“Wenn ich Zeuge werde, wie der Bundespräsident seinen geprüften Ernst den getauften Kameras anvertraut, spüre ich, dass mein Innenleben ungetauft heissen muss. Verglichen mit den Pflegern der Sagbarkeit komme ich mir unvorzeigbar vor. Mein Selbstgespräch macht mich auch mir selbst verdächtig. Das verdanke ich den edlen Bemühungen derer, die jeweils wissen, was das Richtige ist.”
Martin Walser, NZZ Nr. 300/2000

REFLECTIONS, COMMENTS, NOTES

Medicine
Do I want a pig’s coronary valve in my body? I don’t think so. I may be a chauvinist pig – but this is where I draw the line.
Organ donors must be crazy – I’d rather personally cremate myself. A human body isn’t an old Buick.

Breast implants: Poor women! don’t you see that small boobs are adorable? And big tits are only liked by senile sickos.
Heidi Klum is so fucking gorgeous – her big boobs are no problem!

Alopecia: 32, female. Eyebrows go, the hair on her head goes, the pubic hair goes. Her immune system doesn’t like functional follicles ...
And what she wants is unimportant; her beauty, her dignity, her happiness don’t count.
Nice. Nature has such sweet ways. (Listen up, girls – men are not the only cause of misery.)

Abortion is a woman’s business. Not the Pope’s, not the governments’, not the courts’. And to make a big fuss about a little cell cluster is wrong because this makes women feel guilty.
Individual life starts the day one is born. Unless the embryo is reading Nietzsche in there, I wouldn’t ascribe any special dignity to it.
I pray for the souls of the dead that were dear to me; I never pray for a damn embryo. Maybe the soul is the sum of a life; the sum of the feelings, fears, wishes, dreams and hopes one has as an existent entity.
And by existing I mean shopping, fucking, learning, hiking ... Using a woman’s body as a source of nourishment I wouldn’t call existing. This seems more like a parasitical pre-existence.
(But I am sure I was a very special embryo with plenty of orgasms.)

Religion & Politics
If Samuel Huntington’s predictions come true, we’ll see a rise of religious ideologies as a consequence of all the failed secular ideologies in the 20th century.
This is great. It’s so much nicer to die for God than for Stalin or Hitler ...
50 “religious leaders” at the World Economic Forum 2002 in New York! Crazy. They ought to be locked up instead. For seduction and indoctrination. For arrogance and manipulation.

Why can’t we be eclectic? A little bit of Marx, a little bit of Henry Ford, a big bit of Schopenhauer and Freud, a little bit of Red Indian thought, a tiny dose of Buddhism, a grain of Islam, a cunt-full of Catholicism, a dash of Albert Schweitzer, a tinge of anarchy ...
Add your conscience to these, and you’ll see through “religious leaders”. They have no dignity; only their beards are real. And their bank accounts.

If politics were fair, Chief Sitting Bull’s great-grandson would have had sex with Monica Lewinsky.

Deep Space Cruiser 1
Environmental protection is basically a good thing. But one should never forget that nature is the biggest destroyer of all. Glacial periods, earthquakes, floods, fires, droughts and epidemics are not exactly a testimony to nature’s gentle and caring ways.
Nature is a bitch, no question, and only on rare occasions she gives us the illusion of being a friend.
Our beautiful space ship has only one manmade problem really: overpopulation. It leads to loss of freedom, aggression, wars, too many laws, wrong laws, joblessness, depletion of natural resources and environmental deterioration.

Speed limits are sometimes necessary, no doubt. But most often they seem to be there just to annoy us motorists. 30 km/h is the kind of speed a bicycle can do; telling motorists to go at that speed in wide open urban areas is a cheek.

Squandering is fun. Saving sucks.

Just Bitching ...
Product design today can drive one nuts.
I want to get a vacuum cleaner – the designer decided pink is my color. Or a computer – it’s round instead of square. Or the buttons of the car radio: like little droplets drawn by Dali.
Contemporary product design seems to be in the hands of women and children. Men are no longer even consulted. They don’t count anymore.
If I am lucky enough to find something I can live with (like a plain black jacket or a lovely gray hoover), I fill the cellar with backup items. In order to stay happy.