1) I'm too old
2) It's done wonders for the sculpture/landscaping market: want to make a statement but don't want to commission an artist? Just put up a bit of the Berlin Wall.

What are you asking us for? Ask here: http://www.koichan.net/a/wakaba.html

>>111670

Sorry. Freudian Slip. I meant /azu/

I don't give a shit.

It makes me nostalgic for the days when the world was getting better.

Right across the street from Checkpoint Charlie, there's a cafe called Snackpoint Charlie.
I just think there's something absurdly funny about that.

>>111702
Protip: The world was never getting better. It was never getting worse. Such ideas and concepts of "good" and "bad" are relativistic human constructs designed to divide the universe into black and white. As an example, Marlyn Manson said "times have not become more violent, they have become more televised." Assume that the validity of this statement is unquestionable: Is this good or bad? Answer: It is neither. Ir creates consequences. Multiple consequences. To any given individual, the value of these consequences will vary from any other individual.

I also find it hard to believe the time of the fall of the Berlin wall could be considered "better." If nothing else, can we not say that it was the Legacy of Reagan and the Cold War that led us to conditions we are in today?

The only certainty we can come across is that shit happens. It is happening now. It happened then. It will happen in the future. But it's still shit, and it happens. Attempting to classify past shit as superior to current shit just seems like a waster effort. After all, it's different shit, but it's still shit.

>>111710

If you are going to say any of today's 'shit' was Reagan's legacy, then you would have to view it as the legacy of the Cold War as a whole. If the Soviet Union hadn't been absorbing surrounding nations into the Bloc, then America wouldn't have felt any need to secure Iran as an ally, nor would we have tried to help the Mujahideen in Afghanistan (both actions leading directly to problems we have today).

Besides, not having two superpowers (who both could obliterate the Earth with a push of a button) threatening mutually assured destruction, is a good thing to anyone who wants mankind to survive.

>>111714

Don't lay blame for the Cold War entirely on the ol' S.U. Maybe they wouldn't have felt the need for "buffer states" if the International Expedition Force (which included the U.S.) hadn't invaded them right after World War I. Maybe they'd have felt more secure if the U.S. hadn't been happily grabbing chunks of everyone else's empires after World War II and scotching everyone else's nuclear programs and refusing to renounce the weapons themselves.

No one is blameless or completely culpable. Every nation aggravates the situation by making its own power grabs.
Unhappily, >>111710 is too correct...

>...not having two superpowers (who both could obliterate the Earth with a push of a button) threatening mutually assured destruction, is a good thing

It eludes me as to how having one "hyperpower" with nuclear weapons and leadership who believe themselves accountable to no one is "good"...

>>111717

I'm sorry you think I'm blaming everything on the Soviet Union. Soviet leadership in the beginning, most notably Stalin, was somewhat paranoid of Great Britain before and during WWII. When it became obvious that the US was becoming the dominant western power, that fear transferred to America. Stalin was convinced that Britain, and later the US, was plotting against the Communists.

At the end of the war, BOTH sides came to the conclusion that communism and capitalism were inherently incompatible, and felt that an eventual confrontation would come.

Lack of intel for the west, and continual misinterpretation of intel by the Soviets, added to the distrust and added fuel to what we know as the Cold War.

tl;dr Yes, both sides bear some blame. IMHO the Soviet leadership bears a little more blame than the US and GB.

Also, I feel better that status quo is no longer = One side flinches at the wrong time, whole world goes boom automatically.

Hey, so I made some mix CDs because I was going on a trip, right? Okay, so I was putting on songs from a whole bunch of stuff, like some death metal, hip hop, classical, techno, and stuff. I won't say what artists because you'll make fun of me, and then I'll get distracted from my point. What was my--oh yeah. Anyway, I was kind of shotgunning my selections, right? So I shuffled it. And then, I was listening to it, and then, right in the middle of some really heavy sh#t, I mean headbanging evil stuff, I had accidentally put in "Yotsuba, Hungry". You know, where someone in Kuricorder got a ceramic bowl and rubbed their thumb on the lip of it to make it sound like Yotsuba's hungry tummy? Yeah, that one! Well, I mean it wasn't an accident, but I just thought it was neat where Shuffle put it. I think that'll be a great time to pull over and grab a bite to eat on my trip. I'm leaving it right where it is. 'Cause, when I hear it, I'll probably say, "Well, sh#t, I am kinda hungry," and I will get HAMBURGERS!

Because hamburgers are the best!

I'm not going to Berlin, btw. My hatchback not-suv thing cannot drive in water!! It is impossible. So, I won't get to see what you guys are talking about :( . But I am going to Memphis. They have a wall outside Elvis's house and you know what they do? Everyone writes stuff on it! I'm serious! If you have a sharpee and you can find an empty spot, you can write something! I'm gonna write "/azu/tard was here!!" I'm really serious! If you live in Memphis, go look at the wall in a few days! You might see what I wrote! :D

Okay, I have to go get some stuff ready for trip. Good night/morning, y'all!

>>111720
One time I was walking in Memphis.
I saw the ghost of Elvis on Union Avenue.
I followed him up to the gates of Graceland, and I watched him walk right through.

>>111722

...S-s-scary!!

politics is for losers who can't get laid, as is this board

>>111722
Well, one time, I was patrolling (but not hatin') the Eastern Berlin border alone, when suddenly... there came the smell of a fart that wasn't mine!

>>111739
Oh, come now. That's not true. Bill Clinton got laid in the oval office. And That's as political a position as you get! Plus, these days, if you join the Republican Party, you can get 3 nights with gay, drug-dealing prostitutes for the price of one!

Politics, much like /azu/ is for people who have problems NOT getting laid, as you can so plainly see.

>>111720

This... is the best post in /azu/ I've seen in a long time.

>>111720
Oh anonymous thou hast made me chortle with much force.

>>The world was never getting better. It was never getting worse.

Usually I'd be the first one to agree with stomping on rose-tinted glasses, but I have to admit that, like >>111702 I remember the unusual sense of optimism that seemed to develop in those days after the gloomy 1980s; thawing of the cold war, revolutions in Eastern Europe, the release of Nelson Mandela (Feb 1990), all in a few months time.
Of course, not long afterwards we got the Gulf War, The Yugoslavian Civil wars and so on, but back then, for a few months, it seemed not too weird to think: "Shit, maybe things can get better".

>>111783
You missed the part where Sam was making a philosophical arguement that "good" and "bad" don't exist.

Also, if you talk to old people today, they'll tell you how great the 50's were.
If you watch television from the 50's, they'll tell you how great the 1890's were.
I'll bet if you had asked people in the 1890's, they'd tell you how great the 1850's were.

>>111786
Let's not forget how many people look back at high school and get nostalgic? I can tell you this: I am in college, and if I ever... EVER.... miss my high school days, I want somebody, anybody, to put a bullet through my skull, and then toss me into a funeral oven (though an E-Z Bake oven will do if nothing else is available), and then nuke the site from orbit (It's the only way to be sure).

My point is, as time passes, we tend to forget the parts we really, really hated about the past, and remember the parts we love... though we overvalue them. For example, take movies and music. I think there are few people out there, at least on this forum, who will argue that modern, western movies and music, on the whole, suck. We look back and remember a time when movies had substance, when music was more than angry white boys screaming about whores.

But we also forget that back then (whenever "then" was), they sucked ass, too. I mean, look at MST3k. Despite the fact that most of the movies on that show came from an era where pumping millions of dollars (or the deflated equivalent) into CG special effects and screwing the rest was not an option. And it's an era where people would NOT accept the idea that Lucy and Ricky Ricardo could sleep in the same bed on TV. Not doing anything IN it, just having the same bed. So, there goes the sex scenes. All they have left to work with is plot and characters... and they STILL fucked it up. A lot. A LOT. And music? Well, for every Boston, for every Elvis, Beatles, and the like, there were a thousand imitators... whose songs just never took off and faded from memory.

And besides all that, ignoring all the similarities of culture we forget over time... well, "back in my day, black people knew what end of the bus they belonged at, women knew their place was in the home, and I say we shoulda just finished them damn Japs off and bombed 'em back to their non-Christian Hell! ...Also, gay people don't exist. Because every time one of them fags pops up, we hang 'em."

Truly an age of morality, hmmm? (And as proof that government does not change... the first immigration act passed by Congress in America was the Chinese exclusionary act. Basically, "those damn Chinese are coming here and takin' our jobs! I say we kick them out! And then let's go lynch us some gays and blacks!")

It seems to me there's a legitimate difference between nostalgia for "the good old days" (which seems to be a common human trait) and the fact that some eras offer optimism and hope, some apathy, some despair and suffering. Even in Germany you can find Ost-nostalgie for the days before the Berlin Wall fell, but again, that's nostalgia, whereas the collapse of the Wall was a true positive day in history. Like ADD vs. ADHD, there is a difference.

hmm... for me, being directly involved, i'd have to say i'm grateful for whatever it brought. overall, stuff isnt better or worse than before though - it's simply different. got to arrange with what ever system you live in anyway, right?

>>a philosophical arguement that "good" and "bad" don't exist.

Oh, I don't really disagree with that, but I saw that as an observation, helped with the benefit of hindsight, while I was merely trying to illustrate a feeling that such an event can generate, as short-lived as it was (much like a negative mood that can follow after catastrophes like Kennedy, 9/11, etc.).
I think >>111804 words it better than I did.

I'm approaching 40, but try to be as anti-nostalgic as I can ...unless it's about trivial stuff like vidya games.

18 years--plenty of time for Chiyo to grow older, and plenty of time for a nostalgia movement called the "Osties" to grow out of East Germans.

Part of it is just nostalgia, which is probably a form of mental disease when you get right down to it. The other part, however, are people with genuinely good reasons--unhappy at the sense of alienation, or the new social values, or the "downgrading" of their own educations in the eyes of the Federal Republic.

It's an inevitable consequence. Here's a CIS (not USSR) Honor Guard who might not have realized his portrait was going to be in the middle of Berlin for all to point and laugh at.

>>111802

>nuke the site from orbit

Fuckin' A!

>>111808

Starr was supposed to be German himself, right? Ex-GSG-9? Of course, now the "Allfather" is German, too (although Benedict XVI is much skinnier).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I got the impression that in the Preacher universe, God is real, but Christ isn't. That is, there was a human being named Jesus whose bloodline the Grail "preserved," but there doesn't seem to be much discussion as to whether there ever really was a Jesus the messiah,a divine figure who taught and acted as in the gospels. If you see what I'm getting at, in the Preacher theology, Christ is for practical purposes non-existent.