This is not a terrorist manifesto

There is nothing new about the appalling state of quote-unquote "modern" society. We're too everything. Too materialistic, too self-involved. Too willing to distract ourselves from our actual problems by pretending to care about the problems of others. Too depressed, and subsequently, naturally, necessarily, depressing. We're depressing the shit out of each other on a daily basis. Too predatory, too wiling to play the victim. Too analytical. Too neurotic. Too utterly and completely obsessed with narrowing down just exactly what we "are". Too nervously searching for and frantically promoting our "selves" while attempting to appear casual about the entire thing.

But as you are aware, none of this is new. We now live in a decades- or even centuries-, millenia-long era in which more or less every idea has been thunk. The radical periphery are edging them/ourselves into mainstream ways of thinking. Also not new. Without this exact social phenomenon there would be no social progress, which you may or may not deem a good thing. The main problem now is that we are running out of battles to fight. Everyone worth knowing is aware that most of the -isms are bad. Even historically divided subjects have found socially acceptable moderate paths. Having an abortion is largely considered an unfortunate solution to a grey-area problem that some people choose to make but one which none of us are allowed to judge. Which you'd realize is fine, if you'd be willing to accept that you have no idea what the answer to the universe is. The whole deal of whether or not the shapeless cluster of cells is a Person the second it begins to multiply upon itself appears to be the most divisive issue.

Most of us worth knowing have agreed to agree that one ought not to intentionally discriminate against, harrass, molest, judge, restrict, disallow, legally invalidate, ostracize, or prematurely abort any sentient being, even if is an animal, even if one is not a vegetarian and happily, hypocritically, eats the hairy/hooved/scaly/feathered/beaked bastards on a regular basis. But the question about the fucking zygote, when will mankind ever know?

(However, one might compare a zygote to a malignant tumor, the main similarity being that both multiply upon themselves without end until they have successfully colonized the host; the main difference being that one may eventually grow into a President and cost your society billions of dollars and get you killed abroad whereas the worst the other will do is cost you a few thousand before killing you in the comfort of your own home/hospice.)

Those of us really worth knowing--and notice that I have now significantly reduced the number of people to whom I was previously referring--are aware that without action, most of the being-on-the-same-page-at-all-costsness that is running rampant in modern society is largely a bunch of blah-blah yakkity-yak. We are aware that it is all one big circle jerk invented expressly for the purspose of heightening the effects of drugs and alcohol. ("Oh my god, you're so right, no, let me add to that, no, you're so right. Oh my god, look at the time, it's already tomorrow. Time flies when you're a fucking genius.") You are going to disagree with me. You are going to say, but every person who is dissuaded from gaycism by being forcefully made aware of the fact that Those of Us Who Are Worth Knowing think gays are fine and should not be discriminated against, harrassed, molested, judged, restricted, disallowed, legally invalidated, ostracized or prematurely aborted has now lost his voice in mixed society and can no longer spread the seeds of hate. But I would tell you, Bollocks.

Haters gone hate, I cannot believe no one has ever made that clear to you. Haters gone hate.

So love and take care of yourself and the people you find tolerable. Be as nice as to everyone as they are to you. In no circumstances ought you to bother yourself about what others think of you unless they are paying you. In which case you should suck up as much as possible because I mean that is your daily champagne we are talking about. Let the Scientologists do their thing, and offer to pick up your friend after her abortion and spoon feed her ice cream until the bleeding and unbearable cramping, doubt, guilt, regret, nightmares and suicidal tendencies subside, even if you think she is a murderess, because it's none of your goddamn business why she decided to kill the President.

Live well, and be happy.

There's a time and place for almost everything

So here in Germany, there is an elaborate system of standing in line at the grocery store. Once you've got it down and have abandoned all concern for your own personal space, it's a breeze. It goes like this:

• Put your groceries on the conveyor belt, with the heaviest/sturdiest items toward the front, and the lightest/most delicate items toward the back. Leave as little room between items as possible, stacking like products when necessary. This facilitates the next customer's being able to place his items down after you.
• Place the divider, if one is available, as close to your goods as possible. Take two steps away from the conveyor belt and two steps nearer the person in front of you. Stand as close to their actual anus as you can without making physical contact. You will stand like this until it is your turn to pay, breathing down their neck as they pull out their method of payment. The person behind you in line will do the same to you. This takes some getting used to, but you will manage it eventually.
• As the checker scans your items, take each one and place it in a cloth or plastic bag or back into the shopping cart. Here is where your original method of heaviest-first comes in handy, because the checker will scan so quickly that your stuff will literally fall off the counter if you are not fast enough. Pay as close to the penny as possible without making the other customers wait so long their teeth fall out. Walk away.

Now, I was in the very beginning of step one when a disgracefully drunken man in his early 40s pushes past the person standing behind me in line and asks to place his beer bottles down on the ledge in front of the conveyor belt. Normally, this is perfectly acceptable, if:

1. The person in front of you has finished placing their items on the belt, and

2. You are actually the next person in line.

Neither of these conditions had been satisfied, so I told him simply, "no." Carefully but quickly I continued placing my items heaviest to lightest on the belt. Ordnung muss sein.

Well, he didn't like that too much, and said dass es ihm egal war--that he didn't care. And began shoving his bottles down on the belt, standing on top of me to do so and completely obstructing my attempts to finish placing down my groceries.

Now, dear Reader, you know me fairly well by now, so it won't come as too much of a shock to you when I tell you that at 9am after a late night out and with some drunken fool blowing his foul, hot, nasty breath in my face and violating even the reduced European standard of personal space that I reacted with my reptile brain and simply placed my right arm from the hand to the elbow along his chest, stepped in with my right foot and shoved him about five feet back to wherever the fuck it is he came from. His girlfriend--a 6'1" (184 cm) tall black lady--goes, "whoa, whoa, whoa!" I give her a look that says,

You want some too?

She looks away.

Now, reader, you're going to wonder why I was so easily provoked this morning, but, as I say, I'd had a late night, was barely awake, was bleeding from my vagina like a halal cow and had had neither food nor water nor coffee nor cigarette since awakening. And here is some pathetic fool burning the hairs out of my nostrils with his disgusting vodka breath at 9 in the morning, not following the super-important rules. Fuck him, and fuck her too.

As we're standing in line, with one customer between us, he complains loudly to his girlfriend about how "unfriendly" I am and how a bit of common courtesy is in order. My heart starts racing, my hands shake. I tell him, "Look, it's not my fault you're drunk as a skunk at 9 in the morning. You can wait the two seconds until it's your turn."

The woman keeps opening her big yap to broadcast her personal philosophies, maintaining that it doesn't matter when one consumes alcohol, whether it's even 6 or 7 in the morning, the point is to live and let live. The two of them continue drunkenly babbling at each other about what a useless cunt I am, how unfriendly and unbelievable my behavior is. Neither of them will address me directly. And so I'm left with only two options--continue arguing with them, or do my best to ignore them. I chose the latter, inching forward in line and using all the restraint I can muster in order to keep my cool.

I pack my shit and step out of line, set down my bag, sit on the window ledge, cross my legs, and wait for the couple to complete their transaction. Mind you, for the entire duration of the several minutes we'd stood in line, they were unrelenting in their commentary on my behavior. I have now been listening to them for as long as I can remember; I cannot recall a time ever in my life when I could not hear their voices. And I am beyond livid at this point.

Finally they wander out of line and I stand back up, stepping forward until I am two inches from the drunk man's nose. I square myself, and ask him:

Do you have anything else you want to say to me?

He replies, at the top of his lungs and so patronizing you could spit:

No! I hope you have a wonderful day!

I turn on my heel and walk out of the store. As I pass through the front doors I can hear the two of them laughing with one another, but now I cannot make out any words. Face burning, I make my way home, wondering what had really just happened back there.

May you live in interesting times

Things are interesting at the moment.

More so at this particular moment, because I'm drunk. Something I don't do too often these days.

Alert readers will recall my diatribes about my reasons for not drinking. Why I've opted to go in for the dum-dum juice as of late is as much of a mystery to you as it is to me.

Of course, I've drunk since that one time I told you I'd sworn off it forever and was joining AA. But I've always gone back off of it. So that's where I'm at now. Drinking every couple of months for a few weeks, then swearing off of it again.

No, that's wrong. Actually, where I'm at right now--at this exact moment in time--is downloading old hip-hop albums from the 90s. Tonight was R. Kelly and Notorious B.I.G.

Am I supposed to care that R. Kelly is a child molester? Damn Gina, where are my scruples? Nowhere to be found. I also didn't give entirely too much of a shit when Michael Jackson was supposed to be raping little kids. I mean hello? Rock With You? I'm supposed to just forget about that or what? Come on. Get real. People drive Range Rovers without caring about polar bears, I shouldn't have to be villainized for listening to a bit of Jackson Five without guilt. Fuggedaboudit.

Anyhow.

Life is exciting.

Going to Seattle in a few weeks.

Moving house in a few weeks.

Listening to the Sex Me remix by the R.

Drankin a bit of ole Jim Beam.

Life could not be better than it is at this particular moment in time.

I should really write to you more often. The 'Stoph's guidance counselor advised him to drink three glasses of red wine, then sit down to write his Bachelorarbeit, then go back the next day and correct all the follies of alcohol consumption. The point is to prime the pump. Although the 'Stoph does not drink red wine. Forget it. He'll get there one way or the other.

I could be a famous drunk asshole. At least we'd be sure I'd get something written. Even if it was a bit crap and I was too proud to correct it the next day. (I did that with a book I wrote once. Two hundred and forty pages in, I'd get drunk, write twenty pages, go back the next day and have to delete them all. Drunken writing is fun but not quality.)

Hi, Mel.

Purple Haze

So for the last six days I have been unwholesomely sick. Like the kind of unwell you can imagine cutting down hundreds of thousands of medieval Europeans. Even today, as I went back to work, I noticed: I'm still not really right.

Saturday I tried to work, and just sort of wandered around the place like a zombie for a few hours before the rest of the staff literally forcibly sent me home. I came back and fell into the bed and did not emerge from it except to urinate for nearly three days. I was dizzy, nauseous, delirious, freezing, sweaty.

How? How can I have been deathly ill now four times since September? It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Or does it? Does it make sense that in what might be the filthiest city in the general, overall filthiness of Europe that a young American might fall prey to whatever comes around? I feel like a Native American, my populations being decimated by the numerous communicable diseases the Europeans have been infecting each other with for millennia.

Hopefully now that I've survived the plague, dropsy, typhoid, dyssentary, whooping cough, smallpox and tuberculosis I can focus my eyeballs long enough to keep blogging.

It's a Jungle in Here

Now as a rule I don't follow politics of any kind. Have had a boycott for several years now.

But as I was waiting on a friend who never showed up (left her phone at the flat), I sat down with my super expensive (you don't want to know how expensive) electronic dictionary and settled down to read some German news. Among the tedious details of Madonna's landing in the city and heading straight for an exclusive private club (Soho House, for those in the know) and how many ways pork fat can't kill you was an actually interesting article about the Green Party Minister, who is a dirty Turk that wants to save the whales and the polar ice caps and all sorts of things people from the second-and-a-half world aren't supposed to care about.

The interviewers had the nerve to ask this guy if he would send his own child to a school full of dirty Turks, which is something the average German attempts to avoid. The claim is that a good German child learns less among dirty Turks, because the Turkish children speak German only as a second language and drag down the pace of the class. Whether there is any merit to this claim is up to the people who know how to use Google to find out. Those of us who don't just form our opinions based on prejudices, like everyone else.

Anyhow. So this Turkish Green Party dude said, yes, of course. My little girl will be entering a Kreuzberg public school in the fall. Kreuzberg public schools are the nightmares of every German parent who wants their kid to grow up and do something other than auto mechanics. The idea is that your precious snowflake will never make it to university if it has to share finger paints with the children of immigrants.

Besides the fact that it would not fit with his politics not to do so, this guy really couldn't go around not sending his kid to a school full of Turkish kids, so, while the headline was all big and obnoxious, like, "KNOWN TURK SENDS HALF-TURKISH CHILD TO TURKISH SCHOOL. SCANDAL?" I was like, "um, of course."

It reminded me, however, of the public school teachers we had who sent their kids to private school. Like, it's good enough for you to come here and earn your paycheck, but not good enough to send your own kids to? I never understood how these teachers could think that they were tough enough to brave the jungle that is public school but that their kids could not hack it.

What kind of message does that send to their own students? To their co-workers who were educated and educate their own children in the public school system?

I have yet to meet a private school kid who was significantly smarter than a public school kid anyway, or one that used his extracurricular time better. Without school-sponsored team sports all a private school kid has to do is steal his parents car and use to do drugs during school hours (like a good friend of mine did whose mother taught at our school).

Usually I attempt to lend a moral to the story but there is none today. Sending your kids to public school will not only not kill them but it is also not news. I wonder if it's too late to get my 75 cents back for the paper.

Today I did something weird

You're not going to believe me, but yesterday, I completely forgot to use the internet.

I'm serious. Well, partially. At first, it was kind of intentional. I'm starting to realize that I spend far, far too much time on the interwebs, and so I've been trying to cut back from the top down. Like a smoker who waits until after lunch for his first cigarette, I'm trying to just get through breakfast without turning on the computer.

So it went quite well yesterday, pushing through breakfast while reading an actual book written on actual paper and staring at my husband out of the corner of my eye.

Then, as it was my Sunday, I took a wee nap, had a cup of coffee, contemplated laundry, decided against it, and read some more in my book.

But wait. Halfway through my day off, and something is missing. Should I go for a walk? Should I do some laundry? The answer to both questions is yes but I did neither. Instead I went out to eat some lunch.

Came back, farted around some more, still didn't know exactly what was missing. There are plenty of days when I don't do much but fart around and go out to lunch and not do laundry but they all feel like RED LETTER DAYS because of the FUCKING EXCITEMENT the internet provides me.

But I forgot.

I almost forgot today, but my book started to freak me out and I didn't feel like watching TV.

Let's see if I don't forget the internet tomorrow.

I want YOU to stop being such a dick

When I see really, truly nosy people, I'm always surprised when they don't come from one of those places where everybody is nosy, like China or Turkey or the Amazon or something, when they're not ex-villagers or tribesmen accustomed to seeing everybody naked, knowing what everybody's shit smells like and when every woman has her period and commenting openly on the minutest details of other people's lives then giving them unsolicited advice. Or are older than the age of 10. No one is bothered by a staring child or a meddling Vietnamese neighbor, but in good Protestant nations it is the norm to only stick your nose in a stranger's business until you've been caught, at which time you whistle innocently and slyly wait for your next opportunity to look over their shoulder without being observed doing so.

I'm also surprised every time an asshole tells me I should not allow myself to be bothered by his assholiness. Like, really dude? That's all ya got? Yeah you're a dick but I'm the one with the problem? I guess in a way they're right: they're an asshole and they're cool with it, but also, they're an asshole and I'm not cool with it. Who's got the actual problem?

I'd love nothing more than to go on some hippie tangent about shaping your own reality and being at harmony with the world and that but honestly, more than anything in the world, more than a pony or the reversal of global warming, I wish for a day when people would just quit being dicks to the people around them. Just... stop.

How hard can it be? To take two seconds to NOT be a dick. I mean, really, it takes more effort to BE a dick than it does to not be one. At least in the provocative sense. It's easy to react like an asshole, but to be one out of the blue requires dedication. Premeditation, plan Bs. The careful construction of a social interaction, in which you turn out to be the dick. And this is your goal.

So I'm sitting here in one of my favorite Berlin bars and tapping away at the computer screen. Writing. Clearly engrossed. Could be writing anything from an email consoling someone on the untimely loss of a spouse or a terminal diagnosis (not the case) to updating my CV or writing my super vitally important thesis (also not the case) to an argument on an internet forum (the case). All of a sudden the bored dick sitting next to me decides it would be a good idea to stare unabashedly at my screen. I look at him. He looks at me and laughs. I wait for him to stop. He keeps staring, entertaining himself to no end. I partially block his vision with my right hand.

Unprompted, he advises, "You know, you really shouldn't get so excited about people reading your stuff."

(excuse me bitte schön but did I say a word to you?)

"It's my natural right sitting here to look at whatever I please in this place."

"And it's also your right to be impolite?" (that is the closest Germans have to rude. Another word they don't have which I would have loved to use is the word "nosy". Just doesn't exist. Because Germans are rude and nosy. There are no special words for it, it's just how people are. And if we believe what the linguists say about language shaping the norms of a society then we can reasonably assume that the reason so many Germans are both rude and nosy is because they have not created a word for either trait which describes it in a disparaging sense.)

"Let me give you a tip. If you sit--"

"Excuse me, YOU'RE going to give ME a tip? Haha ok bitteschön"

"Yes and here's the tip Schatz. Don't get so bent out of shape about people reading over your shoulder. You're the one with the problem. People are going to do whatever they want."

"That's the tip, is it?"

"That's the tip. I will read whatever I like and there's nothing you can do about it."

(silence. I literally have nothing to say, in either language, to this buffoon. I nod at him with a look on my face that says "you're a madman and I clearly have no constructive response to your madness you mad person you.")

The guy stares some more, and after having been startled by his intrusive, painfully conspicuous social retardation I'm no longer looking annoyed or surprised, just sitting there with my hands away from the keyboard, unwilling to type a single stroke more until he's quite finished. Finally the game gets boring even for him and he goes, "not that I even feel like reading right now anyway. I'd read it if I felt like it but it doesn't even interest me." Huff.

The main reason I get annoyed by people reading over my shoulder is because I'm nearly always reading or writing in English and people here think that they can be "impolite" and "curious" (that's the closest you get to "nosy") to you because you are just a dumb tourist and what are you going to do about it anyway? There're also a lot of people who assume that just because you're reading or writing in English that you don't speak German and this makes their game even more fun because what could be better than needling a stupid foreigner who couldn't even be bothered to learn the language of the land? They don't like it? They can go back to wherever they came from.

I don't have a detailed description of how I react to such behavior in the States because it very rarely happens with anybody other than 10-year-old Chinese children with Down's Syndrome and autism at the same time. Everybody else knows better.

But the truly baffling part came next. When he was finished harassing me, the guy turned to his buddy and continued the conversation he'd been having before. I had quite naturally assumed that because I'm sitting at the bar of a cheap, smoky communist dive and being bothered by a stranger that he was drunk and alone and therefore not responding very gracefully to being rebuffed at what could have been a simple attempt to make contact with another human being and really, what can you expect when you sit at the bar of any bar but to be chatted up by other people on their own; it's a given, to be anticipated and if you don't like it you should have sat in a dark corner by yourself somewhere, with your jacket and bag on the empty chair and all your books and newspapers and pencils and shit spread across the table so as to eliminate the possibility of any unwelcome intruders placing down a second drink. But no. He actually interrupted his own conversation to make me feel uncomfortable and give me a "tip". And to call me "Schatz" (literally translated, "treasure", when spoken by a man to a strange woman takes on the equivalent of a bitchy, queeny gay man condescendingly calling you "sweetie" or "honey". Which was surprising because while the guy himself could have been gay I would never have pegged his companion as so and I didn't get the memo that straight guys were hanging solo with gay guys in dirty smoky communist bars these days. Maybe they were brothers. Adopted.)

So now, this guy has so little sense in his stupid pointy head, that half an hour later, he decides to try his game again. This time, I'm reading and not writing, so I just let him point his stupid face at my screen and read away to his heart's content, knowing that the reason he is being such a stupid cunt about it all is because he can't read a word of it anyway. He tries to get a reaction out of me, stretching out his stupid neck and looking at me and laughing, then trying the whole sad action again, and failing to get a reaction.

Seems if he'd really expected me to take his valuable tip to heart he'd have not bothered trying to get his jollies from attempting to rile me up. I mean Lord only knows that it makes all logical sense, accosting people minding their own business at the bar and then accusing them of reacting poorly and THEN having the nerve to give them tips on how to deal with bastards like yourself.

One of my favorite things to say to nosy people is, "I'm here minding my own business, just like you ought to be doing." Didn't have the words for that in German. Must apply myself to finding a suitable translation. Not that it would probably do any good, nosy bastards, the lot of 'em.

Douche. Bag! Get a life, loser, and seriously, why you gotta be such a dick? Life could be so much easier for all of us.