Simply music

Opinions on the new Belle & Sebastian album have been divided (Guardian says yay, the Spiegel nay, but mainly because of the Norah Jones contribution), but in view (or hear) of the following (listened to while driving to work on this mildly misty morning promising another sparkly autumn day), I have to say I like:

On not understanding a thing

This, apparently, is about photography (via):

"I adjust some levels in Photogene, crop the image, run it through one of a handful of CameraBag or Lo-Mob filters, then use TiltShiftGen not to make a tilt-shift image but because a little bit of blur goes a long way, and because TiltShiftGen has a killer vignetting tool."

Yeah.


I...uh...point and shoot.


I'm beginning to wonder whether, at the tender age of 40, I may just be too old for this world.


(Or, as ICP might put it: "Fuckin' iPhones, how do they work?")

Remember kids: 'A little bit of blur goes a long way.'

Word.

Word is the wrong word

Something new and nice from Erdmöbel:



Erdmöbel, 'Wort ist das falsche Wort'


And for your reading pleasure, a related article/interview thingy from the current issue of Die Zeit.

Is it safe?

I was pondering, this morning, the rather confusing signals regarding the threat of terrorist attacks (specifically, 'Mumbai-style commando attacks') in European cities. There they were, the American and British counter-terrorism sources, issuing their scary-sounding warnings (followed by press reports naming specific targets); on the other hand, Die Zeit, citing German 'security experts', says that the likelihood of an attack is no higher than it has already been and downplays the likelihood of specific warnings about particular places.

So, I'm with Anne Applebaum on this one:

Speaking as an American who lives in Europe, I feel it is incumbent upon me to describe what people like me do when we hear warnings like the one issued on Sunday by the U.S. State Department and cited above: We do nothing.

We do nothing, first and foremost, because there is nothing we can do. Unless the State Department gets specific—e.g., "don't go to the Eiffel Tower tomorrow"—information at that level of generality is completely meaningless.

Speaking as a European living in Europe, though perhaps one with slightly more apocalyptic leanings than is generally common, I have pretty much been expecting some kind of new horror for years. And not just in those high-profile places that have been named in recent warnings: it was in 2006, after all, that two Jihadi scumbags would-be suitcase bombers were foiled only by their own incompetence in blowing up local commuter trains on their way from Cologne to Koblenz and Hamm.

One of the experts quoted by Die Zeit--the head of Saarland's state Office for the Protection of the Constitution--notes that there are several known potential terrorists who were raised in Germany and have had or are seeking out military training in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere. (Though since the weekend --presuming the reports are correct--their number might now be slightly reduced.) Getting the weaponry here, he says, would 'not be difficult' and even only a few terrorists would be capable of committing some serious media-friendly mayhem.

I think this is probably true.


So, my view on these latest warnings is not driven by a lack of concern, and if there's an attack tomorrow morning I'll be horrified and outraged, certainly, but hardly surprised.

I also understand that governments are in a kind of damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't position on this issue; but, still, this kind of warning that, as Andrew puts it, 'something bad may happen somewhere' reminded me of our last trip to the US.

Spending a couple of hours in a Chicago departure lounge waiting to come back, we were treated to the endless loop of a recorded message informing us that 'today's threat level as determined by the Department of Homeland Security is...[pause for effect]...ORANGE.' What, exactly, this was supposed to impart to us--not least on the thirtieth repetition--is a mystery to me.

I just checked and at the moment it's still orange; at least that's true in the 'airline sector', elsewhere, it's the comparatively calm yellow, though I'm a bit stumped about where to draw the line between a 'high' and 'significant' threat of terror attack and how much comfort one might gain, say, from being 'only' at the former.

I can't see that such vague warnings serve any purpose.

Other than, perhaps, treating us to the spectacle of Lily Allen acting like a twit. (Auch auf Deutsch erhältlich.)

(Via Andrew, who seems to have been blatantly ignoring State Department advice about avoiding public spaces in European capitals and has brought back the photographic evidence to prove it. Like any good Texan, he has no fear.)

Mixed news

Félix Fénéon, bringing things to a fine point, around the turn of the last century: 

“There is no longer a God even for drunkards. Kersilie, of St.-Germain, who had mistaken the window for the door, is dead.” 

From Novels in Three Lines, described here.

(Via Blood & Treasure)

Jetzt verschlungen vom Wald, jetzt an den Bergen hinauf

As far as I can tell, there seems to be little established tradition about how one should celebrate the Day of German Unity.

We did so in what seems as appropriate a way as any: going for a hike through a nearby forest, the sort of place where the German soul feels most at home.

A place rather like this:

Since the forest was so dark (even on a sunny day), most of my shots turned out blurry...except for this one. Which I feel sort of makes up for the others.

The route we took was 'Michel's Vitaltour', whose name derives in part from the 'German Michel' figure associated, according to some arguments, with our region (and with Stromberg -- where the route begins and ends -- in particular).

At 13.2km (with a lot of ups and downs...though I noted the ups more than the downs), it was a good way to spend our Sunday morning.

 Just off to the left of this image and further along the path was a small gathering featuring not only a stand selling grilled steak but also a brass band. Sadly, they stopped playing and took a break just before we got there.

A few further photos can be seen at our Flickr page.



(Title reference)

20 years

It's 20 years (tomorrow) since German reunification. This is the first song that comes to mind:



And this the second (for better or for worse...):



And the third:

Feeling disinclined to read the New Left Review ...

... after perusing the ad for issue 64 on the back of the London Review of Books, more specifically, a passage from an article by Fredric Jameson on "Global Wagner":

In one of those paradoxical genealogies in which cultural history is so rich, it seems that we may trace Regieoper back to that East German cultural production which, in the almost universal obloquy of that state, has until recently been virtually ignored. But the theatrical practice of the GDR, from Brecht to opera, was in far more lineal continuity with Weimar traditions - Klemperer, the Kroll Opera - than that of provincial West German culture.

What is it with Anglo-American Marxists that - twenty years after the fall of the wall - they continue to cling to the by now seriously frayed fairy tale of East Germany as the sanctuary of intellectual innovation and aesthetic radicalism, heroically rising above the powerful (but provincial) other beyond the iron curtain?

I guess that means we can start saving up for the next one?

It's taken a while, but it seems that Germany is finally paying off its reparations from the First World War.

The Daily Mail is thrilled at the opportunity presented by this exercise in Vergangenheitskriegsschuldenbewältigung to print a picture of its favourite German politician.

Notes from the stein age

It may be because I'm currently working on a conference presentation on alcohol and violence in the nineteenth century, but this article in Der Spiegel caught my eye:

Police at the Munich Oktoberfest say crimes such as rape and theft are down this year but attacks with glass beer steins are on the rise.

The heavy glasses that hold one liter of beer are a symbol of the annual folk festival. But they can also be deadly weapons. And at this year's fest they have already sent some to the hospital with serious injuries, such as concussions, and bleeding in the brain.

"At Oktoberfest it's happening unfortunately more and more," physicist Erich Schuller, of the Institute for Forensic Medicine at Munich University told SPIEGEL this week. "A stein like that weighs 1.3 kg (2.9 lbs) and thanks to the handle, it's easy to grip, and that makes it an effective striking tool."

But it's good to see that the amber nectar is serving to bring people and nations together:

One of the most serious cases this year of an attack with a beer stein happened on Sept. 18, when a 20-year-old resident of Munich got into a fight in a beer tent with a 29-year-old Canadian tourist. The German then hit the Canadian with his beer stein on his head. The beer stein broke, and its shards injured two of the Canadian's companions. The Canadian survived with a concussion, and the German remains in detention awaiting trial.

On the same day, two more Oktoberfest partygoers were brought to the hospital after being hit in the head with beer steins in beer tent altercations. One of them, an Australian tourist, had bleeding in the brain after he was hit by a Frenchman.

...

On Sept. 25, at 2 p.m., a group of French festival-goers and a group of Italians got into a brawl in which one Frenchman threw his stein into the group of Italians. No one was hurt by that mug, but the Italians then took their steins and charged at the French. One Frenchman was hit directly in the head and was brought to a Munich hospital with a fractured skull.

Of course, given that Oktoberfest attracts something like 6 million visitors and then quickly intoxicates them in crowded, sweaty tents, this seems pretty much like what you'd expect to happen.

No need to get overly upset about it. Overall, it seems like quite a safe event, at which the worst thing you are likely to encounter are washed-up celebrities and bad dress sense. (Though I've never attended myself. Your experiences may be different.)

And, if nothing else, the beer stein menace is serving the advance of German science:

Erich Schuller, of the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, said his lab has recently carried out tests in which they used brand new steins and hit them against human skulls. "The bones often will break, but we haven't been able to break the steins," Schuller told SPIEGEL. "A hard hit with a stein packs more than 8,500 newtons of power -- the human head in the parietal region breaks with about 4,000 newtons."

Man, I'm in the wrong line of research.

Just imagine the frustrations you could work out spending a day smashing steins against skulls. Sign me up!

Es kann so viel passieren*

I'm far from being either very knowledgeable or very obsessive about football, but I am (for better or worse) susceptible to a benign strain of Lokalpatriotismus, i.e., a tendency to develop a deeply felt attachment to where I live. (By 'benign' I mean that this comes without the usually accompanying animosities against neighbouring towns or regions.)

In any case, that's all by way of explaining my pleasure at yesterday's 2-1 victory by local football club Mainz 05 over Bayern Munich (followed here on the radio; match details in German or English).

This has enabled Mainz's remarkable unbeaten record so far this season, catapulting them to the top of the 1. Bundesliga, to which they are relatively recent arrivals.

As I pointed out before the current season began, compared to other teams in the league, Mainz is a small club with relatively few resources; beating Bayern (in Munich no less) is an event in the national football context.

(Mainz, as ever, even showed its generosity, giving away an own-goal to the hosts shortly before half-time.)

Anyway, in a nicely harmonic convergence, we had tickets last night to see one of our favourite German musicians, Funny van Dannen, who was playing down the road and across the river in Wiesbaden.

And van Dannen was one of the writers of a song made famous (well, at least in these parts) by Die Toten Hosen: the anti-Bayern anthem titled....well, 'Bayern' (lyrics).

Herr van Dannen didn't play this one, though he did play a number of other favourites, such as 'Saufen', 'Vaterland', 'Herzscheiße' and 'Posex und Poesie'.

And a very fine time was had by all.

Like our current economic Aufschwung, there's no telling how long Mainz's football carnival will last.

But still, it's been fun while it's lasted.

*Title translation: 'So many things can happen'

Friday night Mountain Goats dance music live video blog post

Like it says in the title.



Yeah, the bass is a bit over-present, but otherwise it's not bad for YouTube.

On contrast

A piece of Hollywood kitsch on which I will most certainly not be wasting any money:



Though it contrasts nicely with the pictures of the athletes' village at this year's Commonwealth Games in Delhi that have been making the rounds these past couple of days.

As the lady with the big mouth says somewhere in the above: "I want to find a place where I can marvel at something."

Indeed.

Notes from the phone booth at the end of the world

I've never read any of his novels, and I wouldn't say that I agree with all of his views.

Still, Michel Houellebecq certainly interviews well. (Via A&L; Daily)

On what seem to be the enormous challenges of French childhood reading:

And then there was Pif le chien, a comic book published by Editions Vaillant and sponsored by the Communist Party. I realize now when I reread it that there was a Communist bent to many of Pif’s adventures. For example, a prehistoric man would bring down the local sorcerer in single combat and explain to the tribe that they didn’t need a sorcerer and that there was no need to fear thunder. The series was very innovative and of exceptional quality. I read Baudelaire oddly early, when I was about thirteen, but Pascal was the shock of my life. I was fifteen. I was on a class trip to Germany, my first trip abroad, and strangely I had brought the Pensées of Pascal. I was terrified by this passage: “Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.” I think it affected me so deeply because I was raised by my grandparents. Suddenly I realized that they were going to die and probably soon. That’s when I discovered death.

Yes....and American parents are afraid of the damage that might be caused by Heather Has Two Mommies.

Anyway...

On visiting your neighbours:

The biggest consequence of The Elementary Particles, apart from the money and not having to work, is that I have become known internationally. I’ve stopped being a tourist, for example, because my book tours have satisfied any desire I might have to travel. And as a result there are countries I have visited that you wouldn’t ordinarily go to, like Germany.

INTERVIEWER

Why do you say that?

HOUELLEBECQ

Nobody does tourism in Germany. It doesn’t exist. But they’re wrong not to. It’s not so bad.

[Ahem: as pleased as I am with this glowing appraisal, it is apparent that some people -- well...at least from the Guardian -- do do tourism in Germany, and in our little corner of it, even.]

On inspiration:

INTERVIEWER

In your preface to The Possibility of an Island, you mentioned a journalist who inspired the idea for the novel. Can you explain?

HOUELLEBECQ

It was a pretty strange moment. I was in Berlin at a café on a lake, waiting to be interviewed. It was very quiet. It was ten o’clock in the morning. There was no one around. And this German journalist arrives and, it was very curious, she wasn’t behaving normally. She didn’t have a tape recorder and she wasn’t taking notes. And she said, “I had a dream that you were in a phone booth after the end of the world and you were speaking to all of humanity but without knowing whether anyone was listening.” It was like being in a zombie film.

I'm thinking of putting him on my to-read list, not least since he's written what sounds like an intriguing book about one of my favourite authors, H.P. Lovecraft.

Any views on the matter you might wish to share?

Avoiding all thoughts of the coming night

Quite a nice image from Orwell, 21 September 1940:

Withal, huge areas of London almost normal, and everyone quite happy in the daytime, never seeming to think about the coming night, like animals which are unable to foresee the future so long as they have a bit of food and a place in the sun. 

Along with noting the imagery, it occurs to me that 'withal' is used far too seldom these days.