confusionThat’s really funny when you remember that ‘berliner’ is also the word for a jelly doughnut. The title is from the Bild—a German newspaper who where running a story on a very disturbing murder case in Germany — go here for the Reuters story. But you should probably read it on an empty stomach—it’s gory, disgusting, disturbing and oh, so wrong. It’s like “Citizen X” meets “Hannibal.”
I found out the other day that a person I have know since I was two has cancer. Now I am not great friends with this person, we don’t keep in touch—but we know each other and are friendly when we meet. I found out through her mother that she has cervical cancer, and she apparently has had it for about a year, during which time she kept it a secret and would not let the doctors treat it.
I have dealt with death before—to many times, but every time it is like the first. This is a strange case because the person involved is not someone I see on a regular basis but I know in the back of my head that it is going to happen. And it’s not going to be a painless, passing in the night kind of death, it’s going to be a long, drawn-out painful fade into non-life.
The things that scare me the most about this whole deal; 1) she is a nursing student it’s not as if she does not know what she is setting herself up for by not accepting treatment. 2) She has two children who she is very devoted to—you would think that she would do everything she could to fight for their sakes. 3) she is six months older than me.
Is South Korea asking to get bitch slapped? Why the hell did they ship SCUD missiles to the middle east now of all times? I just don’t get it. What were they thinking?
On the bright side looks like some of that intelligence we are supposed to have might actually be more then talk—that makes me feel better. What are the odds that we know about a whole lot more than one SCUD missile shipment?
Also I noticed that Jimmy Carter was in Oslo yesterday to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize. He warned against the concept of the “preventive war” —I have to say that I agree with him. When you start attacking people to prevent them from attacking you how much better are you than you think they are? Now you’re the aggressor.
Capote weaves a beautiful tale of a unique personality. Holly Golightly is such a deplorably lovable character that men cannot help but fall endlessly in love with her. As the narrator recounts the times he spent with Holly I could not help but compare the power of her personality to that of a girl I once knew—she could get anything she wanted from almost any man but no matter how much they tried none of them could ever posses her or her love wholly. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is easy to read but filled with meaning and wit. And that damn scene with the cat will rip your heart out!
Moby Dick was a great book well deserving of it’s status as a classic but it was not what I was expecting. Melville is heavy on the details—to the point that you learn a lot of, now outdated, stuff about whales, whalers and whaling in general. I expected more of the white whale. Though he looms over the entire book he spends precious little time as it’s focus. Melville’s writing style is somewhat like that of Joyce in Ulysses, the same attempt to capture the local language and color and switching writing formats from standard prose to play writing. Melville, unlike Joyce IMHO, handles it well and it is neither overpowering nor distracting. A great book for detail oriented people.