squirm

lately work doesn't seem as exciting as usual

  

und ich auch...

Du bist Terrorist (You are a Terrorist) english subtitles from lexela on Vimeo.

cyclemaniacs assaulting and killing for thrills!

 

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

pretty much my workweek

though i ride a bike to the office and here in berlin the rooftops are a bit lower

walpurgisnacht

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

 

but the little girls understand

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

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

good to be home despite the schäden

the cruelest month

yesterday, attempting to kill time at lunch, i decided to stroll through the kleine tiergarten, a leafy environs bookended by two churches - one built friedrich schinkel, where the local drunks argue the finer points of philosophy. reaching the far edge of the park, enjoying the sun and still averse to returning to the office i thought i'd take a gander at the spring greenery in the nearby wilsknacker strasse graveyard. the small cemetery marks the mass grave of over 300 locals killed during the final, desperate battles fought here in april of 1945. it also is home to the headstone of albrecht haushofer - author of moabit sonnets - executed by a roving ss death squad hours after being released from prison as the russian beared down on the neighborhood. wandering over to his headstone i was taken aback when i saw the date of his death - exactly sixty four years ago to the day! coincidence or something more?

glimmer twins

in preparation

for my trip tomorrow i still need to pack. with all the zipping around deutschland for the job i've become much better at traveling light and am also planning to take advantage of the exchange rate by purchasing some tight fitting garments back in the states. but no matter what ends up stuffed in the rimowa i certainly hope i don't end up seeing it here.