Archives for December 2006

Well, sort of. I have a huge to-do-list sitting on top of my desk, I’m a little hungry and there are a million things I “should” be doing right now, but I have been called by my friend De and of course I have to show up.

What wedding do you ask? Well, it’s about making a commitment to change the world. Which I already have done. So I don’t think, my husband will mind my polygamy in this case. Since we’re both already married to each other and the music, well, I wouldn’t mind if he was about to do this either.

The wedding gift should be a post about whichever social cause we feel passionate about. You know that I never write about things social or political. That doesn’t mean that I’m not passionate about them. And gay marriage is not even in the picture anymore, since it finally is legal in Germany. (And I was wrong about gay marriage not being possible in Bavaria. It is. And the couple in question is now expecting a child. I’m so excited!)

The social causes that I believe in are quite abstract. I believe that every person should be able to have choices. That every human being should be fed and sheltered and loved. That we all should strive to become more spiritual and kind. That the only way to change the world is to change me and become a better person. I believe in non-violence. I’m a feminist.

What really hit home with me was the Margaret Mead quote. Jen wrote:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Yeah. Among other things I have studied cultural anthropology, and that gave me the hope that social systems are not just set, they are created by people through mutual agreement. This means that people have the power to change them. As a German it has been very important to me to believe that people can make a difference. You know, I come from a long line of people who didn’t stand up for anything. The people who maybe didn’t agree with the Nazis but they didn’t do anything against it either. I can understand their fear, and I don’t know if I would stand up or not. I even hope that I never have to find out, but I pray for the courage not to shut up and look away. The most courageous things my one grandfather did was not joining the NSDAP. That was a courageous thing to do. Just imaging. He was a communist, but he never talked about it. My other grandfather was a baker and he gave bread to people who didn’t have the coupons for it. Nobody left the country, nobody was thrown in prison, they all just ducked and hoped it would be over soon. And it is. Fortunately.

But I feel that this is one of my biggest obligations towards the world. As a German I have to see to it that something like that can never happen again. I belong to a nation that caused World War II. Teenagers today don’t think about that at all. I don’t think they know much about the time of their great-grandparents. Or the war. And I’m glad that they don’t. I really am relieved that I can travel abroad and don’t have to meet people telling me they hate Germans in general, because they fought my grandparents. But I think it is important not to forget. To speak up.

Wow, who would have thought. I don’t know if this is a social course but peace is a very precious thing and worth living for.

So count me in at the wedding, as I said. We’ll drink champagne, we’ll dance and sing and change the world for the better.

When I still looked forward towards NaNoWriMo I wrote a couple of posts in advance. this one didn’t quite satisfy me. But now I know why I like Buffy. The German blogger USA erklärt (that’s explaining the USA) writes:

Dieses Blog geht von seiner Natur her selten auf andere Blogs ein, aber manchmal passieren dort schockierende Dinge, die man einfach nicht ignorieren kann. Dazu zählt das erschütternde Geständnis von Anke Gröner in der vergangenen Woche, dass sie noch nicht Buffy the Vampire Slayer gesehen hat, bekanntlich die intelligenteste TV-Serie in der Geschichte des Mediums. Ja, die Anke Gröner.

Well there is a renowned German blogger who wrote that she still hadn’t seen Buffy. And the author of “USA erklärt” posted something about an episode of Buffy. And he wrote that Buffy is “the most intelligent TV series in the history of this medium. There you are. I often wonder why I bother with thinking myself. For everybody who remains interested here’s my try:

I promised to post as soon as I could say why I like “Buffy – the Vampire Slayer” so much. that’s not the only TV series that I like; there even has been a time when I was addicted to sitcoms, especially “Roseanne”. I love Star Trek. I love it so much that I even watched “Voyager” and the not so inspired episodes of the new “Enterprise”-series. But when it came to Buffy I was really irritated. My husband then helped me getting it. He came into the living room while I was watching Buffy (one of the better scenes with Buffy, her mother and Spike). I told him what I was thinking about and he said:

“Maybe you like Buffy so much, because it’s just good.”

So I could just stop here. I don’t want to convince the whole world. But I was really irritating that I like a show that’s geared towards teenagers. (When my husband first met me he said I had the same taste in movies as a 14-year-old boy. Since then we have found that my taste is a little broader than that. (And he converted to Star Trek.)) So, after seeing the first three seasons of Buffy in non-chronological order I can say this:

• Even if most stories are about high school they don’t stay there.
• The show became more complex and interesting the longer it ran.
• There are stories longer than an episode.
• There’s great love of detail.
• Characters are multidimensional.
• Everything is possible. (Imagine finding a way to make plausible how the main character can die twice and come back again without losing me.)
• Everything has a twist. Love scenes turn funny, horror scenes turn funny, there even is a musical episode without getting ridiculous. (And yes, there are love scenes turning horrific too. And it’s seldom un-funny. But always suspenseful.)
• There are a lot of puns.
• There is a lot of symbolism but the stories function anyway.

Now you know why I never could do this type of thing in school. There is a lot of details but nothing really conclusive. So I come back to my first argument:

I’ve seen the show for four and a half times and I still can’t wait to see the next episode.

And I’ll have to wait for that a little since I have a date with my husband who likes his movies a little more artsy, we’re going to watch the second half of “Down by Law”. That’s how far you come when you have children (and when you’re sensible): You have to watch a movie in two installments. (And sometimes it just takes three days to translate your blog-post from German to English. Sorry.)

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