...with Charlie and Michael walking on the boardwalk of Nazaré:
Nov 17, 2020
Nov 15, 2020
We thought we'd end up in a little apartment...
Nov 13, 2020
Remember Kylie Minogue?
Nov 12, 2020
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:
Nov 8, 2020
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. |
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. |
Oct 24, 2020
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 |
Oct 18, 2020
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...
Oct 12, 2020
Oct 9, 2020
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!”
Sep 29, 2020
Sep 1, 2020
Portugal (24) -- 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".
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. |
Aug 23, 2020
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"
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.
Jul 21, 2020
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 |
Jul 11, 2020
Death on the Beach
Jul 8, 2020
Jun 26, 2020
Jun 25, 2020
Jun 8, 2020
German for beginners -- Lederhosen
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: