Well, before the US can actively withdraw from the region, South Korea should sign the 1953 armistice pact. Until that time, there is no way the South can communicate with the North on the same level as the US can. It’s unfortunate that the current crisis broke out thanks to a lack of diplomacy on Bush’s conto – i doubt North Korea would have acted like the insulted kid it is now if they weren’t all of a sudden put into the Axis of Evil just because a few disgruntled Arabs flew a few airplane in American buildings. ******* as Kim Jong Il might be, he had nothing to do with that.

It’s not that the South Koreans actually need the US presence anyway. Three squadrons of F-16s (two of them Wild Weasels, the other IIRC still flying long-in-the-tooth Block 30s) and a few A-10s together, a batallion of helos and a bunch of tanks (in total some 40.000 men) are negligable when compared to the South Korean military.

Crying during Titanic? Actually, it was one of the funniest cinema experiences i ever had: my then-GF and me sat in the middle of the theatre. DiCaprio and Winslet are in the water, the ship has just (finally!) sunk… The first sniff comes from the rear-left. A sniff somewhere up front. Two girls start sniffing directly to our right. A girl starts crying quite loud not too far to the left…

The more sniffing and silenced crying i heard, the funnier i began to find the whole situation. If it wasn’t for my company who had the amazing capability to make me behave, i would have laughed out loud during that scene.

I have to agree that European films are often unfortunately overlooked. There is great stuff made over here, but most of it is not only a lot less spectaculair as your average Hollywood-flic, but also the massive marketing budgets of the great Hollywood studios are not available here. Which almost makes it inevitable that great European films have a hard time competing with American cinema – no matter how brilliant, amusing or impressive such films as Kolya, Delicatessen, Goodbye Lenin (must see German comedy about the end of the GDR) or Karakter might be.

But i do want to add that there are plenty of excellent non-mainstream American films as well, often quite ‘ big’ in production and marketing: Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze is absolutely brilliant), Fight Club (despite the totally repulsive Brad Pitt)… Despite plenty of original American talent, they still find it necessary to have US-style remakes of European films which often works out disastrous (anything American with Gerard Depardieu).

I am not holding my breath for the Americanised version of Solaris. How can they ever beat the brilliance of Andrei Tarkovski? And stupidly enough, hardly any of the press releases around this film admit it’s a remake of a Soviet film… sigh.

Yes, i’ve been trying to teach my cat to like beer but somehow it won’t budge. So i have to drink it all myself then…

Here’s Lola on my lap, seconds after being rudely woken up… those are the risks of sleeping on my lap during some drinking session.

The pic is about a year old, but i got it from the asylum so she should be some 4 years old now.

No Kabir, unfortunately that Fitter left without me…

This one is me, when i was still young, naieve and not as handsome (well, the latter is still a growing process but still…)

Trying to see if the new forum uploads works or not…

RE: From Grange Hill to Eastenders to Spandau

I could be wrong here, but i think the band was indeed called after that part of Berlin, but not for the MG factory. Spandau also was the prison where nazi-criminals convicted in Nürnberg sat their sentences, and i believe that during the early 1980s either Albert Speer or Rudolf Hess (don’t know anymore which one, forgive my ignorance) was the only remaining inmate.

RE: Women!!

The Levant, Ufa in Central Russia, Saxony…