WIRED w/ the WEIRD

weihnachten ist vorbei, die mülltonnen füllen sich mit geschenkspapieren und verpackungen, die festessensreste gesellen sich dazu, bald wird der frisch geschlachtete baum seine nadeln abwerfen und bei der sammelstelle landen... vergessen sind vorgetäuschte andacht und ruhe, denn nun gilt es die zwischenkriegszeit bis sylvester zu überstehen, um zum zweiten mal in kürzester zeit dem wahnsinn zu verfallen und das schwerverdiente geld in schall, blitz und rauch aufgehen zu sehen... new year, old problems...

der folgende text zur ach so wunderbaren weihnachtszeit entstand in den letzten wochen seit meiner rückkehr aus ägypten. er wurde von mir in englischer sprache verfasst und ist meine persönliche hommage an hunter s. thompson (1937-2005) und den von ihm geborenen gonzo journalism. ich empfehle sich zwangsweise, weil durch schreibstil, inhalt und/oder botschaft angegriffen, einen kurzen überblick über diesen zu verschaffen - gonzo journalism und hunter s. thompson!

In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: Not necessarily to Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely. [1]

Fear and Loathing in
Crazy Christmas Wonderland

Drunk on whiskey soda, high on weed, the head full of misunderstandings and hatred against the world and its society, knowing not to change anything within, might not be the favoured condition the ordinary, breadwinning right-middle-in-life guy would like to be in, on some Christmas holiday evenings. Nevertheless I do. Sitting there in front of the screen, typing words of alleged wisdom with the effects of a serious alcohol and drug abuse working on my whole body, I'm trying to free myself and rush out of this chewy, foggy fields of Christmas deceitfulness. While there are human rights violations in Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Russia, China, North Korea, now even the US and a hell of other places around the globe, people here crawl into their sacred cave of so-called contemplative sentiment and togetherness. After weeks of alcohol abuse and shopping fever escorted by an accustomed not bothering about the world around, they finally are able to slip off all the onerous, rebarbative things they forever ignored. They get rid of their not caring by not caring after all.

"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things..." [2]

The fifth season has begun long since. Right back from my trip to Cairo I had to jump in at the deep whim of this so-holy and spirituous Christmas wonderland, shining and blinking all around town. Blame it on the timing, it hasn’t been the best hours to travel to a lauded, non-christmas-celebrating country and then come right back to this scenery in its utterly endsieg-style heyday…
No matter the mission I was on, this trip was some sort of breaking out of the freakiness that was just about to start, although the return was supposed to be as it occurred later. Before I left I remember stumbling through the supermarket trying neither to touch nor to throw down any chocolate saint nicholas figures or the thousands of bottles of spirit all build up like barricades - in every corridor of the supermarket. This didn’t happen close to the start of advent. I guess if there wasn’t summer and its warmth melting down the chocolate, these supermarket bastards would start to cram their shelves with santas and stuff straight after the easter celebrations. Cause people keep buying and buying. The situation throughout Europe is the worst we’ve seen so far, the future of both, the Euro and the whole European union is murky… Multinational corporations and globalizing banks, rating agencies and all these lobbying hounds on the loose hold their icy grip around the so-called markets getting their will and profits by any means while moneypulated gear-geeks and tv-polluted any-style-adopters throw them a profitable party every year. The lack of money gets overthrown by a sudden lack of conscience. People roaming round super-discount-offerings that praise all their incredible advantages someone could have by simply buying them. Things nobody ever needs. Christmas time reveals a market for all those things…

"Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things..." [2]

Why do people slip into this screwball madness? Normal people. Every year. Your neighbour you wave to over the fence in the summer days. The same you barbecued and drank beer with some weeks ago now setting up his frontyard tree with some electrified candles, defacing his garden with plastic reindeers and carriage, and as culmination a chinese-children-made santa climbing up his houses front window. It must be a virus, something the US Army made to stimulate the economic driving force. Or the Chinese themselves. More than 50 million kWh are spent in Austria to bring light into the darkness of the deep winter depression, alleviating the minds of the lost. Where's all this Fukushima discussion gone? Did some kind of a Christmas wonder solve all our electricity problems? In factitious, all over illuminated, so-called Christmas villages blue-, white- and no-collar-workers can fullfill their dream of forgetting all the mess around them. Their ears swamped by sounds of a last Christmas, repeated hourly, still nothing more than a poofy promise of a guy who loves to suck dick in public toilets. Now standing there, filled up on cheap, sugar adulterated, hot and sticky Tetrapack wine, eating brezels the world's miseries are long gone, far away like the next mornings aftereffects that will be clinged to your head.

"...[this] is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday nights if the Nazis had won the war. This was the Sixth Reich." [3]

In a society so keen on conducting a war on drugs, the brusque canonisation of alcohol seems a little astray. "Your little friend" on all these meaningless get-togethers, Christmas parties and shopping marathons, "your little friend" whispering hollow words into your ear while writing dead, brutish Christmas greeting cards, "your little friend" that opens the door to the hearts of those people you'd wish to die usually over the year, now jammed together with you and hundreds of other coldhearted morons on a small table filled with empty cups, exchanging empty words, cheering at each other. It's the season were adultery and DUI become normal for a short period of time. Booze sold to children while blacks are hunted down for selling weed. Escalating numbers of domestic violence and suicides, rising divorces and brake-ups and some sort of greybeard-girlhunt on company Christmas parties. Why is all so wrong?

"Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things..." [2]

Shouldn't it be some time where we ratiocinate and turn the view onto ourselves, where we perservere in silence and for once in our lives leave this sticky consumption behind us? For myself I only find this silence when the first autumn winds blow away sweet summer's touch, when daytime hours are shrinking and drinking hours are strongly widening and the winterly depression touches me the first time. Another year gone and past and another Christmas at the gates. Good God, Ythismas?

"When the dog bites, when the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And little by little my happy heart sings
And then I don't feel so bad..." [2]


Johnny What, December 2011




[1] Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)
[2] Song lyrics of "My Favourite Things" from the Broadway Show "The Sound Of Music" (1959)
(Richard Rodgers / Oscar Hammerstein II) as well as The Lennon Sister's Recording on the opening
of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" movie directed by Terry Gilliam (1998)
[3] Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)