We thought we'd end up in a little apartment...

 ...what with all the money trouble we were in.

Instead we got a big villa with acres of oak hardwood floor:

Yes, this is the elevator

Hallway

Kitchen

Kallax, installed by Charlie

The mezzanine

Staircase

View into the living room

Remember Kylie Minogue?

 

[Verse 1]

Feel my heartbeat

It's the same old feeling coming over me tonight

Me tonight

Feel it buzzing

Said I'm never gonna call, but tonight, I think I might

Think I might

[Pre-Chorus]

Gave my heart a ride, bump in the night

No one can take me higher

Know it's been a while, baby, a while

Do you still feel the fire?

Still moving -- Michael's office as a preliminary draft

 So, we are now in place since 11 days, and there's a lot of progress. 

One observation: the locals are very special, and the more you get in contact with them the more consistent the Portuguese experience gets: most--almost all--feature a strange combination of sweetness, softness, and something that passes as natural kindness (even when it comes to bureaucrats). Chang and Michael are exchanging views every day, telling each other that they are so happy here, and even happier than the day before.

And here's the view from the bedroom this morning, at 07:50 local time: 

We moved, we moved -- into our new home

The south-easterly view from our bedroom on a rainy Sunday morning

Chang and our new friend Charlie in the off-kitchen area (still on Sunday morning). Charlie is helping us moving in, we are very grateful. 

And the picture above Chalie's head?

Well, that's Karl Marx, of course, drawn by Doekel, the daughter of a friend, with a take on a poster by the SDS ("Sozialistischer  deutscher Studentenbund"), from 50 years ago.

We moved, we moved -- and met our first Covid-victim

Yes, we finally did it--did it precipitously, since Chang feared that the Lusitanians wouldn't let us back in, what with the excessive French Covid infection rates. We did the journey from Cannes to Portugal in two days (normally it takes three). The first night we spent in a rural Airbnb near San Sebastian, where we met the first Covid-victim of our life---the charming Airbnb owner---who told us that she got infected in March---fever, self-isolation in her bed-room---a whole month---food served through a window. She got an X-ray, but the lungs didn't appear affected, even though there was fever and coughing. But now, seven months later, she still feels secondary effects---palpitations and fatigue, mostly. We handed her a bottle of Beaujolais---we had to explain about "Beaujolais"---and left early. Eight hours later we arrived here:

The InnBar on Nazaré beach, Friday, Oct 23, 2020, around 6PM local time

To be continued.

 

Trump loses -- singing under the shower

Yes, we know, it won’t happen, it’s unimaginable--in the same way that his win over Hillary was unimaginable...

...but wouldn’t it be nice if you were singing under the shower and come up with a space opera along these lines... 

...Twitter closes his account 6 minutes after Biden is sworn in...

...Trump arrives at the airport, but the Deutsche Bank has already impounded his Boeing 757, whose front wheel is now chained to one of these cannon balls they used to use for chain gangs...

...he's led with his Ivanka-soaked family to some VIP lounge for shelter, but can't get in because his credit card no longer works and the black reception girl behind the counter hates Q-Anon...

...a "situation" develops under the Klieg lights from the cell phones of some other VIPs waiting patiently in line and anticipating that he’ll finally loses his temper in public...

...which he does...

...Trump loses it, he really loses it...

...for the first time in public...

...no more coding, no more “good people on both sides”; no more birth certificates, no more “bad hombres”...

...no, the N-word exits his fish-snout, irrevocably and irredeemably...

...and the black reception girl behind the VIP-lounge counter that hates Q-Anon...

...she dials the Black Panthers unit at the DCPD to have n° 45 arrested for Blatant Racism...

...and The Donald is shackled and perp-walked through the main hall of Ronald Reagan National Airport...

...while his Irina-soaked family is frantically dialling all their friends with influence and heft and help out with one of these Lear Jets that are programmed to fly only to West Palm Beach Airport, but nobody answers...

...to be continued...

Talk, talk -- Niccoló's advice

 

The library nobody wants to piss at

Our friend Glenn sends this:

Donald Trump tried to go after former McCain Campaign Strategist Steve Schmidt, the head of The Lincoln Project, on Twitter. Schmidt didn't hold anything back in his reply:

 “You’ve never beaten me at anything. This is our first dance. Did you like, Covita? We are so much better at this than your team of crooks, wife beaters, degenerates, weirdos and losers.

You are losing. We heard you loved Evita. You saw it so many times. Where will you live out your years in disgrace? Will you buy Jeffrey Epstein’s island? One last extra special deal from him? Or will you be drooling on yourself in a suite at Walter Reed? Maybe you will be in prison?

 I bet you fear that. The Manhattan District Attorney may not be around to cover for you or your crooked kids anymore. Eliza Orlins doesn’t believe in different sets of rules for the Trumps. What about the State Attorney General? You know what you’ve done.

Oh, Donald. Who do you owe almost $500 million in personally guaranteed loans to? It's all coming down. You think you and your disgusting family are going to be in deal-flow next year? Are you really that delusional?

 You are lucky Chris Wallace interrupted you after Joe Biden said you weren’t smart. You started to melt down. That’s the place that hurts the most. Right? Fred Sr., knew it. You’ve spent your whole life proving it. You aren’t very smart. You couldn’t take the SAT on your own. What was the real score? 970? We both know you know.

 Are the steroids wearing off? Is the euphoria fading? Do you feel foggy? Tired? Do you ache? How is the breathing? Hmmm. Are you watching TV today? We will have some nice surprises for you. Everyone is laughing at you. You are a joke. A splendid moron turned deadly clown.

 Did you watch Martha McSally in her debate against American hero, fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly? She is so embarrassed by you. She is ashamed and full of self-loathing for the choice she made in following you over the cliff. She is in free fall now. She will lose, like most of them, because of you.

 We hear from the White House and the campaign everyday. They are betraying you. They are looking to get out alive and salvage careers and their names. It’s Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner vs. Donald Trump Jr., and Kimberly Guilfoyle on the inside. They are at war over scraps and who gets to command what will be the remnants of your rancid cult.

 It’s almost over now. You are the greatest failure in American history. You are the worst president in American history. Disgrace will always precede your name. Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will grow up ashamed of their names.

 One day, I suppose there will be some small and not-much-visited library that bears your name. It will be the type of place where a drunk walks by, staring at the wall for a minute, before deciding it is beneath his dignity to piss on. That’s what is waiting for you.

Joe Biden is a better man. He’s smarter. He’s winning.

 Do you remember when you didn’t want to name Donald Trump Jr., Donald because you were worried about him being a loser named Donald? You were right about that. He is.

 But it is you who will be remembered as America’s greatest loser. You will be crushed in the election!”

Covering Trump's losses

 

(Look it up if you don't get it, "Trump's losses")

Portugal (24) -- Quinta do campo

Brother, or sister, if you care: we've finished the house hunt, and are targeting a place atop a hill in Alcobaça, which is 6 km from the sea as the crow flies. Today, however, we talk about a different place, located in Valado dos Frades, a few kilometers from Alcobaça, and it's called Quinta do Campo. 

The main building of the Quinta do Campo

"Quinta" means farm, and this particular one started 900 years ago as the forage point of the Frades (friars) of the monastery in Alcobaça.  

Partial view of the monastery. (The place we are interested in is to the right/south of this picture, up the hill for 600 m or so, make a left, and there you are.)

The monastery is enormous, and possibly twice as large as the medieval downtown of Alcobaça, which, as we learned today, must have been a Moorish settlement initially, due to the prefix "al". 

As John, who runs the place together with two siblings, explained to us, the Quinta provided everything material for the monks, like food, drink (wine), and other substances of material interest; only metaphysical needs required recourse to other sources.

A partial view of the service buildings of the Quinta

Which---come to think of it---testifies to the power, and importance, of pre-modern religious orders.

But then, the order ran afoul of the same forces of darkness which Donald Trump faces in his re-election campaign...

...like liberalism, atheism, and all these terrible creeds that deny the legitimacy of irrational power, and so, a Portuguese king around 1830 decreed the put-down of the monkish orders. The friars were bereft of their Quinta, which was sold to John's great-great...grandfather, a very rich man who had made his fortune in Galicia (northern Spain), and married into the Portuguese aristocracy. Said ancestor erected the manor in the first picture. He also bought kilometers and kilometers (miles and miles) of land around the place at bottom market prices, sired nine children, and lived a happy long life with his spouse.

Yours truly has--in his scandalous political incorrectness--always dreamed of the life of the landed gentry, but he has never seen, despite his visit to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight and other places, a home as purely gentrified in its 19th century emanation as this one: 

The library (1),

the library (2),

the library (3),

the drawing room.

It's a pity Agatha Christie never visited this place.

We'll be back. Hold on. We rented an apartment on the Quinta for a few days; this was our entrance:

Apartment F.

(You can book them here)

Les temps modernes -- Modern times

"Les temps modernes" --named after Charlie Chaplin's film -- was a magazine founded by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre in 1945; it folded in 2019. 

Here's a modern version of the modern times, expressed in the words of our favorite NYT columnist, Ross Douthat. We've been trying to say this since forever, but Douthat says it better, and it doesn't only apply to Republican voters in the US:

"For Republican voters who want more — well, for them you can just make up some triumphs, whether banal (a new social-media executive order!) or exotic (a secret purge of pedophiles!), and trumpet them as victories worthy of Reagan, Lincoln or F.D.R.
In which case Trump could be a special kind of pioneer, and the party he shaped a digital-age novelty: the first political party to exist entirely as a simulation."

"Agathon!", "Alcibiades!" -- Alcibiades crashes Plato's "Symposium"

We've been at it for quite a while, Plato's "Symposium." But now we've hooked up with David Cantero, the famous comic strip artist, and voilà, Alcibiades crashes the Symposium again: 

The text is in German since we are targeting the German market.

Remember the original, Anselm v. Feuerbach's painting of 1874? We've put it up in 2015. Here it is again (click for a larger image):

Portugal (23) -- Praia do Norte

Photo by Chang, taken yesterday (22-8-20)

We've been so slovenly and sloppy and not posting for reasons we don't even dare to explain. Anyhow, we left the beautiful Swiss Valais and hurried to Nazaré, Portugal, where we are house-hunting again.

Last time, in January, the quarry was a bit disappointing, but this time we've already viewed five houses that make the short list. Several of them are situated in the neighborhood  of Sitio, a district of Nazaré, very close to the Praia do Norte, as pictured.

What's so special about the Praia do Norte? Well, the waves. Occasionally, they reach record heights of 30 meters, and the place holds the Guiness Book of Records for the highest surfable waves on the planet:

Haha!

Bürchen again -- Switzerland

We're posting this for our Australian friend, Alex Hogan, the famous editor of Gay Flash Fiction -- as usual, we spend the summer here, and we're concerned she'll get the wrong impression if we don't post enough.

Bürchen, the "Chalet Zone", where we are staying

The farmers get together during the summer and have their cows grazing on the communal ground of the village.

In the background: the Dom, the third-highest mountain of the Alps 

Sunset, picture taken from the house of a neighbor nearby

(All pictures taken during the last 14 days by Chang)

Death on the Beach

Cool, folks, our flash story "Death on the Beach" got reprinted in the summer issue of WickedGayWays:

Back in Switzerland

House is rented, we're back in Switzerland. Picture taken by Chang yesterday afternoon:

You know this voice ? (2)

You know this voice?

---

German for beginners -- Lederhosen

Our friend Sacha (depicted as Jack Horn in our literary oeuvre) and we have been back and forth today about receiving pictures from friends concerning a country that both of us left 40 or 45 years years ago. So...along those lines, here are pictures concerning things which are still happening today in those parts:

Why do you do this, you'll ask, putting up these pictures? Well, we want to sell our books, and here's a fragment from our first novel, Green Eyes, a finalist of the Lambda Literary Awards...and which--TADAA--came out out in a German translation last month. 
The fragment involves Maurice Dymond, a recent acquaintance of our narrator John Lee, who's telling about Godehart Wagner, a fictional fifth generation member of the Richard Wagner clan:

"[Godehart] tells me his life story. He’s from this minor branch of the Wagner family, but somehow he still holds some rights to the Wagner name. Not for the music, of course, that belongs to the public domain, but in some way Wagner’s name is still protected under German law, some special provisions enacted by the Nazis, and he makes his money with Wagner mugs, and Wagner busts, and this themed stuff that you find in tourists shops. And he sells leather shorts, Bavarian leather shorts, emblazoned with the Wagner motif. You know—-these garments that they wear with Tyrolean hats when appearing on the telly where they dance to the tune of Bavarian square dances, jodlers, if you will, and slap their thighs to the rhythm of the music. You are aware of that folly if you ever watched German television. It’s of no importance when you switch to a German channel, there shall always be men in Bavarian shorts and Tyrolean hats, slapping their thighs.”
“Impossible.” [John]
“Mind you, they don’t dance to Wagner music, just a jodler.”
“But the Wagner theme, how do you combine this with leather shorts?” [John asking]
“Good question, no idea.”
“Do you know whether Wagner was gay, too?” [John]

“Actually I asked Godehart. Wagner wasn’t officially gay, but he had an affair with the young king of Bavaria, Ludwig the Second, Godehart told me. Ludwig furthered Wagner’s career, in fact, he underwrote his productions and built opera houses for him. Wagner would not have succeeded without Ludwig. So perhaps Wagner wasn’t gay, perhaps it was just the casting-couch behavior of an ambitious composer. But we can’t be so sure. Wagner and Ludwig exchanged quite a few letters, quite explicit, passionate ones, the jury is out on that one.”
“How do you know?” [John asking]
“Well, Godehart told me, I asked pointed questions.”
“Nobody asks pointed questions anymore.” [John]
“I do,” he says.

Buy the book, here: 

"Click"

Afternoon picnic

...just back from an afternoon picnic in the park, the "forêt domaniale de l'Estérel":

Let's change the subject: A UFO, a real UFO, on a video clip released by the US Navy

And this is a resonably learned link about this from VOX

How to define Trump per Venn diagram

Easy

Michael was born 4 years later and still remembers the ruins

(Our friend Glenn sent this:)

Fragment, fragment...yes, here, cool, from Michael's essay, My Childhood Ruined, which tells about his youth in the suburb of Berlin-Grunewald:

Halfway experiences are also fairly common, I believe, and it took me some time to get over the shitty first sex of my teens, like when Amy, another classmate, him from Armenia, living alone with his father in one of the villas not bombed out, took me to the plot opposite his home which had been cleared of the rubble and grown into an orchard of sour apples with an undergrowth of stinging nettle—-and then suggested that we’d play doctor. We had barely started when Evelyn, whom I hated, and who was officially my friend, turned up and sent us scampering into the stinging nettle.

Fruit trees and cleared plots weren’t typical, however. Roughly half the splendid villas of the Grunewald, by reputation Berlin’s most residential area, had gotten hit by air raids during the war and burned down to black skeletons of eternal stone and reinforced concrete, with rusty steel rods sticking out and begging for accidents to happen like when you were chasing an Indian under fully-feathered headdress up to the fourth floor of the rubble and trip and fall to your death. Yes, fourth floor, or fifth even, since these structures had been built by the nouveau riche in the ’70 and ‘80’s of the nineteenth century when Berlin became the capital of the Second Reich. Falls from ruins never happened, though, or were never reported in the West-Berlin of the ‘50s, an insular place so devoid of news that nothing ever happened—-save for a world-shaking crisis when Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Communist World, threatened to take us by force and unclench WW3—-so the press had to play along and beg any visiting celebrity to confirm with his/her own eyes that—-yes—-Berlin was still the Hauptstadt, even though the government resided in Bonn and anything of consequence had decamped to Munich in Bavaria, including Siemens, the founder of local Siemensstadt (don’t ask).

How about the fruit trees, then? Well, if you’d trip while aiming your pistol at this Indian, you wouldn’t land on an apple tree, but on an Acacia. Nobody ever remarked on it, or explained it, but newly grown Acacias dominated the ruined plots, whole forests of them, until Khrushchev’s ultimatum was forgotten, investors regained confidence, and reconstruction got under way.

Plato's Symposium

Here's little Michael, done by David Cantero, posing--yes, that's the word--posing as Phaedrus, son of Pythocles, the first speaker in Plato's Symposium (each guest is supposed to give an encomium on EROS, the eponymous God of Love).

Just so that you know. I believe I should rather play one of the slaves, but anyhow.

Fragment, fragment. Here, from our script: 

PHAEDRUS (begins): Eros is a great and wonderful god…
--
PH: for he is one of the oldest gods. Hesiod says that Chaos came first---followed by Gaia, and Eros.

CAPTION: (Hesiod goes on) “…Eros, who is the most beautiful among the immortal gods. He is the dissolver of care who overpowers the mind and the thoughtful council of gods and humans alike.”
--
PH: Eros is also the source of the greatest benefits. I know of no greater blessing for a young man than to have a good lover, and for any lover, to have a proper beloved.
--
PH: The principle that must guide men who strive to live a noble life—-the principle of honor—-is best fostered by love, not by birth, money, or other means. Without this sense of honor, neither states nor individuals can ever do great work. 
--
PH: And, I say that a lover who is detected doing anything dishonorable, he will be more pained at being found out by his beloved than, say, by his father, or his companions. And the beloved, when he is found in a disgraceful situation, will feel likewise. 
--
[IMAGE: Sacred Band of Thebes]

PH: If there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, it is beyond imagination how well they could do, refraining from anything base, contending with each other in the pursuit of immortality, and exhibiting such valor in battle that—-even as a mere handful—-they could overcome the world.

Sacred Band of Thebes, random picture from the web

In this spirit, n'est-ce pas?

German for beginners: Grüne Augen by Michael Ampersant

Finally, folks, the GREEN EYES are out in a German translation with the DeadSoftPress. Have a look:

   

Symposium

We'll explain later, but we are working on Plato's Symposium again, and here we have a scene from Aristophanes' speech, the Council of the Gods pondering what to do with the uppity primordial humans:

Rafael: Council of the gods, cropped

Just a thought