Männersmittel

The later capitalism gets, the more I realize das Leben ist kein Ponyhof, die Honig-Waffeln sind Honig-Waffen, and my Hosen have Hosen (for real...Berlin was at times cold enough to warrant two pairs of pants). But I'm embracing the modern media of mediation, whether it's delicious Antioxidantsmittel ("medium for transmitting antioxidants") or my Gesichtebuchmachine ("computer"), either bei Thorsten or at the post-pretentious cafe that, despite its best intentions, is quite the Ponyhof. What kind of mediation-savvy idiot-savant goes on vacation just to go on the Internet, right?

Jamie: i think i'm in the right place
as soon as i entered the ponyhof, i heard someone say "normativo" in italian
2:14 PM me: hey i need to get off my facebookmachine
where should i go?
Jamie: ok===you should leave kreuzberg
go to the holocaust memorial
me: where is that?
Jamie: its right near the brandenburg tor
on a road that goes south perpindicular
2:15 PM to the tor
its actually on hannah arendt straße if i remember coorectly
then you go see some other cool stuff
and definitely check out Dussmann
2:16 PM its the four storez book / music store
me: ohhh hannah ARENDT strasse

At the Holocaust Memorial children were playing a game of cache-cache (not cacher!). Jamie and I capitalized on the generosity of a German Jew ("Not many left you know! All in America! Universities! You want coffee?") in his trendy boutique.

Ron: You like this store? Or you think it has changed for bad?
Jamie: No, it's super!!
Ron: Thanks God!
Me (loudly, looking at shoes): Jamie I love this Shoah!!
Jamie: I think you mean Schuhe.

When we left, skinny jeans in tow, he said with a conspiratorial flash of rotting teeth, "You come back, we have party." Disconcerting, because his skin was so clear, and the whites of his eyes so white...also, I don't even like to have party.

To make sure gender roles stayed normativo, I again provided Lebensmittel for the Männer, who earnestly but not without the aid of webcomics sought to understand the economies...now when my kids ask me "Madame, c'est quoi le subprime mortgage crisis?", I'll know what to say.

Chris: With banks whispering sweet encouragement, people bought homes they couldn’t afford, and now they are falling behind on their mortgages.
Jamie: But the overwhelming majority of homeowners are doing just fine. So how is it that a mess concentrated in one part of the mortgage business — subprime loans — has frozen the credit markets, sent stock markets gyrating, caused the collapse of Bear Stearns, left the economy on the brink of the worst recession in a generation and forced the Federal Reserve to take its boldest action since the Depression?
Me: Can I have some more wine?
Chris: It really started in 1998, when large numbers of people decided that real estate, which still hadn’t recovered from the early 1990s slump, had become a bargain.
Me (sotto): Make it schloss, make it schloss, make it schloss am dem Hose...
Jamie: Bubbles lead to busts. Busts lead to panics. And panics can lead to long, deep economic downturns, which is why the Fed has been taking unprecedented actions to restore confidence.
Me: Hey do you guys ever feel like women are just vessels for homosocial relations between men?

Back in Marseille I’m feeling better, like neither a phage nor a vessel, but I’m eaten up by a deadening self-referentiality, my (literal [physical] and literal [textual]) body become both subject and object. Metaphor’s a metaphage, it consumes itself to the point of anorexic finitude….what’s all this meta for, anyway?