Pub Med, Part Before

Boy oh boy, oh what a night.

A night of meeting people, of having the world of the white woman, the most privileged being on earth, explained by a white, heterosexual male, a less privileged being, according to his own estimation; a night of being propositioned to have sex in the pub's bathroom by a huge Bavarian post-doc physicist baritone and of him being offended by my feeling like a prostitute; a night of being accused of being after the Bavarian's money and of being told there was none to be after; and a night of chatting with a 28-year-old blue-eyed and very pretty Estonian physicist who kept saying "idee" instead of "idea".

Yes, that’s right, I have another story to tell. Which reminds me: I haven’t told the other story to its end. Shit. One more thing for my to-do list. Speaking of to do: I can check off Estonians.

It all began with a breakfast, make that brunch, of champions on Saturday last. Id est: J&B&me.

After that J&me went and bought ourselves some more nail-polish because the both of us don't have much money to spend right now but wanted to buy something for ourselves nonetheless. I actually didn't buy nail-polish because I could not find any that I definitely wanted a similar or the same shade of which I don't already own. I bought myself a cheap mascara instead, which turned out to be pretty good. So no money thrown away this time.

I then went home in order to commence prettifying myself, which I did. Specifically, I did so with the new (and as of yet unpaid) heated curlers. Which have become my newest playthings. I scrubbed and shaved and washed and creamed the hell out of myself. I dressed casually (after all, I was going to a Kreuzberger pub which looked as metaphorically dirty as the more sleazy pubs on the Reeperbahn), but carefully in one of my self-made skirts, a black tee, a black, rather old cardigan and cheap, poisonously green ballerinas. I put on the biggest pair of glasses I have in order to counteract the curly-girly-blonde impression I was giving in my mind.

And off I went. When I came home nine hours later I still looked quite alright, I think. Although I had taken off the glasses in order for the Estonian's eyes to look more easily into mine. But this isn't the story. The story is what happened in those nine hours. And the two after that.

Content. Ment.

My own washer.
My own bedroom.
My own kitchen.
My own stuff.
A job I like and which gives me time to read.
My friends around the corner.
The city around me.

My life's good right now.

Real Time With Miss Sophie

Stop, Hammer time.

Disclaimer 1: This post has no particular occasion. I've been wanting to write about this topic for quite some time now, I estimate roughly for the past seventeen years or so.

Disclaimer 2: What I'm writing below is rooted in a belief in Ingeborg Bachmann's axiom that the truth is reasonable for mankind ("Die Wahrheit ist dem Menschen zumutbar").

In this particular instance, the truth is reasonable for me. I'd very much prefer the truth to anything not the truth. In almost all cases, anyway. That doesn't mean you need to speak the truth to me twentyfourseven, although I invite you to do so. All I want to say is: Do not fear. Do not think about my feelings. Do not be gentle or kind. (Do not go gentle into that good night.) To do so would be to underestimate me. I've grown, I'm growing, and I've learned that I can handle a lot. I might need to take a second. I might need to swallow and digest. I might need some time. But I'll deal. Especially because I'll know what I'm dealing with. So please, people, mutet mir die Wahrheit zu. Anything else I'll view as cowardice in the form of patronizing chivalry disguised as well-meaning concern. (By the way: "Well-meaning" is the deathblow to anyone trying to mean well.)

So shape up or ship out.

This has been Real Time With Miss Sophie.

Come see us next week for Real Time With Miss Sophie: The Retraction Edition.

The things I've seen

and the things I've done and the things I've heard and the things I've ignored and the things I've enjoyed and the things I've disliked and the things I've believed and the things I've ingested and the things I've liked and the things I've made and the things I've hurt and the things I've created and the things I've destroyed and the things I've grown and the things I've killed and the things I've read.

Since April Twenty-Ninth:

John Hart's The Last Child
Tana French's Grabesgrün and Totengleich
Wolfgang Herrndorf's Sand
Anthony Zuiker's Level 26
Florian Weber's Grimms Erben
John Irving's The World According to Garp
Asa Larsson's Sonnensturm and Weiße Nacht
Neil LaBute's Seconds of Pleasure
Saul Bellow's Seize the Day

Now I am ing-ing all the things listed above with Hjorth and Rosenfeldt's latest crime novel. Unfortunately I won't be able to devour it the way I did the others because.....

BAM!

I'm going to start riding my bike to work (looking like I somehow managed to mistake my horse for a bike), so I won't be able to read as much as before when I had the train ride to and fro to sink into those possible worlds.

Sebastian, forgive me, I promise I will visit you every day in my lunch hour and after work.

diconnecting

It's weird but whenever i come home into my new apartment, I always feel like it's not mine but somebody way cooler than me's.

Damit ich es nicht vergesse:

Lampen

Garderobe

As I face the sun I cast no shadow

This is the story of the past three and a half months of my life. They were neither epic nor relevant in bigger sense. But they were definitely good for me. I learned. A lot. About work-life. About my life. About me. I am going to tell this story with all the honesty I can muster and answer for. I have roughly five hours of train-riding ahead of me which should in all likelihood suffice for me to tell this story and do it justice. So consider yourselves my priest and this narration my confessional and my confession.

But let me start in the middle. Specifically where I left off last time I was here. That was right in the coat room line in Magnet where I had just met who would later become The Proposer. Well, in that moment he wasn’t yet. We chatted for a bit in the queue, and when it became too crowded I abandoned my friends and just sat down in a niche in the wall with the future Proposer. A few minutes later; B, who had trouble staying awake and thus staying upright, joined us after having almost mistaken another woman’s bottom for his girlfriend’s. Not willing to risk a similar mishap happening again, J sent B to sit with us, where he, and all the women’s bottom around him, would be safe. When my fabulous friend came back with all of our coats, the future Proposer had bought me a beer, and well-behaved as I am I felt the obligation to reciprocate. Thus my friends went home while I stayed in the club. After some more animated chatting and some compliments by The Proposer, we grabbed another beer, when he received a text message. As we had been talking about his ex-girlfriends quite a bit (who, according to him, generally mourned the end of their relationships more than he did), I asked – actually without any poorly hidden inquisitiveness – whether this was one of his exes texting him. His reply: “No, actually, this is from my girlfriend.” I assume I must have looked something like this:



From the way he behaved and talked I had, in rather ingenious fashion, deduced that he was single. I wasn’t terribly disappointed, just a tiny bit, and also hugely irritated that I had just experienced one more instance of proof that my gut, or rather my people-reading skill, was not to be trusted (as if I needed a reminder…). Anyway, I was curious where he was going with our encounter – he was going to the proposing place –, so I stuck around. He suggested introducing me to his girlfriend – in retrospect this is where I should have become suspicious – and I played along. Again, I wanted to see where he was going with the whole thing and didn’t want to let him get off easy (pun definitely intended). However, I had to visit the bathroom first and when I came back he wasn’t where he said he would be. So what else would I do (for example: GO HOME) except go looking for him and his girlfriend. And I found them. Where he was a nice- and fun-looking relatable guy, his girlfriend was a big, square, hillbilly girl who looked like she had managed to catch the train to the big city for the very first time. I was, again, dumbfounded. This I had not expected. And again, this would prove to be quite logical during the course of the night.

The Proposer’s girlfriend did not look particularly pleased (which I don’t blame her for) when I arrived and, broadly grinning, introduced myself. The Proposer seemed completely unfazed. I stayed with them for some time and tried to make some polite conversation, but eventually gave up. After a while The Proposer nonchalantly danced away with the help of a friend and left me with his still rather reluctant girlfriend. This was awkward. After a short while she left, too. I was by myself. Trying hard to look like I wasn’t alone I scanned my surroundings and casually chatted up the guy next to me, who was also alone, who was wearing a ridiculous hat (though I don’t mean to imply any causal link here), and who looked approachable enough in that moment. We exchanged maybe two sentences and that was that. At that point I realized that I was standing in a Berlin club at I guess five, five-thirty in the morning all by myself. On New Year’s. Suddenly it seemed as if I could see myself in a mirror, or as if I was standing next to myself, quietly watching and judging myself. It was then that I realized I needed to go home. On my way to the coat room I veer off into the smokers’ lounge to close the night off with a cigarette among strangers. And lo and behold, who was sitting there at the smokers’ bar? The Proposer, his friend and his girlfriend. I casually strolled over (have you ever noticed how whenever you attempt to be sincerely casual in reality it never looks more forced?) and tried to converse politely one last time. That’s when it got weird. Because The Proposer started to compliment me right in front of his girlfriend. And he also got a little handsy. Also right to his girlfriend’s hillbilly face. I was confused. Shortly thereafter they decided to go, which was fine by me. Trying to save face for all of our sakes I asked the hillbilly girlfriend if it was okay to stay in touch with The Proposer, seeing as I was new in town and had yet to make new friends. The girlfriend didn’t seem to mind. Alas, The Proposer had something else in mind entirely. Right then he shut me down: No, he didn’t want to stay in contact; no, he didn’t want to exchange numbers. He thought I was cool and he found me sexy (again, his girlfriend was right there), but no, he didn’t want me as a friend. He’d rather have me as a part and party of their relationship.




He was kind enough to elaborate: He was indeed looking for a third party, uncompromisingly female, to join himself and his hillbilly girlfriend in the boudoir. Again, she was right there. And again, she didn’t look too happy. I found this insulting to her, to me (come on, I am not her kind of gal), to all sorts of people, things, and senses of propriety. And this I told him in no uncertain terms. He effusively tried to explain, which I stopped then and there. He said he would go now. I said that was a great idea. They left. I stayed, a little perplexed. When I turned around towards the bar, my eyes took notice of the guy sitting next to me: the guy with the ridiculous hat from before. As we already had, in my mind, become great friends from our briefest of exchanges in the other room, I felt no hesitation to talk to him some more. It turned out to be more fun than anticipated. After a brief while I felt a tap on my shoulder and when I turned around I almost couldn’t believe it: The Proposer had come back to do some more proposing. I was fed up. And told him so in no uncertain terms. With a firm voice. And a stern look. Eventually, he gave up and I returned my attention to The Hat. And the night began.

"The novel is more of a whisper, whereas the stage is a shout."

Oh how staged out I am.

In the past 3 months, much has happened. Too much to tell right now, at this time.

But rest assured, and beware, it'll come to you. Oh how it will come.

Something strange instead of some strange (Part II)

Alright, so we hung out for a bit in the less densely populated part of the floor and had a jolly good time there, too. Then we encountered the couple that had previously gotten on my nerves. Or rather: one half of the couple: the girl. Please excuse this cutesy expression for a grown-ass woman, but really, this was all she projected to be: a girl. She stood behind me at the very end of the bar, where the counter hits the wall. She stood there by herself. Next to her, but not yet with her, leaned a rather conservative-looking guy wearing a green quilted jacket (by the way: wow. It was hot as hell in there) with its collar up. Obviously. He started chatting up The Girlfriend, she flirted back, he twirled her around (what's with all the twirling; did I maybe miss the memo that twirling is the thing to do now?), she obliged delightedly if not delightfully and they both continued flirting aggressively. I was watching them out of the corner of my eye when The Boyfriend stepped into my field of vision. He quickly looked around, found The Girlfriend, leaned to the side a bit in order to see with whom she was talking so animatedly, saw, turned around on the spot, and left. The room. The club. The city. The country. I had no idea which. But the force with which he stormed off might have been enough to catapult him off the earth and straight into space. For all I cared he could have stayed there and orbited the earth with a broken heart. Or ego. Idiot. Apparently, he was the only one who was allowed to twirl The Girlfriend around. Which I get. But what he should have done, I thought in this moment, was go up to The Collar and The Girlfriend and, without so much as a word or a glance to The Collar, take her and twirl her around a couple of times in front of The Collar. That should have cleared things right up.
Alas, I was wrong. He, in fact, did not leave. Well, he did leave the room, but not the club. About ten minutes of unaware flirting later, The Boyfriend came back with their jackets. He unceremoniously walked up to The Girlfriend and The Collar, handed her her jacket, put his arm around her back, and gently guided her out of the club. The Collar remained behind, a little annoyed, I assume. I couldn't suppress a smirk. Not that I wanted to.
Shortly after that episode we decided to leave. By now it was somewhere around half past three. Somehow, the excitement had abated and we felt a bit deflated. Bam, poetry. You're welcome. At that point the line for the coat check was almost as long as when we had come in. So, off to the bathroom I went, leaving J&B to wait on their own. After the five or six minutes that it took me to get into and out of the toilet the coat check line had barely moved. So I didn't feel too bad for making my friends stand in line and hold my spot for me.
After what felt like half an hour but probably only were about seven more minutes and after we had moved up in the line about two meters, seemingly out of nowhere a guy appeared at my side, let's call him The Proposer. The Proposer said something to me, I reacted, he was in a good mood, I was in a good mood, we started chatting. He said he had been trained as a hotel clerk, didn't like it and thus became a cabinet maker. Now, what I should mention to explain my immediate interest in The Proposer is that my brother, who I think is the greatest guy in the world, is a hotel industry expert and that I have always found the art of cabinetmaking to be oddly attractive and that I like to imagine myself in another life or universe as a cabinetmaker designing and producing her own successful line of furniture. Ergo: I was immediately in favor of The Proposer. Had I known then what I know now, namely that he would turn out to be The Proposer, I very likely wouldn't have continued talking to him. Or maybe I would have, just to let it play itself out and have something to tell you folks. Be that as it may, namely hypothetical, the fact is that I did talk to him and did agree to let him buy me a beer.
How this one beer turned into two and more and how he became the Proposer and why I still only came home at around eight thirty in the morning and why four strangers found themselves on New Year's morning in the almost empty tram talking about mathematics, pussy, and the potential for violence in the public space -- well, that is a story for Part III.

Something strange instead of some strange (Part I)

So, folks, the new year has come and I skidded into it on the slippery slope of alcohol and a jolly good time. Oh what a good time I had. But before I start telling that tall but true tale, I should mention that almost simultaneously to my decision to start building a life in Berlin for real I finally received the invitation to a job interview -- at home. 2012 thus ended on a very bittersweet note for me.

With this tiny shock to motivate me to make the best of my time here or anywhere, really, I was looking forward to celebrating the arrival of a new year with my friends to the fullest. All the more surprised it turned out we were when we realized after a delightfully normal but fun meal that we might not make it to midnight if we continued sitting in the kitchen. Thus, at about 10 p.m. we decided to move things along and get to the club early, like old people are wont to do.
We arrived at Magnet in Kreuzberg at about 11 p.m., had no problem getting in but experienced a kind of paradoxal universe where outside noone wants in but inside the queue for the coat check was more than ten meters long. So we spent about 20 minutes waiting for our coats to be checked, which turned out not to be too bad because the guys doing the checking were, if not the quickest of the bunch, still friendly and good-natured. After having successfully gotten rid of our outer wear, we fought our way into the smokers' bar and did what you do in said place: have a smoke. And a beer, of course. Then we scouted the other floors, of which we believed there to be two. Only after having gotten our coats before leaving did J finally figure out that there was a third floor which was not the smokers' bar. She, more than B or I, was very upset about not having discovered it before because she found the music coming from that floor to be very danceable. We did, however, have a good time with one of the other floors for the most part of the night, so that while we were dancing we didn't feel like we were missing something.
We spent most of the night at the electro-indielectro-don't-ask-me-I-just-dance floor where we had an extraordinarily good time. And not just because of the music but also because of the delightfully mixed crowd which covered everything from the cool dudes to the mellow hipsters to the relaxingly normal folks to whom I count the three of us. Ages varied comfortingly, too. At midnight there was a countdown and a happy yet non-hysteric shout-out all around. One nice young lady went around the crowd and distributed sparklers to everyone who would have one. It was a nice, very communal atmosphere among a crowd of very different strangers.
Shortly thereafter, four very drunk, very young guys of about twenty years and with hessian bags dangling unmanageably from their arms managed to conquer the slightly elevated part of the dancefloor in one corner and proceeded to have an awesome time among themselves. Not only were they not in the least obnoxious -- as young, drunk men their age very easily turn out to be -- but more than that, they were absolutely adorable and seemed to be very much content in the company of their friends. When one thoroughly likeable young woman danced up on one of the guys, he without hesitation dismissed her in a friendly manner while simultaneously flinging himself into one of his buddy's arms. It was a sight to behold. So much fun and happiness.
After several trips to the toilets for each of us, which took anywhere from five to twenty minutes, we finally decided that it was getting too crowded on our dancefloor and that it would be wise to retire to another part of the room where there was less dancing and more sitting and talking and thus more room. Lest you think that there was also less fun to be had, let me tell you what happened there. First of all, we re-met this Asian guy who was wearing a suit. We had seen him before near our place on the dancefloor. He was with this cool chick with this cool red dress in the style of the fifties. And he was wearing a skinny suit with a skinny tie. They looked like straight out of Kill Bill, but not keenly so. They were just really cool in a very relaxed and non-exerted way. Then there was this slightly weird guy, his head full of unkempt curls, making his way through the sluggish crowd and yelling what I suppose was his girlfriend's name in regular intervals. It wasn't that big a room or that big a crowd. A thorough scanning of the people around you would have yielded the same, and much less noticeable, results. And then there was the couple.
The couple who a few half-hours before happened to situate themselves next to us on the dancefloor and whom I found to be almost unbearably self-centered. He couldn't keep his hands off her, which, granted, is in itself a good thing. But not in the obnoxious, almost domineering way that he did it and which she happened to enjoy. He twirled her around, he grabbed her ass, he grabbed her thighs, he moved her hair, and she obliged. As old and worn out as the phrase is, all I could think was: "Get. A. Room." This was the couple that we encountered in the "chill-out" area of that floor. And if you want to know what happened next, and what happened after J&B left the club and I stayed, and what the indecent proposal was that I received that night and what happened on the train-ride home, you have to check back. More on what the titular "something strange" and who the titular "some strange" was will be coming soon.

Against the Dark

Please beware: Mushiness ahead.

Ich fühl mich sauwohl hier in Berlin (und das ohne meine Möbel, ohne meine Bilder, ohne meine Bücher, ohne mein Bett, ohne mein Geschirr, ohne Arbeit, ohne das meiste, was ich eigentlich als notwendig für das eigene Wohlsein erachtet hätte). Wenn es nach mir ginge, bliebe ich für die absehbare Zukunft hier. Und da es nach mir geht, bleibe ich hier. Auch wenn sich Berlin noch ein wenig gegen mich sträubt, hält mich das nicht davon ab, jetzt aktiv und entschlossen meines Glückes eigener Schmied zu sein. Es wäre ja noch schöner, wenn ich mich von einer weiteren Stadt unterkriegen ließe. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, ....

In diesem Sinne: Hauruck und Prost!

Because alternate endings symbolize so much

Februar.

Their logic is simply breathtaking.

• 
  JOSH HARA yesterday

  Good thing the NRA isn't in charge of fighting fires.
• 
  MJ yesterday

  If you need an assault rifle with 30, 50, or 90 round clips to protect yourself maybe you just suck at protecting yourself.
• 
  
  MIKE POLK JR. yesterday

  Only received 2 death-threats while tweeting through #NRA presser. I think this country is finally turning the corner. #Kumbaya
• 
  MAX SILVESTRI yesterday

  There were two armed guards at Columbine so it's weird the NRA didn't bring those guys up on stage to talk about how well that went.
• 
  MIKE DRUCKER yesterday

  Someone should tell the NRA that it's absolutely normal to have a tiny penis.
• 
  JEN STATSKY yesterday

  Where does a guy w/the name "Wayne LaPierre" find time to make crazy statements about guns in between all the tying damsels to train tracks?
• 
  SETH MEYERS yesterday

  NRA: If we banned schools there would never be another school shooting.
• 
  POURMECOFFEE yesterday

  We must fight back against the violent fantasy of video games by making the actual landscape of reality look like Mortal Kombat.
• 
  LOLGOP yesterday

  I didn't watch the whole NRA press conference. Did LaPierre end up releasing his hostages?
• 
  ERIN GLORIA RYAN yesterday

  Can't wait for the NRA's new anti-rape campaign where everyone gets a penis.
• 
  CHASE MITCHELL yesterday

  Just want to point out the NRA's plan to stop school shootings is literally the plot of Kindergarten Cop.
• 
  MICHAEL IAN BLACK yesterday

  Oh cool, George Zimmerman is going to be protecting my kids in school.
• 
  TRAVIS HELWIG yesterday

  "To protect every gun, we must arm every gun with another gun." -NRA
• 
  KEPLY PENTLAND yesterday

  I am genuinely shocked that LaPierre's solution isn't to arm the children themselves.
• 
  BIG-DUMB-CHAD.GIF yesterday

  This Wayne LaPierre, he's really not the sharpest armour-piercing assult round in the clip, is he now.
• 
  JUSTIN STANGEL yesterday

  NRA blames Natural Born Killers for violence and Cannonball Run for people who drive too fast
• 
  MILES KAHN yesterday

  NRA's LaPierre blames "Natural Born Killers," music videos and all of 1994 on mass shooting.

No body's safe.

p.s.: fear boner. scrote squad. eskimo brothers. mla. yobogoya. chalupa batman. vinegar strokes. the shiva. the sacko. the terrific lady day. the white knuckler. bobbum man. and many more.

'tis the season

From your cold, dead hands? No problem, we've got enough guns for all of you.

Okay, so the argument against stricter gun laws goes: "If every single normal person had a gun, they could defend themselves against crazy people with guns and thus there would be fewer massacres and thus there would be fewer gun-related deaths." That's the argument, right?

Disregarding the fact that this is just purely counterintuitive right from the start -- after all, even if fewer massacres took place because the perpetrator feared running into a potential victim with a gun (again, a highly unlikely scenario, given that most mass killers plan on or at least accept the risk of dying themselves), or even if just fewer deaths in the same number of massacres would occur because one potential victim had a gun and shot the attacker, it's highly unlikely that the every-day amount of gun-related deaths would remain the same or even decline; quite the opposite would most probably be the case --, it's just plain illogical. Simple logic, based on assumptions from empirical observations, tells us that this is a false statement. Countries with stricter gun control laws and proportionally fewer guns have fewer gun deaths. So the claim that more guns and more readily available guns would somehow reduce gun-related deaths is illogical.

Furthermore, the math doesn't add up. If there is a number of people z in a country with x guns among them, a certain number of gun-related deaths y will occur. Reducing the number x by half, for example, would mean, that for the same number of people z only x/2 guns were available. For the same number of people z to cause gun-related deaths in the same amount as before, namely y, when there are only x/2 guns available would mean that z would have to show an unusual and greater-than-before effort to shoot each other. This, I think, would lead any rational, logical person to assume that with fewer guns there would be fewer gun-related deaths.

And this aside from the fact that the idea to not give guns to people in order to keep people from shooting each other is just really plain intuitive.

Charlotte, 6

Daniel, 7

Olivia, 6

Josephine, 7

Ana, 6

Dylan, 6

Madeline, 6

Catherine, 6

Chase, 7

Jesse, 6

James, 6

Grace, 7

Emilie, 6

Jack, 6

Noah, 6

Caroline, 6

Jessica, 6

Avielle, 6

Benjamin, 6

Allison, 6

Dawn, 47

Anne, 52

Rachel, 29

Lauren, 30

Mary, 56

Victoria, 27

"Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. But that’s unacceptable. As others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t 'too soon.' It’s much too late." (Ezra Klein)

The complete and utter despair and heartbreak this unimaginable and incomprehensible attack on innocence and on the only sacrosanct part of any society caused is, I think, captured as good as it can be captured at all in this article from, of all things, the onion. 

Top, die Stoppuhr läuft.

Vorlesungen von ihm müssen absolut großartig sein.

There's a light over at the Frankenstein Place

well, in the dull light of day i don't seem to be quite as gloomy anymore. maybe a little spark is left in me after all. i guess i'll have to wait and see if it'll turn itself into a bona fide fire.

And hey, one bright side still remains: you can't accuse me of failing at doing pathos well.