Among my few character flaws is a certain irresistable, cyclical attraction to self-help books. Every now and then I buy a few, read them, believe them whole-heartedly, fail to implement them and, finally, forget them. Which is just as well because, face it, people never change, do we?

I mean, you can change what you do, but not who you are, deep down. And it’s who I am, deep down, that really truly bugs me, you know.

Oh, before I forget, to the small lady on the hot, crowded subway with her head stuck in some guy’s armpit: whew, I know; I apologize; but I am allergic to every deodorant I’ve found so far, they make my armpits itch horribly so I can’t use them. Sorry!

And this one self-help book — which I’m liking so far since it admits you can’t change another person or a relationship, just yourself, assuming that is that you can change yourself which you of course can’t (see above), but which I won’t name here as it’s a bit academic in parts and also, I haven’t finished it yet so I won’t mention it yet but I promise to later if it works, which I doubt — mentioned sexual fantasies, and what they can, sometimes, tell about you.

And I asked myself, have I ever really had a sexual fantasy? Normally, I wouldn’t ask myself that but traffic was fairly light on the freeway and now that they’ve installed these computerized spy cameras everywhere here that photograph your license plates and calculate your average speed people have been going the speed limit here, which is a real miracle in Austria so it seemed safe to pursue the line of thought.

Have I? Fantasies? Day-dreams?

No. I’ve never had a sexual fantasy, not once in my life. Before I met my wife, I might have seen a woman walking down the sidewalk and thought, “gosh, she’s really fucking hot!” But that’s not a fantasy.

My visual imagination really sucks, maybe that’s part of it. And, in writing, I’m not very good at coming up with a plot, either. Maybe it’s some deficiency hardwired into my brain. So I decided to try to have a sexual fantasy right there, going 130 KpH on the freeway.

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So is Howard Dean the guy? Or is this going to be like McGovern in 1972? Or worse?

Would it help Dean if I donated my $14 million in Blogshares money to his campaign?

I was talking to a nice guy a while back. It turned out we had both gotten into fistfights in junior high, with Nixon supporters.

Vote manipulation?

Or, 16,000 liberals and one Nazi.

Met my wife at Schloss Sch

One day it was just there, on the field outside town where the Gypsies camp when they pass through. The circus. Circus Barelli, billing itself as Germany’s second-largest circus (after the Bundestag?).

(By the way, I highly recommend visiting their site!!!)

It is a large circus, with many trucks and trailers. The tent is colorful and 25 meters tall. Impossible for a strong-willed six-year-old to miss, in other words.

So we went. One rainy night we went. Yes, as a special treat, we went after our daughter’s normal bed time. She was keen on that. She couldn’t believe her luck. We had free tickets. The circus, you see, hands out free tickets when they arrive in town.

Well, free. “Free” tickets. Free, depends what you mean by free. Free as in, free for one adult. First of all, the kid pays full fare. Still, we get in free! Yeah, cotton candy / fairy floss and so on will cost you etc. But what the hell, how often does the circus come to town?

Well, free. They were called free tickets, said right on there, “Freikarten” but that means, in circusspeak, ten Euro off. Says right there on their website, which you absolutely really should visit if only for the little ringmaster cursor chaser.

“You want HOW MUCH?” I asked the lady at the window selling tickets, who happened to be the circus boss too. She just ignored me and waited for me to pay. She’d obviously done this frequently in the past.

“Just pay the lady, honey.”

“You know how fucking much she wants? Free tickets, pah.”

So we went in. Big tent. Very cool.

“Daddy, can I have a…” “NO! You know what this cost me already? No you can’t have any peanuts, cotton candy or…”

“…a flashing green disco light?”

“No flashing green disco light.”

Big circus. They had a live band. My daughter and I discussed where we’d put the various areas – kitchen, bedroom, living room – if we lived in a circus tent year round.

Various animals came out and did things. One neurotic long-horned bull tried to gore the four shapely dancing girls wearing red sequin bikinis and red harem pants slit ankle-to-waist with sequined hairornaments and strings of pearls every time it circled the ring, but they were used to it and shimmied out of the way each time it passed.

A man stood in the center of the ring and cracked a whip at the animals to make them behave. There was much cracking of whips in general. Eh, German circus.

A very tightly packed woman – as if a large woman had been packed under high pressure into a medium sized woman – with blonde hair pulled back tightly into a braid, the largest false eyelashes I’ve ever seen – and many, many sequins rode two horses around, one at a time. Cracking of whips. In general, though, the animals were well-treated and looked very healthy and happy.

A clown picked people out of the audience for humiliation, triggering my lifelong fear of being picked out of the audience by a clown, but I was spared.

The Eastern European acrobats were pretty good. A man jumped off a low tower onto a seesaw, shooting a young dishwater blonde woman with good abdominal definition in a blue top and very short blue hotpants into the air, where she did twists and flips and rolls before landing on his shoulders.

Later they did the Wheel of Death, which was impressive. The woman wore a more flattering red sequin bikini this time.

Almost forgot the contortionist. She had a poetic act. It was like a traditional circus trying to do Cirque du Soleil or however that is spelled. Wait, I’ll do a google search… Good guess, I got it right. She was in a tight outfit, white with silver I believe, climbing around a silver hula hoop that was raised fifteen meters into the air. Swinging and stuff.

Horses and cows ran around. In the middle, they had a 20 minute break for the kids to pet the animals. Only

I remember what it was I’d wanted to post yesterday. An ethnologist told me that during a trip to Papua New Guinea he’d asked a tribesman the name of his mother-in-law. The shocked man warned him in a whisper never to ask anyone the name of his mother-in-law. “You could be killed!” he said. Mothers-in-law are taboo there, being in charge of black magic as they are, and are never referred to by name.

How primitive.

On a completely unrelated note, during a recent trip to a wine-growing region here, we saw a stand selling things to eat, including pastries, and long strips of what looked like fried dough, about two inches wide and a foot-and-a-half long and sort of concave. Or convex, depending on which side you’re examining them from, very thin dough. We asked what they were. “Mother-in-law tongues,” we were told. Made by rolling some sort of dough out very thin – it looked like pastry dough – and frying it on a griddle.

How quaint.

Anyway. Brian asked for my wife’s Kirschkuchen recipe.

My Wife’s Now-World-famous Kirschkuchen

Disclaimer
Being intellectuals, you can do the conversions yourselves, as necessary
Also, THIS WORKS WITH PITTED PIE CHERRIES, not regular cherries.

Ingredients:

• 250 g real butter not margarine

• 250 g sugar
• 4 eggs
• 400 g all-purpose flour
• 16 g baking powder, my wife thinks

Instructions

• Butter and eggs must be at room temperature

• Mix butter and sugar with mixer
• Don’t forget to preheat oven to 190 degrees C.
• One at a time, add eggs to mixture, mixing with mixer, then add next egg, mix, etc.
• Mix flour and baking powder, then stir into butter-egg-sugar mixture
• You need a form, or baking pan or something, shallow and large enough for the Kuchen. We use the oven tray, greased (buttered) and thinly floured. Maybe a non-stick item would also work, but no promises.
• Spread dough on pan, put cherries on top (should be enough cherries to cover it). Sprinkle this with cinnamon and powdered sugar.
• Bake for one hour at 190 degrees C, or until it looks like a Kirschkuchen; golden brown etc. You can do the stick-something-in-and-if-no-dough-sticks-to-it-it’s-done test. My wife uses a knitting needle, my mother used a knife but she never made Kirschkuchen.
• Consume.

They say fish is a brain food, but I had fish last night and cannot remember what it was that I wanted to say here. Maybe it was the wrong kind of fish.

I remember hearing about cowboys shaking out their boots before putting them on in case anything venomous had crawled inside during the night, like real estate developers. After showers lately, I shake out my towel before using it, and inspect it closely for eight-legged friends.

“Mommy, there’s a wet naked man shaking spiders off a towel out on his porch!”

Weather has cooled down here. Today is showery, overcast and cool. Very pleasant. I had muesli for breakfast.

What the hell was that story.

You know how someone from Berlin is called a Berliner in German? And someone from Hamburg is called a Hamburger? The German name for Vienna is Wien, and there’s a lifestyle magazine here called “Wiener”. When I was first living here a long time ago, and moved back to the States, I nearly subscribed just to have something to maintain the connection, until I imagined the mail carrier’s face delivering the post.

I baked strawberry-rhubarb cobbler recently and it was good. My wife has done a lot with pie cherries lately, since all the cherries on our youngest child’s tree ripened at the same time this year. Kirschkuchen. Cherry marmalade. More Kirschkuchen. “Anyone want some more Kirschkuchen?” “No thanks, mom.”

What is with Blogshares anyway? My portfolio is over $12 million now. What does one do with it at this juncture? What’s the point?