Mixtape: January 2010 (Nobody Breaks My Heart)

1. Portishead - We Carry On  
2. Joy Division - She's Lost Control 
3. The xx - Vcr  
4. Scout Niblett - Duke of Anxiety  
5. Max Roach - Driva Man  
6. Karen O and the Kids - Animal  
7. A.A. Bondy - Killed Myself When I Was Young
8. Mia Doi Todd - My Room Is White (Flying Lotus Remix)
09. The Cure - Subway Song  
10. Dinosaur Jr. - Pieces  
11. Sonic Youth - Massage The History  
12. Max Roach - Tears for Johannesburg 
13. Shirley Manson - Samson and Delilah (If I Had My Way)  
14. Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon - Remains 
15. Blue States - Season Song

Reading List: Dezember, Jänner

Non-Fiction:

Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan.
Joan Didion: Miami.

Fiction:

Dietmar Dath: Die Abschaffung der Arten.
Olga Flor: Kollateralschaden.
Michelle Tea: Valencia.
Alice Sebold: The Lovely Bones.
Juli Zeh: Schilf.
Philip K. Dick: A Scanner Darkly.
Karel Čapek: R.U.R.
Caitlín R. Kiernan: Daughter of Hounds.
William Gibson: Pattern Recognition.

Films:

Ballast (2008, Lance Hammer) ****.
(500) Days of Summer (2009, Marc Webb) **/***.
Moon (2009, Duncan Jones) ****.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry) *****.
Paper Heart (2009, Nicholas Jasenovec) ***.
Inglourious Basterds (2009, Quenstin Tarantino) ****.
Hancock (2008, Peter Berg) ***.
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (2001, Peter Jackson) *****.
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002, Peter Jackson) ***.
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, Peter Jackson) ****.
Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, Henry Selick) *****.
Alien (1979, Ridley Scott) ****.
Aliens (1986, James Cameron) ***.
Alien 3 (1992, David Fincher) ****.
Where the Wild Things Are (2009, Spike Jonze) *****.
Das weiße Band (2009, Michael Haneke) ***.
The Lovely Bones (2009, Peter Jackson) **.
Whip It! (2009, Drew Barrymore) ****.
Fantastic Mr Fox (2009, Wes Anderson) ****.
Shaun of the Dead (2004, Edgar Wright) ****.
28 Weeks Later (2007, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo) ***.
The Brothers Bloom (2008, Rian Johnson) ****.
Sherlock Holmes (2009, Guy Ritchie) **.
Push (2009, Paul McGuigan) ***.
Sleep Dealer (2008, Alex Rivera) ****.

"You're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way."

"We're freaks, that's all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that's all. We're the tattooed lady, and we're never going to have a minute's peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too."

J.D. Salinger: Franny and Zooey.

NY Times: J. D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91, January 28, 2010

Squee

e4 
Stream (might work better with Hotspot Shield)
over at cellar door

That is all.

...if I knew how to read and write, I would

Snort.

Structural Weaknesses, Part 2

"Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.

The ruling represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision to reshape the way elections were conducted. Though the decision does not directly address them, its logic also applies to the labor unions that are often at political odds with big business."

NY Times: Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit, January 21, 2010

Interesting:

natürliche Personen / juristische Personen .

party donations = free speech

First Amendment vs Demokratie: 1:0

Columnize Your Randomness, Part 27

It seems like the weeks until the premier of "Skins" went by quickly (didn't feel that way when the show was still two months away) - and the time is now, finally (tomorrow). I don't really understand the tagline "can it really be the new Doctor Who" in the Guardian-article (it's just a very British thing to embed drama and amazing character development in ridiculous plots and over-the-top minor characters, right, that's nothing "Doctor Who" specific?), but I am vaguely amused that fan fiction is now an issue discussed in mainstream media, and, oftentimes not exactly with the support of people who write fan fiction, mentioned in interviews with cast members. Also, the description of how viewers didn't like the love triangle so consequently this season is more about Naomi and Emily is lovely (having stumbled across some video clips of cast members attending events, British female teenagers really do like Lily Loveless, a lot - and I kind of get why).

More Caprica-stuff before the first new episode airs next Friday: Jane Espenson discusses sexuality on "Caprica" , and the LA Times Show Tracker blog interviews Magda Apanowicz, who plays Lacy (I am looking forward to strange conversations between her and Zoe the Cylon.)

We love Soaps has an interview with the two leading actresses of "Anyone But Me", Rachel Hip-Flores and Nicole Pacent. New episodes are released every second Tuesday (although there was no new episode yesterday, but you can subscribe on iTunes).

Amber Benson and Adam Busch's "Drones" premiered at Slamdance and got a rave review from SLUG  magazine. The "office comedy with alien undertones" features among others Samm Levine ("Freaks and Geeks") and Jonathan Woodward (the man who has been in every Joss Whedon show except "Dollhouse").

And, finally, die Zeit writes about the new Tocotronic record "Schall und Wahn" ("doch die Texte sterben allzu oft den kleinen Tod allerschönster Verrätselung." - but that's true for the past two records, and you either like it or you don't, right?), and Paste finds five reasons to celebrate Cat Power on her 38th birthday, and while I would certainly find more, I was amazed to find her cover of Oasis' "Wonderwall" on that list, which is the first song ever I heard her sing, and that was one of the small coincidences in life that sometimes lead to great things.

Structural Weaknesses, Part 1

“Tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken,” Mr. Brown told his cheering supporters in a victory speech, standing in front of a backdrop that said “The People’s Seat.”
The election left Democrats in Congress scrambling to salvage a bill overhauling the nation’s health care system, which the late Mr. Kennedy had called “the cause of my life.” Mr. Brown has vowed to oppose the bill, and once he takes office the Democrats will no longer control the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome filibusters.
There were immediate signs that the bill had become imperiled. House members indicated they would not quickly pass the bill the Senate approved last month."

NY Times: G.O.P. Senate Victory Stuns Democrats, January 19, 2009 2010

So essentially, the structural setting of the US Congress allows for a minority to block any policy? That seems highly ineffectual and potentially dangerous, especially when this power is actually used to block every policy. Here is a chart of how the usage of the filibuster has risen over the course of the last years (until 2008, as the Democrats already has a majority in Congress before the last elections).

The result: paralysis in the face of crisis, as it is ridiculous to rely on the responsibility of the minority party to accept their defeat, and the fact that the electorate put the other party (as there is only two in this case) into power. (vaguely related: if you google "paralysis", "legislative branch" and "minority rights", Taiwan comes up immediately. I'll look into that)

...

Alright, cough syrup and pain killers it is. I have this very typical common cold but somehow, my wisdom teeth are affected by it as well, which means that my head feels like a balloon and my eyes are all teary and the second I go outside... well, it just doesn't work. Which is really, really not good in finals week.

[also, I take back some of the things I said about the neighbours renovating: Apparently my other neighbour is fixing up the apartment for his wife's mom, who is OLD, and I know how the whole meeting-the-needs-of-handicapped-persons process works, and how important it is, so yeah. I take back what I said about dinosaurs.]

In other news, this trailer and this review both make me very happy (and no, I did not know that the Runaways were a teen band, and was wondering why they would cast a fifteen year old girl to do all the things Cherie Currie and Joan Jett did in the Seventies). I have a soft spot in my heart for actresses I like who are stuck in a franchise that I seriously DO NOT LIKE, so way to go, Kristen Stewart. Way to pull a Jessica Biel there.

Last night's episode of "Heroes"? Not so much.

A man inside a man. Which is no man at all.

"What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too."

Philip K. Dick: A Scanner Darkly, p. 146.

Columnize My Randomness, Part 26

One of the reasons for why the motivated posts from last week weren't followed up by more this week: I think my neighbours are trying to find a secret room behind their walls. Or maybe they are trying to excavate a dinosaur carefully, inch by inch, I don't know which one of the two, there is however neither a dinosaur nor a secret room, only MY APARTMENT on the other side of these walls. Seriously, having renovated my own place, I can't even start to imagine what kind of operation they are running over there, but it appears as if they might have hired the most inexperienced and inapt worker for the task. This has been going on for a month. With the amount of hammering and drilling that they've done so far, they must have built an entire city within the confines of their apartment by now. And I haven't seen them yet. They are invisible people.

Anyways, enough with the whining.

Régine Chassagne, a member of Canadian band Arcade Fire, wrote a piece for the Guardian about Haiti, the native country of her parents. In this Foreign Policy collection, different Haitian voices talk about the country before the earthquake. The last picture of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic clearly shows the extent of deforestation that has diminished tourism and made the country more vulnerable to natural disasters. In other news related to Haiti, Wyclef Jean's (Fugees) charity Yele Haiti is under scrutiny because the administrative costs are higher than in other comparable non-profits.

At the beginning of last December, Bristol-based band Portishead released a track called "Chase the Tear" for Amnesty International. You can watch the video here or download the song - all profits go to Amnesty.

New Spoon-record called "Transference". Haven't heard it yet but the bits and pieces available online sound amazing. 

While re-watching the third season of "Skins", I once again found myself strangely drawn to a particular song that is very much unlike the music I usually enjoy. In the episode "JJ", British band "You Love Her Coz She's Dead" performed their song "Superheroes" live within the show. Here's another song by the band:

YLHCSD - Dead End

In the spirit of tv series and music, here is a mixtape inspired by "Caprica" ("Music for Our Future"), which will start its regular run on the SyFy-channel tomorrow (with a rerun of the two-hour-long pilot, regular new episodes start next week). It's co-curated by Pitchfork. 

Not even Katee Sackhoff is enough to make me watch "24" (the show has tried to lure me to the dark side for a very long time now. But I resisted Janeane Garofalo, Michelle Forbes and Mia Kirshner, and "finally I only get to sit behind and a desk and not kick ass" doesn't really make it harder). I will happily continue to read interviews and wait for someone to give her a gun-bearing role again, though.

The New Yorker has a really extensive profile of Neil Gaiman ("the most famous writer you’ve never heard of."). He is also now engaged to Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls. I don't know why I mentioned that, probably because usually the allure of celebrity relationships escape me but this one seems pretty cool. As far as other people's relationships can be cool. OK, I'll stop babbling now.

CAVE people seems like the kind of pejorative acronym that might have been flying around in these parts if the native language was English and we had this specific sense of humour. (Und hier ein dazu passender Artikel über die Erfüllung der vereinbarten Quote zur Aufnahme von Asylwerbern)

I do too (although I can't answer the question right now, I promise I'll try)

Procrastination FTW!!

New Los Campesinos! record "Romance is Boring" out today. First single:

Losing track of dates and time...

[screencap from the January 11th episode of the Daily Show, in which Jon Stewart's skills failed on John Yoo, the guy who decided that international standards against torture did not apply to the United States.]

Rudy Guliani, NY mayor from  1994 to 2001, forgets, eh, which year 9/11 was (or that yes, George Bush did win that election he didn’t win).

"We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we've had one under Obama."

As a comment to the underpants bomber (who might be the reason why I'll have to walk through sci-fi machinery teenage boys have been dreaming of for ages when I go to London next summer).

Das Lied zum Sonntag

Portishead - Threads

Better if I could find the words to say
Whenever I take a choice it turns away

I'm worn, tired of my mind
I'm worn out, thinking of why
I'm always so unsure

I battle my thoughts I find I can't explain
I've travelled so far but somehow feel the same

I'm worn, tired of my mind
I'm worn out, thinking of why
I'm always so unsure
I'm always so unsure

I'm worn, tired of my mind
I'm worn out, thinking of why
I'm always so unsure
I'm always so unsure

I'm always so unsure
I'm always so unsure
I'm always so unsure
I'm always so unsure

I am alive when I sleep
Why am I not in all that I got?
I can't find no one to blame

Stand, stand, damned one
Damned one
Damned one
Damned one
I am one
Damned
One
Where do I go?

[auf "Third", 2008]

Columnize Your Randomness, Part 25

Vor allem anderen: Wer für Haiti spenden will, kann das einfach und unkompliziert per SMS beim Roten Kreuz tun.

The fourth season of "Skins" starts on January 28th. I am excited enough that I wrote reviews of all 10 third season episodes (featuring the current second generation of characters). They will be posted over at cellar door starting on January 19th, so that the last one commences the day of the season premier. After a long period of silence on the official e4 page for the show, there's been an overload of new content to advertise "Skins": among others, a more revealing trailer, letters and diary entries written in-character about their summer experiences. especially enjoyed Pandora's, explaining where she saw her group of friends in the future, and Naomi's bio, although I highly doubt that the actual Naomi would misspell the name of the American President (but she likes Sleater-Kinney, which only confirms how cool she is. And yes, I just wrote that about a completely fictional character).

If you don't know the show, it's about a group of Bristol teenagers in College (the two years before University, 16-17 I believe?), there is a lot of sex, drugs and drama, and yes, that makes it both more entertaining and real than anything currently portrayed in US tv shows. Each episode is told from the perspective of one of the characters (hence the title). The first episode of the fourth season will be about Thomas.

io9 posted an interview with Tim Minear, a long-time writer and director for all things Joss Whedon, who wrote and directed the game-changing (although using that term in relation to "Dollhouse" is obsolete) eleventh episode of the second season, in which we found out who the man behind the curtain was. Naturally, it's spoilery, but highly interesting because it explains how the writers worked with the fact that we've already seen the future in "Epitaph One". With yesterday's "The Hollow Men", there is only one week to go until the final airs (it's apparently two weeks until "Epitaph Two", with no new episode next week due to a special on the earthquake in Haiti).

The Los Angeles Show Tracker Blog has an interview with Alessandra Torresani, the "angry 16 year old girl who brings about the apocalypse" in "Caprica" (which premieres on January 22nd). She mentions playing at least five different character, kinda like Eliza Dushku in "Dollhouse".

And with the recurring theme of tying all things back to Joss Whedon, John Gunn, director of the gory (in the EWWW that's gross kinda way) movie "Slither", is assembling an awesome cast for his follow-up project "Super". Among others, there's Nathan Fillion, Rainn Wilson ("The Office"), Liv Tyler, Ellen Page and Linda Cardellini ("Freaks and Geeks").

Felicia Day talks to the comic book resources about the transition of online series "The Guild" to comic format.

PopMatters has an article trying to find the "TV's best cyborg" - their definition of the term is rather broad, but who am I to complain that it includes Echo and River Tam (and Cameron, but that was a given)? In the spirit of both the idea of cyborgs and the celebration of all things "Dollhouse": You can actually read an English translation of Karel Čapek's "R.U.R." (Rossum's Universal Robots) online. The play is the source for the term "robot" and where the Rossum Corporation comes from.

PopMatters also has a very favourable review of Claire Denis' "35 Rhums", the movie she finished previous to "White Material". In fact, I don't really remember any movie ever getting the full 10 points before (oh, right, "Wendy and Lucy" did too).

The wonderful Laura Veirs has a new record out: It's called "July Flame" - a summery record for winter.

Laura Veirs - July Flame

Scout Niblett's follow-up to "This Fool Can Die Now" comes out next week. It's called "The Calcination of Scout Niblett". This is a live rendition of the titular track, and it looks like the sneaky guitar that catches you  by surprise is back.

More thoughts on Haiti

One of the first things that I noticed about how this catastrophe is treated in the media is the contrast to other so-called "world events" of the past months. With the demonstrations and protests in Iran, we took it for granted that one of the sources of information available to us, the uninvolved consumer, were Twitter, Facebook, Blogs by people in Iran. They became an important primary source for us and the media - they provided an insight no journalist there could ever have. With Haiti, it's different. Twitter, Facebook and Blogs are important, but mainly as outside sources of information, and as places where people who aren't in Haiti raise awareness about Haiti, and call for donations to help. Information about how and where to donate spreads quickly, but there are no flickr-pictures from current Haiti, no blog entries from people in Port-au-Prince. The catastrophe destroyed the little infrastructure the country had, and according to this statistic, only about ten percent of the people in Haiti have access to the internet.

I think we've grown to take the internet for granted; we consider it one of the most important change that happened during the last decade, and sometimes forget how quickly it happened. I remember that most of my friends didn't have internet access until the early 2000. My parents only decided to go online in early 2003. It's been such a short period of time, and we sometimes tend to forget that other parts of the world are still far from the same level of connectivity that we are, that we take something for granted that still is a luxury good elsewhere. You can find a list of countries by number of internet users on Wikipedia - and the map that goes with that list clearly shows how poverty and access to information (and, if we consider the internet as we see it in 2009, the ability not only to access, but also to share information) are linked.

...

"You run out of ways to describe it."
Brian Williams, NBC Anchor, from Port-au-Prince on The Rachel Maddow Show.

Haiti

Nach Naturkatastrophen wie jene, die Haiti vor drei Tagen getroffen hat, wird mir bewusst, wie wenig ich von einem großen Teil der Welt weiß. Ich hätte Haiti zwar auf einer Landkarte gefunden, und wusste auch von der ökonomischen Kluft zwischen Haiti und der Dominikanischen Republik, aber von der Geschichte oder den politischen Verhältnissen Haitis hatte ich keine Ahnung.

Haiti ist nach den Vereinigten Staaten die älteste Republik in der westlichen Hemisphäre. Das westliche Drittel der Insel Hispaniola, also das heutige Haiti, wurde von Spanien 1696 an Frankreich abgetreten. Nach der Ausrottung der indigenen Bevölkerung wurden afrikanische Sklaven zum Abbau der wertvollsten Ressource des Landes, Zuckerrohr, gezwungen. Zwischen 1791 und 1804 führten die afrikanischen Sklaven einen Krieg gegen die französischen Kolonialherren; der Nationalheld François-Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture besiegte eine Armee Napoleons; die Unabhängigkeit wurde 1804 erklärt. Daraufhin unterstützte der neugegründete Staat Unabhängigkeitsbewegungen in Südamerika.

Ab 1825 musste Haiti als Gegenleistung für die Anerkennung durch Frankreich Entschädigungszahlungen an ehemalige Plantagebesitzer leisten, während das Land unter einer Reihe despotischer Herrscher keine wirtschaftliche Basis aufbauen konnte. Unter der Diktatur von François Duvalier (1957 - 1971), in der unter anderem Haitianer für den Profit des Diktators als faktische Sklavennarbeiter an den Nachbarstaat verkauft wurden, erlebte das Land einen folgenreichen Braindrain.

Der derzeit amtierende Präsident Haitis, René Préval, wurde 2006 in demokratischen Wahlen gewählt.

Als Folge der politischen Instabilität seit der Unabhängigkeit Haitis ist das Land heute das ärmste der Westlichen Hemisphäre: Es nahm 2007 den 147. Platz im Human Development Index ein - alle noch schlechter platzierten Länder liegen in Afrika. Von den 9 Millionen Einwohnern leben etwa 75 % von weniger als zwei Dollar pro Tag. In einem Working Paper für den IMF werden Thesen aufgestellt, warum die Verhältnisse in Haiti sich vor allem seit den 1960ern im Vergleich zum Nachbarland Dominikanische Republik rapide verschlechtert haben.

Das Erdbeben am 13. Januar hatte unter anderem so verheerende Auswirkungen, weil die Gebäude improvisiert sind: eine Familie beginnt mit einem einstöckigen Haus, und stockt dann auf, wenn die Kinder erwachsen werden, meist ohne entsprechende Materialien. Das Zentrum des Erdbebens war nur wenige Kilometer von Port-au-Prince entfernt, und traf damit vor allem die Hauptstadt (mit etwa 1,7 Millionen Einwohnern). Es zerstörte die Infrastruktur, die für eine schnelle Hilfe notwendig wäre: erst gestern konnte ein improvisierter Tower errichtet werden, der den Flugverkehr regelt; das Hauptquartier der UNO-Truppen in Port-au-Prince wurde zerstört, der tunesische Kommandant Hedi Annabi wird wie hunderte andere Mitarbeiter vermisst. Zahlreiche andere Hilfsorganisationen suchen ebenfalls nach ihren Mitarbeitern; die drei Spitäler der Medecins Sans Frontieres wurden im Erdbeben so stark in Mitleidenschaft gezogen, dass die Ärzte in Notquartieren operieren. Bilder des TIME-Fotografen Shaul Schwarz zeigen, wie katastrophal die Situation in der Stadt ist, während die Zeit ausläuft, in der unter den Trümmern begrabene noch gerettet werden könnten, während die dafür benötigten schweren Maschinen am Flughafen feststecken und nicht weitertransportiert werden können.

In seiner Rede sprach US-Präsident Obama von der "common humanity that we all share", während die Nachrichten aus Haiti und die anlaufende internationale Hilfe alle anderen Schlagzeilen von Terrorismus, der Wirtschaftskrise und der Gesundheitsreform in den Hintergrund treten lassen.

Ein Bild, das eine improvisierte Zeltstadt in Mitten der zerstörten Stadt zeigt

Zeit: Verzweiflung der Opfer schlägt in Wut um, 15. Januar 2009
Zeit:  Die Zeit wird knapp in Haiti, 15. Januar 2009
Guardian: It became increasingly, brutally clear: Port-au-Prince is a tomb, January 15, 2009

NY Times: Tensions Mount in Devastated Capital as Nations Step Up Aid Pledges to Haiti, January 14, 2009

NY Times: Media Struggle to Convey a Disaster, January 14, 2009

Das Lied zum Sonntag

A. A. Bondy - Killed Myself When I Was Young



Killed myself when I was young,
With my fingers on a poison gun,
'Cause I had to come back new:
Wanna walk on the ocean blue.

And I'm gonna leave this town,
With the people all tumbling down.
And my boots on the diamond road
Behind such a heavy load.

And I will come back someday,
If I do not lose my way.
Don't weep, my girl so true,
Let the train whistle cry for you.

[on "American Hearts", 2007]

Dollhouse has broken my brain. Again.

That is all.

And then your heart skips a beat

 "Her voice kept me from leaving; when she was audible, there was a palpable ache in her singing, as well as flashes of sharp, high tones. There were also uncomfortably generous silences.
Whatever else was going wrong, though, Marshall knew how to dramatize a song, alternating bursts of passion with unintelligible whispers. It’s hard to know what to call the music that she was playing. She strummed her guitar tentatively, repeating a few simple chords. It sounded a bit like the quieter moments in songs by Sonic Youth, but stripped of confidence."

The New Yorker: Wonder Woman. The Transformation of Chan Marshall. Sasha Frere-Jones, in 2007, writes a positive review of "Jukebox".

Music and a couple of things

Mia Doi Todd - My Room is White

[on "Manzanita", you can find a very good remix of the song on "La Ninja: Amor and other Dreams of Manzanita", or here]

Peter Pilz' comment about the full body scanners was something along the lines of: we can try them out in front of the Social Democrats' and People's Party's parliamentary club, as long as I don't have to review the pictures. Body snark! (via Mittagsjournal)

I think whoever owns the apartment next to mine is renovating and trying to rent out / sell. Shall I sabotage their effort? I enjoy the peace and quiet so much.

A PS to yesterday

“And there was this idea at the heart of the show that we were very intrigued with, which was that this apocalypse is born from an angry, 16-year-old girl.”

Ron D. Moore on Caprica, in an interview for The Daily Beast

This looks so awesome

Look, it's teenage drama! With robots! (let's braid our hair and talk about our feelings, right?)

Review of the Caprica-Pilot here.

The show starts on January 22nd.

...but it's still weird that the first person to pop up when you google this is Sarah Palin

"Life irritating art"

I came up with it myself (as the most fitting way to describe the time between Christmas and my birthday), but as I said before: every original thought you ever had is very likely to already be google-able.

This made me laugh...

Weil es immer lustig ist, Dinge über Erwachsene zu lesen, die so klingen, als würde es um verantwortungslose und sorgenfreie Teenager gehen.

"Veit Sorger, Präsident der Industriellenvereinigung und Aufsichtsratsmitglied der Banken-ÖIAG (Fimag), gab bereits zu, den Erlös aus dem Investment auf einem Treuhandkonto deponiert zu haben. Gröller tat dies nicht. "Ich sehe keine Veranlassung, das Geld auf ein Treuhandkonto zu legen. Ich habe in der Vergangenheit viele Sachen in den Sand gesetzt, die Hypo-Geschichte ist aber gutgegangen" , sagt Gröller. Es wird vermutet, dass er das Geld für seine Immo-Projekte benötigte."

DerStandard: Affäre macht Investoren und BZÖ nervös, 4. Jänner 2010

(Während Tommy das Geld auf ein Sparbuch legte, um später ein Auto kaufen zu können, gab Marco sofort alles in einem Plattenladen aus.)

Even though I didn't like the movie...

this and this

And once again, with the cannibalism

"Oh please don't go, I'll eat you up, I love you so."

Where the Wild Things Are (Filmempfehlung!)
(also, remarkably, Max Records is not related to Ellen Page)