a lady bug is girlie.

PS
I've fallen in love with the writings of David Sedaris. He explained to me myself somehow. I only want to hear more(I've been listening to his recorded readings). Why is it that the best dudes are gay dudes while I'm cursed into being a straight woman (straight but not square, mind you)?
OK Seriously... time for sleep

Lets start out happy. Here are my little darlins All dressed up for halloween. Poor crying baby, maybe lea wanted a girly costume like her big sister and cousin.



Ok on to the stuff Buchenwald stirred up in me.
I don't know why I have to keep making comparisons but that's whats compelling me so...
Here is a juxtaposition for you.




How do these things relate? Well, It's systems of classification through symbols. Man, that topless hanky dude must be a freak in the sack. Here is a link to the explanation of what the hankys symbolize, and here is a link to what the nazi triangles and stars symbolized . So when are systems of classification good and when are they bad? I think this comparison makes the answer to that question a little to simplistic.
Our guide at Buchenwald explained that queers and Jews were the prisoners that SS guards were pretty much allowed to do anything to. The Nazi's pink triangle was of course taken over, so that a symbol of oppression was turned into a symbol of pride or resistance. . This can be compared to hip hop artist taking "nigga" and flipping it around (to the shock and offense of most of their Granny's).

Alright, now to take a little look at Karl Koch and Janis Karpinski. Karl Koch was the husband to Ilse, the bitch of Buchenwald, he was a bad man, so bad even the Nazis didn't want him in the end. Janis is the woman who was in charge of Abu Ghraib Prison during the time that the torture photos surfaced .
I'm going to take excerpts from two web pages.
The first comes from the bottom of this page on the trial of Ilse Koch. (this section is about Karl Koch)

As the camps became more brutal, Koch was promoted: from Sachsenhausen to Esterwegen to Lichtenburg to Dachau, then to Columbia Street prison in Berlin, renowned for its excesses of torture. Prisoners there were locked in the doghouses, chained by the neck, and forced to lap up their food from a bowl. Anyone failing to bark when Koch walked by received twenty-five lashes with a cane. Koch had one prisoner beaten senseless, then ordered guards to stop up his anus with hot asphalt and force him to drink castor oil.

and here is a long excerpt from an interview with Col. Janis Karpinski, that was on Democracy Now a week or so ago . Col Karpinski is shifting some blame to General Miller, the man who is currently running the Abu Ghraib Prison. (I got that idea from this wiki article )

And he used the example at Guantanamo Bay that the prisoners there, when they're brought in, that they're handled by two military policemen. They're escorted everywhere they go -- belly chains, leg irons, hand irons -- and he said, "You have to treat them like dogs."

AMY GOODMAN: You were there when he said this?

COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: Yes, I was there when he said that. And he said, "They have to know that you are in charge, and if you treat them too nicely, they won't cooperate with you. And at Guantanamo Bay, they earn -- the prisoners earn every single thing they get, to include a change of color of their jumpsuits. When they get there, they're issued a bright orange jumpsuit. They're handled in a very aggressive, forceful manner, and they earn the privilege of transitioning to a white jumpsuit, if they prove themselves to be cooperative."

And I raised my hand. I was just there as a guest. I was not a participant, but I said, "You know, sir, the M.P.s here don't move prisoners with leg irons and hand irons. We don't even have that equipment. We don't have enough funding to buy one jumpsuit per prisoner, let alone an exchange of colors." And he said, "It's no problem. My budget is $125 million a year at Gitmo, and I'm going to give Colonel Pappas all of the resources he needs to do this appropriately."

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Colonel Pappas ran the prison within the prison, is that right? He ran something called the "hard site"?

COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: He ran the interrogation operations within the prison, that's correct. And it was -- Cell Block 1A and 1B were the two maximum security wings of the hard site, and during General Miller's visit, either at his order or at his request, General Miller told -- instructed Colonel Pappas to get control of Cell Block 1A.

AMY GOODMAN: Treat the prisoners like dogs. That explains the leashes and making prisoners bark?

COL. JANIS KARPINSKI: It seems to be consistent with those photographs, yes, with the dog collar, the dog leash and un-muzzled dogs. And, in fact, those techniques have appeared in several memorandums that have been signed by senior people.



This bit about the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, earning everything they get makes me think of another thing the kind guide of Buchenwald told me. In Buchenwald the prisoners were able to earn a chance to sleep with the prostitutes brought in. The prostitutes were told they could earn their way out of the camp this way after a year but this seldom happened. There were maybe 15 prostitutes in this all male camp.


alright, alright, enough for now. I really need to figure out what I'm doing and start keeping normal sleeping hours.

The prisoners in the camp had to build things for the Nazis. They dug tunnels and made rifles, things like that. They tried to sabatoge their progress in order to resist the Nazi regime. They had to be careful how they did it though because they would be punished with beatings and death.
My dad was drafted into the military during Vietnam. Due to an injury during training he was stationed in the pentagon doing peon work. He told me the MIT computer guys working there were bitter about their draft and would always fuck up the computer systems before their discharge.

OK more on these subjects later.


dogs treatment in nazi prison vs dog treatment in iraq prison
gay symbol(hanky in the back pocket) vs nazi symbol(red, pink, yellow triangles)

I'm so tired. my schedule is flip flopped and I've been up 20 hours now because i didn't want to miss this excursion to the Buchenwald. It was a perfect day for it, cold and rainy. The monument from the GDR is something, it's huge, like a Roman Colosseum somehow but there are also information centers. The barracks have been plowed down. Only the gate area and crematorium remain. I sleep now.

Let’s go back to 1958. In the little mill town of Bynum, NC there lived 4 teenage boys, Hobo, Kilroy, Skipper, and Pete. These boys’s had a custom for mischief night. They would go out to farmer Green’s house and tip over his outhouse. A few days before Halloween these boys ran into farmer Green at the local store, Grady’s. Framer Green said “I’m ready for you boys this year” the boys laughed and said “yeah right.”
A few days later it was mischief night. The boys piled into Hobo’s old junker and drove out to farmer Green’s house. They parked, hopped out of the car and started running across the pasture toward the distant silhouette of the outhouse. Now, Kilroy was the fastest of all the boys and they could see him way up ahead, running and running, when all of the sudden he disappeared.
The other boys slowed down a bit and started calling out for Kilroy. They found him down in the shit hole yelling, “Get me outta here.” Farmer green had moved the outhouse back a few yards. The boys pulled Kilroy out. He stripped and jumped in the cold river. Then he rode back to town buck necked.

vivi and lisa convinced me i look better with short hair and so after months of pain staking growing, i cut it all off again.



PS
my old teacher danny walsh told me that it was Robert Mapplethorpe who did those huge kkk portraits.

It's 9:50 am here. For some reason my schudule is flipped around so I'll go to bed in a few hours. Being left here in Weimar while the rest of my class is a week in Belgium, is kind of a bummer. Plus the 4 roommates thing is starting to get to me a little. It's strange. On the one hand I miss total privacy and on the other hand I'm terribly lonesome.
My neck is hurting from bending my head over the computer. I have two little knots from it. I ordered books for my students next semester. I haven't read them yet so it's risky. I did order them for myself though so I'll formulate some kind of learning plan.
I kind of like the learning system here, how they switch things up every week. Last week was pretty bad. It was a two day workshop from 9-6 with some stern woman named Suzi. She was the kind of teacher who ignores students when they raise their hands, unless they're the ass kissing students who repeat what she says but rephrase it slightly. I only made it to a few hours of that workshop, thank god! I did do the readings and they were fairly interesting. Suzi is a little to obsessed with Derrida. If a person just follows the theories of one person how are they ever going to create any original way of thinking?
This class I'm sitting in on is called art and commemoration. The other students are going to Leuven to make anti-nazi art but I'm supposed to make a project here in Weimar with an advanced undergradute student named, Anki. I should give here a call, see what she's thinking. I think I'm the wrong person to be making art about the holocaust but I can tell you the things I was thinking of this earlier evening/morning whatever.
First I looked up Buchenwald. It means Beerch wood. It was a concentration camp that starved and worked all these people to death . Its nearby here. When the American military came in 1945 they rounded up a thousand or so citizens of Weimar and made them tour Buchenwald while there were all these dead people laying around.
I guess one of the big concerns of this class is dealing with cultural memory. How are people going to remember the Holocaust once no one is around who actually witnessed it somehow? I've already formed some links in my mind that could connect southerners and germans. Here are two things they had in common.
1. some people were being tortured and murdered based on ethnicity
2. were defeated in war
Ok the situations were totally different but the time difference is what I'm interested in. The american civil war was in 1865. WWII was in 1945. Today it is 2005. No one in my family remembers the days of slavery. The only civil war story that has been passed through my family has absolutely no mention of slavery. [inlink]robin,314[/inlink] and I didn't learn about the history of lynching until I was in college in atlanta. Actually I learned about it from an art show at the contemporary. In the main room they had huge wall sized photographs of KKK member's heads in their masks. It was disturbing because you could see the details of these kkk guy's very human eyes, very clearly. Then I walked into the other room and it had all of these old lynching photographs. One of them was taken in the county I grew up in. I learned from this web site that it was a custom to take photos for postcards. This is the only hanging story i ever heard growing up [inlink]robin,60[/inlink]
Ok, So I just spent an hour or two searching for this show art show from atlanta that introduced me to the south's drawn out bloody history but I can't find jack shit. It's making me wonder if I'm crazy but no I've decided everyone else is. And so.......
My thoughts about this Weimar, Holocaust stuff at the moment are centering around this woman, "The Witch of Buchenwald" as she compares to this woman, "The White Witch of Rose Hall". Now this has got me thinking about the different representations of human torture and malice. If anyone reads this and has time to look at the links about these two woman maybe you could hit me up with some comments and tell me how you think they compare. If it were up to Suzi, the Derrida loving teacher, the White Witch wouldn't even exist because she isn't authenticated.

this is something adam sent out. It's a good idea for a non traditional costume

I so want to be leigh brasington,
he even has audio recordings.

GOOGLE-IT!

. . . . .


RECIPE FOR A GOOGLE™ PARTY
Adam Overton, April 2005
originally presented on ZBZZ.com by Aaron Spafford

A Google™ Party is a costume party where the attendees dress up like people that they've located while "Googling™" their own name.

. . .

Go to google.com (or any other reliable online search engine) and search for instances of your full name, using quotation marks to keep the correct order: "John Doe". You're looking for webpages that mention or talk about a different person who has the same (or a similar) name as you.

If searching for the full name doesn't work, try using variations like "Jon Doe", "Johnny Doe", "Jonathan Doe"

If you still can't find a match, don't complain or give up - start getting creative:

Try reversing the names: "Doe John"
Include or substitute your middle name: "John Kenny Doe", "Kenny Doe", "John Kenny"
Try other genders: "Jane Doe"
Try out nicknames you had or wished you'd had: "Cooter Doe"
Add, subtract, scramble or reverse letters: "Jhon Doh", "Don Joe"
Try single names: "John" or "Doe"
Try using initials: "J. Doe", "J.D."
Etc.

There is no excuse for coming up empty handed.

. . .

After searching for a bit, choose the alter-ego that seems most interesting and try to figure out how this person might dress. Always check first to see if you can find any pictures of the person -- perhaps you can emulate some facial or bodily features. If no pictures are to be found, then use the content on the site to figure out what type of person you're dealing with -- businessman, athlete, porn star, frat boy, cheerleader, church elder, etc. Especially keep your eyes peeled for clues that might indicate a time period or location, especially if your source is a news article, historical document or obituary.

Finally, dress to impress at your next Google™ Party and live it up as your alter-ego.

. . .

VARIATION 1
Instead of the party, go about some or all of your day as your googled alter-ego.

VARIATION 2
Instead of the party, do a performance as your googled alter-ego.

Robin: There is a definite distrust of the Federal Government today in
the US. But you need to remember that there was also a distrust of the
founding fathers during and after the revolution. When you really
think
about it, it is not a distrust of the government, but distrust between
the different social classes that comprise any society. In short, this
distrust is a problem that first started when man came down out of the
trees and will continue until man no longer inhabits this earth.
Culture dictates how man acts, not politics.

-my dad

and so...


founded on distrust?

Happy late birthdays, ladies.
So I've been reading a bit about lilho's birthday and i think I must have been getting some psychic vibrations which directed me to party because I had a wild night last Friday. Here is the story. An Italian woman named Naomi, who is in my class, came to my flat to pick me up. I had purchased a bottle of sekt, sparkling champagne like wine, and we proceeded to drink a few glasses. Then we went off to find out other classmates. Before we found the others we stopped off at the liquor store and purchase some grass vodka (at my suggestion). The we went to sam's, british dudes, and I had a beer while waiting for dušica, a serbian woman, and Nickol, a greek dude. Then we drank the bottle of grass vodka and walked to the club. At this point I was already quite intoxicated. Upon arrival at the club i ordered a glass of straight vodka, drank it, order another then another. I also was buying the bartender a drink along with mine just because sometimes I feel a bit weird about not tipping so free drinks makes up for it.
I was wasted. In the room were my friends were there was a 80's reminiscent, cure sounding band with a guy in red panties acting like he was going to strip on the stage. I got excited and unbuttoned my shirt to encourage the guy to go on and drop his pants. Eventually I crawled/fell up onto the stage to just tell the guy, "I really think you should drop your pants and lets have some public nudity." After that I went into the other room and passed out on a bench. dušica sat watching over me and stroking my head. dušica, sam and I left shortly later. dušica invited us to her house for some grub annd we sat and ate and she told us it was ok and we could sleep in her bed. so I passed out on the bottom of a dušica sandwich.
In the morning I woke up and sam and dušica were not there. I put on my jacket and looked around for my bra. After realizing that I must have lost my br at the club I stumbled into the kitchen and dušica's flatmate and her 3 month old baby were have some breakfast. there was also some asian dude there. I was all where am I? Where is dušica? I was informed that dušica was in the shower. I told her goodbye through the door and was on my way out. I stopped by the store to get some water and an orange and I ran into sam. I told him I lost my bra and he was all, ha ha ha that's brilliant. Then I went back to my house where I realized that my night of excessive drinking had left me with some unsightly marks (perhaps from my glorious stumble up on the stage at the club.) I told my flatmates about my wild night and they were laughing and started telling their own old drinking memories in German. I went and passed out again.

The end

Oh a serious note, because I do take myself so very seriously, school here is kind of interesting. Reminds me allot of the work of Arzu and Perini. People are cool and I make a presentation in the morning of my video installation work.

so my computer is about to cut off not much time....

Last week I became very frustrated with this paper work visa crap so i stopped everything and went and got a bottle of jack and went home and drank it. I later found some video which incidentally, I don't remember shooting.









Later i went to Berlin and met my friend Bjorn and we hung out at some painters studio. Some crazy woman stopped in and smoked hash with us all night.









another day i was lounging by the riverside with my eyes closed and I felt something bite my bare foot. I jumped up and saw a rat in the water who quickly scurried out. I think that it fell out of the tree onto me.



I stayed in a youth hostel and there were always school kids on the corner in the day.



I finally got tired out and returned to my sweet home in weimar.











one thing i've learned is to stop shooting video when i am all blow.