Vapours contributors Adam Gilhespy and Andrew Fenwick were sent to report on the Pohoda Festival in Slovakia for a rival publication. Initial suspicions that the festival was a massive fundraising effort for an anti-abortion campaign proved unfounded, and Enjoy Bratislava and Slovakia magazine made a superb guide for the weekend:
Stop to smoking
“The [no smoking] act actually in force orders the owners of bars to separate these two [smoking and non-smoking] zones but in practice often the imaginary boundary is formed by vacuum or other meaningless absurdity.”
Drivers, Beware!
“The influence of drugs used before the ride is different. Some kinds suppress and slow down the reactions, others on the contrary evoke accelerated reactions and a sensation of dauntlessness.”
Celebrations of victory all over Europe
“A war that spread almost to the whole world, killed tens of million of civilians and soldiers, destroyed innumerable quantity of towns and caused property and cultural damage of incalculable dimensions.”
Undignified primacy
“Despite the tendency of constant reduction of unemployment, in the scale of all EU member countries we are still in the desperate last place.”
Advances in the science of things bumping into things
Disappointing for doom-mongers and a small section of the scientific community, a report has concluded that it’s unlikely the earth will become fodder for a black hole when the Large Hadron Collider starts hurling protons at each other in the not too distant future. It’s also doubtful that the search for the Higgs Boson will turn all atoms into ’strangelets’ and put an end to us forever.
Tectonic plates go a bit funny before grinding together to cause earthquakes on the San Andreas fault. Monitoring changes in seismic wave patterns could give prior warning of quakes, say scientists.
Mars’ two-faced nature is down to a collision with a massive moon-sized space rock back in the day, say Californian researchers, not volcanic activity. The finding explains the differing thickness between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, rather than any inter-planetary bitchery.
“Hi, my name’s Martin, I’m 39, and I live in a small town in central England. I’m not a very heavy smoker but I do enjoy my Marlboro Lights (sometimes filterless), and I do get a kick out of smoking. Enjoy the occasional cigar too. There is much more to me than this though - drop me a line if you want to know more! Hello Everyone…”
My Grandma and Granddad were initially very worried about the installation of lights around the base of Bamburgh Castle (they lived in its shadow). All of their fears were quickly allayed upon the occasion of it’s first illumination.
Other examples of when my Grandparents were happy are:
1. The time we all went to an expensive restaurant and you really could taste the difference.
2. When blue-tits nested in the bird-box.
3. Young Doctors ( “Young Quacks” ).
My Grandparents are buried in the churchyard overlooking the sea.
“Everything’s relative. They say keep your eye on the donut not the hole. Work is the donut and fame is the hole - it can be a deep hole, too, and you can get pretty screwy if you spend too much time in it. Getting stuck in the hole can be dangerous because it can make you forget what got you there in the first place.”
At home with David Lynch, March 1999.
From Book Of Changes - Interviews by Kristine McKenna, Fantagraphics, 2001.
According to Björk, the image of Iceland is being destroyed by an increasing number of aluminium smelters: “If they build an aluminium factory in Helguvík, it will be the first thing tourists see when they arrive in Iceland [at Keflavík airport], then they will drive past [The aluminum factory in] Straumsvík on the way to Reykjavík. That is just like shooting yourself in the leg. This is bad for our future as a green country and for tourism. It is also bad for Icelandic artists who are aiming at international success, because we are trying to promote the image of purity, clean nature and our relation to nature.”
Last weekend Björk, with the aid of Sigur Rós and a bunch of lesser known Icelandic musicians, performed a concert at the Botanical Garden in Laugardalur, Reykjavík to raise awareness of the omnipotent chemical element which handily boasts the atomic number 13.
Item not won: Adolf Hitler’s head shaped candle.
A man was arrested yesterday for decapitating an wax effigy of Hitler in Berlin’s Madame Tussauds.
Possible motive:
World War II is over, and Nazi officials remove Adolf Hitler’s living head and hide it in the fictional South American country of Mandoras, so that they can resurrect the Third Reich for the future. It fast forwards into the 1960s, and the surviving officials kidnap a scientist in an attempt to keep Hitler alive. Various intelligence agencies, aware of the evil plot, recruit secret agents to bust the Nazi officials.
-They Saved Hitler’s Brain (synopsis), 1963. Dir. David Bradley.
Comment:
This is a rare reactionary attitude to German history in the capital (of all places) as Germany is internationally recognised as a nation which has confronted its past ‘head-on’ and benefited as a result. You only have to walk around Berlin to see that the remenants of the Reich have not been concealed or glossed over.
Consider the term: Trauerarbeit - Ger. meaning: mourning or grieving, literally translates as ‘healing work,’ (which importantly denotes an active process) used by seminal artist Joseph Beuys during postwar period to describe his modus operandi which included didactic lectures, social sculpture and founding the Green Party in Germany. He is said to have been a Luftwaffe pilot, shot down over the Crimea and nursed back to health by Tartar nomads, hence his autobiographical output. Beuys saw himself as shamanic figure who sought to put a plaster on every wound that he found, no matter what the size. More…
Remember: Two (W)Wrongs do not make a (Third)Reich. Story
