You keep what you kill

Time to celebrate the bestest dog in the whole fucking world - Wooster! Wooster's birthday is November 30th and this is a late happy birthday blogpost for my alter ego! :-)

Scheiß drauf, Malle ist nur einmal im Jahr, haben wir uns gedacht. Und sind halt mal rübergeflogen. We'd planned this trip together with a friend of ours in Spring already, but for various reasons then decided to travel in mid-end September. And what a wise choice it was! Our plan was to hike the GR-221 from Port D'Andratx to Pollenca in a week and we found the conditions to be just perfect. Not too hot, not too cold, dry. And more or less lonely trails except for the sections around Lluc. But before we could set foot in the Tramuntana, we had to get to the island first, which proved to be a bit problematic and expensive. I had booked a flight TXL-PMI return with HG (Niki) in March and we were supposed to fly out on Sunday, Sept 17th. And of course they have all my contact data, email, telephone, and they use it all the time and I'm a fucking platinum member ... but still, they somehow "neglected" to contact me. More or less acting on gut instinct I...

Wir waren am Freitag mal den Kasper gucken. Ich hatte ehrlich gesagt recht niedrige Erwartungen an das Konzert, wurde aber positiv überrascht. Erst mal haben wir das Timing richtig gut hinbekommen und mussten ausnahmsweise mal nicht vor der nervigen Max-Schmeling-Halle anstehen. )Wird die jetzt eigentlich in Manuel-Charr-Halle umbenannt und Bushido spielt das Eröffnungskonzert?) Wir mussten nur noch 4-5 Songs Umbaupausenmusik ertragen und konnten geschickt den Supportact umgehen. Ich habe Fatoni schon ein paar Mal gesehen und muss leider sagen, dass ich ihn langweilig finde. Nett, aber langweilig, nicht mein Ding. In der Umbaupause lief noch "Ein Affe und ein Pferd" von K.I.Z. und es haben fast mehr Leute mitgesungen als nachher bei Casper. Zurück zum Thema - Casper hat sich eine sehr aufwändige Produktion gegönnt, ich hoffe, es lohnt sich auch finanziell für ihn. Sehr cool, das ganze Ding mit Liveband zu spielen, das hatte schon richtig Druck. Well done! Auch ansonsten, r...

Home of the Nazis. Well, not unexpected really, since the Börsenverein is happy to take the money from disgusting publishers like Kopp Verlag. Good to know that the guest of honour 2018 will be "Deutsches Reich", as the new bookfair director Joseph. B. Höcke has recently announced . In my bookfair microcosmos, I only became aware of all this the Monday after though. I had a wonderful fair, the weather was so nice and made everything really, really relaxed. Met lots of nice and interesting people over three days, fantastic food, old and new friends. Plus my panel about AI in Publishing on the Friday afternoon worked really well - capacity crowd, standing room only. :-) OECD reception: Dinner at Medici and Sardegna: The usual poor, embarassing performance of Frankfurt Bookfair - no credit cards accepted, a website from the stone age, marketing for events not happening ... so still way to go, guys. We'll see whether they ever make it into the 21st century. I...

So sorry. Tremendously sorry. Have broken my promise to blog more often again. But trying to make up for it now that the rainy season approaches. It's just that, ah, nevermind. So, last night we had quite a fantastic dinner at "Richard" (Köpenickerstr. 174, Kreuzberg). There's so many things I liked about it, they would never fit into a twitter feed. I'm not a twat, don't tweet, and have no limits here. The room, very nice, high ceilings, good light ... the service, attentive but unobtrusive at the same time ... the menu, well balanced and so happy to see that they offer a vegetarian menu by default, not just on request ... and the food of course, the food. THE FOOD. Excellent doesn't do it justice, outstanding is the right term, I guess. My special favorite was the butternut pumpking with passionfruit and topinambur and the parmesan pasta with egg yolk, mangold, and zucchini. Outstanding. Also the cheese selection, outstanding! :-) Didn't have breakfa...

I rarely go to concerts these days. To many smokers around. The smoke itself is bad enough, just makes me feel sick. But the real problem is the aggression inside me. I have to stay away from these people because I have good reasons to assume that rather sooner than later I won't be able to control myself and BEAT THEM TO A BLOODY PULP. I admit that I often have these images in my head and I'm going through the scenes in slomo, that's when I usually leave the building before it becomes reality. While it would be a) justified, b) fun, and c) make the world a better place if I beat the living daylights out of a motherfucking smoker, it would also d) land me in jail. Which I would very much like to avoid. But if anybode invented a virus that killed all smokers, I'd be happy to help spread it. Fuck you. So, that is one of the reasons I don't go to too many concerts these days. The second reason is security or rather the amateurish security a lot of the bigger locations ...

Verliebt in Berlin hin oder her, wenn Fußball läuft, dann läuft immer Fußball. Momentan läuft aber kein Fußball. Und auch in Zukunft eher nicht, geht mir nämlich jedes Jahr mehr am Arsch vorbei.  Dafür aber umso schönere Momente in den letzten Wochen, die ich genießen durfte. Hektoliterweise Regen, zwischendurch auch ein bisschen Sonne. Tolle Kunden und Geschäftspartner, die mir Geburtstagskuchen backen. Was will man mehr? Mit dem Regen kamen auch die Gespenster, aber alle Fenster waren zu und sind mit Knoblauchsilikon und Silbernitrat abgedichtet, da kommt keiner rein. Glück gehabt. Nach dem Regen kommt der Spaß. Mein Hund ist nämlich Jesus und kann über Wasser laufen. Kann dein Hund nicht. It's extremely important to make sure your balls dry out propely after a day out in the wet wilderness. After all, you don't want to get any funghi down there. Ladies don't dig that. :-D Dann war da ja noch die Sache mit dem Älterwerden. Lässt si...