When in Berlin, visit The Anti-Kriegs-Museum, The Anti-War Museum. I think of it, just knowing it's there, that someone thought it absolutely necessary to have such a Museum, for the education of the people of Planet Earth, it is a Very Fine and Needed Thing.
Perhaps if I beg and whine and debase myself, some kind Soul associated with the Museum will print out a copy of this pathetic refrigerator art and stick it on a wall somewhere with a pushpin. Vleeptron Dude's Greeting Card to the Anti-Kriegs-Museum.
Stop the War.
Stop Both Wars.
Stop All Three Wars.
Stop All Wars.
Vleeptron has been promising you Really Big Integers for a long time.
Vleeptron delivers, as always.
In both Euros and US Dollars, the order of magnitude of these Really Big Integers is Hundreds of Billions.
I love Really Big Integers, so you cannot imagine how very sorry I am that someone has used these Really Big Integers for This.
~ ~ ~
This one is better, I think. I understand the electronics and the logic of the 7-Segment Light Emitting Diode (LED), but I never paid much attention to the intimate details of its æsthetic design.
You seen seven red hexagons, you seen 'em all.
Well, anyway, Bob is still no Artist, but this task has surely elevated me from Refrigerator Artist to Draughtsman Apprentice.
Thank you, Mr. Showaker, my Metal Shop teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School. You introduced me to the Pleasures of Draughting. I had no idea what you were trying to teach me or why it might ever be important to me, but as I grow older, the dim lightbulb sputters in my head, a neuron fires.
The World That Human Beings Build:
No drafting, no bridge.
No railroad.
No skyscraper. No elevators.
No electricity and no phones on the skyscraper.
No boats. No ships to carry boats. No submarines.
No toilets or faucet water in the skyscraper or the submarine.
No Apollo to the Moon. No FM radio ("No static at all").
No new wooden stairway to my basement.
Mr. Showaker was right. I was a Swine, and he spent decades casting his Pearls to me and my like.
First, before it becomes Real and Solid, the World must be drafted. Blueprints. CAD.
No drafting, no fission or fusion weapons.
Sloppy slipshod drafting, no Cluster Bombs to fall from the Sky and keep killing children (attracted to their bright happy metallic colors) for decades after the Peace Treaty is signed and everyone sips a glass of Champagne in the Grand Hall.
No drafting, no Roller Coaster at Tivoli, which I rode because I can't read Danish and I thought it was the Fun House. Snookdi Pupsi does not mean Fun House. I hate Roller Coasters.
Stop whatever you're doing and plan a trip in the Spring, for Opening Day of Tivoli. Or first telephone to make sure that Harlequin and Pierot and Pierette and Columbine, the Commedia del Arte, will be performing for Free, and Every Hour. These beautiful, talented, funny, happy young people must be university drama students, as I once was. They probably come from nine countries and each one begs Tivoli for the chance to spend the season being paid little to perform this sublime cycle of ancient theater, as remarkable as Noh theater or Balinese puppet theater. The costumes alone made me weep, for the first time in my life to be just meters away from them in their explosive patterns and colors, wrapping living, breathing, actresses and actors.
Tivoli is the world's oldest Amusement Park. It's across the street from the railroad station in Kobenhavn/Copenhagen. You can't miss it. If you're as stupid and clueless as I was, and never even heard of Tivoli, every night as the park closes, Tivoli fills the sky above Copenhagen/Kobenhavn with a startling and magnificent fireworks display.
I noticed it reflected in the windows of the Baroque government office building across from my hotel room. Darkness had hidden the office building and the narrow street, put it into a deep and boring sleep.
Then suddenly Tivoli announced that it would soon close for the night. And me in my underwear and socks unpacking my backpack startled, electrified into sudden Happiness and Thrill at midnight. I didn't even have to be facing in the right direction.
It must be nice to work at Tivoli, it must be nice to hit old Punch with a bladder every hour and listen to the squeals of delight from all the children and from Bob.
It's common to be hit by a taxi or spattered with mud or have a tree fall on you or buy a bad sandwich and be sick for two days.
But how often does the universe explode in your face just to say
Hi!
Welcome, Weary Traveller,
to Kobenhavn!
If you really go, try to get a room in the hotel attached to the Train Station. Go out the station's main exit, go down the sidewalk on your left, and just walk into the lobby. Disco may be dead -- God let it be so! -- but Art Deco and 1928 are Alive and Well and Having a Wild Fucking Party at this strange and delightful little hotel that 9999 out of 10000 newcomers just walk past, as if it weren't there, as if an entire hotel were invisible, on their way to the Hilton or the Radisson or the Ramada.
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