Instead of going political once again, and obsessing too much on the upsetting win of one of the nastiest constant liars in the US political sphere preparing to take over the nuclear soccer ball, or whatever, as well as whether Merkel meant it with the no Leader of the Free World for us*, or not... I'd rather report some new sensations of the physical world. Or conjecture on.

No, not sensations of the trump'eting kind. Bodily interactions with the everyday physical world, rather.

The other day, about a forthnight ago, I realised, that if I take a really hot bath in early winter, and most of my body is beneath the surface, but the parts of my legs around my knees aren't, my knees give off a thin smoke. Of their own! I.e. my legs were at an angle, knees up, the actual bath water not steaming too much and I saw... Okay, I knew within a second the "smoke" had to be just more steam, but the child in me - yes, still present after all dese long done years! - was impressed.

I'm the man with the occasional smokin' legs!

Today, after a bad dip into a lot-of-crazy-coughing 'flu for about a week, I realised that my food intake during sick leaves tends to be the exact thing I should be going for, when I'm not sick: Healthier (less finished food, more fruit, more tea than bottled water) and less of it. Only once I feel better, like now, do old unhealthy appetites return (mostly carbohydrates & salt - I love most salty stuff).

So I wondered: Was it only the diminished hunger caused by i.a. fever that had that effect? Could it be in part due to the often-closed nose, i.e. partial loss of smell?

Maybe I could do a lot for an effective new life diet, if I stoppered up my nose for one or more days each week...?

Well, have a good festive month!

A friend of mine tweeted recently that our world seems broken at the moment. When I jokingly replied I hadn't noticed & that I was feeling okay in mine, he gave me a list of current happenings/politicians as proof of breakage.

With my school debating society background, I can tell a debating challenge when one comes knocking, so here I go down some of the list...

Security agencies (USA & FRG)
The greatest threat to our world first... Yes, it is a great one. But here comes a perhaps specious argument: It's an age-old threat. Current is only Mr. S.'s "leaking" of what they are currently capable of doing, and how foolish we Internet users have been in opening up our public and private lives, right down to the camera pointing at us on every laptop, to these illegal observers. Illegal because of the implicit total foregoing of the presumption of innocence. -- This is a long-term problem truly threatening to break our world, and we need to address it by forcing our governments to put their monies where their big mouths are re privacy protection. And to accept less national security because of it.

Saxony
The police in a major city in this federal German state were handed a likely IS terrorist - by other Syrians! - including plans to set off a (probably suicide) bomb in a near future, that will now not happen, luckily. At first the cops couldn't admit it wasn't them who had brought in the potential culprit. And then they left him alone in a holding cell with enough materials to hang himself. Which he apparently proceeded to do. The home minister of the state apologised, but did not resign. -- I'm sorry but this reminds of me of much worse cases during Apartheid in the 80s in South Africa. In one of them, evidence of major mistreatment of the dead suspect came to light, and the minister of "Law & Order" didn't bother commenting, much less resigning; after a week, the newspapers had dropped the story. As long as German media & the public are as upset about this as they are now, and remain that way for a while, and perhaps even get the Saxon police in line, things are much better here than they have been, or still are, in many other countries.

Syria
Yes, d' accord, that one can't be argued against. One true sad blight on our happy planet. Let's never forget the thousands & thousands of civilian dead.

AfD
This pretty ridiculous party's not going away after a few months is actually a blessing in disguise. It makes Germans - yes, like me - wake up to the real yesteryear (fantasy) thinking in the heads of at least a fifth of the voting population. And it allows those of us who say "never again Nazism" to sharpen our arguments, and build our courage (& muscles if worst comes to worst). Pre-AfD times were just a little too stupidly comfy in Germany.

May
I'm not sure that Mrs. May means all the nationalist tilting she's doing to the British political consensus of recent decades. Perhaps she is just playing a hot poker game right now. Look at the hopeful gist of the next-to-last ECONOMIST's cover (right), for instance. So the new Iron Lady with the Shoes is a potential crack, I agree. But not quite broken through yet, I feel.

Putin
Yes, this guy is a new major Fascist "world leader" waiting to happen, especially after the crazily genocidal bombing sprees in Syria of recent weeks. The new twist is that he keeps calling everyone else - except Assad & his army - fascists. Which will also be his downfall, I feel. Without any friends, an already weak Russia will fail. Soon.

Trump
A badly-smelling dog star already starting to fade again. A longer-term - but not yet current - threat is the wave of anti-elite sentiment he - the biggest gold-fingering member of an elite consisting of only his family - is surfing so profitably. So, to help prevent a future broken world, here I just hand over to the late great s.f. master Kurt Vonnegut (courtesy of the Engl. Wikipedia):

"The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead."

If you correspondingly substitute local political parties near the end, applicable more and more to all Western nations at the moment, it seems to me...

P.S.: The older I get, the more local my world gets. So the hardest counter argument I can bring against my friend, my tired mind tells me, is homely-cobbled Friesenstraße near where I live... As I walk up it: Great book shops on the left, the wonderful Brezel Bar - ah, the taste of a truly freshly baked pretzel - on the right, then a great soup joint (only open during work days, not evenings!), further up the best video rental in the world. And if you feel threatened by Cross Mountaineers, the district's police station is at top left...

I'm ending a brief sojourn to Düsseldorf, the capital of my home state, North-Rhine Westfalia, traditionally catholic-conservative as well as a mainstay for Germany's unions & social-Democrat workers

I can't remember ever having been here, but must have been as a child; when my parents were young, in the late 60's, they apparently used to drive here a few times a year to do "window shopping".

They probably chose to visit the one grand "Prachtstraße" (street of great splendour) the city seems to have to offer: Königsallee, usually abbreviated to "Kö" - a broad, light street with wide pavements and middle isle strip of mostly green... It mainly offers s lot of hot (sic) couture places of trade (like the one pictured - note the black-laquered cat), with appended tightish street cafés. There's also at least one beautiful 4-storey old building, copper-roofed, with big stone faces of lions, on one side, as well as an unfortunately big green sign "kaufhof", which probably lights up at night (aaaarrgh!), on top.

The rest of the small bit of the inner city I saw on my two-hourly excursion, from the central railway station to the Kö, was pretty dead, dirty & dingy. There was even an old Beate Uhse shop near the station - I felt transported to the 80's. One bright side, here & on-Kö: You get to see a lot of Asian faces - Chinese, if I picked up bits of spoken words correctly...

T.b.d.