A Dusty house

I live in a mess. I don't mean my messy way of life at the moment but literally the place, my parents' house is a big mess. The reason for all the mess is: Dusty, our Labrador dog. At two years of age, he feels himself the center of the world, which for him is our family. It is really hard to just sit on the couch in the living room and read because he thinks that's an invitation for a belly massage for him on the neighboring seat. My parents are still quite strict with his access to the couch but they have given in to most other demands from the dog. So he really does what he wants all day. The mess that I am talking about is not only from his hairs and the dirt he carries on his paws into the house from outside. Clever Dusty immediately realizes when someone has not shut the door to the kitchen entirely. So as soon as people are out of sight, he sneaks into the kitchen and has his very own private party in there with the waste paper and plastic packages, eventually spreading the party and the waste to the living room and beyond. I once managed to catch him red-handed with my cellphone camera.

Agrikulture clip

A brilliant idea for a video clip: reality TV. Put forward by Agrikulture from Jakarta/Indonesia, where else.

Baby-sitting for friends

Ratatat in Munich

Ratatat are not a rock band. They use guitars and they do rock but they couldn't be more different from who is regularly drawing crowds in indie-biased Munich. The crowd at 59:1 sported the usual tight legs and slim scarves and were most probably looking forward to what Wikipedia titles "pathetisch-verträumter elektronischer Glamrock". However, Ratatat's electronic element never reaches the hyper-complexity and is never used as purposeful to build emotional dreamscapes as in the works of electronic scientists like The Notwist. ("Es war dieses weinerliche Zeug, das mir nie richtig gefallen hat." Evan Mast about Dashboard Confessional). Nor do Ratatat display any of the understatement so dearly cultivated by modern indie rock bands, with their melodies reflecting the humble background of gray British industrial towns. Ratatat's music is driven by nothing else than a fat, old hip-hop beat. Curiously, they are much closer to hip-hop than any other genre although their songs consistently lack any vocals. Their affinity towards hip-hop has actually long been obvious, at the latest when they put out their free mixtape where they beefed up tracks by Biggie Smalls or Missy Elliot with "a little" more beat and bassline. Why does all this matter? Because we will dance to hip-hop beats next summer instead of indie rock. Ratatat are rappers in disguise and invite their audience to wear big and baggy again on the dancefloor, at least figuratively. And because they themselves look like indie rockers, people trust them and increasingly accept the invitation. In fact, rumors are that already on a large scale, "common people" from NYC to Frisco are having secret hip-hop jams in their living rooms. And I remember the old-school-parties thrown by my homies, äh friends Beanie-David and Hip-Hop-Steffen having the highest dancers-to-attendees-ratio of all parties in Passau. And to be honest being the most fun of all. Word.

The Brandals at 62,14 miles per hour

This is how we can save the world:

Bringing an end to the lives of cockroaches cruelly

I just came home after a lovely evening with friends bowling and drinking and found a big fat cockroach on my kitchen floor. These nasty little creatures regularly intrude my house, although my landlady already renewed the drainages in kitchen and bathrooms. Cockroaches will outlive us all anyway and then they can have my house and savor all the remaining food in the fridge, surf the net with my laptop and enjoy a bath in my bathtub. However, as long as I have not suffered death from Iran's inevitable nuclear strike (or the US's, the outcome will be equally consequential), I heavily claim the right to purge my home from these idiots. So whenever I see one of them, I immediately bring my RAID Multi-Insect Killer spray and an end to their lives. I have in fact never seen anything more cruel than killing cockroaches with RAID Multi-Insect Killer. It smells like chewing gum but is more poisonous to insects than anything else, killing them within minutes. I recently upgraded my arsenal to include the red RAID Multi-Insect Killer bottle. Before I only had the green one left over from the previous tenant and which is used to kill mosquitos. Its performance on cockroaches was acceptable. However, the red RAID Multi-Insect Killer kills ground insects much faster, in fact it kind of decomposes them. Instead of their legs spread from their body, the legs are now cramped together, like an embryo. Really scary! Sometimes, after coming back to the crime scene a little later, I can see that a leg or a whole part of the animal has fallen off the body, as a result of its last moves. I sometimes have the feeling that using this gas, especially in the kitchen, may not leave the human body unaffected, especially when used in surprisingly huge doses like in my house (but a lot helps a lot, right?). Oh, by the way, I started cooking regularly again. I often have a friend over now and I try to remember all the recipes for what I used to cook during university. If anyone's around, swing by, I treat you a healthy meal! And why not cook yourselves more often again and invite friends over? Nothing better than a good meal cooked by friends for friends. Yummy, Martin.

The Dorques in Saigon

It was still 2007 when the Dorques from Manila hit Saigon, made possible by Rupert/Tuung, who is bored from Vietnamese pop music and incredibly rich and therefore now and again flies in some of these fine underground rock bands that nowadays blossom all over Southeast Asia. Except Vietnam it seems. At any rate, the crowd at the venue was rather surprised that they could not sing along any of the Dorques songs, like they always do when their same band plays every same evening the same covers of the same songs. So I was pretty much the only one that screamed for the Dorques.

myspace.com/thedorques
myspace.com/tuung

Jakarta for me.

The Indo trip is already long over, but there is still one thing I want to share. One of my secret endeavours when I went to Jakarta this time was to find out what in hell it is that fascinates me so much about this city since I first lived there in 2005. After the trip it is now still not possible for me to list the exact formula of the drug Jakarta is to me. The impression is just too blurry. Instead of steam bubbling for pages about a vage idea, I publish this picture, taken from the blog of my good friend Dominik. This is the picture I have in my head when I think of Jakarta. Nothing less. Thanks so much, Dominik.