Takes of hitchhiking in Germany, wellness (feat. naked picture) and The Holy Chao fan site

G´day,

And another special welcome to my congregation, Hello Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel (nice pix btw), Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. I´m back from my trip to visit my friend Alex near the Dutch border at the Rhine. I have already complained about the pricing structure of the German public transport system and as a trip by train down there would have cost nearly 40 Euro (one way! only 125km!) I decided to hitchhike, cheap-ass me...

Well hitchhiking got a little out of fashion around here, when I was young I can remember that there were hitchhikers everywhere and it was a quite normal way to get from A to B but nowadays you rarely see a hitchhiker at all so I was a little worried if that was the best of all possible plans but I was game to give it a try. So I pondered a few days if I should go via Autobahn or via the small roads cross country. The upside of Autobahn is that you usually get quite a long way in one go, the downside is that you can only hitchhike from the big motorway stations and it usually takes quite a long wait until you get a ride. The downside of the cross country route would be that it would require lots of small steps from town to town and according to Murphy´s law you get a ride to the one end of the town and will have to walk all the way through the town until you can hitchhike again to the next town.

In the end I decided to go cross country so I started around noon on Friday after I found my hammer. Btw thanks for all the interesting comments on FB...well here is a picture:
The classical carpenter´s hammer is a quite usefull tool to have when you go hitchhiking. In 20 years of hitchhiking experience I only encountred potentially dangerous situations twice but you can´t be too careful. And if it comes to making a point that you are not to be messed with nothing beats a carpenter´s hammer. Even the most dumb troublemaker will think twice before messing with a guy holding a carpenter´s hammer...And if you think now, wow, I need one too, contact Emily (you can get her Blackwoods email if you contact me...), she will be able to sort you out and you might even get some discount...

So I walked 4 kms to the other end of Borghorst and put my thumb out. Five hours later I was in Kleve. All in all it worked quite well, I never had to wait for more than 15 minutes and I got some unusual lifts. Twice I was given a ride by women and it doesn´t happen too often that a woman who is driving alone picks up a guy and when I commented on that one of them said, "Well you were standing there and I thought you look kind of cute...". And I was given a ride by an older Dutch couple which is also fairly unusual. All in all it took me ten lifts until I was in Kleve and had to walk only once, in Bocholt, for approx. 5 km. The only drawback was that, even though it was cloudy I got a decent sunburn. Damn, I managed to live two and a half year in Australia without getting a sunburn once and then I get one on a cloudy day in Germany...

Alex picked me up in Kleve and it was the first time that I saw her new flat. She used to live in Holland but the rents in Holland are unaffordable so she moved to the other side of the border like half of Holland does. It´s quite funny, the Dutch are slowly taking over Germany. In Kranenburg, the town Alex live half the population is dutch by now...
They even have the street signs in two languages "Besucherzentrum" is German for visiter´s centre and "de gelderse poort" is Dutch...
This is one of Alex´s paintings I always loved and because she won´t ever sell it I finally took a picture...
I love the skull-like face of the dog...reminds me of "The scream" by Munch
more arty stuff
and another painting...

In the evening we went for a walk to a lake in a nature reserve which was kind of nice but I got eaten alive by mozzies and horse-flies. And once again: you P.E.T.A. idiots can threaten me with Coldplay until you rot but if any sixlegged bugger bites me, that´s the last mistake in its miserable existence. I mean they started it...
Lake, looks nice but is full of nasty biting thingies...

The next day we went for a wellness day. In a town nearby called Goch there is a lake with a sauna park at the shore and in an outburst of creativity someone called it "Goch Ness". The sauna thingy was really great. They had some ten saunas in all varieties but I loved the original Finish ones with an open fireplace and at least three square metres of hot stones. The best thing was that they had a sauna-master who came in every half hour to pour ice on the hot stones and wave the hot air around. It was awesome...sauna is one of the best inventions ever...thanks Finns!

By the way, just for information to you Australians and other decendents from the prude English. You don´t wear bathing clothes in sauna! My friends from Finland couldn´t stop laughing when I told them that in Australia people wear speedos or swim suits in sauna. In sauna you are naked. And that´s not considered perverted or another kinky German idea, that´s just normal. Well one observation I can share with you, the fashion in Germany in terms of hair style nowadays is to go bald. I felt a bit like last millenium having pubic hair but I have always been a little anti-cyclic.
One of the sauna houses...you could even jump straight into the lake when you got out of it...nice...
Me relaxing with a book on the beach...as my blog is not adult rated I had to censor some bits...

On Sunday I took the train back home. But I went on the Dutch side as I found that the trains are a lot cheaper on the other side of the border.

In other news, as some of you already have noticed I have put up a facebook page for "The Holy Chao", my old band. Thanks to everyone who became a fan and thanks for the feedback. I´ll put up some more pictures and songs during the next weeks and I have also contacted Mark to get my hands on our old recordings...so stay tuned.

That was it for today, have fun, take care and cya

Turtles, sane High Court judgement and fucking bureaucracy

G´day,

And a special welcome to my loyal disciples, Hi Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. I live in constant fear that I forget to mention one of you one of these days...

My hunting success yesterday inspired me to hunt today for the most feared of the "Big five", the turtle. The most shy inhabitant of my parents garden pond could be dangerous when it´s cornered. I could spy it sitting on a rock at one corner of the pond and so I moved with extreme care, always checking for the wind direction. It took me five minutes for five meter and then I was hidden behind a tree and could very carefully approach the unexpecting turtle until I could grab it by the shell. Boy, that turtle was surprised...hehe
In order to determine the species I took a quick pic from the turtle belly and then I sat it on the table and examined if it was healthy...
It looked at me with deep suspicion, probably thinking I would play Coldplay to it but I only torture frogs. Turtles are more of the quiet persuation so they have nothing to fear from me. Very carefully I removed the dead pieces of it´s shell and checked the eyes, claws, mouth according to the turtle health sites in the internets. After some time the turtle got bolder and stuck it´s head out of it´s shell...
Well, when I finished the turtle health check I sat it back on the rock I took it from and compared the pictures with the different turtle sites in the web. And what we have here is a yellow-bellied slider (Trachemys scripta scripta) which comes originally from the south east of the USA and even though all the forum explain that they need clear water and a certain diet and temperature it seems to survive quite well in the pond...

National news: today the German High Court decided on an interesting case. A German website for schoolkids features amongst other things the possibility for the kids to rate their teachers. The site has administrators who monitor the ratings and abuse, insults and similar gets deleted by admin. And -of course- a teacher took the website to court. She claimed that the rating (she got really bad marks, lol) would violate her personality and privacy rights. The makers of the site claimed freedom of speech. It was a good day for German jurisdiction as the teacher lost. Read full story here (in english). But even though she lost and it was the highest court she will probably still continue sueing as there could still be the possibility to file a case with the Constitutional Court and the typical German teacher doesn´t stop before he/she has exhausted all legal possibilities.

As an explanation, in my experience certain personlaity types are drawn to certain jobs. Don´t get me wrong, I´m aware that you can´t say all teachers, politicians, lawyers, policemen or doctors are the same but there are clearly tendencies. For example, you will not find too many freethinkers who have a problem with authorities in the police force but you´ll find, well let´s say a certain type of personality in above avarage numbers in the force...

The stereotypic German teacher is a small-minded, dogmatic, self-opinionated asshole. It´s impossible to have a discussion with those people, the thought that other people´s opinions could be valid wouldn´t occur to them. Those guys are ready and willing to take a simple matter like an apple tree loosing it´s leaves on their lawn up to the highest court. Every German lawyer begins his day with the lawyer´s prayer which goes along this lines: "Dear God, thank you very much for creating teachers. Please send a wind that some apple tree leaves fall on the lawn of a teacher...." During my practical part of the law studies I could witness teachers in court rooms and it was hillarious. I once worked as a prosecutor and had to appear for the state against a guy who had allegedly slit the tires of a car during a neighbourhood party. In the hearing we found out that there was no witness at all and the only reason why this poor guy was charged was due to the teacher who lived next door and he was sure that it could only have been that guy. I dropped the charges and the judge who was really pissed off by then told the teacher and I quote "If I see you again with such ridiculous accusations in my court room I´ll charge you with wasting the time of the court and I´m serious".

If a teacher moves in the house next door, best advice get yourself a legal expenses insurance, you´ll need it sooner or later...

In other news, I´m fed up with the fuckers from the welfare office. It´s eight weeks now that I have applied for the dole and they still havn´t decided. After four weeks they sent me some more forms to fill in, which was ridicolous enough already and then I asked them several times if that´s all now or if they still need anything. And yesterday (eight weeks after the original application) they sent me a letter saying that they still need a written confirmation that I´m not entitled to get money (so called ALG1) from the labour department. Well, you are only entiltled to get ALG1, if you have worked at least twelve month in the last two years in Germany. And as far as I recall I was in Australia and that was also the first thing I told the idiots. I even gave them a copy of my passport showing my date of entry to Australia and my date of exit. But they still insist on the written confirmation. So I went to the labour department today and found myself, as expected- in a catch 22.

Following conversation is a summary, original was ten minutes...
Me: "I need a written confirmation that I don´t get ALG1 from you guys, as I´m not entitled as I was in Australia the last two and a half years"
Girl at entrance desk (G.a.e.d.): "Well as you are not entitled to ALG1 we are not responsible for you. Please go to the welfare department"
Me: "Been there, done that, they want the confirmation"
G.a.e.d. : "But we can´t give you a confirmation as we are not the right department for you"
Me: "I know, could you at least give me the last statement in writing as that should sum it up"
G.a.e.d. (looking paniked): "No I can´t give you anything in writing"
Me: "Could you please have a look at my data?"
G.a.e.d. : (looking at monitor): "Funny, it´s the same database the welfare department uses and it is written here that you are not entitled to ALG1 as you´ve been in Australia. Why do they want a confirmation from us?"
Me (even though I had certain suspicions) : "I don´t know but you see I´m waiting for eight weeks now for my money and so could I please see someone who could give me the certificate, pretty please with sugar on the top?"

Eventually she agreed and I was sitting at the desk of a guy who told me: "Well, why does the welfare officer need this confirmation as she has access to the same data I have and it´s all there." My careful hint that she might got the job due to a let´s-give-retarded-people-a-job-program met his sense of humor and he gave me the cerificate but refused to add "as you could have looked up yourself stupid bitch". Well you can´t win them all....

In the end I felt that my Dalai Lama like patience is slowly coming to an end so I went to see my friend and brother in spirit Dirk with whom I shared a desk at LexisNexis for five years in his function as a lawyer and gave him power of attorney. Dirk told me that what the welfare office does to me is common practice arond here and that he will sort that out for me.
Dirk, friend, brother, lawyer

Well, that´s it for today, have fun, take care, don´t get sick and cya

Frogs and some thoughts on different political cultures

G´day,

And another warm welcome to my followers, Hi Emm, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. Yesterday I became a follower, too. If you want to see some interesting stuff, have a look at Daniel´s blog "La Vie Par Mes Yeux" , some great photos there. In fact the pictures are that good that I doubt that Dan took them but anyway.

And this one goes out to my friend Ronnie, thanks for your nice comment and I´ll try to help you continue giggling on the train. Ronnie and me share a dark secret, in 2005 we posed together in the nude for the suicide boys webside. Btw, do you still have the pics by any chance? I tried to find them but apparently the site doesn´t exist anymore. If you have any idea how to get my hands on the pics, send me a message on FB.

I´ve already told you about the biblical plague of noisy frogs in my parents garden pond. I already tried several times to catch one of the wretched animals and my father holds the view that it´s impossible to catch frogs by hand. Well, dad, you are wrong
Now it was payback time. I´m not a fan of unnecessary cruelty against animals but necessary cruelty is quite ok with me. So I placed the noisy creature in a glass, placed this glass between some powerful HIFI speakers and gave Kermit a taste of his own medicine.

As I didn´t want to end up on the wrong end of the P.E.T.A. activists I did some research on how to torture animals in a humane way and choose some Coldplay songs to play to the frog in heavy rotation. IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP: if you are planning on playing Coldplay songs take care not to hear them yourself. I found out that loud heavy metal playing via headphones is a good protection, just be mindful that there are several seconds of quietness between the songs during which you are exposed to Coldplay. Better leave the room once you set up the frog torturing engine.

After several hours I returned (protected by Sepultura) and released the frog back into the pond. I hope he spreads the word...

In other news, I don´t know if that made the news in Australia, the newspapers in Italy report on the escapades of the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. He is quite interested in young, beautiful girls and apparently he flys in a selection of high class hookers to his private yacht in Sicily every weekend on tax payer´s money. The hookers get either payed in money, political posts or favours like builing permits or similar. Well one hooker didn´t get the building license she was promised and so she went to the press with a tape recording and told the whole story. In addition to the tape recordings several photos turned up, well it´s quite well documented what happend.

The story itself is not that interesting, a politician who abuses his position and tax payer´s money for hookers, where is the news in that? What fascinates me though is the reaction of the Italian public. More than three quarters of the pubulation seem not to mind at all. Some quotes I heard went along the lines "The press should stop picking at the poor man" and "It´s just "amore", wheres the harm in that" and the best one "It´s just a conspiracy by the left wing to discredit our prime minister" (the conspiracy being that the tape and the pics leaked).

Well the political culture is surly different in different countries, in the USA the President got nearly impeached for a harmless blowjob and as far as I remember no tax payer´s money was involved but in Italy you can behave like an absolute ruler and the people love you for it...it´s only "amore"...

Well that´s it for today, have fun, take care and if you have the swine flu get better soon...cya

Thoughts on the demonstrations in Iran

G´day,

And another special welcome to my congregation, Hello Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. I have watched the news from Iran quite closly over the last week and I can only say that I admire the spirit of the people who go and demonstrate in Iran.

I had my fair share of demonstrations when I was younger and I still have enough rage towards certain topics inside me to still take it out on the streets and show the assholes at the top that I am no sheep. But demonstrations in Germany or other western democracies are a little more on the easy going side. The worst thing that can happen is that you get walloped with the good old truncheon and get arrested for 23.59 hours and then they kick you out again. The pigs around here don´t actually shoot you. And an arrest might be a little unpleasant but usually you don´t get tortured (even the US officially banned their torturing practice since January 2009) or disappear without a trace. And let´s face it, attending a demonstration as a teenager is like feeling a true rebel for one day.

But attending a demonstration in Tehran these days means to risk getting shot, getting arrested (and not only you, once they know who you are they might arrest you family), getting imprisoned for noone know how long, getting tortured or whatever the fuckers there decide to do with you. That´s not playing rebel for a day, to go on the streets there takes true balls and I really admire the people who have them!

To be perfectly honest I have no idea if I had the balls to do that and I´m very grateful being in a situation where I don´t have to find out if I have.

Well, I try to do whatever I can on the internet to show my solidarity and can only call on you all to do the same. That´s all for today, have fun, take care and cya...

The moment my artistic career was maliciously murdered and who is to blame plus flea market review...

G´day,

(Explanation: this blog entry was written over several days so don´t get confused, I started Saturaday, continued on Sunday and finished it now Monday morning)

And a very special welcome to my congregation, Hi! to Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan from an extremly tired author. Fucking hell, I got up Friday morning at 5.50am and had one hour of sleep Friday night but due to caffeine I am still technically awake. Let me emphasise that it only technical so if the following doesn´t make any sense or isn´t as brilliant as usual it´s due to my lack of sleep...

Firstly I want to thank all of you who liked my childhood paintings and now that I know why I didn´t like them initially I am changing my mind and making my peace with my early artworks. Several of my readers asked me why I had such a negative attitude towards my own childhood paintings and that got me thinking, why indeed do I have such a negative attitude towards those paintings. I mean I was just a child when I did them, so where did that attitude come from? All I could remember from kindergarden time was that I hated handiworks and paintings and I always tried to finish as fast as possibly to be able to go "playing". So I went and asked my mum if she could remember my kindergarden days and she told me the tale of the brutal murder of my young and innocent artistic talent which I will share with you...

Well, my first experiences with early "education" was a day care centre. My parents were among some like minded parents who founded the first privat day care centre in my hometown. As this were the early 70ies they were guided by antiautorical guidelines and it was very much like "let the kids do what they want". And what I wanted was playing not handicrafting or painting... I started going there when I was three but at the age of five I had to go to the kindergarden which was of the catholic persuation and more guided by the good old classical principles of education.

There we had to do what the kindergarden teacher told us and when say wanted us to paint we had to paint/handycraft and were only allowed to play after we have finished the tasks. So as little Jan didn´t like to paint/handycraft too much, I reckoned that the faster I finished the paint/handycraft jobs the faster I could play and didn´t put too much effort into the works.

That attitude seemed to have anoyed one of the kindergarden teachers and one day she took my collected "artworks" and in front of all the kids she tore them to pieces and explaining that that´s how you deal with rubbish and that I didn´t have an talent and all I do was "Geschmiere" which is a german word that has no english equivalent. It means roughly something put onto the paper by a deranged or someone without any talent what o ever...

So even though I have no memoriy of this incident, probably repressed, I can now pinpoint the moment my artistic career was killed and I have someone to blame. Well, I could have become the second Picasso or Dali or Hieronimus Bosch. The story continues, when I told my mother about that she went and took this kindergarden teacher to the cleaners like a lioness and complained with the right people so the teacher was fired in the end and hopefully died in poverty from an embarrassing desease...

So now I eventually made peace with my children´s paintings and start liking them but enough of the stories from the past and let´s move to the report of my attendance at the flea market.

From April to September each summer there is a flea marked one one saturday each month at the "Promenade" in Münster. The Promenade the ring around the inner city where the city walls have been in the olden days. Now it´s a bicycle/walking street with lots of trees and it´s quite nice there. The last time I sold stuff there is something like five years ago and I thought, well, it starts Saturday morning so it´ll be sufficient if I get there around 5.30am but friends of mine told me that if you don´t claim your location by Friday around early afternoon you won´t have a chance to get a stand. So I got there around 1.30pm on Friday and claimed my stand.
Funny enough, on the other side were four people sitting and the one girl looked over at me and I thought "I know her from somewhere" but couldn´t say from where but then she asked "Jan, is that you?" and it turned out that it was Judy who also worked at my old company.
So we sat and talked and passed the time until 6pm when you were finally allowed to build up your stall.
Before 6pm, everybody was just waiting...
Frauke came over to visit me, with Gaby and Frank who brought some coffee which was much appreciated...
And at 6pm the promenade filled up with the flea market experts who gave your stuff a calculating inspection even while you unpacked your cartons
My stall and some of the shit I had for sale... The flea market in Münster has apparently changed from a Saturday morning market to a Friday night market. Between 7pm and 11 pm it was crowded with people and I sold much of my extremly ugly stuff. But from 11pm onwards the stream of potential buyers slowly faded and as the night continiued it got first freaking cold and second boooooring...
Some night impressions...the people either covered their stands with plastic foil and went home for the night or slept at their stalls or partied the night away...
I decided to stay and if it weren´t for Gaby who was a real lifesaver and provided me with a warm sleeping bag I would have probably frozen to death. At 4.30am I had a nap for an hour and then I went for on the search for coffee (successful).
This was my neighbor to the left, he did chinese art and was a really nice guy.This were my neighbors to the right and they were fucking drunk assholes. They were already drunk when they arrived on Friday afternoon but when they came back in the morning, man...fucking hell. I´m not easily pissed off but when these guys started insulting the bypassers and kept on shouting abuse I contemplated to call the security and get them removed but luckily they realised that they are too drunk by far and went home quite fast...

Summary, apart from the freezing and the drunk neighbors t was quite a fun experience. I made some money which I used to pay my cell phone bill but all in all if you break the earning down to a hourly rate is was not profiable at all.

While I was freezing in Münster the kitchen at my parents place was dismaneteled and removed by the guy who won the eBay auction. When I came back it looked like this:
27 years of use have left their traces especially on the floor and previously my parents have tried most of the cleaning stuff but without avail so they had a professional tile man coming who tried the good stuff and voila, with some decent cleaner and much elbow grease it was possible to get the tiles clean again. That guy offered to do the whole kitchen floow for Euro 500 but I said, hey let´s just get our hands on the profeesional cleaning stuff and I do the elbow grease part. Stupid me. Well I couldn´t back off now, so I first did the coarse cleaning and discovered that the tube for the kitchen ventilation was apparently used as a nesting place by some birds...
An old abandoned birds nest was located in the wall but as the grill on the outside wall is quite narrow the only birds who could have used it as a nesting place could be a wren. The cleaning itself was quite successful bt a pain in the ass...important safety tip, use decent foot wear as he stuff is quite agressive and managed to dissolve the soles of my shoes.
Bad quality safety shoe, next time get decent shoes from Blackwoods...lol

Ok, that´s it for today, I hope that all of you guys who have the swine flu are getting better by now, have fun, take care and cya...

P.E.T.A. or more on the infinity of human stupidity...

G´day,

And welcome to my congregation, Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. Actually I only wanted to do a very brief blog entry today as I have enough to do with the clearing of my parent´s kitchen and the preparations for the flea market but then I read the newspaper this morning and thought Jesus motherfucking Christ on a bicycle...

Sorry if the following is a little on the polemic side, if you are vegan, extreme animal rights activist or Coldplay fan, please stop reading here for your own good...

I don´t know if you read about it, Barrak Obama did a TV interview and during this interview he swatted a fly. Result: fly dead. Well, so what? The ability to kill a fly is not an important skill for a US president and has no significance what o ever...

One quote from the Seattle times: "I was shocked and dismayed by President Obama's unprovoked and brutal attack on a fly the other day". And the misguided idiots of PETA did a press conference and went on and on about the "inhumane ways" of fly killing and the rights of flys to live and similar bullshit. What the fuck? Did the vegan lifestyle cause your brains to rot? Caught mad cabbage desease? Not enough animal protein in your diet? Listened to too much Coldplay that turned your brain into porridge? You fucking white middle class kids with no brains, who never had any real problems in your life and enjoy the luxury of a secure life so that you can waste your enery on the rights of flys! Damn, go and listen to Coldplay, that´s bad enough...

I´d love PETA go to Africa where the flys cover starving, sick and dying humans and try to explain to them that they should use a "humane" fly trap which doesn´t harm the animal and it could be released into the wild again...

Well in my proposition to vacate on continent and deport all the religious nutcases there, count the idiots of PETA in, too.

Ok...I´m off to the flea market soon...will take pictures and post tomorrow. Take care, have fun and remember not to take antibiotics as bacteria have a right to live, too
Sorry for that but

Discoveries in the basement and censorship in Germany

G´day,

And another extra special welcome to Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. Todays blog entry will feature some of my extremly early "artworks", some pictures of my ancestors and a little report on the Germany´s latest idea of internet censorship.

Today the German Bundestag will pass a new law. This planned law got me (for the first time ever) to sign the official Bundestags petiton against it. Like so many ofther countries (as well as Australia see Blog entry from the 29.03.2009) the German government wants to regulate the internet. As the Germans made some real bad experiences with censorship in the course of the "third reich" the German people at the whole are a little sensitive to censorship. So significantly the proposition came disguised as a campaign against child pornography. The minister for families, Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) did the Helen Lovejoy approach ("Will someone please think of the children?") and demanded that all Geman ISPs need to implement a filter software which is connected to an ominous blacklist to ban websites which contain child pornography.

This is quite a clever strategy as a freedom-of the-internet activist is forced to be "pro-child-pornography". When I voiced the opinion that I´m very much against this law people asked me, "how can you defend the consumers of child pornography?". Well, let me firstly tell you that I don´t like child pornography and I think people who get aroused while watching something like that are sick in the head and the whole thing is disgusting BUT banning those websites doesn´t solve anything! It´s a populistic campaign aimed at stupid people who have no idea how the internet works to show that "we do something" to protect the children. FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!

You must be quite stupid to belive that a blacklist on the ISP-end would save any child. The assholes who produce the disgusting stuff will be still out there and the consumers will find ways to circumnavigate this obstacles (via cell phone for instance). If you really want to make a difference use good old policing. Find out where the stuff is produced, kick in their doors with a SWAT team and give them the truncheon, then put them in prison and it´s well known to all who know it well, that child abusers will have a really good time in prison...

But apparently that costs money. So instead of doing something effective the government tries to pass the first censorship law since 1933! O tempora, o mores!

And the media for the stupid majority, i.e. BILD and CO, are promoting this campaign. BILD today features an article on one German ex-congressman who´s against the law. As a matter of fact there is an investigation against this guy for possession of child pornography. But BILD combines the two facts so that it seems that everybody who is against this law is a child pornography consumer. On a journalistic level it´s ingenios I have to admit but media coverage like that only deepens the opinion of the stupid masses that "he who s against internet censorship is a child molester".

On the other hand -and now it get´s paradox- BILD demonises censorship in other countries especially Iran as dictatorship and undemocratic and praise the "heroes who use the internet to fight against the madman of Teheran". I won´t even comment on that...

But I´ll summarise my oppinion: the internet must be free of any preventive content control. The authorities must take repressive reaction on forbidden acts, contents and behavior according to the local laws but content control is censorship. I am aware that the price for my freedom to use the net and voice my opinion is that a bullshit nazi motherfucker, a child porn freak and religious nutcases have the same rights and I don´t like that too much but freedom is always the freedom of everybody or no freedom at all...

Any society that resorts to censorship is only one step away from becoming a totalitarian regime!

Ok that was my call for more sanity and now in lighter news, the cleaning of the basement became the digging into a goldmine. I found unbelievable stuff, old pics in my granny´s old folder, my mother´s old passport from 1963 (man, she was a looker...) and paintings my sister and me did in 1977/78...argh...

So let me introduce my ancestors
My great grandparents (parents of my mother´s mother) Josef (awesome moustache) and Josefine Hillers and their first three children (3 out of 10 lol). Picture was taken approx. around the turn of the century...
My granny, Emmi Wilkes
My grandpa, Otto Wilkes
My grandparents together...dates of all three pics unknown...
My parents wedding day 12.06.1970

I also found a folder with my mum´s old stuff. She was a quite good athlete when she was younger, she even started for the West-German national team at some international championship in Finland in 1963. I found some funny newspaper cuts...
My mum is the girl on right, this pic was taken at an annual sports club meeting in 1962 at which the successful athletes got some medals or so...I love the hairstyle...very 60ies
Well, my mother has always claimed that she looked quite good when she was young but when I found her old passport, my jaw dropped...fucking hell...my mother was a hottie...

Well, it´s funny enough to put pictures of other people on the net and it´s also nice to make fun of them but when it get´s to embarrassing stuff of myself, aehm, let me phrase it that way: it´s not so fun anymore but as I serve the truth I can´t just hide unpleasant truths...Ok here we go, when I was little I went to the day care center and afterwards to the kindergarden and the people there made me do stuff like painting or diverse handicrafts. I can remember that I didn´t like it, as all the other kids were good at it and I was -lets face it - shit. I saw the stuff my sister did in the same year (and she´s two years younger than me) and her stuff looked at least like a human being with a sense of colour and form did it, where my sorry efforts more resemble the works of a brain damaged, colourblind monkey who had his arms amputated and tried to paint with his mouth... Only a loving mother could keep something like that instead of dumping it into a bottomless pit in the middle of the night. Oh well, here they are:
"Untitled" (Crayons on paper, approx. 1977) This could be a house and a flower, the black thingys that resemlke "m"s could be birds...
"Wir malen mit Wasserfarbe" (watercolours on paper, 07.06.1978). The red blob could be a house and the brownish-greenish thing a tree, The black dot symbolises the despair of the artist...
"The mole Grabowski" (Crayons on paper, 16.05.1977). This was the artists impression of the childrens book "The mole Grabowski". The vulcanoshaped blackish thing is a mole´s hill and on top of it we have the mole itself. Flowers, grass and a butterfly complete the composition...
"We fold a cat" (Oregami technique, 06.07.1978). The artist leaves the traditional boundries of paintings and uses the japanese art of oregami to show a cat. I guess I had help with that one, as the foldings are quite neat...couldn´t be me by myself...
"We use watercolours II" (watercolour on paper, 17.08.1977). My abstract phase...honestly I have no idea what that should be but I simply have to admire the boldness of the brushwork and the novel choice of colours...
"Untitled" (watercolours on paper, undated). The artist´s first attempt on pointilism, if you look real hard (and take some LSD) you should be able to see the cunningly hidden shapes...
"Pustetechnik" (ink and crayons on paper, 13.06.1978). The artist discovers the abstract minimalism, clear shapes and some coloured accents show the tendency of isolation of the individual in modern society. The artist most polictical work...

Ok...I know you all had a giggle now and you probably can´t take me serious as an artist no more but well, so fucking what? I know I can´t paint, draw or handicraft stuff. Well at least I can write...lol and now I write a goodbye for today, have fun, take care (get well soon to Shivani and Lei-Lani who also got the swine flu today which raises the swine flu count of my facebook friends to three...), take care and cya

Australian on the loose, swine flu update and more funny stuff from my past

G´day!

And another sunny welcome to my congregation, Hi Emily, Josara, Julia (another apology, 789436792 left), Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan.

This morning I opened out local newspaper and the main story for this small town was titled "Encounters of the hopping persuation - Kangaroo fools police, train drivers doubt their eyes". Since one week several people have sighted a small kangaroo between Borghorst and Burgsteinfurt. One of the first who saw the kangaroo was a train driver who didn´t tell anyone as he thought he would be declared mad or be supected to have been drunk. Same with a scooter driver who also didn´t report it as he feared the police would have probably not believed him or worse. But since it was eventually reported the first investigations showed that there is no Kangaroo missing within a radius of 100kms, so that´s a bit of a puzzler. When the police arrives after a reported sighting, the Roo is nowhere to be found...The local paper started a competition for the first picture of the Kangaroo so I reckon that the forrest beween Borghorst and Burgsteinfurt will be full of amateur photographs today...

On swine flu, after my ex-girlfriend has survived her swine flu attack, my former flat mate has the swine flu now. Get well soon, from here...The nice thing about it is the laid back way Australia deals with it. Dr Senanayake, an infectious diseases physician at Canberra Hospital, said to "The Australian", that on a conservative estimate, the swine flu would infect 20 per cent of the Australian population, with up to five per cent of the infected then likely to require hospital care." Around 80,000 to 200,000 people in Australia may ultimately be hospitalised for swine influenza ... with around 8000 deaths,'' Dr Senanayake says. The feeling in Australia is "no worries"...and Germany´s media is still paniking...haha

Now for something completly different: after I got so much positive feedback on all the old pictures and stuff I posted yesterday I decided to post some more. As my parent´s old kitchen has been sold and will be picked up next Saturday, we have to move the stuff from the cupboards somewhere else. My father took the oportunity to tidy up the basement and it´s amazing how much old stuff we´ve found there. Yesterday afternoon I found a forgotten heap of old stuff of mine. When I went to Bolivia in 1999 I stored my stuff in my parents basement but it got flooded so much of it was destroyed. But yesterday I found in the back of one of the cupboards the collection of cards, photos, posters and other stuff which decorated the walls of my old room. I thought tha this stuff was also destroyed in the flood so I was quite surprised. I had an amazing time to go through that stuff and I scanned some of it and will publish it for your viewing pleasure.
This is a portrait of me by a polish girl I met while hitchhiking through France. I´m not 100% sure but I think it was in 1994...
One of the three or four pictures existing between 1986 and 1991. This was me in 1989...
Botzi (or Bozzi as my sister claimes)...some dogs are just cool...
The three pictures above were the most awesome discovery in the heap. They were taken on 12.April 1996, the day after I finished my university studies. Marc, Sandra and me (and two other guys) went to an old quarry and had one of the best days ever...I even forgot that there were pictures from that day....
This is another amazing dicovery. This scetches were made by a girl from Lithuania when we were in Amsterdam in 1992. In Feb 1992 we (a group of 30 students) visited Lithuania and in June the Lithuanians paid us a visit. A weekend in Amsterdam was also part of that visit. The scetches show my friend Tom and me on our way through Amsterdam´s red light district. I especially like the 2nd pic...me with guitar viewing the windowshops...lol

Well, I also found lots and lots of old flyers. Please bear in mind that we didn´t have the computer technology we have today to make them, so they look amateurish but I still like them!


Haha, the last two flyers have a little story. The yellow one was the "official" flyer for the summer party of Münster´s last squatter house. I guess 15 people lived there and they were of the hippie, vegan, safe-the-whales and women´s lib persuation and they asked us if we would like to play. Well you might think by the way I dressed when I was younger, that I was a hippie but you are wrong. I only dressed like one, I was already the dirty minded and politically uncorrect idiot you know and love...We (Marc and me) had a look at the official flyer and thought that The Holy Chao was a little too small on that one, so we did our own version (the white one). So when we put all the important information on it, we still had some space, so whe put "FREE" "Summer party" "Food & Drink" and "Beautiful women" on the bottom of the flyer...Four day later I got a phone call from the organisators telling me that The Holy Chao can´t play the summer party. When I asked why that was, they explained that they saw our flyer and had a meeting with all the inhabitants and they decided that we were "fascho-chauvinistic dickheads who reduce females on their appearance" and they wouldn´t have someone like that playing their summer party...we had a good laugh and told them that we won´t distribute those fascho-chauvinistic flyers anymore so in the end (and after several more meetings haha hippies) we were allowed to play provided that we won´t make any more chauvinistic comments...
Gig in Berg Fidel in 1997...


Some concert posters...

The posters for our annual Erntedankfest (Harvest party) from 97 to 99. 02.Oct 1999 was The Holy Chao´s very last concert. Well the first Erntedankfest poster was designed by me (and I´m quite bad at that) but from early 1998 we had Martin who was a grafitt artist to do our art work. I really like his posters. For the last concert we had two posters, the lower one was done by Dorit...

Well that´s all for today, I hope you liked the pics...have fun, take care and if you have flu: get well soon!