Pee Age Dee

I am dreaming of a little gnome, coming up the stairs at night, giving me my academic title. It is a dream indeed. I think that I will win a Grammy or an Oscar before that.
Ah, a new dream. The Bauernbergpark Man, returning from his imprisonment, will sit on his park bench, smiling this time and he will say: "Ahh Dr Archy 2000, how are you today?"
Ok. Stop. I should stop drinking this non-alcoholic wheat beer.
I should draw another Neruda question.
Or meditate.
Or better work on my thesis.
Hmpf.

Mother Russia

I grew up in an area that was occupied by Russian troops from 1945-1955. However I lived there from 1980-1990. That was my time to occupy that land.

So my connections to Mother Russia are very loose. I do not know many Russian people, myself. Those that I know, I appreciate very much.

All I know about Russians from the post-war period is based on tales from my grandmother and all I recall is that the Russians did not have the chewing gum: the US boys did. In spite of this difference in resources Austria stayed neutral.

Nowadays the Russians have much more chewing gum than for instance let’s say the Ukraine. The Crimean people, whose flag gave away the game before the referendum, crave more chewing gum, among other things.

I think Austria regardless of its incorruptibility by chewing gum shall stay neutral again.

Signs of the Bauernbergpark Man

Last autumn he spent about five days in the park.
Then he disappeared again.
A few days ago I was walking my dog along the north end of the park, when a police car stopped. It was the third one that I saw that day near the park. They were looking for the Man.
I did not see him that day and have not met him since.
However, the policemen did not get out of they cars to look for him in the park.
"How strange" I thought and walked my dog back home, past the place where once the park benches stood, that had been the home of the Man for many a night.

Friends will be friends

In the 1986 promo video of friends will be friends, Freddie looks as if he is the healthiest one of them all. However, he was the first one of them to go.
I came across this video after spending a nice evening in my favorite bar and my favorite restaurant with one of my favorite friends. We were having a perfect time although we had to talk about serious incidents and developments around us.
Friends will be friends right 'till the end.
I am not such a big Queen fan anymore although it was my number one band 26 years ago. We all change, and the world around us changes even faster.
I am glad, that in the middle of this stream we can sometimes hold on to the tiny islands of our friendships, rest for a while and enjoy.

Thank you out there...

Information

So let’s start all over again. Empty the cup. All over again.

After huge, massive loads of information have entered my cerebrum, me being unable to hold back the throngs of bits and bytes with my thalamus, I resign, sitting in the train back home again.

I start all over again. Empty the cup. All over again.

Today you can get information everywhere. No wonder, for it is the age of information in an information society. Countless websites torture you with news of the world. Even if you restrict your interests to scientific websites and news, it is amazing what you can find. Truckloads of innovation, giant heaps of breakthroughs, countless wizards of the modern age, inhabit newspapers, TV and the web. It is fantastic.

But I start all over again. I will empty the cup. All over again.

Here, where I am sitting, it has become peaceful now. Although we are moving at a speed of 220km/h it is rather quiet. Is that an illusion? Or is everything else an illusion: synthetic biology, nanotechnology, stem cell research, IVF, nuclear power.

I start all over again. I am emptying the cup right now. All over again.

Finally, I stop considering all these technoscientific advances. Even my private worries stop bothering me. It is easy. The secret is: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7…

Sochi

Some time ago I had a very strenuous but enlightening conversation with a full-time professional blogger, who earns money from advertisements in his blog. He said that it is crucial to head a blog entry with a controversial or at least actual topic, so that anyone looking for that issue would come to YOUR page.

You might think that I am following that advice right now.

However, I want to analyse the not very obvious connection between the Bauernbergpark Man and the current Olympic games.

Two years ago, the Bauernbergpark Man gathered gravel, for his small gravel heaps, when he moved backward and scared away a bird, a sparrow by the way. This bird flew to a nearby restaurant to get some breadcrumbs for his naturally occurring hunger. He found some and as an exchange gift, he defecated on the stone floor of the restaurant garden. I came along and walked into the faeces, thus carrying along the bird excrements to my home where I left my shoe in front of the door. How the shoe and the bird excrements find their connection to the women’s ski jump final in Sochi is obvious now, isn’t it. We (Austria) won a silver medal in this competition, and if the Bauernbergpark Man knew about all that he would be very happy about it.

Zu faul (too lazy)

Zu faul zu recherchieren sitze ich hier im Railjet von Wien nach Linz. Wäre ich nicht zu faul, so würde ich nach den zwei Gedichten nun ein wenig recherchieren und was in mein kleines Heiligenlexikon schreiben. Stattdessen schreibe ich noch einen Blogeintrag auf Deutsch. Ja ich bin sogar zu faul um ihn auf Englisch zu schreiben. So denke ich mal in meiner Sprache über den Bauernbergpark Mann nach und stelle fest, dass er schon wieder verschwunden ist.

Ja, zu meinen Blogregeln kommt dann auch noch dazu, dass man möglichst auch öfter die Sprache wechseln soll, um die letzten zu vergraulen.

Und wer Kant nicht gelesen hat, mit dem rede ich erst gar nicht.

Schmoll.

News again

Today I posted some comments to an Austrian news article on genetically modified corn. The more subtle and intelligent the post was the less reaction was there from the other posters. I received most feedback to stupid and polarizing posts. “How interesting”, I thought.

What lessons can be learnt for the blog? I will stop writing about the Bauernbergpark Man in a neutral, descriptive fashion. I will just write extreme right or left (depending on the weather) commentaries on world events.

This will give me the audience I’ve been yearning for all these blogging years full of sadness and solitude. But when will I do that?

Giving up writing about the Bauernbergpark and its dwellers is harder than giving up smoking.

But I will try tomorrow. I swear.

How to write a blog

Here are a few guiding principles (the ten commandments of blogging):

1. First read a book on how to write and don’t rely on web entries like this one.

2. Don’t write a blog at all. You keep ending up reading your follower statistics too often and lose your self-respect after a while.

3. Write about the Baurnbergpark or the Bauernbergpark Man as often as possible.

4. Don’t reveal your identity. Just wait until people queue up in the Bauernberpark to watch you and your dog go past to see how you really look like.

5. Irritate people by writing about as many topics as possible, even in one entry if possible. That avoids boring your audience.

6. Change occasionally to a sort of meta-narrative, talking about your blog or talking about your own stories. That irritates people even more.

7. Incorporate words like terror attack, Djihad, president and so on in close proximity to each other to attract at least the attention of the NSAs or of similar institutions.

8. Some name dropping like “Aristotle said…” or “I don’t like Descartes, because…” is also very important.

9. Use black background and white print until someone says: That hurts my eyes. Then you have achieved one of the bloggers’ holy goals: to have impact

10. Blog on

Neverwhere German (Spoiler)

Neverwhere Neil Gaiman

 

Das Buch, bei dem ich das Gefühl bekommen habe, dass ich alt werde, dass ich nicht mehr ein Kind dieser Zeit bin, sondern schon einer älteren Generation angehöre, heißt Neverwhere und ist von Neil Gaiman. Die Geschichte ist schnell erzählt, noch schneller als Neil Gaiman sie erzählt. Ein junger Mann, etwas unreif und in einer nur vermeintlich glücklichen Beziehung und ebenso tollem Job, wird durch einen Zwischenfall in eine Parallelwelt gerissen, in das London below. Dort herrschen andere Gesetzte, vieles ist ungleich bedrohlicher als in London „above“ und auch nicht ganz so langweilig. Und das ist scheinbar Gaimans Hauptintention. Es darf niemals langweilig werden. In der Kürze liegt die Würze. Manch ein Charakter hat eine Lebenserwartung von ein paar Seiten, alles wird zügig abgehandelt. Lange Beschreibungen, subtile Charakterzeichnungen oder gar tiefsinnige Dialoge sind nicht so gefragt. So durchsteht Richard Mayhew allerlei Abenteuer, besteht ein Gottesurteil (für mich das Beste an der Geschichte), besiegt das Biest von London, was sich auch schon in Träumen abzeichnet und steht am Schluss zwischen der Entscheidung zwischen London above und London below. Jetzt habe ich natürlich schon zu viel verraten, doch wird ohnehin so viel erzählt, dass noch genug davon übrig ist. Der Siegfried des Nibelungenlieds ist ebenso zu finden, wie unzählige andere Mythen. Alles in allem ist Neverwhere eigentlich eine Graphic Novel ohne Bilder, und die Dichte und das Tempo der Handlung werden auch verständlich wenn man weiß, dass es sich um ein Script für eine BBC Serie handelt. Für mich alten Mann ist die ganze Geschichte viel zu schnell erzählt, ich kann da halt nicht mehr mit. Wer aber etwas gegen Langeweile braucht, und gerne Comics liest, der hat in Neverwhere einen unbestrittenen Schatz gefunden.