title, what title?

My mom used to tell me that I should marry a Japanese girl, because only a Japanese girl would be able to deal with the mess I cause at home. After moving out, I have gotten tidier, but I might keep my mother's wish, if I meet one like Riyo Mori , who became Miss Universe 2007 last night...

I will be in Stuttgart for the long weekend to get drunk, see friends , watch F1 and eat tasty South German Food ...

Mating seasons for homo sapiens sapiens is open. For those looking for a hook up phrase, here is the song with the best one in the history "you and me baby ain't nothing but mammals so let's do it like they do it in discovery channel"

Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde is my all-time favorite album. I know so many good albums, but none has so many hits in a row. Take out Pledging My Time and I can close my eyes and listen the whole album. I've been asking myself what is so special about the album. I guess there are three reasons. First of all it is the only Bob Dylan album, where the music matches and sometimes surpasses the quality of the lyrics (especially I Want You). The multi-layered and multi-chromatic and in the artists own words "mercury-like" sound is open for discoveries. Secondly there is a general feeling of mysticality to the album. It is like knowing something exists in the heart, but not being able to be sure about it's existence. It's as if Dylan found a clue about the "direction home" he talks about in Like a Rolling Stone (Sarah?), but lost it on a drunken night, and went searching for it in a trip... This feeling is most obvious in Visions of Johanna which brings me t...

Buyuk Fenerbahce taraftari sampiyonluk kutlamalari sirasinda oyunculari Tümer Metin'e Besiktasli taraftarlardan ogrendikleri tezahuratla destek verirken: "Pembe tezkere, pembe tezkere, Tümer Metin'e pembe tezkere" o kadar cok tezahurat calarsaniz olacagi budur... Video'yu bana izleten Nuri 'ye tesekkurlerimle.

On Easter I attended one of the weirdest parties in my life in Sage Club Berlin. I mean WEIRD. Dancers in gas masks taking blood showers, stripper girls sucking (fake) blood out of each other. And there was the video shooting of this weird band from Stuttgart and Brazil: If you watch it closely, you can catch me dancing towards the end... After being invited to Berlinale , now I am a familiar face in music. Hmm. Let me tell you openly. I am a celebrity.

I've been reading lately on secularism. I came across this interesting memo written by American Catholic Theologian John Courtney Murray to the Cardinal of Boston about the stance that the Catholic Church take on the proposed law in the 60's which would make the sale of female contraceptive drugs legal. It is interesting to read a voice from the Catholic church which stood for the law, while keeping his beliefs against the use of contraceptives. Catholics in USA are, unlike in most other parts of the world, are religious minority and benefited from the secular principles in the USA. To summarize he makes the difference between public and private morality. He defends that civil laws are to protect public morality, not private morality. In this sense banning contraceptives would be dealing with private morality, which is not in the scope of civil law. He further holds that even if it is against Catholic "moral law", the fact that many religious and non religious group...

It turns out that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky did not like his epic 1812 Ouverture. Here is what I read in Wiki : "Meanwhile, Tchaikovsky complained to his patron Nadezhda von Meck that he was "not a concocter of festival pieces," and that the Overture would be "showy and noisy, but [without] artistic merit, because I wrote it without warmth and without love," adding himself to the legion of artists who from time to time have castigated their own work" I am not sure how should I interpret this. Umberto Eco said once that he does not give a damn about the relation between writer's life and the book itself. I guess I'll stick with that, whatever this Genius said about his piece, I still believe it is brilliant. Perhaps you gotta have the ears of a genius to make such a comment. The last movement from the overture has long taken its top place in my personal the best fitness music list.

In my previous post , I posted songs from Thom Yorke and Björk, refering them as successful musicians from the 90s. Here is a great song that brings them together. It is from the soundtrack album of Von Trier movie Dancer In The Dark titled Selmasong. The video and lyrics are out of sync, as the video is the movie version without Yorke. Speaking of Trier, he has been diagnosed with a severe depression , and looks like he won't be doing movies for a long time. Sad, I was eager to see his new project Antichrist, about a world created by Satan himself.

I've been listening to a lot of Björk lately. Mostly her early works. It occurred to me suddenly that in 3 years, the glorious days of 90s will be 20 years old... It was a both sad and happy realization. No one wants to get old, thats the sad part. But after 20 years, when I look back there are so many good artists and songs enduring 20 years, ensuring my belief that 90s will be remembered as golden years in music. So here are 3 great songs from this great era: First is my favorite Björk song, Army of Me: (ps Rammstein's Benzin video?) Then one of the most striking videos from the 90's, Björk's Bachelorette: And lastly, my favorite music video from the 90s, hailing from the same great year of 1997, Karma Police by Radiohead:

My friend Ozan used to put memorable scnes from on his blog. He has long stop doint it. In order to encourage him, and to pay my homage to the eeriest and saddest scene in my personal film history I post the famous "Sandman" scene from David Lynch's Blue Velvet: The song is "In Dreams" by Roy Orbison. I don't know why but the lyrics remind me of another great movie song, "Mad World" cover by Gary Jules: "In dreams I walk with you. in dreams I talk to you. In dreams youre mine. all of the time were together In dreams, in dreams. But just before the dawn, I awake and find you gone. I cant help it, I cant help it, if I cry. I remember that you said goodbye. Its too bad that all these things, can only happen in my dreams Only in dreams in beautiful dreams. "

In my previous post I jokingly asked if Dylan was a Cylon, after his song All Along The Watchtower was used as the wake-up call for the 4 of the remaining 5 Cylons in the fleet. After thinking about it, I realized that Dylan can really be a Cylon... In Battlestar Galactica, the Cylon warships, named the Basestars , are just like other Cylons half machine half human. Each base star is for the sake of control and identity is a hybrid : Hybrids control the whole ship with their subconscious mind. Their consciousness, stuck between life and death utter incoherent sentences, which a certain group of Cylons interpret as words of god. Here is an example of their utterances: "Two protons expelled at each coupling site creates the mode of force the embryo becomes a fish that we don't enter until a plate we're here to experience evolve the little toe atrophy don't ask me how I'll be dead in a thousand light years thank you thank you Genesis turns to it's source reductio...

I watched the 3. season finale of Battlestar Galactica. I am not into series so I cannot compare it to other season finales, but as an episode from a science fiction series shown on free tv, I have to say it was a masterpiece, both in terms of the dialogues, the story, the editing, the music... Lee Adama gave a speech on the trial of Dr. Gaius Balatar, a populist scientist turned politician who lead the fleet to settle down on New Caprica, only to be occupied by the Cylons, and was the head of the puppet government on New Caprica, about innocence, guilt, and clemency and justice which would not be off the story on great trial movies such as Nurnberg Trials or A Few Good Man. Bear Mc Creary, the composer behind the great music in Battlestar, arranged Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" in a very eerie way, which was heard only by the remaining 4 Cylons in the fleet. Before discovering their true identities the Cylons used lyrics from this great song: There must be some wa...

My trip to Turkey, which I described in my previous post, was rewarding both sensually and intellectually. I bought many book in Turkish. Even though I am able to read in German, I am not as fast as I am in Turkish. One of the books I bought was Umberto Eco's 5 Moral Pieces . One of the pieces is an excerpt from a correspondence between Eco and the old Milanese Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, which was published as a series on a major Italian newspaper (which was published later as a book titled Belief or Non Belief ). This piece has helped me clarify my thoughts on secularism and it's constituent role in democracy. In one of his letters the Cardinal asks Eco the question "how can one be sure that the principles on which he bases his actions are absolute, if he they are not based on a eternal and absolute force such as God...". Eco replies by stating that a set of moral principles based on the basic paradigm of not treating others in a way that would make upset us, had ...

I was off to Istanbul for the weekend to meet friends, family, and most importantly to support my team in their important game against Fenerbahce. Before the game we were 2 points behind Fenerbahce with 4 games remaining in the season. All the supporters were delighted to be in the championship chase after an awful season start. I boarded the plane with hope in my heart... I arrived in Istanbul Sabiha Gökcen Airport around 2 AM. It is the second airport in Istanbul, serving mostly cheap flights. I was impressed by the speed with which all the baggage pickup processes took place. Same hold true for my way back to Berlin. This is one of the reasons why I believe in small government, when there are financial incentives -such as those of cheap carriers- everything has to proceed timely... I started my culinary dream vacation on 3:30 AM with various Turkish delicacies prepared by my cousin (Pinar Abla cooks the best Suboreks). The breakfast at my uncle's followed by a visit to the local...