Tribal? No, varicose.

"Pretty wild tattoo for her age", I thought when the expensively dressed lady passed in front of my lawn chair. D'oh. No tattoo. Not even a patterned pantyhose. Sorry.

Stuff white people like

I don't know. What do I think about this? As a part of tonight's "Long Night of Museums" the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology featured a couple of activities dealing with Native American culture. At 9 pm Stormy Red Door, a Montana-born Dakota/Assiniboin now living in Northern Germany, performed the ceremonial act of lighting the fire. The crowd watched attentively, bison bratwurst in one hand, Beck's beer in the other while Stormy Red Door was waving his feathers in all four directions. After the ceremony he asked the audience in a very low voice to "please respect the spirits" or - as the museum staff put it –"Well guys, don't throw your cigarette butts into the fire". Now I ask myself: Can a performance like that ever be more than entertainment?  The museum itself says "We, as a Museum of Ethnology, try to contribute to a better cross-cultural understanding by encouraging other cultures to play an active role within our Museum." But: Can this "active role" ever be more than a role in a staged spectacle? 

Next item on the agenda: music and dances of the Plains Indians with the "Elk Singers" and the "Northern Dogs". No doubt - a great show, but hey... what's wrong with white people? Why is it always easier to identify with a foreign culture or religion? Because we don't have anything in our own culture and heritage that we relate to and dare to identify with? Why do so many people who set out to find themselves look in the most distant places? Why don't they just ring their own door bells? Maybe they're at home already! Is that it? Do we forget that we are at home already? That we have been all the time? That there is no way we can get lost, because there is no other place than here and now? I don't know. I truly don't know.

Second sculpture find in German cave reveals „penises probably overrated“.

The "Schelklingen John Doe"

The "Schelklingen Venus"

BERLIN – After the presentation of a 35,000-year-old ivory carving of a busty woman found in a German cave yesterday, archaeologists unveiled a second spectacular find this morning. The „new“ carving found in Germany's Hohle Fels cave depicts a completely ordinary man with a beer belly, flabby arms and a tiny penis.

The Hohle Fels cave discovery suggests the humans, who are believed to have come to Europe around 40,000 years ago, had the intelligence to create symbols and think abstractly in a way that matches the modern human. „Carbon dating reveals both sculpture were done by a woman artist,“ said archeologist Lisa Özdemir. „While the female carving expresses a vibrant sexuality, the male figurine’s physique is rather boring. This leads us to the assumption that the importance of the penis is probably overrated.“ Scientists from renowned international universities agreed that after the discovery of the "Schelkingen John Doe" penile history has to be rewritten.

Atlantis at launch pad after Hubble reports Horsehead Nebula completely made of hair

With the launch of space shuttle Atlantis just one day away, the final countdown status briefing is set for 10 a.m. from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The briefing will be carried live on NASA TV, and participants will include NASA Test Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, STS-125 Payload Manager Debbie Hahn, and Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters.

This morning, STS-125 Commander Scott Altman and Pilot Gregory C. Johnson are once again practicing landings in the Shuttle Training Aircraft. At Launch Pad 39A, the rotating service structure that surrounds Atlantis will be rolled back into its launch position at 5 p.m. EDT.

Late yesterday, Space Shuttle Program managers met and gave the green light for tomorrow's launch of this final mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In a briefing for the media, Mission Management Team Chairman Mike Moses said launch controllers are not working any issues that would prevent an on-time liftoff tomorrow at 2:01 p.m. EDT.

Could I grant Google access to my brain?

Recently I have noticed a change in my dreams. As a child my worst nightmares were about falling off the railroad bridge in front of my kindergarten, the whirling witch who lived in the hall, and the unability to warn people of evil because I had lost my voice (analyze this!). The funny thing about the latter is that I still have dreams with the same content (no communication possible), but that instead of my silent screaming I find myself desperately texting on my cell phone, but I get all the letters and numbers wrong, there are no numbers at all, or the connection fails. To make a long dream short: I lose my digital voice. Interestingly enough those mashups also happen to me in the daytime. Where did I put the pressure cooker? My first thought is to give it a call and locate it by its ringtone. I subconsciously recognize a vibration - my cell phone? No, just a thunderstorm. Where is the book I just finished reading? My brain suggests searching the shelf with google. Is this scary? I don't think so. Actually I really, really need a strong search engine for my brain. Too many things are sitting in its dark and damp corners (like Latin, knitting or the recipe for lemon pie), inaccessible for the computing powers of my own mind. Unfortunately the buzz words "highly available", "on demand" or "scalability" don't apply to the cloud computing network that is my brain. I would love to get some support from Google here. 

New venue for cock fights in Hamburg opened on Tuesday.

Enjoy Labor Day demonstrations from the privacy of your own home.

Violent Labor Day demonstrations are an integral part of German festive culture. But whereas in previous years the opposing political groups were as easy to tell apart as soccer teams, left wing and right wing participants this season look more and more alike. Black sunglasses, black pants, black sweater, black balaclava seems to be the way to go. And since the police follows this style guide as well, it can be pretty hard to find the black block you politically identify with. I suggest you enjoy May Day from the privacy of your own home and build your personal one-man/one-woman black block. It might not be as much fun, but it sure is safer.

My top five conspiracy theories about who is responsible for the outbreak of Swine Flu.

1. The North American Union (One nation under one epidemic)

2. Twitter (Give them something to tweet about!)

3. The face mask industry (any questions?)

4. South Korean scientists (no, wait - they were the ones with the fluorescent puppies, right?)

5. Pigs (Harrharrharr! Look who’s laughing now!)

Keep your eyes and ears open. Don't let them fool you!

Marine mammals file class action suit against popular ecotourism beach resort.

What's wrong with the market? Mu!

When reading about the dynamics of „The Economic Crisis“, its impact and causes, I have the impression that most contributors to the debate miss a crucial point. There seems to be a great need for the identification of someone to blame, someone who is responsible for the collaps of the markets. Now, responsibility implies intention, and intention implies free will. From my experience as an advertising professional I know that free will is amazingly hard to find in big corporations. This doesn’t mean that executive managers don’t know what they’re doing. They know what they are doing, but they don’t know why. They don’t know because it doesn’t matter as long as they abide by the laws of their corporation – with corporations being subsystems in the bigger system that we call „the free market“ or even „capitalism“.
Humans acting within systems unfortunately tend to forget that these systems are man-made structures that serve no other purpose than their happiness. Instead of shaping these structures for their own best, people accept them as unalterable. Thus the system becomes autonomous. Suddenly it has its own rules and logic, its own symbols, meanings and mechanisms, it forgets about ist goals and becomes an end in itself. This makes it possible that people can be very successful within the system, i.e. the corporation, while at the same time their actions are extremely harmful to others. As soon as we forget that systems like the economy, the nation or religion are a mere framework for human relationships and not absolute, we lose ourselves again in the depths of self-incurred immaturity. Even fighting "the system" means believing in it and contributing to its continuing existence. But if we manage to see the current economic crisis as a chance to challenge our own beliefs of what is real and what is not, we can actually emerge stronger than ever. If we stop considering ourselves victims to the systems we constitute, these systems lose their power over us. If we realize that we have everything we need and that we actually own the world, we can finally stop trying to win it. Greed is for people who feel poor. Do executive managers have Buddha-nature or not? Mu!

New on my list of things I never knew existed: the cheese fetish.

O là là, look at Camembertine and how she melts lewdly on the wooden cutting board...

Ah, oui... C'est si bon... Fromagette obviously loves playing with her strawberries.

Don't get me wrong: I am a lover of cheese. But... on a more platonic level. I was pretty surprised today to learn that there actually is something like a cheese fetish. Would that still be a carnal desire? Anyway, I'm not judgemental. If people like to make love to an aged Gruyere that's perfectly okay. I just wonder about a couple of things: 

1. How do they date? Do they pick their sweethearts from the store down the street for a one night stand? 

2. Do they tell their partners? What do you say when your husband finds a Gorgonzola stain on the sheets?

3. Do they do sex tourism? Are the streets of Alkmaar filled with people who secretely lust for intimacies with the juicy yellow beauties?

Please, if you have answers, let me know. Maybe there is a market for cheese porn. And I really have to make some money now.

The zombie bunnies say Happy Easter!

Customers who got arrested for the possession of this item also liked this item.

You know that you are traveling a lot, ...

... when the "welcome back" balloon you got after your last trip still looks good when you are leaving for the next one. 

No girl is an island.

Lillian was an island girl. She loved the sea and its temper, its mood swings in spring, and how it changed color with the approaching storm. Every afternoon she walked down to her favorite spot on the dock and watched the sun set. Lillian was happy. Until one day she wasn't happy anymore. And since she was not only an island girl, but also the only girl on the island - and more precisely: the only person on this deserted, godforsaken piece of rock amidst the waves - she had the freedom to make a quick decision. She would leave. No discussion.

Lillian was a hands-on girl. The very next morning she built a boat from a coconut shell and a mangrove root and sailed out to sea. This afternoon she wouldn't watch the sunset from the dock. 

Lillian was venturous, but not always lucky. Before night fell, her boat started taking on water. Within an hour it was gone. Again Lillian was alone with the sea.

Lillian was drifting on the open ocean. For days and days and nights. For the first time in her life she felt absolutely helpless, completely at the mercy of the sea. For the first time in her life there was nothing she could do. She had to surrender. On the third day she started liking it. 

Lillian was washed up on a beach after two weeks. She was too weak to get up. All she could do was lift her head a little, so she could see the sun set over the ocean. She smiled and coughed up a gallon of salt water. Then she fell asleep for a night and a day.

Lillian woke up in the afternoon. Although she still felt dizzy, she realized that somebody was watching her. Lillian looked up. In one of the palm trees there sat a girl. 

Leilani was an island girl. She loved the sea and the wind and the pattern of the palmetto shadows on the sand. When she saw that the strange dead girl on the beach had opened her eyes, she slowly climbed down her tree. It couldn't hurt to sit with her for a while.