Electricians at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany were confounded by a series of mysterious blackouts affecting the aquarium of one Otto, an octopus. After staking it out one night they discovered that the cause was Otto himself who, seemingly annoyed by the 2000 watt spotlight above his tank, had figured out he could extinguish the offending light source by climbing onto the rim of his tank and squirting a jet of water in its direction.
This is not the first time the aquarium has had a problem with Otto, says Director Elfriede Kummer:
“Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it. And from time to time he completely re-arranges his tank to make it suit his own taste better - much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants.”
Kummer supposes that the octopus is merely bored or perhaps attention starved although, considering his behavior, I’m inclined to theorize that Otto might have a little problem with the drink.
This particular Noise du Jour is, perhaps, more immediate — more of a Noise du Moment — as it represents the work of an artist who I had no concept of until mere hours ago, but whose oeuvre has captivated me within that same time. The lead singer of the German reggae/dancehall band Seeed, Mr. Fox’s solo work, anchored with the military precision of a drum-line and woven with the strains of orchestral strings, is a sound that appeals to some primitive part of my brain, producing an instant chemical reaction and thus, addiction. I’m at a loss to keep from falling all over myself in my enthusiasm for this sound so I will just end it here and urge you, loyal, trusting readers, to simply listen for yourself.
Update: Thanks to Benjamin Stürmer for translating the lyrics! You can read them in the comments.
By the third day, you’re pressed against the only stage at Maschinenfest, both hands braced on either side of your own bruised ilia, spanning several bars of black and yellow caution tape with sticky fingers.
The venue is Kulturfabrik in Krefeld, Germany. Krefeld is small, pleasant, and slightly dowdy, sheltering large, serious citizens in shades of beige and blonde. An odd place for this sort of soiree. I’d figure the likes of Maschinenfest for Berlin, but I assume costs in a big city would be prohibitive.
You’re studying the way one of Militia’s drummers lands his blows on his oil drum, knocking the stick exactly into a dent that was pounded into a tailored concavity over years of performance. Nonchalant flicks of forearm land it on this divot again and again: perfect. This is junkyard kodo, and you feel their impacts right in the swamp of your guts. And then, only then, can you write about it.
Behind you, one thousand people sop it up. Men and women self-consciously shoulder historical German military garb, Saturday’s trend. I stare at a nerdy-looking man in a peaked SS officer’s cap. I am obviously Yankee, in my Earheartesque ensemble, and his eyes flicker to the side. We beat you, I think. I find out later that he’s Irish.
In the history of secret weapons programs and government cover-ups, none is so chilling as Germany’s Volkswaffe program. It was begun sometime before the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, under the guise of producing a cheap, reliable automobile for the common man. Instead, Ferdinand Porsche’s bulbous design was used in an effort to produce an agile, lightweight fighter car for use as an elite airborne unit in Hitler’s plans to bring Europe under his control; a squadron of death-dealing Herbies emblazoned with the Balkenkreuz.
Seen here for the first time are documents, declassified footage, and eyewitness accounts of an unknown chapter in German aerospace history, and a testament to the extent of Nazi ambition and hubris. For the first time, the story of those madmen who attempted to build a car that would touch the sky will be told; and hopefully those who would attempt the same will take note, lest history be repeated.
A young lady models the work of one of the sixty artists who attended the fifth International Bodypainting Festival in Mainz, Germany. I really like how they have the extra arms connected with wires so that she can make them move. The effect in motion must have been surreal.
Japanese television is often described as being a seething mass of bizarre and indecipherable entertainment, perhaps unfairly so. Surely other countries of the world have weird shows choking their airwaves. Take, for example, the Germans who apparently have, what appears to be, a game show called “Wetten Dass…?” This particular episode features a man who throws plungers at the nude torsos of other men. I’m not sure what the purpose of this is, but, it being German, it is most certainly a metaphor for the emptiness of existence or, perhaps, the negation of Self. I could be wrong, but surely it is rife with deep meanings.
I have a hard time understanding the thought process behind creating a show like Captain Planet. It almost seems as if someone, at some time, thought that kids’s favorite part of G.I. Joe was the Public Service Announcement at the end. Here, then, is what the kiddies really wanted, a bland, cliché ridden multi-cultural group of young environmentalists, wearing the latest in fashionable Earth Day apparel, who possess magic rings that, when combined, form a flamboyant super hero in a half shirt.
In this particular segment our heroes go back in time to chase after Bea Arthur and her less wrinkly twin sister/daughter who have come to sell a nuclear bomb to…Hitler! Or at least someone who is supposed to represent Hitler. While the swastikas have been removed the side-swept and greasy grade-school-class-photo-meets-
deranged-pedophile haircut remains but, more inexplicable, is the replacement of his now infamous ’stache with a Ming The Merciless Fu Manchu. Worth watching just for the uncomfortable moment were he makes the Captain become all sweaty with his piercing eyes.
Sometimes, sports teams just pick the wrong mascot, and other times, they pick the wrong mascot a good thirty years when it would have been in vogue. “The Swastikas,” a women’s hockey team from Edmonton, Alberta in 1918, is just such a team. Such a fine set of frauleins — their perky Aryan breasts expertly accentuated by the cross-knit Nazi emblem on their bosoms — would have blossomed a mere three decades later and six thousand miles to the West.
As it is? Exiled to ignominy along with other untimely sports dynasties like the Flaming Goatsexes [1953, Bowling, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Scotland] and The Queerbashers [1899, Women’s Basketball, Mooseknuckle, Ontario]
“While not technically a beard, Nietzsche’s moustache is increasingly being studied by Anglo-American beardalytic philosophers. His ‘tasche gained a bad reputation when Hitler claimed it as inspiration.”
The trailer for the bizarre 70’s mash-up between archival World War II newsreel footage, 20th Century Fox Films and Beatles cover songs, All This And World War II.
An excellent find: a scan of a poster produced in Germany in 1941 detailing future transportation technology in a world where they won World War 2. Note the senescence of the city streets below. Once you eradicate the subhuman mensch of a “Master Race” dominant world, you have empty streets populated entirely by blond, genetically in-bred Mongoloids. I wouldn’t like to live in this paleo-futuristic vision of the 1950s: I like my streets to bustle with gypsies, Jews and homosexuals more than I like the overhead hoverings of gyrocopters. I might give up the French for this underground “Diving Torpedo” train though.
A look at some of the graffiti just down the street from my new apartment in Berlin, a collaboration between famed street artists JR and Blu. Giant babies tattooed on the sides of urban decay and visible from my bedroom window? I’m in heaven.
Would anyone really have minded losing World War II to the Nazis if the SS had been full of sexy dominatrixes like Ilsa? I know, I know: the Jews, the Gypsies, the Homosexuals, the Political Dissidents. But I’d hope that, given a Nazi army largely populated by busty sadomasochists with an insatiable hunger for bisexual love, they’d have taken one for the team. Fascism’s just not so bad when you’re handcuffed to a swastika-shaped bed and being ridden by a foxy minx. It only falls apart when a wattled toad like Joseph Goebbels is doing the riding.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
Electricians at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany were confounded by a series of mysterious blackouts affecting the aquarium of one Otto, an octopus. After staking it out one night they discovered that the cause was Otto himself who, seemingly annoyed by the 2000 watt spotlight above his tank, had figured out he could extinguish the offending light source by climbing onto the rim of his tank and squirting a jet of water in its direction.
