a Russian to believe this: What advantage of democracy can the US or the EU legitimately point to? Economic success. (Sure, there's the issue of greater personal freedom. But most Russians don't seem to feel like their freedom is that limited; and, in any case, as many of the commenters point out, freedom isn't all that important to most people compared to more basic quality-of-life issues). So money is the main thing to be said in favor of democracy. It is, in other words, a business proposal.

Why are most of the former Soviet satellites desperate to get into the EU? For the economy. And the various reforms in democracy and freedom that occur in these countries are often the result of a desire to join the EU to make money. So, of course, from the perspective of someone who already believes that democracy and freedom are a good thing, it looks like the EU is a positive agent of change: it appeals to governments' self-interest in order to spread democracy. But to someone not already convinced of those values, the pictures is far more sinister: money is used as an incentive to buy into Western propaganda (much the same way that the US threatened to withhold monetary aid to countries that refused to join the "coalition of the willing"). And the consequence is that, to someone not already convinced of the value of democracy, democracy looks like a sham ideology that Russia's neighbors are paid to accept or even threatened into accepting (seriously, the incredibly insane plan to put a missile defense system in Poland can only reasonably be interpreted as a threat to Russia). And, of course, most Russians are not convinced of the value of democracy. Why would they be? Their experiment with democracy was a disaster. Their economy is doing much better under autocratic rule. And if the incentive to accept democracy is economic, then for the typical Russian the economic incentive points firmly away from democracy and toward Putin.

So, from a Russian perspective:
1. Democracy looks like an ideology.
2. The only clear reason to accept that ideology is economic (in fact, many seem to accept it cynically, just in order to profit from it)
3. Putin promises economic success without capitulating to Western ideology.
Therefore,
4. Putin is the rational leader to support.

2008-02-18T22:47:00.001-08:00

Cooking: A Phenomenological Variation

I haven't cooked much lately, but today I rolled up my sleeves and made my first New England clam chowder. The results are pretty damn tasty, if I say so myself. Sure, it took me three hours, and I managed to overcook the potatoes the first time and had to boil new ones, but soooo worth it.

I can't help wondering, though, whether my way of cooking new things has to do with my philosophical orientation, or just with my general inability to follow instructions. The standard advice on how to cook is this: the first time you make a dish, you should follow the recipe to the letter. Once you've mastered that, you can make variations.

But I don't do that. Partly, sure, it's because I hate directions that are too complicated, or that call for weird ingredients, or that require standing next to the stove the entire time, or that make you use five different pans, or that call on you to keep track of details (I'm not good with details). But I think there's some philosophical influence, particularly my recognition of the problem of relativism: I don't know what it means to "follow the recipe to the letter." Which recipe? A simple Google search will reveal hundreds or more recipes for any single dish. Some will be weird as hell, some very simple. If I follow just one recipe, I'll miss out on the even tastier suggestions offered by another. And, in any case, settling on any one recipe without a good reason would obviously compromise my autonomy.

Instead of picking a recipe arbitrarily and following it, then, I try to seek out the essence of the dish. The method is this: Do a Google search. Pick the first 20 or so recipes. Read them. Trash the ones that are either redundant or way too difficult. Figure out the common element. Now look for the variations, and try to figure out which ones will be improvements and which ones not. Ignoring specific measurements of each ingredient, let the kinesthetic system take over, choosing the correct quantities. Enjoy.

2008-02-12T22:27:00.000-08:00

24 and Torture

Recently, a number of articles, like this one from WSJ, have been discussing the fall in fortunes suffered by "24". The show, apparently, spent its last season steadily dropping in the ratings, and that the writers and producers aren't entirely sure how to save it. Here is the standard analysis I've found in the articles: The show became wildly popular after 9/11, when people wanted to punish terrorists and were attracted to Jack Bauer's violent interrogation techniques. When the "national dialogue" (I'm going to drop the scare quotes after this, but imagine they're there) about torture took off, the show's "ticking bomb" scenarios were regularly used to defend torture. But as people thought about the issues, and more and more people who actually know what they're talking about came out against torture, the national mood shifted. People decided that torture was wrong. And so, 24, which had become associated with torture, now started losing its popularity for the very same reason that it originally took off. (There were other reasons the show's rating started falling off, of course, like the growingly outlandish plots, and maybe some boredom; but this story is supposed to explain why the drop was so steep.)

This story smells fishy to me. Here's what it's telling us: people wanted to torture terrorists. They used the show's scenarios of terrorists with information about ticking bombs as a defense of torture. And then, as a result of the national dialogue, people changed their minds. They decided that torture was bad. And so they decided that the show, which condones torture, is also bad. So the claim is this: many, many people all across the country, who loved the show because they loved the vicarious torture experience and wanted to torture terrorists, changed their minds because of the national dialogue and turned against their justification for torture. Now, think about those people you've met who think (or thought) that torture is a great idea. Remember how, when these people defend torture, their eyes turn red and foam starts coming out of their mouths. Now imagine that national dialogue changed their minds. Seems unlikely, doesn't it?

I'm not denying that the national dialogue had an effect; what I doubt is that it changed people's minds about whether torture is good. Of course it may have changed some people's minds, but I can't believe that it changed enough minds to have such a noticeable effect. Here's my explanation: While certainly rabid torture supporters were part of the show's initial audience, most of the viewers weren't torture supporters. They just wanted to hurt terrorists, or at least wanted to watch somebody hurting terrorists. The national dialogue had the following function: it made people realize that hurting someone to get information from them is torture.

Isn't that obvious? Well, no. Of course none of us like terrorists. But I think a lot of people are generally decent human beings and don't like torture. And this is a standard conflict in the human heart: on the one hand, we want to hurt those we think of as enemies. On the other hand, we want to retain our moral principles. And we can stick to the former, usually, so long as we don't realize that we can't do it without violating our principles. That is, my suggestion is this: people didn't realize that hurting terrorists was torture, because they never contextualized the show in moral terms. When the national dialogue started, and 24 was regularly used to justify torture, all those people made the cognitive link: they realized that what they were enjoying on the show wasn't just fantasy enemy-bashing, but was instead a morally abhorrent practice, namely, torture.

And so the show's fortunes changed: it went from being a fun show about getting back at those damn terrorists to being a justification for torture. And there are enough people who oppose torture (when it is so named, of course), that they wouldn't watch a show that seemed to support it.

2008-02-11T20:30:00.000-08:00

Why Not to Hate Hillary

I finally found an article that's favorable to Hillary, which is a rare commodity in the media these days: It's Paul Krugman in the New York Times.

What I like about it, particularly, is its discussion of "Clinton rules," i.e., the rules according to which everything the Clintons do is interpreted as evil and calculating. It's weird. At the start of the primaries, I was really anti-Hillary. And I must be one of the only people who's become more and more pro-Hillary in the past months. Really, two reasons: (1) The media's treatment of Clinton sucks. It's virtually impossible to find articles that say anything positive about her. The intellectual elite--i.e., the ones who are supposed to be my people--have pretty much all dropped her. But what really makes me angry is the misogyny in the press. Like that whole episode where everyone went on and on about how Hillary cried, and insisted that this was a calculated political move to get sympathy. Regardless--it's worth noting that she didn't actually cry (nobody besides Jon Stewart seemed to notice this). But also: the idea was to say "see, she's a woman! She's trying to make herself look more sympathetic by crying!" What the fuck?

The other reason I've become more pro-Hillary (besides, that is, simply reacting against the general misogynistic crap directed against her, whether overt or covert) is that I haven't seen a single decent reason to support Obama. As far as I can tell, his supporters just think he is really charming and charismatic, and this makes them believe that he is an agent for change. And I'm pretty disgusted with the intellectual establishment, because we are supposed to be the people who are not taken in by this sort of thing. (Though intellectuals do have a history of bowing to cults of personality, so I shouldn't be surprised.) And maybe my problem is that this sort of thing just doesn't work on me. I had (and still have) no idea what people were talking about back in 2000, when even Bush's detractors admitted that he had charisma. And now--and I don't want to compare Obama to Bush--I just don't know what the hell people mean when they say Obama is charismatic. Maybe this is a deficiency in my constitution, but hell: if I'm deficient in such a way that I don't respect personalities for superficial reasons, I'm fine with that.

I still don't like Hillary much. But now I'm rooting for her all the way.

Disclaimer: I am aware that I am referring to Barack Obama by his last name, and Hillary Clinton by her first name. And I am also aware that this is a standard manifestation of media sexism. I don't quite know what to do about that. Because the problem with referring to her as "Clinton" is that it still feels a bit confusing. And the problem with "Mrs. Clinton" is that I just can't usually make myself refer to people by titles...

Here is another nice article on this, this time from Stanley Fish. He's going with the "smart women are threatening" line. Yup. And here's how we know it's a gender issue: In 2000, the problem was obviously that Gore was way too smart, while Bush was the dumbass that other dumbasses want to have a beer with (note to dumbasses: you will never, ever get to have beer with the President--unless, of course, he puts you on his Cabinet). But the complaint wasn't that Gore was too smart--you just don't say that about men--it was that he was "hard to relate to" or "too stiff" or whatever. Yup, people who are smarter than you can be hard to relate to. Still, though, you kind of want them running the country, if only to make sure that you never have to have an awkward beer with them.

2007-10-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

Blackwater and the Invisibles

I'm confused about Blackwater. They claim that not only did they come under attack first, but that one of their vehicles was riddled with bullets and later had to be towed away. But nobody saw this vehicle. So it's safe to assume that, if there was a bullet-riddled vehicle that was towed, it was invisible. But that means whoever riddled it with bullets could not have been aiming at the Blackwater convoy, since it's pretty hard to aim at an invisible vehicle. Unless, of course, you are a gunman from the invisible world. So: Blackwater's invisible vehicle came under attack from the invisible insurgency. I am certain that the findings of the FBI investigation will confirm this.

2007-10-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

From AP: "Egemen Bagis, a foreign policy adviser to Erdogan, said Tuesday that Turkey should not punish the Bush administration if the resolution passes. He said it should react against those in Congress backing the measure as well as impose sanctions against Armenia for supporting it."

Turkey imposing sanctions against Armenia? That would be showing a lot of restraint. I mean, it seems like the best way to prevent Armenians from insisting there was a genocide would be to, well, get rid of them somehow. Hmm...

2007-08-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

Wow. Ray Bradbury is Even Dumber Than I Thought!

I've just discovered that Ray Bradbury has come out and claimed that Fahrenheit 451 was not about censorship; it was about how television destroys reading. Aside from that being a completely nonsensical explanation of the book, it is also an explanation that Bradbury has, in the past, explicitly contradicted. In fact, some years ago, I read an interview with him (I wish I could remember where it was, but the magazine is currently an ocean away at my parents' house). It was an interview that made me desperately want to drive to his house and punch him in the face.

First, he claimed that he left NY because the art world was very fake and into crap that wasn't really art--like Warhol. Now I'm sure the art world was fake, since that's the nature of the beast, but if Warhol isn't really art then Bradbury certainly isn't a writer. But, more to the point: he also, in that interview, mentioned that Fahrenheit was very popular in the Soviet Union, and then sort of chuckled something to the effect that "those idiots didn't get that it was their own repressive society I was criticizing." This is somewhere in my list of stupidest things ever said. As a former Soviet, I can safely say: OF COURSE everyone realized what the book was criticizing. That's WHY it was popular. Soviets didn't like their repressive government. There's no real point in pointing this out, I guess. I'd think anyone capable of understanding human language could figure that out. But apparently not. In fact, that interview seriously confused me about how a brain so disfunctional could have come up with Fahrenheit 451, Martian Chronicles, and a kickass screenplay to "Moby Dick." It's certainly a miracle.

I'm used to artists saying weird things about their paintings or sculptures; but it's very bizarre when writers say absurdly stupid things, particularly writers who are insightful in their writings. And now Bradbury has clearly contradicted himself, since he's claimed that Fahrenheit was (1) a criticism of repressive Soviet society, and (2) about television rather than censorship. (Ok, maybe it's not a contradiction: maybe he thought what was repressive about Soviet society was that everyone watched too much television. Seems a bit far-fetched, but then again, which of his claims isn't?) And this, then, is truly impressive: he's made two contradictory claims about his best book, and both of them are stupid.

2007-05-29T12:22:00.001-07:00

Good news: I've become famous. Along with hundreds of other people, I have been added to Jim Beam's advertising campaign in Bulgaria. I didn't get a free Jim Beam for this, though, despite their claim that it was a "Jim Beam Party," which is probably just as well since I'm not a huge Bourbon fan. I'll take Tennessee over Kentucky any day!

So, here's one of my least photogenic moments of all time:
http://images.jimbeam.bg/sofia/24/pages/P5258222.htm

2007-03-31T15:28:00.000-07:00

The third day began with Julie presenting at her conference, and of course I had to go. I started out trying to be a dick and asking her a hard question, but then I decided that I should be nice... after all, there was really no one there for me to impress. The conference led to our switching to English for the rest of the day, which was a bit sad but it did lead to different kinds of conversations... The range of things I can talk about does change depending on the language I use, which is probably obvious. We ate the free lunch provided at the conference, which consisted of barely tolerable sandwitches and salads that could not even be classified with that much of a positive description. The last time I ate at a conference in the Netherlands was 5 years ago, and found the salads to be completely inedible; these new salads were a confirmation that Dutch catering salads are intentionally designed to look edible and taste like something that needs to be spit out. I say "intentionally" because I do not believe that it is possible to put together those particular ingredients (which taste a bit like the vegetable equivalent of road kill) in that particular combination unless one is specifically trying to induce vomiting.

After getting completely lost and somehow wandering all the way to the East side of Amsterdam, we managed to find the Stedelijk Museum, which I really wanted to see because it is really the biggest contemporary art museum I've been to after the Tate Modern. Unfortunately, they were also under construction, so only two exhibitions were open and the permanent collection was completely closed. But that was really enough for us and occasioned the following exchange:
Me: I really like looking at contemporary art because sometimes there is something cool.
Julie: So you like contemporary art because it isn't all bad?
Right. On that note, we looked for some more contemporary art on the way back from the museum and found this:

Yup. It really is a beauty.

But part of the exhibit we'd seen led us to talking about whether or not cities are "masculine" in their architecture. I'm not really sure what that means, but one of the artists featured had attempted to interject femininity into the masculine architecture of the city. It wasn't entirely clear how she was doing that (she put a box around her chest and let men put their hands in it... obviously I'm not fully getting the idea). But in what way are cities masculine? Is it because there are "phallic" structures all over the place? I'm tempted to think that cities really were just full of monuments until some theorists started seeing penises everywhere and convinced everyone else to start seeing penises everywhere. For example, here's a monument in the center of Amsterdam:

What is masculine about that? As I pointed out to Julie, it even has at least one woman at the base! (It's called sarcasm. Deal with it.)

We continued with a trip to the train station, since Julie needed a ticket to the airport and I needed one back to Köln. Getting an international ticket involved waiting more than half an hour for my number to be called (sort of like at the DMV), but on the plus side, a direct ticket back home cost 40 Eur, which was the same as my three-changeover ticket to Amsterdam.

Germans in Köln frequently express puzzlement about the fact that the English name for their city is so different. (I usually do my best to point out that "Cologne" is actually closer to the original Latin name.) But if they think "Cologne" is weird, I wonder what they think of the Dutch spelling:

After this adventure, we went back into the center, had dinner, wandered around some more, got ourselves some drinks, and had a good conversation, but as usual, Julie went to bed long before I was ready to. This led to my standing problem for this trip. I'd been waking up early (by my standards). And when I wake up early, I get tired at night. That doesn't mean I'm ready to go to bed, but it does mean that in order to go clubbing, I would need some company along to keep me energized. Lacking that, I decided to do my usual flaneur thing, wandering around the city at night and occasionally ducking into bars (I failed to find any fun bars in Amsterdam, possibly because I was too lazy to walk down to Rembrandt Plein and instead stuck to the outskirts of the RLD; but the bars do close waaay too early for a city that looks like it should be a 24 hour party zone). My wanderings led to the following:

1. An English girls asked me for directions to The Doors. I couldn’t provide those directions. Even though The Doors happened to be next to my hostel, and I could walk back to my hostel, I couldn’t describe how to do it. (Philosophers call this the distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that.) Anyway, I considered coming along, and asked if The Doors is a place I wouldn’t mind hanging out in:
Me: Is it just a place to get hash?

Her: Yeah.

Me: Is there anything else there?

Her: They have some non-alcoholic drinks.

Me: What’s the point of that?

Her: So people who are too young to drink alcohol can go in to smoke.

(Fortunately, that isn't actually the reasoning behind it, since coffeshops are 18+.)

2. I passed through the RLD and heard two bored prostitutes chatting loudly accross an alley. One was saying, "I had this guy today and we got into doggie, and he had a big... you know. And one time he pushed too hard, so I hit him, and I hit his neck with my heel." "You are so bad!" "But then he looked at my face and he said he was sorry."

3. An African guy came up to me and started chatting. He was really nice, though at the end of the conversation it turned out that he just wanted to get some change from me. Oops. I fell for that trick again. It's happened to me in Germany. But whatever. I said I only had 30 cents, and he was nice regardless. I guess I should've guessed, though: he started the conversation by saying "I know you!" as we were passing each other. Part of what he said in the conversation was that Amsterdam now has too many cops. I asked why this was a problem. He just said that it means you always have to carry ID with you. Anyway, the moment I said good night and walked away, two cops on bikes swooped down. One of them started questioning the guy. The other one came up to me. I explained that I don't speak Dutch.
Cop: "What did he want from you?"
Me: "Who? What?"
Cop: "The Negro. Did he try to sell you drugs?"
Me: "No."
Cop: "It may not be a problem for you, but it is a problem."
Me: "No, he did not offer me drugs."
I'm getting the sense--and this is confirmed by various news reports--that Netherlands is getting xenophobic and racist, which is sad and obnoxious. Also, this was my third night there, but I already knew that all the drug dealers are on the next street over. I went to get some money from an ATM, and on my way back saw that the cops were still questioning him, so I thought I'd at least try something. I walked over to them and said "He really is a very nice guy." "Yes," said the cop from before, "we know." Maybe he was being nice to them, too.

4. Bars close around 2 or 3. So I wandered home. Two girls were sitting on the ground in the middle of the street. They said something, I said something, and we ended up chatting for an hour or so. Unfortunately, it was kind of cold, and we had nothing to drink, and all bars were closed. Everything was closed. And I'm a moron: I didn't even get e-mail addresses. Which sucks, because if I go to Ireland this Summer, it would be nice to know someone in Dublin. And it would be really nice to know some 19-year-old girls... I really don't know what the hell goes on in my head. It's like, if I'm sober (which I was by that point) and tired, my gentleman instincts completely take over my preferred instincts.

The girls were very excited about their explorations of the RLD earlier in the day. They had gone to a live sex show and fallen in love with a prostitute, and these were their respective obsessions, about which they kept talking in unison. Since there have been no pictures of me in Amsterdam so far, here are some to go with the story.

Sarah (above) was obsessing over the sex show. "They actually had sex! In front of people! I can't believe it... I thought they would just strip, or have fake sex, or something." Apparently, she was the one who tipped their beloved prostitute 5 Euros.

Louise (above) wasn't as shocked by the sex show, but she was fascinated by the prostitute. "Most of them are mangers. Maybe that's why we liked this one so much. She was so beautiful! And she had a perfect body. I asked if I could feel her breast, and she let me. Only a girl can get away with that."

5. I get back to my room past 5. The only person there is the girl who, earlier that day, was the only one still sleeping when I left the hostel (and the last night we'd had three other people in the room). She was sitting on a top bunk, swaying back and forth, looking very distressed and chain smoking. When I walked in, she looked at me and in a very heavy accent asked "What do you want?" I was planning to be nice because she looked very unhappy, but since that was her first question, I couldn't resist answering with "Well, that's my bed." Anyway, after a very brief chat in which I assessed her state of mind and her English skills (she's Italian), I decided that sleeping a few hours was preferable to trying to keep the conversation going. And I didn't feel like chain smoking without beer. So I grabbed one of the four free beds and remembered how much I prefer bottom bunks anyway.

When I woke up the next morning, I got to breakfast at 9:29, everything except the toast was cleaned up already, and the food-supply guy said "You were late yesterday and you are late today." In my world, "late" means "1 hour past"; that's a bit extreme, but it definitely does not mean "1 minute early." I pointed this out to him, and consequently he relented and gave me a ton of ham and cheese to put on the toast. But there were no more eggs and no more cups for coffee. I also discovered that BBC World shows the same content every morning. When I went into the tiny hostel bathroom on my floor, I found two condom wrappers, which told me that (1) there is a way for getting around the six-beds-per-room situation, and (2) my night was pretty lame.

2007-03-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

The second day we were both a little less tired, though still not exactly with it. But we were conscious enough to wander through the Rijksmuseum (which is currently undergoing some kind of construction, and so the collection is pretty small--basically, there are no especially good Rembrandts, though a few great Vermeers). Unfortunately, it was filled with French and Italian school kids who were busy answering questionnairs about the various works of art; although they were annoying, I did think about how cool it would be if American schools routinely made their students go to museums and write about art... well, one can dream. Looking through the museum's pamphlets, we discovered that the Dutch word for death is "De Dood," which, to be honest, made me think of "The Big Lebowski" more than anything else.

We then hit the Van Gogh museum, which had quotes from the artist posted on the walls; the quotes were really good and made us both want to read Van Gogh; perhaps the coolest one was about how he decided to paint a masterpiece, even though he was not ready to do it, just because it was the only way to learn how to do it. The descriptions of the paintings, though, oddly referred to Van Gogh's "technical inaccuracies," as if he had somehow tried to get Renaissance perspective down and failed.

Then we wandered around some more. Here are some Amsterdam discoveries:

This made me really want to eat there. I mean, if they're this confident about the quality of their breakfast, it must be good, right?

And here is the vastly superior Amsterdam version of a parking garage... notice something missing? Something that smells of exhaust?

There are all sorts of fun things if you look around. For example, if you don't watch your step, you might miss the odd breast-groping taking place beneath your feet.

I think that this particular gem was just in front of the big church in the RLD. Behind the church, on the other hand, was the area for African prostitutes. The fact that they were, for the most part, segregated from the white (and Asian) prostitutes was in itself an odd bit of red-light racism; but from an American perspective, it's hard to miss the symbolism of the black prostitutes being located behind a church.

And, just so noone thinks that the various forces involved in the layout of the RLD care more about symbolism than convenience, the following is proof to the contrary. Catering to tourists with the munchies involves making sure that they don't have to walk far when they're high, so the place to get a "high snack" has to be right next to the "high time" coffeeshop:

On the topic of convenience and catering to tourists, though... has anyone else noticed that the Dutch, at least in Amsterdam, have a tendency to be really damn rude? Not all of them, of course, but there did seem to be a pronounced trend. Waiters, for example, would routinely ignore us; in one restaurant, we had to ask three or four times (well, ok, "we" is the wrong word, since I made Julie ask...) before someone finally brought us the bill. The most brilliant moment came in a museum bar. The bar had just closed, but Julie wanted some water and was hoping the bartender would be nice enough to oblige, but the moment he saw us approaching, he turned his back and started washing glasses. Maybe, just maybe, this was unintentional. But that's a little hard to believe.

But finally, here's something odd:

What's odd about it? These posters were all over the city, and somehow every time I saw one I was compelled to re-read it, and every time I wanted to cry. I really have no idea why. I don't especially like cats, though they've grown on me over the years, and I'm not entirely sure that animals should be kept as toys, or that people who want pets just so somebody will "love them" really need animals rather than some competent psychotherapy. But something about this story of a girl separated from her cat really made me sad. Maybe it's the "I miss her a lot," or the cuteness of the non-native English writing, or the underlining of the word "scared"... and definitely something about "she gets very easy scared" was central to my response. But I really cared about this... almost wish there was an e-mail on the poster, so I could find out if this girl found her cat (no, I am not going to call). I was hoping I'd run into "Sabotage" while I was there, but no such luck.

2007-03-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

Off to AMSTERDAMN!

I went to Amsterdam to meet up with Julie, who was there for a conference. I figured, Julie is always fun to talk to, I really needed to go somewhere as I haven't been out of Germany since I came back in October, and I could use a few days of practice speaking Russian (with Julie, not with the population of Amsterdam). The only concern was: I was in Amsterdam five years ago and hated it. But this time I liked it a lot. The trick was to focus on the city...

... and ignore the tourists and the overgrown hash industry, which I just find garish.

The trip to Amsterdam was great fun and once again reminded me of how much I loathe Deutsche Bahn, the German train system. Despite various American jokes about the Germans and their efficiency ("At least the trains run on time..."), German trains are perpetually late. A direct train to Amsterdam costs 60, so I took the 40 Euro option... which unfortunately involved no less than 3 changeovers. Taking a train with changeovers in a country where trains are late seeminly 25% of the time is a dangerous idea, but I didn't actually think of that until I got on the train in Köln, which was delayed 12 minutes thanks to a broken door in my car (no, I did not break it...). I was still hoping, however, that my connecting train would also be late or, at least, that it would wait.

One of the bigger difficulties in Germany, at least for me, has always been understanding loudspeaker announcements in trains and stations; those are hard enough to make out in English, but in German they tend to sound like a garbled wall of static. Unfortunately, when I finally learned to understand them, I found that this never actually helped, partly because Deutsche Bahn seems to go out of its way to be as unhelpful as possible. Understanding announcements tends to just make me angry, and this time was no exception. My connection from Münchengladbach to Venlo was slated to leave at 10:25. At exactly 10:25, the following announcement was made on our train: "The train to Venlo is not waiting for us. The train has left. The train is not waiting." I'm not sure if it was the cheery voice or the clearly high value of this announcement that pissed me off more, but the fun part was pulling into the station exactly two minutes later and having to wait 58 minutes for the next train. Good thing I got up at 6 a.m. Fortunately, my other connections were in the Netherlands, so I got into Amsterdam in time to check into my hostel and meet up with Julie.

I really appreciate hostel names that clearly took years of thought, and mine was maybe the best one I've ever heard:

It takes some serious genius to not simply take one of the most banal titles possible, but to throw two of them together. But the genius does not stop there, because obviously an intentional act of concealment lies in what is excluded from the title, since this is neither a hotel nor an inn but, in fact, a hostel. To be fair, though, it wasn't bad, and breakfast (despite ending at 9:30), was pretty good: toast with some delicious ham, cheese, boiled eggs, and coffee. And the location made me wish I still smoked pot, since the hostel is on the same block as three major coffeeshops: The Bulldog, Abraxas, and The Doors (overheard outside: "'The Doors' is open when the doors are open." Get it? It's a use/mention joke).

We spent the first day wandering around pretty aimlessly; Julie had just gotten off a flight from New York, and I had gotten less than two hours of sleep the night before, so neither of us was particularly up for museums or, really, anything else. We spent some time searching for a cafe (I had to explain to Julie the all-important difference between a cafe and a coffeeshop, without which Amsterdam is a bit confusing--one thing that pissed me off, though, is that there are a ton of internet coffeeshops, but I didn't see any internet cafes, which resulted in my not checking e-mail for three days). Food has gotten really expensive; while in Germany it is fairly easy to find a full dinner for 5 Euros, finding something other than kebab in Amsterdam for under 12 turned out to be a serious task. After accomplishing this, we wandered around some more, and found this:

My theory: before coming up with the hideous Red Light District, Dutch men experimented with crocodiles; the first martyr is here immortalized in stone.

After repeatedly getting lost in the Amsterdam maze (seriously, what an insane street layout; sort of like the West Village, but bigger, and I'm pretty sure the Minotaur was stalking us), we found our way to the RLD. The odd thing about it is that it is so freaky, and yet so hard to stay away from. We watched one window from across a canal to time how long it took a man to come out; well over 15 minutes, and we got very bored. A man saw us standing there looking, and told us that we can go in together; then he informed us that he is a cop, which we didn't quite believe--our theory was that he was actually interested in the transsexual prostitute behind us, but didn't want to go in while we were watching. After a few beers (mmm... I've missed good beer), we wandered out and Julie headed home to get some sleep. I stayed out a bit longer to get some more good beer, and then went back to my top bunk in six-bed dorm room to get some sleep.

2007-03-26T15:11:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I head to Amsterdam and will hopefully have some fun things and photos to report, though since I don't really like the pot scene, the red light district, or the hoards of tourists, I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing there.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to make some progress on my dissertation, but then Claudia visited me, which was a very nice interruption. I'm always happy when I can get people to drink and dance all night--something about corrupting others in order to feel better about myself :)

And I've started watching Bill Maher episodes on Youtube. So far, I'm not especially impressed; the shows are good, in that he gets some really impressive people on and the discussions can be pretty outstanding, but today I watched the recent episode with David Frum, and was surprised: he was damn good.

Now, what threw me off is that I suddenly realized what a knee-jerk liberal is. I'd always thought that knee-jerk liberals are people like me--that is, people who generally think wars are bad things, but maybe also that military intervention is sometimes a good idea, like in various cases of genocide (Darfur, anyone? Why is the UN asking the Sudanese government for permission to come and stop the government from killing its own people? Does that strike anyone as a strange thing to do?). But today I realized something else: Frum was making some damn good points. Conservative points, to be sure, but good ones: he insisted, for example, that if we simply pull out of Iraq now, then the Shiites are likely to simply start slaughtering the Sunni population and we will have a Rwanda scenario. This seems like a reasonable thing to say. But instead of dealing with it, Maher asks why the people who've been wrong about everything so far think they have a crystal ball to predict what will happen in the future. Well, yes, okay, but that just doesn't answer Frum's point, because his scenario doesn't seem all that unlikely.

Frum made a few other decent points, too, and got shot down, more or less O'Reilly style. And what really threw me off was that the comments on Youtube were absurdly critical of him. And that's when I realized something: I am not a knee-jerk liberal. A knee-jerk liberal is someone who shoots down anything and everything that a conservative says for the simple reason that it is said by a conservative. I think it would be great if there were more knee-jerk liberals than knee-jerk conservatives, but it would be even better if people worked on getting their damn knees to stop jerking around so much, because that might be the reason that everyone keeps falling down.

Maybe I'm just too optimistic: I keep thinking that liberals just should be smarter than conservatives. But I don't think it works that way; I've met plenty of really stupid liberals. So now I'm going to wonder if I should keep identifying myself as a liberal.

2007-03-18T06:40:00.000-07:00

Recent experience on the train:

A fight was on the verge of breaking out. As best I could tell, the fight involved a drunk and very obnoxious white guy (he was wearing a backward baseball cap, which meant that I had an immediate dislike for him) liberally using the N-word. Two black guys and their friend were not entirely happy with this, and were making various moves indicating that they were going to inflict damage on the ungentlemanly Arschloch. Their friend--who looked possibly Moroccan--seemed to be the most upset, repeating over and over that he was not black. The white guy, meanwhile, was attempting to stave off damage, not by apologizing or shutting his stupid face, but by saying over and over, "it's okay, my mom is black!"

Now, the predominant German response to this was for a number of people to say, over and over, that the police are coming. No police actually came, even after a public transport employee came over, threatened to kick the guys off the train, AND insisted that he'd called the police. Nor did either party to the dispute seem particularly concerned. But everyone kept repeating that the police were coming, like a mantra that was supposed to resolve the situation.

There was, in the end, no fight; just some shoving. But what I thought was interesting was the general response, or variety of responses, to the situation. Several people--mostly men, but one or two women--actually jumped in to try to pull the combatants apart. Once a combatant was isolated from the melee, several women would talk to him sympathetically, telling him that tomorrow (when he is sober) none of this will matter. I, on the other hand, realized that I had no interest whatsoever in interfering. Sure, if it looks like a fight is completely unfair, as when somebody is clearly outmatched by an aggressor, my natural sentiment of justice is likely to kick in. But this wasn't such a situation: this was a situation where one individual clearly deserved and sorely needed a beatdown, which several other persons seemed more than happy to provide for him. And my take on this didn't seem especially odd: a number of guys settled comfortably into observational positions. True, several men did get involved in breaking up the fight, but for the most part they seemed to be on their way home with girls, and I suspect they were looking to appear chivalrous.

And so, here is my (now established as gender-specific) query: Is chivalry misplaced in such circumstances? Isn't it possible that avoiding fights is NOT always the best policy? Don't people sometimes need to get a good beating, just to keep them from acting like douchebags the next time they get sloshed?

2007-03-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

Karneval '07: Coda

The Perils of Communism

In lieu of a Day 6, I present a cautionary tale for children. Communism is like the French: when you play with it, you're asking to get your head chopped off. The difference: under Communism, you're happy about it, as this unbiased and daring photo-journalistic exposé makes clear. Beware the Red Menace, for it shall rise again!

As you can see, Russian peasants are not immune to the sway of Communism.

Neither are Chinese peasants, as this groundbreaking study makes clear for the first time.

Of course, some people are liable to fall asleep when the Reds get political.

Others, hiding behind masks and aliases, simply tease the Red Machine, believing themselves to be safe.

And then there are those who just clown around.

And one might witness an occasional fainting spell.

Can we be saved from the Perils of Communism? Only when the Pirates of Capitalism turn Communism's weapons back against it! Workers of the world, unite with the pirates to support oppression!

2007-03-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

Karneval '07

On the Fifth Day of Drinking...

19 February

When I accidentally wake up at 10:30 a.m., my first reflexive act is to reach for Dr. Roman's medicine: two excedrins chased down with coffee and a nicotine stick. This helps a bit with the four-day cumulative hangover/sleep deprivation, so now all I have to worry about is the troop of acrobats doing backflips in my stomach and the odd pressure inside my head. But Rosenmontag is the biggest day of Karnival, a massive parade is unfolding less than 10 minutes' walk from my door, and I'll be damned if I'm sitting this one out. Wish I had an ice pack to put on my eyes, though; I won't see much unless I get them to open a little wider.

Getting out of the house--since it involves motion--turns out to be difficult, though a brief phone chat with Benni, my roommate, finally motivates me to get in gear and head over to Appellhofplatz to see the end of the parade.

I've pretty much missed all the candy being thrown out--not that I particularly care--but Benni nicely saves some for me; I reciprocate with beer. Candy and beer certainly make a good combination, and he is obviously enjoying it.

I don't know if it's the beer or the sugar high, but a new friendship is quickly struck through a glass door. What his friend is doing behind him, though, is anybody's guess. Following the end of the parade, we wander over to Zülpicher. It's a bit of a long walk when you're still hung over but not yet even close to drunk, and it doesn't help that at the end of this walk, Benni and his friends still can't decide where to go. While they're pondering this serious question, I make a dash for the pissoir, and on the way back run into Andres, who is heading over to the Purple Club to meet his roommate and some friends who are living in Wuppertal but have come up for the partying. And so off I go, temporarily ditching my roommate.

Purple club is more or less empty, except for us, but this means that we get to chat for a while and catch up on beer consumption. And it provides the sombre atmosphere needed for the occasion where the Specter of Communism meets, apparently, the Spirit of Capitalism, straight out of Texas. We somehow end up talking about philosophy, which is clearly the wrong thing to do during Karneval, as we are quickly reminded when the music picks up and the still relatively small group of people there begins dancing. It's time to rejoin the fun once again.

Andres is still furry, and not so into the dancing. I try to convince him that Karneval music is really the song of the gods--which is obviously a true claim--but he clearly can't see the truth through those glasses. I'm having fun, but eventually the relative emptiness of the place starts to grate a bit and I head back to Zülpicher, where the grass really is greener.

Though it isn't only the grass that's greener: the animals are, too.

My roommate and his friends have in the meantime moved to Roonburg, which is where I told them to go in the first place and where I'm heading anyway--I get a text from Benni at the exact moment that I get in line, so all is well.

He's drunk and starting all sorts of mischief. And I'm pretty drunk too, or at least I notice that I am as soon as I start dancing.

That's probably why I forgot to stare directly and intently at the camera like I usually do. My mistake.

Eventually I get up on the stage to dance, which gives me a nice vantage point of the rest of the club. And my hammer has a long reach. It takes a while to get down, but by 5 or so we're both ready to head back home. And so concludes the last fun night.

Day six doesn't deserve a separate post. I ended up sleeping most of the day, then spending hours getting ready to go out, and so missing the Nubbelverbrennung, the great German Catholic tradition that officially concludes Karneval. The idea is to blame all of one's sins (and pretty much everything that's gone wrong in the past year) on a doll and then burn it. At least I saw it last year... Afterwards, Benni comes to the still-hopping Lotte with me and we down a bunch of beers in an hour, but he can't stay out because he has to study for exams, whereas I want to take advantage of the last night--which ends up being a bit of a mistake. Zülpicher is deader than I expected, and Roonburg is emptier than even on normal, non-Karneval nights. So day 6 is a bit of a bust, but I think at least I managed to stretch it out until 4 or so.

2007-03-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

Karneval '07

Day 4 -- Nothing of Importance

18 February

I was so tired that an unscheduled nap was forced on me around 9 p.m., which meant that I didn't wake up until 1 a.m. My roommate didn't feel like going out, and I didn't feel like venturing far, so I put on my "easy" costume and decided to hang out at my local neighborhood Lotte, which is an all around cool bar and usually plays some of the best music around (a good bit of Johnny Cash!). Not, of course, during Karneval. The place was pretty rockin', full of people drunk and dancing, as with any good Karneval spot, but not too full to prevent convenient access to the bar which, as far as I am concerned, is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for a good atmosphere. (If I have to wait more than 5 minutes to get a beer, I get cranky. Particularly if the beer is Koelsch and takes, if you are very slow about it, less than 5 minutes to finish.) The easy access means that my plan to have one beer, for the sake of fulfilling my Karneval duty, turns into five or six.

At some point I apprently got angry at my reflection in the bathroom... And then forgot to take pictures for the rest of the night; reasons unclear. I strolled out, hoping to check out the party at nearby Tsunami, which amazingly was closed; you'd think that a club that closes on Sundays would make an exception for Karneval, but apparently not. While wondering what I should do, I was approached by someone dressed like a Bavarian (that he turned out to actually be Bavarian seemed to ruin the costume a bit) looking for a place to party. And so I showed him (Stephan)the way back to Lotte.

Although living in Nordrhein-Westphalia has taught me to distruct Bavarians (mainly because everyone makes fun of them), Stephan at least follows my favorite rules for occasional acquaintances: he speaks German with me and only switches to English if I fail to understand something he says twice, which happens often when the music is that loud. When a slightly frightening girl dances with him, he thinks she is actually a man, and tells her she can dance with him as long as she doesn't touch his ass; a bit confused, she asks if he normally lets women touch his ass. He says "usually yes." Then he realizes that she is a girl and he has just managed to be a major dick, but beer makes it all better. He occupies himself with hitting on every girl in the bar, though none of them are single (except, maybe, for the one not grabbing his ass). One gets more talkative after a few beers and repeated attempts at conversation by Stephan and buys us shots of vodka. I reciprocate with shots of good old Tennessee Jack. It's now 4 a.m. and definitely time to head home.

2007-03-02T05:56:00.000-08:00

Karneval '07

Day Three--Reliving Last Year!

17 February

So the previous day it was all innocent enough; I went to the "L" just like last year, on the same day of Karneval. But now I ended up reliving last year's Saturday as well when I ended up at Boudoir with Verena et al, though this time Tobi came along. Today he is a duck.

One of the joys of Karneval, of course, is that pirates mingle easily with sailors. It's almost as if they're not fighting over treasures at all, but are instead sitting down together--or rather standing--for a nice tiny glass of Koelsch. Or maybe 20 nice tiny glasses of Koelsch. Who can keep count any more?

I gave Tobi my camera so he could take pictures of ME, dammit! Instead, he saw the waitress and decided to digitally capture her soul. She seems very happy about it, too, which is amazing considering how much she has to run around through a packed crowd of drunk people making empty pick-ups and full deliveries.

In any case, he finally got back to the all-important task of capturing the Spectre of Communism in action once again.

"Hey, wanna play with my sickle?" Indeed.

Anyway, eventually we all got a bit sick of this party, except for Tina (in the last pic), because she lives around the corner from Boudoir and wasn't quite getting into the whole spirit of Karneval, which to my mind involves checking out new places that are not in one's back yard. So, anyway, we moved on to some place called Alkazaa (sp?), which is supposed to be a Karneval hot-spot. It was in fact so much of a hot-spot, that it was jam packed full of people to the point where existing inside was impossible without being elbowed every two seconds. Didn't work out for me. After all, I can only tolerate this much violence if I'm drunk, and I can't drink if there are people shoving me and forcing me to spill the most valuable of all beverages. On the way home I ran into some Canadian guys and a German girl who invited me to chat with them back at her place. Unfortunately, the conversation was about hockey (where I remembered that Canadians really are different), the girl's odd Baptist Christianity, and her latest crush. Definitely time to call it a night.

2007-02-24T14:23:00.000-08:00

Karneval '07

The Second Day--The Red Menace is on the Loose!

16 February

When you're very pretty, like me, you spend a LOT of time before going out looking at yourself in the mirror. If you happen to have a plastic sickle in your hand, you can fantasize about shaving with a real sickle. But that, of course, is only for the true communist. Now, how would that red star look as a tattoo?

Of course, for the costume (official title: Das Gespenst des Kommunismus=The Spectre of Communism) to work, I had to constantly keep my weapons crossed in front of me. Otherwise people got confused. Some Canadians asked me if I'm a communist pirate or something--because naturally every self-respecting pirate has a sickle...

Yes. I'm keeping them crossed in the bar. Yes, it is a little hard to dance like that. But if nobody gets my costume, its pure genius is lost.

Lisa has convinced me to lower my weapons. Communism is powerless against fake freckles.

Aaaand she's in action.

Beer in hand, jacket off... time to do some pounding! No pun/innuendo intended. Seriously. I'm just pounding beers.

By the way, we are at the "L" in Ehrenfeld, where Tobi (you can sort of see him next to Verena, who is wearing a Russian hat) and Andi are spinning some sweeet Karneval music.

And on their break from DJing, they reveal their deep secret: they really are twins! (Don't be shocked, everyone except them has known for years.)

Tobi shows us how to dance. There's really nowhere to run, but it's 5 a.m., the place is empty, and the music has gotten cheesy--by which I mean that Tobi has started playing his Richard Cheese CD. Main reason to stay til closing.

2007-02-24T09:20:00.000-08:00

Karneval '07

First Day on the Job

15 February

We first observed the Karneval festivities in a detached, anthropological and scholarly manner. Fortunately for me, as I had just pulled an all-nighter to finish a paper, the chosen location was Chlodwigplatz, a leisurely 7 minute stroll from my house.

In the meantime, however, we were consuming beer in order to build a solid foundation for the more serious drinking that would take place after the sun started to slowly set. Also, to stave off the ravages of sleep-deprivation to allow for maximal enjoyment. Unfortunately, Andres didn't manage to take a good picture of me. I'll pretend that it's not his fault...

...After all, he is just a furry animal... Or something like that. I kept thinking he needed a rifle with that costume, but it's cool in any case. We retreated to his apartment...

...to observe his roommates making complicated preparations, which involved trying on the 20 different costumes they had just bought that day.

And, of course, more drinks. Drinking without a good base to work up from is just too complicated. Finally we moved to a party, which took a 45 minute walk. Though this wasn't exactly a Karneval party.

It was actually a big techno party oddly located across the street from Pascha, Europe's biggest brothel. Note: when Germans dance to techno, they dance exactly the same way as to everything else. No fancy footwork, no crazy tricks with glowsticks... very relaxing and pressure-free.

And here is a display of women's solidarity... in front of the toilets. As the only person wearing a mask, Cynthia is very mysterious. Even I can't tell that's her.

And now they're staring at the bright lights in the distance... it is the voice of the techno gods, temporarily drowning out the voices of the true, Karneval gods.

My God! Smoking! What other horrible vices will the spirit of Karneval bring forth this night?

Look out! She's got a gun! You have to look very carefully to see it, but that's what makes the gun so cool. I want one!