Rickety Rocketry

Apparently "Rickety Rocket" is a 70s/80s cartoon series about four teenagers and their rickety rocket. Does anybody remember it? I don't. Because at that time I was pooing my pants, a day was a month, a month was a lifetime and the universe was the wide open park adjacent to the place where I grew up...

Monday, April 19, 2010

Blogging Across the Alps...


After Rickety Rocketry has hibernated for over a year, I decided to start a new blogging project documenting my somewhat megalomaniac, hopeless and pretty stupid goal of running across the Alps in 2012 in a single day. More information at

acrossthealps2012.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Places Named After Numbers

There is a song by Frank Black that I like, even though the lyrics don't really make that much sense. Maybe it was just the phrase "places named after numbers, different kind of love", which caught my attention. It puzzled me, but somehow sounded true...
Far from being a maths genius, I did have a fascination with numbers as a child. I had an imaginary football club where each player was represented by a marble, with his own stats for stamina, skill and fitness. And yet later, I would employ that system to rate the girls in my class by character, looks and overall score. It was an attempt to hold on to a childhood dreamworld in the face of hard hitting puberty. As a child counting was my drive for many things - walking in the mountains ("let's reach 3000 meters altitude!!"), running the 50 meters as fast as possible, imagining the size of population of my imaginary planet (yes! I did have an imaginary planet! Ha!) and, of course - the stairs: When I was six or so, I had an obsession with counting steps on stairs during walks with my father. I remember reaching the number 10,000 after a week of counting and it made me increadibly proud. I loved counting. And felt like the count, until there was some maths wizz-kid in our primary school class who really was the count for all of us - he would always win at maths games against the whole rest of the class and later even participate in the German school maths olympics. But also him was just a puny shadow compared this man:
Yesterday, I came across a documentary about Daniel Tammet, a prodigious savant who was diagnosed with epilepsy as a child and Asperger's syndrome later. Recently, he learned German within a week - as he did with Icelandic a few years ago. He can remember the number
Pi up to the 25,000th digit and he can do the most difficult and intricate calculations in his head.
The special thing about him, however, is that he is able to communicate much of his inner life to the outside world, unlike other prodigious Asperger's. I'm deeply impressed by how he describes his inner life, his days are literally numbered. Calculations become imaginary landscapes and when he talks about it, it is quite poetic.
I have my own memory of what it is or was like to have a private imaginary world. But while my fascination with numbers, like that of many kids, was actually counting, Daniel Tammet seems to be doing something else - he reads them and wields the results like a poet would do with a phrase. In his world, language, numbers and emotion are intertwined. Numbers are actually living things, beautiful, intriguing or scary. For him numbers are an integral, necessary part of everything. Like in that Frank Black song -

Beyond below above
A gravity that slumbers
At the center of
Places named after numbers
A different kind of love

Thank you for the picture, Heidi Rettig.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Rock that Candy Shop!

This morning I woke up to a burning candy shop on the radio. It is also the day when I'll be heading into a four day luscious holiday with a very special woman. And so I say:

1. It will all come down before the fires of hell
2. You let me in your house with a hammer
3. Rock that candy shop, set it on fire

Here comes the song - "Candy Shop" by "Fatima Spar und die Freedom Fries", an austrian band...

Klickt! Uns! Reich!

Gut, ok. Ihr seid keine Massenkonsumenten, sondern besondere Menschen. Ja, und genau darum geht's hier. Denn nun gibt's eine tolle Gelegenheit für Online-Einkäufer nebenbei Gutes zu tun. Und ganz nebenbei auch noch unsere unterfinanzierte aber total wichtige, tolle, gute, sinnvolle Arbeit in einem innovativen gemeinnützigen Verein zu unterstützen. Indem Ihr Euch nämlich ganz einfach den tollen auf's philippinenbüro zugeschnittenen Toolbar von clicks4charity.de runterladet:



Spenden kostet hier nämlich garnix. Und das funktioniert so:

1. Ihr kauft was im Internet ein
2. Der Onlineshop zahlt dafür eine kleine Provision, ohne das sich der Einkaufspreis erhöht (Die Provision ist teilweise ziemlich gut, es bringt also was...).
3. Das philippinenbüro profitiert von der Provision

Mehr Infos gibt's bei clicks4charity.de (bitte benutzt aber den Toolbar hier auf dem Blog, wenn Ihr uns unterstützen wollt...)

Das ganze sieht dann so aus:


Ich kann Euch schon hören - "Seelenverkäufer" ... "Konsumsklaverei" ... etcpp. Aber glaubt mir, wir machen uns hier jeden Tag tonnenweise Gedanken um politische Morde, Landreform, böse Bergbauprojekte und Kredit-, Reis- und Wirtschaftskrisen und irgendwoher muss die Kohle ja kommen. Also - bitte installieren. Aber im Zweifelsfall trotzdem beim kleinen Tante Emma Laden um die Ecke einkaufen gehen. Denn sonst gibt's den irgendwann auch nicht mehr...

Monday, January 12, 2009

Me Rikey Yur and Likey

Yul is a modification of the old nordic word „Yula“, meaning „wheel“ and referring to the ever constant cycle of the seasons. „Yul“ is a pagan celebration of winter solstice. Solstitium in turn is Latin, meaning „resting of the sun“. During Yul, the longest night of the year, the promise of rebirth and the return of the light are celebrated and realised and many candles are lit. While it originally refers to the night of the 21st December, it has been postponed this year by two weeks, for purely personal reasons.

Rikey, however, is a racist misconception of Asian English accents used predominantly by white heterosexual young males as a humoristic element in popular language. It connotes “like”, i.e. implying bad grammar and pronunciation as in “likey”. Here is a very good example.

Now, if you don’t know what I’m on about, I don’t blame you. You may even think “is there a single person in this world who would understand that kind of mumbo jumbo?!”

I can guarantee you that there is. And she’s a maverick tingle massage.

Monday, December 1, 2008

The Psychology Of No One And Nothing In Particular


I wish I could write something about distance and how it makes me feel.

Transcending the here and now somehow doesn’t work my way today.

So, forget the hypothesis. Long live experience.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Wintersehnsüchtelei

Manchmal wünsche ich mir, ich könnte mich in eine Katze verwandeln. Nach Hause kommen und mich schnurrend auf das Sofa legen, den Körper einrollen und den Kopf auf die gefalteten Pfoten legen. Das dicke Fell schützt gegen Welt und Winter, die Nonchalance der getigerten Seele düpiert die Sehnsucht. Die Sehnsucht nach Schneeballschlachten zum Beispiel und der dumpfen Stille im Neuschnee, nach glasklaren Nächten übersäht von Sternen und schneeflockigen Ingrid Bergmann Küssen und einem warmen Körper und Gegenstück zu diesem Loch im Herzen. Die Sehnsucht danach, nach Hause zu kommen, sich auf’s Sofa zu legen, den Körper einzurollen und nicht an Dinge zu denken, die es so garnicht gibt im Zeitalter des Klimawandels und der Desillusion. Der Klimawandel macht meine Winterwelt letztlich nass und grau und die Desillusion lacht sich ins Fäustchen und verdeutlicht, dass dies strenggenommen garnicht meine Welt ist: Denn irgendetwas, was vielleicht auch irgendwann einmal aus Liebe geschehen ist kommt vermutlich genausogut aus anderen Gründen zustande.
In dieser Situation hilft eigentlich nur etwas Warmes im Bauch, ein gutes Buch, ein Anruf, Bier, Kaffee oder Spaziergang mit Freunden, mit Kindern spielen; Programmkino, Pfefferminztee oder einfach nur ein aufregender Wichs im gemütlichen Prädormitium --- Witze sind wärmstens zu empfehlen und Wärmeflaschen auch nicht schlecht. Gibt es Theater, Kunst, Disko oder ein Konzert zieht’s mit mp3s im Ohr wippenden Schrittes dorthin, wohin die nasskalte Dunkelheit die Menschen treibt. Dort verleiht man seinen Kopf, Geld und Witz und hofft - auf die Nonchalance der getigerten Seele, Schneeballschlachten und flockige Ingrid Bergmann Küsse, die Wangen apfelrot dank innerer Wärme und vielleicht duften fremde Haare nach Winterluft. Währenddessen verkriechen sich Klimawandel und Desillusion vor lauter Sehnsucht zwischen den heimischen Sofafalten.

Thank you Bev for the cat...
Thank you Beautiful South for those Ingrid Bergmann kisses and thank you F.C. Delius for "Ich leihe Dir meinen Kopf".