I’m not feeling too hot today. It’s either the weather or there was something wonky about the Tofu burger or the dusty bottle of African style ketchup I had with it last night.
My latest e-book still isn’t up at Amazon, because Kindle Direct Publishing has been having hick-ups for several days now. So the official announcement will probably have to be postponed until Monday.
However, there is a new post over at the Pegasus Pulp blog, which discusses the resurrection of the gothic romance in addition to some general indie publishing links.
Here is the WTF news item of the day: A 500-year-old vampire or rather a disturbed 19-year-old claiming to be one has been arrested in Texas after attacking a woman.
Predictably, the usual suspects try to pin the blame on Twilight and on vampires in popular culture in general. Because no one ever accepts that seriously disturbed people will be disturbed no matter what they watch, read, play or listen to. Never mind that if this guy had really been inspired by Twilight, he wouldn’t have attacked that woman, because the Cullens don’t bite humans.
Finally, I would like to remember two artists whom I admired a lot and who both died much too early on this very day.
First of all, there’s artist and director Christoph Schlingensief, who succumbed to cancer last year at the age of 49. His final project, building an opera village in Burkina Faso, basically an African Bayreuth, is still ongoing. I know, at first glance the opera project sounds a lot like “clueless white person wants to give Africa help it does not need”, but the project goes a lot deeper than that and not only has the support of the locals but also a lot of involvement from African architects, artists etc…
Secondly, there’s German rock singer and occasional actor Rio Reiser, who died fifteen years ago aged only 46. I largely missed his band Ton, Steine, Scherben, because that was a bit before my time, but I was a fan of his solo work and even once named a character, a rock musician who get embroiled in an intergalactic rebellion, in his honour.
So in rememberance, here is my favourite Rio Reiser song and one of my all-time favourite songs in general: Junimond.
This is one of the very few songs that make me cry every single time I hear it. Since Rio Reiser died, I can never get past the line “I’m sitting up here on my cloud” without tearing up.
sending...