I was very curious and excited about the book. Opening Beigbeder’s books for the first time always makes me feel like a kid opening Christmas presents. My first reaction was very emotional. After reading three pages, I had to put the book away. It was spooky. What I was reading felt like my unwritten words. My thoughts about writing, about family, about the childhood. About amnesia. Just like Beigbeder, I also suffer from a complete amnesia about my childhood. No memories whatsoever.

But this is where the similarities end. In contrary to my childhood, which was bursting with dramatic episodes, Beigbeder’s childhood is just plain…. boring. It takes artistry (and yes, some tricks) to write a whole (good) book about a boring childhood. Noble ancestors, holidays in family villas, Bently rides to the country club, parents’ divorce which magically went by without one bad word, let alone a fight, a caring mother and a cool father, a handsome brother. Beigbeder is nice to his readers, and even excuses himself for this boring childhood, mentioning that probably most childhoods are boring. That is his actual problem – or the actual inspiration for creating what is today his famous public persona – Beigbeder is extremely isolated in his French bourgeois capsule.  No Fréderic, most childhoods are everything but boring!

This extreme boredom (I actually cannot believe that one can have such a childhood. He must be romanticising it.) is for a person like me, who often complains about the challenges life has opposed on her, a very important message – boredom is actually a curse! Especially for a sensible, creative, educated person like Beigbeder who wants to feel the whole intensity of life and reproduce it in his writing. What to do when there is nothing is there? Search in all the wrong places. Search in clubs and parties and young female bodies. Search in alcohol and drugs.

And it is the drugs (cocaine) that gave Beigbeder the huge gift of finally having a dramatic experience – and a chance to grow up. After getting arrested for snorting coke on a hood of a parked car, he ends up in a jail. And hey, an eternal kid finally gets to experience a bit of “not boredom” – which he describes as horror! Two nights in jail are such a trauma that he finally decides to try growing up and writes his best book yet.

The book is honest, the book is self-critical, the book is a fantastic portrait of bored bourgeoisie. But there is a disturbing feeling that here,  he is trying to make everything right. Through self-criticism and through glorifying others. His mother is a self-scarifying saint. His father is a cool businessman heartbroken because his wife left him. His ex-wife should be pitied for her role of  a single mother. The brother is a handsome successful knight. The daughter is an angel. Jesus! What is happening here!? “I’ve been a bad boy till now, I did and said some bad things but let me try correct it here!”??? This glorifying of his family feels … intentional. The end result is making the boring life he is describing seem even more uninteresting.

I was extremely excided for Frédéric when I finished the book. Personally. I was happy for him because he seems to have (finally) reached another stage in his life. I know how great that feels. Knowing him, I believe he has actually reached this stage long ago but it took this book, admitting it on paper and turning it into peace of art, to make it “official”. But the book also made me sad. For the emptiness. It made me want to take him by the hand and take him to Baghdad for a few moths to live with an Iraqi family. And then make him work in a hospital with very ill children. Anything that would make him a bit ashamed for dramatizing two nights in a jail.

But most of all, this book made me grateful for all challenges life has given me. I will not complain about them anymore. But honestly – I did have enough!

P.S. Definitely do read if you want to know why we write.

I fell even deeper in love when I saw him perform for the first time in 2002. He was like a ball of energy bouncing (in the coolest dance moves since Astaire and Jackson) from one side of the stage to the other. I calmed down a bit after I met him the same night – in person he was quiet, shy and … smoked-up. Plus – his accent made the conversation very difficult.

Last night, I’ve seen Jamiroquai perform again. Many things have changed in those eight years but one thing stayed same – I’m still in love. Last night was special because it was extremely fulfilling to see how lives and circumstances change. For the better.

Jay Kay: He calmed down. He is still incredibly energetic. He still electrifies the audience. But now it seems a bit more… not controlled but…. careful. What he used to do on stage was pure self-destruction. It was of course extremely gratifying to the audience but it was not sustainable in the long term. Especially not without drugs. On one side, as a fan, this “calmer version” makes me a bit sad. On the other side, as a woman in love it makes me happy to see that he will not bleed out on the stage just to fill the voids in our lives. He managed to perform a very fine balancing act of preserving his energy without seeming controlled or withheld. That’s what makes a great artist! Bravo Jay Kay!

Ana: I found myself! In 2002 after the concert, and especially after meeting Jay Kay and the band and hearing about their lives of rock stars, I was very sad about my life of a “Special Project Manager” at a mobile network provider. Compared to life of creating, performing, sharing energy with people, energizing your audience, travelling, being surrounded with like-minded people, my life seemed like a useless disaster. I was sad. And I was envious. Last night, I was just grateful for what they were giving me (us) and deeply satisfied with my own life and with the fact that now, I am a part of this creative force. Bravo Ana!

So one huge bravo to everyone! Including you, dear readers!

I had to take my shoes off before I entered the balloon. I never read barefoot before. There is something different with reading barefoot. It makes the situation more intimate.

From inside of the balloon, the audience was blurred. The sounds were blurred. I could see them and hear them but there was this protecting shield between us. And then there was the eco… I could hear myself. There was something magical about it. The audience was there but not really. I was there but not really. Or realer then real (?).

It felt safe like in mum’s belly. It was my best reading ever.

And then I came home and looked at the pictures. I was stunned. I realized that I found myself inside of my own crystal ball. Shiva’s crystal balls from my Croatian book cover! It was the 7^th crystal ball. The last one. The missing one. The one that belongs into the empty space above Shiva’s head.

And since I found myself in my own crystal ball, the magic took over. I got my first grant for literature.

I hope never to leave my crystal ball.

Last night, I went to the traditional summer party organized by Vienna’s snobbiest bar. I used to be a regular guest in that bar – Back then, when I was still a snob. And when I was still partying.

I know I sound like my grandma, but: Things were different back then.

I don’t know if that is the new fashion, if there are more prostitutes in Vienna or have women all turned into hookers? The bar to which we used to go to wearing LBDs (for the male readers: Little Black Dress) was now filled with porn stars and hookers. The dresses were tight, (too) short and see-through, the heels were all above 15cm. My (male friend) told me: “Look at them. The moment you show them your brumm-brumm (no clue why he’s speaking baby language. Maybe too much skin melted his brain) you don’t need to put in any effort anymore. And if they see the house (he has a gorgeous villa in Vienna hills) they’re done. Yours on the spot.”

Hmm. Either the times were different back then, or we were different back then. Or we were simply naïve. That’s also a possibility.

And then he went on: “Look at that blonde in the red dress at the bar. Polish call girl (I don’t know why he knows. Maybe if you have a villa and a brumm-brumm you also have an overview of the hottest call girls in town). Turn around and look at that sexy Czech group behind you. For sale.”

I don’t know. I have a feeling that prostitution is on the rise. Not necessarily the “official” prostitution but the unofficial kind.  Wearing a skinny dress to be able to “give” yourself to the ones with more expensive brumm-brumms. It is the greed. It is the hunger for luxury. It is the “money as religion” thing. It is “get as much as you can while you can”. It is the whole new value system. Has it turned us into hookers?

The application has been created by a 17years old Russian programmer. Just for the fun of it. As the user number started growing, his family collected money for the unexpected expansion – the kid needed some more severs. Have we found a new Zuckerberg here? Is yet to be seen.
But let’s get back to Chatroulette. It is a very simple application which puts random people together for a video-chat. No need to log in, no need register – so it’s simple and completely anonymous. The only thing you need is a computer and a webcam. Go to www.chatroulette.com and you’ll see yourself in one window, your random chat partner in the window above, a text-chat window and two buttons: NEXT and STOP (I didn’t get the point of  the STOP button yet, maybe you can figure it out).
You get to meet random people from all around the world. You can chose from up to 22,000 people online. They are just a click away. And gone in just one click as well.

And here the Chatroulette phenomenon:
1. You’re completely anonymous so you can do whatever you want
2. The moment you don’t like the person you just click NEXT. This needs no explanation, no excuse. People do it anytime, even in the middle of a sentence or a chat. The moment there is anything they don’t like you’re gone. Or the moment you don’t do what they want you to do (masturbate). A very painful experience for people with low self-esteem.
3. It is all about masturbating men. 80% of people you find are… dicks.
4. People stick something over their cam so it does’t show their picture. Here’s the trick: When you do this, 90% of people think that if they can’t see anyone, no one is watching. How stupid is that? So they style their hair and check their teeth in the camera, or just go on masturbating.

Apart from getting an overdose of masturbating dicks (hey, why do only ugly little dicks masturbate online?), I had following experiences:
A Turkish guy with no teeth sitting in an internet cafe.
Many men from places like Las Vegas, London and Lisbon. They all clicked me away the moment they saw my whole (tired and unmade-up) face or the moment Marcus came into the picture. (although they were not masturbating, they were obviously looking for sex).
A woman who was interested in sex with me (sex).
A couple getting it on full picture in front of the camera. Few minutes after I found them, they got interrupted by someone who I would swear was his wife (or mother) – suddenly they jumped up and started dressing and just as I was wondering what kinky new sexual practice that was, a screaming woman entered the picture. I witnessed another 3 minutes of the fight, then someone finally thought of switching the camera off (sex).
Advertisement for sex chat (sex).
My neighbor Marcus claims he had a very nice 20 minutes long chat with a guy from Amsterdam. I don’t know if I want to believe that.

Yes, Chatroulette is wild, horny west of internet. A zoo of dicks AND men looking for sex. Pity. Because the idea of finding random people from all around the world for a short chat is actually very cool. But the reality is not. Still, Chatroulette is a fantastic social experiment. Also, you can use it as a platform for your ownn experiments – to test when, how and why people react the way they react. I decided to put on full hair and make up next time, just to see the difference in the reaction (and NEXT rates). I also want to see how the men react if you play they game and immediately ask them for sex.
Someone proposed to define chatroom topics. Dickroulette for whoever wants to share the masturbating experience. And then Footballroulette, Partyroulette, whatever…
But you see, we need rules to make it work.
Otherwise we’re simply stuck masturbating.
Next.

Great. Have we learned nothing from the financial crisis? Bravo, politicians. (Why don’t we just get rid of them?)

Please note that the news about the rejection of the transaction taxis is quite hard to find. G8 concluding that they are angry of Iran and N. Korea is so much more important.

P.S. What about the change Obama was promising? Anybody seen it?

For more details: Demokratie ist Kultur

Susan Sontag