yeah yeah, treegugger, yeah... No really!!

yeah yeah, treegugger, yeah yeah, whatever

open letter to UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-Mon

Dear UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Mon,
I write in regards to developments in Burma. An international push is under way to put pressure on the dictators of this country whose population has been languishing outside our conscience and in China’s shadow for too long. The 2007 uprising of the monks and the dictators’ coldhearted response to both the uprising and cyclone Nargis highlight the urgent need for international action at the same time as our continued appeasement in the face of atrocities committed on a daily basis is a lowlight of global morality.

This lowlight will not be healed by inaction.

I recently spent a month in this country, whose people are, despite the awful conditions that they are forced to endure as a result of our unethical inaction and our thirst for cheap teak and rubies, the most hospitable I have ever encountered. They would have ample reason for hatred of individual visitors and the world at large. Yet their strength of conviction in a better day to come is unshaken and a welcoming smile greets the visitor as long as he does not carry the dictators' stick in his hand. Let us support them in this most noble of endeavors. Let us not ignore their plight in order to uphold an amoral status quo.

I urge you do add your voice to that of millions of people around the world as well as 112 former Presidents and Prime Ministers. My happiness at their unified message is only colored by the knowledge that it is certainly easy to call for change once they are out of office. Please do not follow their lead and add a useless, if morally compelling voice, to the chorus once you are out of office.

I am sending this letter to my friends to add themselves to the growing list of malcontent, as well as publishing it on my blog where you may read it at:

http://mindgloaming.blogspot.com/2009/04/open-letter-to-un-sec-gen-ban-ki-mon.html

Kind Regards,
Peter Illetschko

Sign here to to add your voice

if you ever wondered what CRAZY really means...

60 minutes of darkness

It is that time of the year again. As last year I am asking you all to turn it off! Maybe you want to have a romantic candle light dinner. Or try that new windup flashlight you got from auntie at christmas. Or maybe you just want to make a statement about how much less energy we could all be using. Let us all put out money were our mouths are!

zaisu!

Usually it is my rule not to post any pictures and stories of my home or physical/psychological underwear etc. Some of you might ask, what is the point? And rightfully so. I am already posting pictures of my naked behind in front of certain Austrian castles. It's a prostitute that doesn't kiss sort of rule. Rather pointless, although who am I to judge the oldest job in the world. So forget it, here is the newest addition to my home.

Yukio San can attest to how difficult it is to get a Zaisu in the States. They are really common in Japan. I have been looking for one for a while now and found an online store that sold them completely overpriced. But since it is the only one, they set the price. And your desire decides if you pay it or not.

So they sent me the wrong size. And the wrong pattern, and I told them I would like a different one, and they said that they don't do returns (who does that?!?!?!), and I should check their policy (who does that?!?!?!), so I called my bank to reverse the card payment (oh, I SO do that!!!), Bank said that I need to send the item back first and have a receipt, which is of course ridiculous because what if they don't take it, or throw it away and say they never received, but I send it back, because the little one is truly to silly little, and of course the hard core superfriendly JP girl there rejects the Zaisu, but does call me because she realizes that I will go all the way, and offers me the larger one without any cover, which is why it looks nice like this, because their covers are just tacky, but in the meantime the little Zaisu comes back to me, because once you reject UPS they never go back, so I send it again, and now she takes it, and she sends the big one back, and now you know why it is worth my time to write this excrement of a post, and your duty to suffer through it with me - Sumimasen.

Soso, I give you the Zaisu (hontoni):



And this is when you look really comfortable siting on the floor in your Zaisu that you are really happy with because it was such a female dog to get it in the first place:


But did someone really do this thing on the bottom left? No wonder they don't do returns. "Young Master on Zaisu not practice balancing if Young Master the force wants to bend to his will."

Now the only thing left to do, is get rid of half of my stuff because I realize that I look like a crazy Japanophile. My excuse is that all of these things accumulated incrementally. My place looks like a version of Michael Dell's pad on negative steroids. Luckily enough I have increased my skill at reduction of meaningless material attachments over the course of my travels. Unluckily enough I really like the things (very few) that I have now.

But here comes Gröni with "Enough is too little - Genug ist zuwenig" (which is not the title of this song but a line in it. The title is "Everything remains different - Bleibt alles anders") - leave it to ze Germans to find a philosophical none-conclusion to my dilemma.

Deutschland Deutschland über alles

München, Hochsommer, 38°C.

Auf gut bayrisch: es is sauhoaß! Mitten in der Isar steht ein Mann in Badehose und füllt einen Maßkrug mit Flußwasser. Als er daraus trinken will, brüllt ihn ein Münchner an:
"Hä, du, wos machst'n du do? Spinnst du vielleicht?
Du konnst doch ned des dreckerte Isarwasser saufa!
Da werst doch krank, kriagst an sakrischen Durchfoi und speib'n muaßt g'wiß aa drauf.
D'Hund und Katz'n scheiß'n eini, des is durch und durch mit Bakterien verseicht.
Konnst froh sei, wennst net draufgehst dabei!"

Der Mann in der Isar hält inne und ruft dem Bayern am Ufer zu:
"Wat ham se jesacht, Mann? Sprechen Se keen Deutsch, wa?"

Drauf plärrt der Bayer in perfektem Hochdeutsch noch lauter zurück:
"Gaaanz laaaangsam triiiiinken, daaaas Waaaaasser iiiiist seeeeehr kaaaalt!"

euro ma(i)le man vacation

My Brother has for ages and a day been that reliable soul that delivers all the little important and not so important posted items to the people of the Landstraße District of Vienna. You can all imagine that being a male man is not hugely lucrative. But its steady and satisfying work. All those happy faces when that summons from court knocks you in the back of the head, or that long sought lover finally tells you to bugger off. And let us not forget all that junky mail from people that are so friendly that they send it to you without even knowing you. But if it is riches that you are after choose a different route.

Now riddle me this. I know a bunch of people like my brother in Austria. Not making a ton of money but paying a ton of taxes. In exchange they get crappy weather and long vacations on balconia. Hold on, did I say long vacations on balconia? Well, shiver me timbers, but my brother and his dear wife are embarking on another Mediteranean Cruise soon. Here is the map of the tour:

So maybe not all of them go on these cruises. But then again this special ed teacher (no they are not any better paid than the ones in the States) I know goes on four week trips to India and Machu Pichu. All these low-paid, socialist, health-insurance-enjoying, life-expectancy-increasing, boorish, constantly topless running around Europeans can afford what none of the citizens of the home of the brave and the free get to do. Enjoy life.

Or when is the last time you heard of anyone going on a four week vacation to anywhere? We get four weeks in two years. And most of us, if our firm would let us go on vacation for more than two weeks at a time, would not be able to afford anything but, you guessed it, going to balconia.

Lolita and The Reader

Recently I watched The Reader. Even though I was told by my chick friends that this is a chick flick (I never cease to be amazed at women's propensity to call themselves chicks. I guess it is the same as with the N-Word. They can say it, but I can't. Somehow my first amendment vocabulary access right is slowly but surely tending to zero. Some of you may think that a good think(g) -cough, you didn't see that- considering the quality of my writing. Maybe I should call them the C-Word, but that could be entirely and obscenely misunderstood).

I had read the book a few years back, and thought it to be one of the more powerful pieces of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. And without pride I will call myself an expert on that, which is, as most/some/little of me, to be credited to my familial environment. I was raised on a steady diet of books, exhibitions and thought patterns of anti fascist/burning babies/holocaust/war/Hiroshima/vietnam/global warming (in the 80s, when it was still called Greenhouse Effect). So naturally I was interested in the movie, and thought that since this does not require any special effects or grand mythological spectacles the movie might actually do the book justice. As a side note: The German title: Der Vorleser much better signifies the main story line of the book than the English The Reader. Jungchen (Kid) does not merely read, he reads to her. Impossible to translate, I know, poor nuance-less language.

It also didn't require that stupid coming and going German accent that Frau Oscar Winner displays. Do Americans really think that this is what Germans sound like when they speak German? But in the end it is much more a movie about illiteracy and it's possible consequences. If your (K)id doesn't want to learn how to read after this you have thoroughly unmotivated offspring. But let us forget about the Oscars going to another Holocaust movie, let us forget the accent, let us forget even all the truths contained in this work. Instead, let us focus on one thing:

A 30-something having sex with a 15 year old. And they don't just have sex. Even in this hollywood movie, where sex is a sort of disembodied, none-physical, guilty experience, they get it on wherever it is possible to get it on in post war Germany without getting arrested. Yes, I know its a turn-on.

But so is Jeremy Irons, who is a pretty good actor. Has done some pretty good and riské work. Should be getting an Oscar as soon as he sees himself through to making a Holocaust movie. But when he gets it on with a young girl in Lolita: huge outcry. Tagline: A forbidden love. An unthinkable attraction. The ultimate price.

Compare this to plot line for The Reader: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as...

So as a purely sociological question, without any ideological undertone about the double standards in our societies we should ask ourselves why we react a certain way. Why are you outraged at Lolita and comfortable with The Reader. Why do I think it's nice to be taught the ins and outs, as it were, by an experienced woman (and this is emphasized in the movie when Jungchen seems so much more adult compared to his peers after being with Frau Schmitz)? Why do women the world over, the ones who know about sex, think dirtily to themselves "Hm, I betcha Kid knows what he is doing, now that he's all growed up"? But when I think of an experienced man teaching a young girl certain things the hair on the back of my neck stands up and I want to rush out with a large tree trunk to obliterate the dirty bastard and rescue the sweet damsel (to return to her raving mad father of course. Out of the gutter with your mind).

Also, Fiennes absolutely kills Winslet in about a tenth of the screen time.

open letter to The Economist

Dear Sirs,

I always enjoy reading your magazine. Since I fall into a rather "green" or Naderish political category I like having my paradigms shifted by your unabashed promotion of capitalism. However, in your recent article "Machines that can see", dated march 7th, 2009 your lack of analysis goes to far.

My disagreement with your biased view on this could easily be measured by the frown on my face. And you wouldn't need Omron Corporation's device to proof my disgust. Do you really only see monetary value in controlling us (the toiling masses, if you need it to be spelled out) better with the help of around-the-clock surveillance? How about the pursuit of liberty? Are we all just automata to be controlled for the benefit of greater rationalization?

The only good thing about this article and indeed about this topic is the unanimous voice in the comments in your online edition. Not a single person there shares your enthusiasm for these developments. And I urge all of them to send letters to their democratic representatives. Do it before Google sells your disagreement, expressed in an email such as this, to the highest bidder. This needs to be regulated more so than the financial world. It is no coincidence that the same people who are the cause of the current economic malaise would most likely jump at the chance to implement some of these Dr Evil technologies that you seem to love so much.

When the governments of the world increased surveillance and red-herringed us with library subscription surveillance I was worried about my privacy. Now that business is jumping on this bandwagon, it is time to really be scared. I must start thinking of going off the grid - and I am a rather stable, none-conspiracy-theory kind of person. I do not look forward to having an eye replacement surgery á la Minority Report in order to escape the all seeing eye of Big Brother.

Illetschko Peter