There is something profoundly sad about having a dream where one catches up with an old friend, only upon waking remembering that this friend died several years ago.

Paul McCartney mentioned this at least once in a published interview in regard to John Lennon; at the time when I first read it, being all of 16 or so, I could understand it ( Read more... )

This weekend, I saw my sister for the first time in months. She was telling me stuff about people we know, and catches me up with the side of the family I really don't have contact with.

The only extended family of my dad's that we got to know growing up was his maternal grandmother and his mother's brother's family (so, my great uncle).  This ( Read more... )

I was surprised to hear that he was 85. Then again, even if he had been sixty when we met, and I was sure he wasn't a day younger than that, with his snow-white hair and mustache, he still would have been very close to 80 when he died. As children, though, it's very hard to judge people's ages, and so one tends to make rough groupings - kids, big ( Read more... )

I finally, finally watched the movie "23 - Nichts ist, wie es scheint" which is, more or less, based on the life of a certain Karl Koch, who was one of the earliest big-time computer hackers.

I put the movie on my amazon.de wishlist years ago, as rydel23 recommended it. I finally got it, but it's been terribly hard to find time to sit down and watch a ( Read more... )

Such a cloud of witnesses ( Read more... )

So I turned on the radio this morning, and of course, they are talking about Iraq, todays story being the abduction of Kim Sun-il. They played an audio excerpt of the video, where he pleads in Korean and English for his life ( Read more... )

Back in the day, back when I worked at Barnes&Noble, we always knew David was the one working in the music department when the Elliott Smith music came on. Whereas other things garnered suspicions from people (I was always suspect when the Beatles came on, even though I didn't even work in that department normally), Elliott Smith was exclusively ( Read more... )

Well, I know it's kind of late ( Read more... )

One of the themes that is becoming more and more pronounced in the Harry Potter series is that of death. Voldemort is adamant that the worst thing that could happen to a person is that they should die, and he tries convincing Harry of this. After all, if this life is it, why waste your time trying to do good and trying to be noble, especially if ( Read more... )