The light is impossibly bright at Munich East Station today. On the next platform an ashtray is burning, and the smell of scorched cigarette filters hangs like a pall over the Ostbahnhof. The trains have a particularly nasty edge to their screech this morning.

I have a hangover.

More awful German

From the second hand page of the German Apple Store:

Ludwig van Beethoven

I just finished listening to Ludwig van Beethoven's Third Symphony, "Eroica". The BBC was good enough to publish the recordings of the first five symphonies.

The finale is amazing. Beethoven is hard to play, anyway, but this is extreme even for him. It's like "ok, now you players are warmed up, let's play some real music." Except that, after playing the first three movements of Eroica, you're in no shape to play that finale. It's just astonishing how he puts one section after another through its paces.

Thinking about Beethoven, a concept (which had formerly been a bland stock motif of the SciFi trash I read) takes on a strange immediacy. At the time Ludwig composed his third symphony, he had already been going deaf, which was a great burden on him. The question now is, if he had today's state of the art hearing aids available, would he have been the same great composer? Or was it only his deafness which made him what he was? Would he have been a mediocre composer, with better hearing?

And would it have been right to deny him access to hearing aids? Do we, from a historical perspective, say "thank god" or "what a pity"?

Perhaps we say a little bit of both, through that dreamy, pink-tinted look we always take at history. Like Milan Kundera wrote: "The interface between the present and the past is the Kitsch".

PS: the BBC stopped offering the first five symphonies for download, but the next four will soon be up.

Made me laugh

From Lawrence Lessig's book, Free Culture:

If you're not a programmer, or don't know many programmers, the word 'hack' has a particularly unfriendly connotation. Non-programmers hack bushes or weeds. Non-programmers in horror movies do even worse.

A word of advice

I'm sitting in a public restroom stall at a Munich subway station, feeling poorly. From time to time, someone clears their throat wetly in the booth next to mine. I have no idea how I'm going to manage the remaining hour of my one-and-a-half hour commute to work.

Later on the train, I have time for reflection. After a good binge, the feeling on the next day is like waking up, feeling bad and slowly rising back to the land of the living during the day. Only today, my ascent seems slower than usual. I feel more like the walking dead. I have become trapped in one of the intermediary regions of hell, doomed to roam the land as a zombie, walking slowly, mumbling at people and going to the toilet a lot.

Never drink Rappen Weihnachtsbock that has been out of refrigeration since January. Even if there is absolutely nothing else.

I killed my first PC yesterday

Not computer. Player Character. I'm a Dungeon Master.

For those who do not know what the Dungeon Master means, I will not explain right now, but rest assured that it has nothing to do with anything sexual. Or sexy.

I've always been dreading the moment when the first of my players actually bought the farm. We have been playing in this group for almost ten years, and the mortality rate has, up to now, been zero. But sometimes events force your hand.

The abovementioned character tried to get around a monster on a swaying draw bridge by running at it, and jumping over the side of the bridge at the last possible moment. The plan was to catch hold of the rope on the side and use it to swing around the monster.

He rolled a 7 (In our system, low is bad, and rolls go up to twenty, or more). There was nothing I could do. He fell to his death.

In retrospective, it was a liberating experience. It's easier than you would think. And fun.

I think I am going to do it again.

Einschüchterungspolitik

My initial attempt at composing this in English failed miserably. I can't be bothered to translate it right now. Sorry.

Angela Merkel gibt ihren Senf zum Beitritt der EU in die Türkei:

"Die Aufnahme von Beitrittsverhandlungen mit der Türkei, deren Außengrenzen an Irak, Iran und Syrien liegen, überfordert viele Bürgerinnen und Bürger Europas."

Ihre Polemik ist abstoßend. Sie benutzt das Schreckgespenst Irak, um der Xenophobie gegen die Türkei mehr Rückhalt zu verschaffen. So muß sich keiner mehr in schwache Ausreden wie den Verweis auf die 'andere Kultur' flüchten. Jetzt kann man sich auf die terroristische Gefahr aus den Irak stützen.

Man beachte außerdem daß sie so geschickt ist, nicht selbst Stellung zu beziehen. Sobald sie an die Macht gekommen ist (und das wird sie), werden die Beitrittsverhandlungen wieder aufgenommen. Darauf würde ich wetten.