Sunday Music, Monday Edition

Is it ennui or disgust I feel ? I can not decide. Yes, I cut back on my news intake. But old habits die hard, and last week Thursday or Frayday or the night in between, I travelled several news channels. And I saw wretched things.
I read an article in the NZZ by Leon deWINTER (Ger., Eng.) about a book that claims to answer the question who betrayed Anne FRANK and her family. To make a long story short : The answer this “team of cold case specialists” and “historians” gives, is worth absolutely nothing. They built a wild “theory” based on one (!) anonymous message from 1946 that is already known to historiography, and evaluated as useless because leading nowhere. I do not know what this book is, I am inclined to follow deWINTER who calls it a crime. And I also follow him when he insinuates that the USAmerican publishing house that financed this lousy “research” wanted to see results, understandable after three years. And so they produced their final solution, and presented the world a Jewish man as the wretch of the century, a man who conveniently is dead since 1950, and who was a member of the “Judenrat”.
(Excurs : If you want to learn about the holocaust, especially the shoa, read Raul HILBERG (1926-2007) (Ger., Eng.) : The Destruction of the European Jews, first 1961. Also look at Georg MOSSE (1918-1999) (Ger., Eng.) : Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism, 1978. I am sure that HILBERG somewhere explains the role of the “Judenräte”.)
In the same news I found that somewhere in Tennesseistan Art SPIEGELMANs (Ger., Eng.) Maus (Ger., Eng.) is pulled from the school libraries, because it contents bad words and – horribile dictu ! – the image of a naked, dead, female body. I can not help, but the only people I can imagine, who have an interest to ban Maus from school classes, are people who are either openly fascist, or plain idiotic. Banning books seems to be something quite normal in parts of the untied states.
Speaking about plain idiots : Finally I saw the guv’ner of West Virginistan show the world the arsehole of his dog – he really held the dog up and showed its anus around – and told Bette MIDDLER to kiss it. Because she insulted the “state”, in a tweet, some weeks ago. Yo, all hail da big chieftain.
After that I turned to European news. They are dominated by the Eastern non-war. The only man who stays calm as marble, besides Vlad, is the Ukrainian president. He lounges in an armchair and tells the people to stay cool. He is either absolutely pointless – what I can not believe : You do not become president of a fine-tuned mafia state when you are absolutely simple, simplicissimus so to say. – or he knows something we do not know. I assume the latter.
Anyway, if they want to shoot, they should start soon, because now the ground is still frozen. After winter rasputiza (Ger., Eng.), the Wehrmacht did know something about this, and even the most advanced Russian tank still can not fly over groundless bog.
Ennui or disgust. Was it ever different ?
Est secretum. By Oreste RAVANELLO (1871-1938) (Ger., Eng.), sadly I did not find the names of the performers. I hope you enjoy the music. May we have a peaceful, and productive, week.

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Sunday Music

For diversion a Sunday Music on a Sunday. I spent the last working days instructing my successor. I only hope that he’s not too fast, and I mean not only the driving style. My co-driver and me carved out a certain amount of time for this particular “job”, so it wouldn’t be nice if he does it all needing an hour or so less a day. But I think the colleague is seasoned enough to understand this without further discussion.
A lot of discussions took place in Germany over the last week regarding the epidemic situation. I can not understand it, there is nothing to discuss : Get your vaccination as soon as you can.
Violent protests against necessary, heavy-handed actions like partial “look downs” etc. erupted, notably in The Netherlands, but in other places throughout Europe.
The development in Germany is frightening (here is an actual overview in a newspaper). What I find remarkable is not the high number of infections, or the proven connection between voting for the new fascists and vaccination refusal (a simple look on a political map shows that areas with high infection rates are most likely areas with high outcome for neonazi parties – yes there is not only one) – what I find most interesting is the fact that the number of daily vaccinations is pretty high, but the percentage of newly vaccinated people does not go up accordingly (a friend who is good with numbers brought this to my attention). Of the daily vaccinated people roughly two thirds are people who get their third jab (booster), while only one third gets the first (!) or second injection.
According to a survey more than 60% of the still not vaccinated are “absolutely unwilling” to accept a vaccination, 20% are “unsure” (!). If my memory does not fail me, we have now short to 70% of the population vaccinated – what leaves us with nearly 30 % of idiots. I think the number of idiots is even much higher, they want their Karneval and Weihnachtsmarkt, they expect to go on vacancy like usual, they do not wear masks, scramble in the streets and stand close by close – while we (not so) slowly but steadily run out of ICU beds, and people who work in hospitals & care still have no mandatory vaccination.
The really sad thing is that all this was avoidable. The agency in charge, the Robert-Koch-Institut, warned in July and explained what to do. Countries that had been hard hit by the virus, like Spain and Portugal e.g., showed the way out : People vaccinated, and – oh Wunder ! – it works. The head of said institute gave a passionate speech last week where he expressed his anger and frustration, and gave a grave warning. The death toll will rise, no doubt. We see a disaster of political cluelessness, aimlessness, and plain fear of “unpopular” decisions. In the end a loud & reckless minority yells and hollers nonsense, and spineless politicos do not scrap the courage together to follow the advice of experts.
Even the sun is forced to make a statement : The coronahole (image) spews out particles over Earth.
Let’s turn away from the deadly nonsense.
Let’s listen to Mr KESSELs (1923-2004 ) (Ger., Eng.) song titled Lison from his 1969 lp Kessel’s Kit. I do not know whether the title refers to the French river (Ger.), or an Italian white (Ger.). I hope you like the music. May the coming week be relaxed & easy for all of us.

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Sunday Music

I decided that I had enough of the news. What happens in Afghanistan right now, changes everything. With the Western troops marches out the very last remnant of something called “trust”, the little bit that was left after the Western allies under US lead betrayed the Kurds some years ago, evaporates. Like anything else that was tried in this country over the last twenty years or so – puff, gone, welcome back in patriarchal stoneage, islamistic version. Pakistan feels betrayed too, the whole damn region is even more instable. Last week the Chinese gouvernement received a visit of some Taliban leaders. One may wonder when they’ll start mining there. The number of refugees in Europe will grow, of course.
Obviously there was / is a major misassessment, misjudging on USAmerican side, would be nice if a little more realistic point of view would be taken in general. But anyway, the deed is done, the world has to face the consequences.
Enough of this, and other idiotic things.
Today’s Sunday Music is a foxtrott titled El Manisero (The Peanut Vendor) (Eng.), composed by Moises SIMONS (1889-1945) (Eng.) ; here it comes in the 1930 version by Don AZPIAZU (1893-1943) (Ger., Eng.) and His Havana Casino Orchestra, singer is Antonio MACHIN (1903-1977) (Ger., Eng.). I hope you enjoy the music. May the coming week be less idiotic, mean, and violent – at least one can hope for it.

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A Little Whine

I was not able to go to Suebia this weekend, and it feels crap. And it is all my Grätigkeit to blame.
For some days now I develop a headache from midday onwards that slowly but steadily gets on my nerves. Yesterday evening I nearly lost it at our filling station. I drove towards home in the late afternoon through heavy rain, met an unwanted detour, cursed the autobahn I had to rejoin, finally reached the filling station with the last drop of Diesel. Here I forgot something, a guy yelled at me, and I was close to, well, loose it. The Suebian expression is “auf der Sau ‘naus”, what may give you an idea of my feelings. My co-driver made me realise the nonsense, and all was fine.
I actively avoided (more than usual) collisions that would have been caused by other drivers over the last days – and pray that I made no serious mistakes meself. I saw some inner-city accidents last week, and three heavy ones on country roads & the autobahn this Wednesday. These three happened obviously shortly before I passed the location. In one case a car seemingly summersaulted into a field, at least I could not see that the thing would have been driven to the location where it came to rest, on its left side – the wheat was still standing well all around it. In all cases dutifull people already were doing the necessary, like safeguarding the location, helping the hurt etc., so I could drive by.
The weather is strange. I know for sure that my body reacts to air pressure – I mean that I need some air pressure to function properly. I think that is not the case right now. Usually I lie down in the late morning for an hour or so, sleep a little, doze a little, get up after an hour or three halves, all well. Over the last days I slept awefully at these occasions, and when I got up, the face in the mnirror was terrible, swollen, like after a Sauftour, a real bad bender. The mentioned headache does not help. Time through these siestas flowes differently : I fell asleep, woke up with the impression that I must have slept for an hour or so, that it would already be time to get up and prepare to leave for work. A look on the (radio-)clock taught me again & again that only fifteen to twenty minutes had passed. I find this very distressing, simply because I usually can rely on my feeling for time. And because I woke up, and felt even more exhausted than before.
I blame this terrible pressure system they called “Bernd”, or “Bernhard”, I don’t know. I only hope “Bernd” finally pisses off, the basted did enough damage around here.
I seriously need to entkrümpfeln : I want to see nothing, hear nothing, meet nobody over this weekend. I feel old, exhausted, grätig. It is different this time. Only two weeks until holidays. I have to scrap everything together to keep my optimism. And it feels lousy not to be in Suebia.