ritas kleine welt

frosty mid-winter is the most appropriate season for visiting the memorial.

if you can't depend on anything, you can still depend on two things: godwin's law and the ignorance of people.

a few years back on QI, stephen fry quipped, 'sometimes there's just not enough vomit in the world.'

i have just spent some four hours on the phone with friends and we were mutually at our whits' end and we three kept repeating the same phrases over and over again. 'i am lost for words! i can't form a coherent thought!'

a quick search query on deviantART with the words 'cute nazi' returned a staggering number of 1,365 hits. that is discounting an unchecked number of nazis and fascists on there promoting their 'art' and helping deviantART fill their own pockets by passively lending a platform to these people. they seem to fall into two categories: dumb girls between the age of 14 and 18 who truly think that mengele was as cute as a button and göbbels just your average kind of misunderstood adorable sweetums of a guy. and then there are the hardcore, die-hard, true neo-nazis who wank to american history x and send their love to deary adolf. yeah, the last time i visited a concentration camp i smiled with glee. especially when i remembered that spread in country&style and suddenly realised that good german oak makes for a hell of a good barrack for outings over the weekend.

most of all i am disappointed and disgusted by the owners of deviantART, though, for supporting antisemitism on the web by lending these people webspace for free!!! i had once thought of opening an account there. not so much now. i won't stoop so low and associate with such people who piss on the millions of graves filled on account of nazis cheerully wanking over human suffering in the most painful, most dreadful way unimaginable.

deviantART, you truly have revealed yourselves as the sad bastards of this passing year!

monday just after i had finished teaching the second round of shakespeare's lusty world of sonnets, i was on my way to berlin to celebrate 20 years of the opening of the iron curtain together with birgit and christoph. at first it was wet. and then there were lots of people. and then we had a hunch that the people in front of their tellies saw much much much more and also heard what was being said. but still it was great fun! it's not every day that a nation gets to celebrate its freedom and invite the whole world to the party.

and then, shortly after midnight, christoph found himself in the arms of two obliging ladies who wished him a happy birthday.

before you continue with the content behind the cut, please, take the time to re-watch the original broadcast of the tagesschau with a very happy anchorman announcing the opening of the east-german borders.

on 9 october, 1989, the prayers for peace began in the nikolaikirche in leipzig. thousands of leipzigers had begun gathering each monday to pray for a peaceful solution to the bubbling conflicts in what was to become the final year of the GDR. for his level-headed guidance and the repeated call for, 'keine gewalt!' (no violence!), the reverend christian führer was later awarded the augsburger peace prize. yesterday, twenty years after the first monday prayers, he repeated the reading of the sermon on the mount. guests of honour were the german president, horst köhler, saxony's prime minister, stanislaw tillich, leipzig's mayor, burkhard jung. but no one received a greater cheer of welcome than germany's former foreign minister, hans-dietrich genscher. the people of leipzig welcomed him with standing ovations.

as it is super election year 2009 in germany, s. and i just came back from our third trip to the ballots within the past six months. today it was for the bundestag. hands up who can show an equal track record.

edit: the numbers are in. oh, dear!

antisemitism, for example. i had always thought that we are finally beyond that. but then the pope goes about condemning himself and his church by walking into this open saw mill of public relations. benedict and his cardinals are supposed to be wise men who are fighting for a better world. but all of a sudden, they seem to have lost touch with reality even more than they had already in the past decades. how on earth could they claim to reach out to judaism but at the same time rehabilitate a cardinal who has denied the shoa more than once?!? the term 'hypocracy' springs to mind. or are they simply delusional?!?

einstein was right when he said, 'there are two things in existance that are infinite. the universe and man's stupidity. but i am not sure about the universe.'

i would have written about it already last night, but i was just too pooped out after getting home from the pub quiz. anyway, last week, the paths of richard von weizsäcker, former president of germany, and i crossed. i saw this grizzled old man in the other side of the road, waiting for the traffic light to turn green. he looked eerily familiar already at so many metres away -- and my eye-sight isn't the best at dark. so when i ambled past on my bike, this sudden burst of recognition shot through my mind. richard von weizsäcker -- in front of the fürstenhof hotel. just about 100 metres away from where i met alan alda.

and last night, talk of surreal, on my way to the pub quiz -- i saw him again. only this time, our paths were reversed.

Today - the United States of America!