Shotgun Quiz

Camelot & The Lady Of Shallnot
Nin & Lance Gallagher, August 8, 2000.
Gallagher is an author and publisher in Montrose, Scotland

The Lady of Shallot is a character in the King Arthur & the Round Table chronicle.
She was madly in love with Sir Lancelot, but (of course) died miserably
because he literally belonged to Queen Guinevere.
The scene we recalled here was of the Lady's death vessel, drifting along a river
and stopping at Lancelot's feet.
I only ripped the name off and twisted it.

Benedict Anderson is an American scholar, one of the 'experts on Indonesia'
(or so people said; it's just one heck of an everlasting fact that
so-called experts on anything Indonesian have been foreigners).
The book he said I messed up with was Imagined Communities.
This chat with Gallagher was a few days after I got interviewed
by the Indonesian news magazine TEMPO.

CLICKABLE PIC: MY JOB

L: It must be next door to impossible to educate unless one can catch the ears of the public; and the gift of speech, as we know, is not often accompanied by the power of thought. The statesmen have demonstrated that it must be that to govern a nation one needs a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability. These men, in everything unconcerned with their business, appear to be devoid even of common sense. I recognize the need. I must agree that political education is a necessary evil. Although I don't regret the lack of enthusiasm nowadays in politics.

N: "Not always hand in hand with some power of thought"? Indoctrinating yourself that you are, nevermind your dyslexia, doesn't matter your periodic nervous breakdown, fit to govern -- ain't that some incredible "power of thought"?

L: This is no longer the era of the ideological.

N: Worldwide, maybe. In general, maybe. Not here. It's a neverending business.

L: The idea of Camelot in the sixties is still alive today thanks to our tendency to romanticize the mundane. Yet I am convinced that there is no marked capacity in today's political writers and statesmen alike as it was before. To entice enthusiasm, to lure with liveliness of imagination and subtlety of intellect. How come? For it is not needed anymore. Ideologies are dead, and I must say for our own good. Consequently political writing is also gone. This in time makes the need of political education greater, with a shift, no longer ideological.

N: Considering that the life span of the Backstreet Boys has exceeded everybody's expectation, maybe including their own, it's no surprise that Camelots seem to be everlasting. We're kids anticipating Mandrake to turn the rabbit into doves and balloons, Lance. You might have passed the treshold of primate's evolution chart, but the rest of the mankind is still the same old five year-old, droolling over popcorns in the circus tent. And ideologies still occupy a large portion in the developing countries' minds. You can't legitimately take U.K. as the marker. At the same time, Camelot is a democratic illusion. Everybody has one, whether he's with the IMF's board of directors or with the flock that begs for haircut of their debts.

L: Don't you find it hard to write now after there is no longer a regime to fight against?

N: There's always something to fight for and another thing to kick the butts of. To me, those are most likely one and the same thing at once. The impolitical at some point hates the political for the loud noises they produce or the lousy suits they wear or anything else, whatever system of governance is applied. So it's not a case of lacking things to be for or against.

L: By the way, I read about your skirmishes in publishing Benedict Anderson's book. I'm sorry.

N: Oh really. You must have been loving every second of it.

L: What happened?

N: I was asked to translate the book. I said okay. The non-English parts were done by other people. There was another editor to work it out to fit to print. Then one day they took the first draft. It went straight to the market.

L: Anderson demanded to pull back the books. He didn't like the translation.

N: (Shrug) The so-called editor didn't do anything to the pulp. And they had never sent the draft back to me for corrections or anything. I won't take the blame on this. Once in a while it isn't my fault, and this was one of such instances. But I screwed up. By accepting the offer to translate it in the first place.

L: Have you ever met with Anderson himself? I read that he thought it was impudent that you have never consulted him.

N: I've never met anyone, Anderson or no Anderson. That's not how my job was done. It's always like this: someone asked me to translate something, if I like it I took it, someone else minded the copyright thing etcetera. If I didn't edit the book myself, then the editor got to do something for the money he got out of the project -- namely submitting the first draft to the original writer, and so on, and of course edited the thing -- or else what was he called an editor for? None of this was done in this case. Whoever had the idea of publishing the book should have been in touch with him all through the process. It's not my job. And I don't revel in celebs.

L: I have always wondered at the passion many people have to meet the celebrated. The prestige they acquite by being able to tell their friends that they know famous men only proves that they are themselves of small account.

N: Every fish has a groupie. In every field.

L: I only read Anderson's book after hearing of the dispute. It was a good book. But I wonder if your country need it. It is an old book, and took basics. I think it is out of date.

N: Still holding on to the thought that politics is dead? I don't think so. We've hardly learned the basics and I don't like the idea of committing trial-and-error all the time like we seem to be doing now. Anderson's book is necessary -- since nobody local wrote something like that. Nationalism is never outdated, though global corps clearly want it to be. It's about how and why -- two questions we seldom ask. We barely know what, to begin with, and are not done with who either.

L: Complicated. :)

N: What isn't?

L: How was the settlement?

N: I don't know. A reporter from Tempo [Indonesian news magazine] called me for an interview, I wrote to the publishing house retelling it, and that's all. I guess somebody would re-translate the book or what. And another publishing house would re-launch it or something.

L: I'm sorry, and I am. But you may learn from it.

N: Annoyance is called "lessons" for a reason. And life is a school without any lunch break. And the tuition fee is too high for most.

L: "Imagined lessons".

N: What isn't?

L: You don't have to repeat yourself. :)

N: Anyway, thanks for asking. I'm still sick of this Anderson case. I'm beyond lousy sometimes, and even if I was seen as such in this I would gladly say "yeah, you're right", but the lack of work on the part of other people involved in it was really getting on my nerves.

L: You shouldn't keep it to yourself when you were upset. You should try to release sooner.

N: I did try to whine. But it was at the wrong ears.

L: Did you get an unfavourable remark, or...?

N: I didn't even get "Anderson who?" -- which would have been more honest. But that was not a whine in vain. Lesson #1: Don't talk to strangers. Lesson #2: Especially if they're salesmen. Lesson #3: Especially if they're salesmen who love Star Trek. Lesson #4: Especially if they're salesmen who love Star Trek and lie about it and pretend to talk political.

L: If you meant Art (Thomson, English poet), it was your own fault. Everything float at haphazard on the various levels of his consciousness, and he has never done with Camelot.

N: No, it's not Art, it's someone you're lucky not to know. But everybody has a homemade Camelot.

L: As occasional glance at the obituary columns has suggested, although there is small likelihood that men see it as Camelot. Yet Camelot has its own logical premiss that in the ordinary course of things the end can no longer remote and it is accompanied by the irksomeness of settling down skirmishes, sadness and troubles. There is the betrayal of Guinevere and the last voyage of the Lady of Shallot, Lancelot is not very clever and Arthur is ill-informed upon the ordinary affairs of life.

N: I guess from Ben Anderson's window I'm the Lady of Shallnot. About Arthur -- what can you expect from someone who learns life from a magician?

L: Dreaming in the entrancing fashion. More people are "Arthur" than we may be able to accept.

N: More are worse. It might be unthinkable to you, but a lot live out there, smugly believing that they have known much about life after reading 10 science-fiction paperbacks.

Blitz
Nin, Gordon Stanton & Fist Larrabee, September 23, 2000, 01:00 - 04:10 EDT.
Larrabee was an electrician in Sparks, Nevada, USA

F:	I don't know if we are famous in the world.
G:	By dint of box-offices it is certain. I am not cynical. With all of its vices, the cinema industry in America is a helper for the cultural dissemination, and it has delivered. In India, Indonesia, the Arabian republics and South Africa, the world learns of Native Americans by watching our movies. By no means accurate and historical approaches are not always practiced, yet it is something I, personally, am pleased to notice.
N:	The funkiest radio station with the biggest number of listeners in Yogya is Geronimo. The coolest discotheque I used to frequent in the '80's, until early '90's, in the same town, is *Crazy Horse. I know a few artists whose eyes have been fixed to anything Native American, and a nutsy rock singer that spends every penny he got on this -- his first band was Comanche, and later on Sitting Bull*. Some souvenir factories live solely by producing such things, too. Must be hundreds of similar stuff out there in Indonesia alone. Whitewashed, severed clean from historical strings, distorted, squeezed, simplified, biased, commercialized -- so shallow like the junk they dub "Java" in Amsterdam shops -- but what the heck as long as we can constrain our preference to just "They know my people". And forget the subsequent line "That Kevin Costner guy sucks."
F:	I saw things like that in America where we should have got respect. A gay bar is named *Shoshone*. It will get bashing and change but there will be others.
G:	Is it your tribe?
F:	I am Oglala from South Dakota.
G:	Unless opening my books again I cannot refresh my memory immediately, so many names to remember. :) I am only playing. There is no American History without the names. I have faith in the men and women at the frontiers, but their history cannot be but for the Natives. They are real foundation of America.
F:	How do you know us in Indonesia?
N:	Karl May's *Winnetou* -- subtitled "The Brave Apache Warrior Chief" -- has always been a "classic" here since time immemorial. The Indonesian transliteration is sorta confusing, and I've never seen the original. Then piles and piles of blockhead films (of course). Translations of what were claimed as "historical studies" on Wounded Knee and the Little Big Horn and the Last Stand and such. Documentaries and docudramas. Lately came the "Natives by Natives for Natives" TV films.
F:	It is new to me. America is hated everywhere.
G:	The United States might be, but I think, my personal opinion, that America is not an object of sheer modern hatred and the history of the Sioux and others inspired people from other countries. They could differ the heroes from the modern Americans and the early pioneers. Especially in struggling countries like Indonesia. They must have been identifying themselves with the Native Americans.
N:	Betcha. Who would see themselves in, or want to be, the dusty cowboys that chew and spit and never took a bath for life? We fought for this Republic, we fought to simply be a nation. It's just an instinctive urge to cheer the Chiefs shooting at the Feds.
G:	Are you related to Chief Crazy Horse? I am sure his second wife was Larrabee.
F:	I don't know, I am not so old. :) Yes so I was told. According to it I am half white. But I like to think I am Oglala no contamination.
N:	I normally hate to say anything good about anybody -- but no one is like Crazy Horse. Absolutely no one that I've ever heard of in this wretched world. He's a man. For real. Or so until another history book is launched.
G:	Chief Crazy Horse was a distinguished leader. He is so in all ages. A historian once called him a Sioux Christ. The daily life of the great men shows greatness, and that is so with Crazy Horse. The Army has admitted that he was never caught a prisoner.
F:	There are lies about him. To me, he is a big man and he is not without faults. But there are lies for a long time.
G:	I am sorry that I am a white man in this context but I am also an American, I am an American first. "We" feared the tribes and "we" were not as noble as we wished. Clearly seen in history how we committed mistakes by mistakes. "We" were barely educated, only soldiers with concerns toward money, rewards and shallow minds. "We" wrote the history of the States and therefore "we" lied.
N:	All histories are gossips that have grown older and age pulls in respectability and the diminishing stock of check-and-recheck respondents illicits validity. BTW do you teach what you just told us to your kids?
G:	In other words. I do. It is dangerous for Americans if our children are introduced to history of their own nation as if it is all proven and true. There is a big case of missing links and false records. Take Chief Crazy Horse. The report at the time of his death testified that he has committed suicide as resisting capture. A time lapse before we were let known the Chief was killed by a prison guard from County Tyrone (an Irishman). And the Army then conceded they have never put him into custody. I agree with you, that Crazy Horse was one of the greatest leaders in American history; he was never caught, he never seen the inside of a prison, the plan to execute transfer to Dry Tortugas (near Key West, Florida) failed, and he died a free man.
N:	I've never said "leaders". I'm sorry that I really don't know much about the Native Americans -- but to me it's hard to say "a great leader" when no overall unity was achieved under his wings. I only have my own nation's stuff as the other point of this comparative glance: we are 13.667 islands, thousands of tribes and languages -- but we got a sorta "great" leadership in the '40's that can unite all those within one Indonesia. That way we kicked the Dutch and Jap butts outta here. "Unity in diversity" is crappy for today's ears, but it means Something. If you only fight for your own tribe, that's not really "leadership" to me -- not when the context is nations.
G:	I must say you were right in some points but incorrect in others. The Native Americans have had the unity in Nations. Although they did not achieve a nationwide unity, the Sioux is one and the diversity in it is accepted as parts of a Nation. Yet tribes are the atoms. You don't say you are Indonesian way often, you identify yourself as Javanese in its place. It is more so for the Native Americans. The pride is of the tribe.
N:	No, Sir, that was not it. We talk 'Indonesia', we talk of a construction. A deliberate, intentional, building upon stuff we officially dub nowadays 'native' -- Indonesia is made, and is still in the making; Java on the other hand is an identity you could never forsake because it was built in, it runs your basic system. nationality in my case is a matter of, actually, choice. But I could never choose being not a Javanese. Catch my drift? Like a Sioux couldn't be anything non-Sioux, but he can be non-American if he wants to! Back to the topic.....Crazy Horse is a man. Redundant but necessary -- "great", "good" or the contrary is not needed. He'd never been anyone but himself. That, to me, is what anybody should be -- Sioux or no Sioux, Chief or no Chief. I love him somehow.
F:	He is not "Indian on coins", cigar box and apple crates. No one knows what he is like.
G:	I believe that Nin meant the Chief's character. He is famous indeed, for the things he represented and his integrity. I admire him.
F:	O.K. When he died Touch the Clouds was a last man in his tribe. He pulled the blanket over his face and said "It is Crazy Horse's home". He was badly injured and dying but he refused to lay on white man's bed. He died on the ground. I don't want to say other nations are not that good, but I take Crazy Horse's death as the death of dignity.
N:	I read about his last minutes somewhere. And I thought -- how vast the difference was, between dying on a white officer's bed and ending life on your own soil! As far as I know, he was the Untouchable among the Natives -- and remained such to the end. No hand-shaking with the Prez, no stupid medals attached, nothing conceded but what was beyond his control, sickly the most important thing -- the land itself.
G:	Symbolism and history are inseparable. Nations have their own symbolism, representing their beliefs and what they are.
N:	The history of every man is the track record of symbolic stuff.
G:	The devil in teaching and learning history is I am, at times, reduced to lament, wishing it was not as recorded. So much could have been different today if they made it right in the past. For nations, for people and tribes, for the world itself.
F:	My father said he and other kids wished they would find Crazy Horse in rocks. My kids won't see it the same way. I don't have education like my mother wanted, but I swear if I have kids they will learn their own history.
G:	The death of a great man used to start legends as you have known.
F:	No one knows what Crazy Horse is like, and where his bones are.
N:	That's what they say about God.
G:	Native Americans are indeed sensible. They don't make gods of humans, this is a danger for other nations but not for them.

Asses To Asses, Daft To Daft
Nin & Melinda Shaw, September 23, 2000.
Shaw was a freelance songwriter and diner worker in Key West, Florida.

CLICKABLE PIC: WHAT TURNS ME OFF

N: He's so pathetic. "I want brain and body," he said, in a cybertone equals to what Hitler got after a speech when the "clap or else --" worked. His conclusion was: "I guess I need two women then."

M: Men like that are daft. They don't know what they're talking about and they don't care. Like what I just told you, huh?

N: Well, everybody knows a moron or two.

M: They say people are craziest in cyber space. Looks right, huh? BTW you're not close to this daffy like I am with L, right? He isn't after you or anything?

N: Mel, that's an insult.

M: Who knows. He could say it to look smart because he wants your attention.

N: I've never seen him in person and I hope I am spared that one ordeal -- he won't look smart even when shutting up. Normally he doesn't speak English, and whenever he does it is bound to be whatever is the worst cliché to get memorized from the Hollywood products, girl rap bands, and cheap magazines. That alone has been getting on my nerves -- but this time I'm thinking wider. The line is too common, so at least it's a universal dysfunction of some cells. Woody Allen got this disease. Always fussing around how to get Schoepenhauer's brain inside Kim Basinger's head -- and ended up with a Korean baby fat with the excellent ability to distinguish the letter A from Z. I'm thinking about this now because I somehow feel sorry for these creatures.

M: Why sorry (for them)? They can't get a woman like that, they're asses wanting pearls. Just right if they never get it.

N: Hard not to pity them because they really don't know what they want. They don't know the real thing. If they ever meet just one single woman that has those qualities at once, she's gonna freak them out.

M: She won't even talk with them! It's like my ex B. He complained of it all the time, but women like he wanted never looked at him! How good this is.

N: I don't like seeing the world seeming like just "amen"-ing the common male wish of "body and brain". No one, as far as I know, has ever tried to fix the false notion up.

M: At work I know a man who has sympathies for Moral Majority. Do you know it? Anyway he (I think) is like most of his kind. He says most women are brainless, one day someone will smash his skull for that. He thinks like people in ancient worlds. Of course, nobody returns his call! Just right. I don't like them feminists, but women are not stupid. But you see in here it is like that, what can you expect outside it?

N: That's one of the straws in the haystack of indocility. But what I meant was this: if the wish for "brain and body" is correctly described, no problem. It means they know what they want and how much to pay for it. But that's not the case. The translation of the wish so far is just fantasies of a naked Pamela Lee citing Stephen Hawking's theory during the blow job. This is sickening.

M: You're confusing. You talk about women or what?

N: Maybe not. I'm sick of the notion of "brain" within the common male wish and fantasy of "body and brain". Not your focus, I guess?

M: Nope, I thought we talk about how men commonly think women are below turtles.

N: That's a part of the big pic. My focus is, those men might know what "body" is, but are clearly entirely clueless about "brain".

M: So we can talk about women and brain too. Sorry if I can't catch up. I think about this. Men, they are bored with their wives and girl friends. Then they wish for other women and look for excuses to do it. Like, they say their wives are stupid. It is not their wives are stupid, but they are bored with them, and we let them do this thing. Now what do you say about that?

N: Most wives I know are certified airheads. Just marrying those blokes alone is a loudly advertised Exhibit A in the Court of Sanity. But since the very first sex they must have known what made their women's heads -- I agree with you that citing it as an excuse 5 years later when sexual urges abate is disgusting.

M: Tell me if you know any man going together with a woman because she is smart. I don't know anyone like that. Asses will get asses, that's all about it. Stupid men get stupid women. Smart women don't want the daft around them.

N: Real brain scares them, I'm positive about this even though they'll never get to know it firsthand.

M: My last boyfriend (now) is not like that but he isn't "brain" either.

N: Nobody needs "brain" around the household. It's reserved for the Washington Post.

M: What about you? I know, you told me you don't see anyone now but what's the future?

N: Oh, I tend to team-up with losers. If this fate doesn't change, I'll end up with just another Mr. Very Wrong, the Ph.D. in Losing Big Time, Moron Of The Year. But that's not gonna happen. I'm too busy to mind men in this sense. We're talking about men here, and I may fret and fuss about men everywhere else, but those are about men in general -- not "a man for me" or anything. Sorry for being verbose. Just in case.

M: I don't blame you if you are sick with them. My relationship isn't so serious anyway. I'm still getting over my past. Like I said they were daft and I am still mad.

N: Sorry for digging up old skeletons if I have done so unconsciously.

M: No, it's OK. I think about them sometimes. It drives me mad. Don't you get mad at your past and ex?

N: No. Should I?

M: That's a lie. If someone hurt you, or make you mad, isn't it always your thought after he's gone? I won't believe if you say your ex are all good men and so on.

N: I don't lie to strangers. :-) I've always been getting losers, blockheads, morons -- but they're gone now, living their own petty lives to die unrepentant of the shallowness they have held dear. (See, I'm vindictive enough!) I automatically erase old files. I'm an old machine, I can't get overloaded.

M: I don't believe you. But that's not my business.....

N: "I've never loved you anyway". Ever heard this song? (By The Corrs. They're sexy but not in my list of listenables)

M: So you didn't love them. Ha ha ha. If you don't lie, that's a good line.

N: It's the truth. Of course I said "I love you" from time to time -- out of habit, as pacifiers when they're down, as pushers when I needed their help around the house, and basically I love everybody. It didn't mean a thing. It surely didn't mean what they thought it meant.

M: Have a good laugh here! :D Maybe you don't lie, you just don't love anyone. It's my thought about myself sometimes.

N: Well, that would be a different thing altogether. I love, and passionately love, many things under the sun.

M: You know what I mean, men. I wonder if you love a man.

N: Two, in the course of time since 1988 to this minute today.

M: LOL!!!! Tell me about them! Why you love them?

N: Because I love them. I brought the second one to life -- he's forever here.

M: Don't get too mushy, you can fall in love again. You know that.

N: Funny -- a man last week wrote to me, "I guess that's when we fell in love with each other" -- Jesus Christ!

M: What?? What made him saying that?

N: My cyber-"I love you"'s. I should have kicked out this habit of saying that to show that I care about my friends -- but I always think that they know what it means.

M: If you ever fell in love once you will know when it is not falling in love. I know that too, so I am not confused with my feelings.

N: The last time I "fell in love", it smogged in L.A. and there was Jaco in the air. It will never happen again.

M: You make me remember my ex D. He moved to Europe. I'm over him but I remember he's the best love in my life. Uh-oh, I'm mushy!! Anyway, I will never see him again though I can feel like that again (maybe).

N: If I can pray, I will, for you. :-)

M: Naah, pray for yourself girl! You are a good friend. You'll find another. He'll be Mr. Right!

N: Oh, thanks a bunch, Auntie. That's a crappy cliché.

M: I don't know what to say, OK? But I pray for myself like that. Or I'd rather be alone. BTW, this is coming to my mind: I thought you don't believe in love.

N: Roughly speaking, I don't. But I've been there. Based on experience, that was love -- the rest was just whatever, maybe sex, maybe insecurity, maybe desperation, maybe just a need to do something when football season was off -- anything. But that was love. That's why I'm not mad, that's why I know it's not redundant.

M: You're queer. You don't hate me for admitting, I don't "love" my boyfriend? Alot of people do.

N: A lot of people live together for sixty years without loving anybody -- not even themselves. This phenomenon is as rare as sand in the desert.

M: I make it up with him by being good, and I am honest. He knows it. We can live like this, helping each other and who knows I can fall in love with him later? I'm sorry if I make you sick. It's true.

N: It's none of my business anyway. But as long as I don't catch you getting into illusions, I'd say what the heck. They said humans are social creatures, remember? Companionship is enough when love is inexistent. When there is no real peace, a truce will do. We live by modifying. And we easily get used to anything.

Beauty & Du Bist
Nin & Fritz Stahl, June 2001. Stahl is an IT engineer in Rendsburg, Germany.

CLICKABLE PIC: INDONESIA

S:	It is like Indonesia will get a new President, at last. I hope it is what they want. I followed what happened in the news, it seems the condition was worse and no one did anything about it.
N:	Obviously bashing each other in front of TV cameras means doing, not "something", but "anything", to those carpetbaggers up there. I don't really trek the news these days. There are other, quicker and with more fun, ways to get a stroke attack. I'm sick of people whose way to greet me is "Is there another bomb?"
S:	It must be boring for you. It's like in Paris, when they knew I am a German, they asked "So, how many Turks are killed today?" The beast is in my passport.
N:	The beauty of the collective sin.
S:	Reading some of your articles, I had a feeling you followed the World War (II) in history. I know it is illusory to wish people of France forget what Germany committed. But I wish so.
N:	Never, even if you Final Solution the entire population of Europe. But it's sorta human to wish for deletion of a historical moment.
S:	With the population decline, younger Germany will be numbered small. It needs more skilled young men/women from other countries. I hope it will help educate Germans about diversity.
N:	Well, if it's only about the existence of the Others out there, the SS elité has been educated enough, don't you think? Otherwise they won't even bother to eradicate anybody. What you don't know won't disrupt your peace.
S:	They didn't know about Asia. I never found a mention of Asia in the period, nor they were aware of Japan which was a big force in the world. Up to today Germany is backward compared to other Europeans.
N:	Do you have any vague idea where Indonesia is, BTW? :-D
S:	Near Sumatera? :-) Schleswig is backward. But I was getting education in Bonn, even in '92 I knew people went to other continents. I have a friend in Yogyakarta since '99. He is a consultant. I know many people from Germany work in your country.
N:	What kind of consultant? I know that this republic looks wanting in any sort of advice from anybody, but feeding expats in US$ just to be told "You have to pay more attention to the infrastructure" is ridiculous.
S:	I'm not sure where he works, but it's not development agency. I think he is a consultan in finance.
N:	Even worse! :-\ Insurance peddlar? Tell me he isn't. Please. I got an upset stomach.
S:	I'll ask him. I am really unsure. We went to the same university but he graduated earlier. I only met him again in Frankfurt Fair recently.
N:	I know nothing about Germany but its worst. So, in advance I want to apologize for my prejudice.
S:	That's all I know about Germany as well, it's almost common. I am aware of it when I go elsewhere, not when I stay at home. But people in Rendsburg almost don't read news about anywhere but the city. There are rare who go as far as Berlin. In the less educated mass, prejudice is not only against Asians or Turks, or Americans, but against other states in Germany Republic as well, against Dutch, and many others. Although it doesn't mean better than a prejudice against a people and they are aware of it.
N:	Hitler's greatest sin is putting the blood on the next generations of Germans' hands indiscriminately.
S:	The people he said he would save. I try to imagine. If I was born a long time ago, I was adult in '40's, will I be a Nazi at heart?
N:	And?
S:	I don't know. That is the worst answer, I don't know. A mass hypnosis in Naziism with the war in Europe has begun, may influence my mind like the others.
N:	At least you're honest. And don't brag about how many African females you have been with just to zoom out a false pic of your open-mindedness.
S:	Even if I have intention like it, I can't, I've never done it. I met people from different countries in big cities of Germany, but I have not known a friend from other country. Do I make myself understood? I mean to say, a "friend", it is a man/woman you often meet and talk, go together, like that?
N:	Aha. If you claim the Korean you saw across the street in Berlin yesterday as your friend, you're not open-minded but insane.
S:	We will meet a group from Japan next week. I am excited.
N:	What are they doing there?
S:	We will (may) have a business together. A branch will be opened in Tokyo or other city and we have their company here, not Rendsburg but Hamburg and Bonn.
N:	Japanese are not so spiffy in IT. I always think it's their way of life -- so sterile like a hospital corridor. India, on the other hand, with its crowded, colorful, noisy streets, has been the best in producing more innovative minds.
S:	It may explain why Americans are ahead of us. Europe is old and acts old.
N:	Orderly, elderly -- yeah, maybe.
S:	Do you still defend your President? I read his statements when he was in America (I am sorry) they are crazy. A new President seems better.
N:	I've never defended him. But I'm loyal to almost anything, and he's the smartest President we've ever gotten -- in a sense useless in politics but great in being an authentic individual.
S:	I like (ex-President) Habibie. I think he's intelligent and a "regular guy". I saw him in Aachen.
N:	You like him because he's the only one among 209 million of Indonesians that can read Stern.
S:	He speaks German real good. :)
N:	Well, this President we still have now was a political essayist and a football commentator -- Habibie can't beat that to get my vote.
S:	Did you vote? I thought Indonesia don't vote for Presidents?
N:	I didn't, and it doesn't. But votes have to be counted everyday in anyone's Presidential years -- a romantic notion, but we "think" by feeling anyway, and in the end it's what counts.
S:	President Dur has too many enemies which he makes himself.
N:	Oh, always. President or no President.
S:	As I hear for the first time Indonesian President is blind, I wonder, then it is more open than European/American. Did you know Tripoli march?
N:	Jeeez. What's that to you?
S:	I have a school friend in wheelchair. We used to go on bikes together before I moved to Bonn, we were close friends. He lost a foot in an accident.
N:	That the planet shrinks is a popular sentiment with this GenXers, but from time to time it really freaks me out. I happen to know a bit about the march -- retold a book about it and such. Your buddy was in it?
S:	He had a good time there.
N:	Great! :-) I don't know anyone with disability up close and personal -- but I think quite a chunk of my mind has been mulling over the subject.
S:	Europeans think they do better to disabled people than Asians or Africans. But it is difficult. So I wonder, in Indonesia there is a blind President. How do they receive?
N:	A short ugly story. They did anything to kept Megawati (now VP) from getting there. Gus Dur was sorta neutral, so the sharks and hounds and such lifted him up to the #1 chair. Not a yippee choice: a President that couldn't read the state's LOI's or a President that doesn't have testosterone? Both are problematic to us here, you know -- being a woman means having a deficiency anywhere if you want to get to the summit. Pacifying the right-wingers was in the picture too, though they got there exactly because they were pushed and pulled in by the muckcracking stuff around Megawati's religiousity. I hate this story. Not one single actor was a protagonist, not one single plot was devised without malice.
S:	If President Dur is out, then you get the new President as it should before. You don't be happy about it?
N:	I forgot to mention that people think the other candidate for President back then, against Gus Dur, also couldn't read the state's LOI's -- not because she's visually impaired, but through some other cause, harder to fix.
S:	I remember! Dur said "She is stupid but she loves the people".
N:	Wow. So some made-in-Germany stuff really works up there, huh? :-) What bothers me is, she's conservative. But, well, rather than unpresidented. These last few years have been like a public school in a frantic run to finish up the curriculae. We should have learned more during the time if we weren't so busy getting bewildered or fell into apathy, than the first 53 years of Indonesia.....I'll just wait and see. How's Germany BTW?
S:	You are not interested in Germany :) I think, crazy or stupid? It is not an easy choice. Germany is as fine as it can. But the mind is old and wrinkled.
N:	Don't worry. You're gonna get all the ancient minds and bulldog-skinned thoughts together as Euro.
S:	I regret a thing.
N:	Which is.....?
S:	I was never going to East Germany. I only knew from television. I regret it.
N:	You can still do that now, or just get out next Sunday and see people around your place -- if they're really like what you told me about, that's East Germany enough. So tightly shut, so narrow, so shallow, so dark.
S:	A one world dictatorship will be solution to national problem. As now, nationality is what you are, then Germany's faults in the past and present are my faults, to other nationalities. What a beauty, to be a German man. And the young Germans who pay attention to politics are only New nazi.
N:	Not minding politics altogether might be the eraser at the end of the history pencil. No WW II would be left to mind. And "a German" is only a bureaucratic signifier anyway -- nationalities were invented to make life easier for those people at the airports.

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